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What’s Our Best Bet in 2024?

By Dan McKnight | The Libertarian Institute | May 12, 2023

Did you see what Donald Trump said about Ukraine?

At a CNN town hall on Wednesday evening, the former president and current candidate announced:

“If I’m president, I will have that war settled in one day, 24 hours. I’ll meet with Putin, I’ll meet with Zelensky, they both have weaknesses and they both have strengths, and within 24 hours that war will be settled. It’ll be over…I don’t think in terms of winning or losing. I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people and breaking them.”

When CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins asked Trump if he wanted Ukraine or Russia to win this war, he responded, “I want everybody to stop dying. They’re dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them stop dying. And I’ll have that done in 24 hours, I’ll have it done. You need the power of the presidency to do it.”

That’s a damn good answer. And a much better one than anyone in the Biden White House has presented for why we’ve spent over a hundred billion dollars to fight a war with Russia.

These corporate press stand-ins never explain what “victory” conditions look like for Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelensky has said his aims include the recapture of Crimea and the decapitation of the Russian state.

But should those be America’s war aims? Should America even be a participant in this Eastern European war? I don’t think so. And I doubt you think so either.

We are eighteen months away from the 2024 United States presidential election, and none of us can say with certainty who will win.

Will Donald Trump return to the Oval Office? Will Joe Biden receive a second term? Will Ron DeSantis or even Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tip over expectations?

My organization, Bring Our Troops Home, does not endorse or campaign for political candidates, so I don’t have a say in those results.

But I am confident, whomever is elected, that a president does not have the power to single-handedly defeat the War Party; the swamp is too deep, the DC bureaucracy too hostile.

The future of our Constitution will not be decided by a single election, but by a decentralized movement which can stop our next endless war before it starts.

The Defend the Guard Act would keep your state’s National Guard out of unconstitutional wars that haven’t been declared by Congress.

I’ve already gotten this bill introduced in 24 states, passed through multiple committees and even the Arizona Senate.

So whenever you’re watching a town hall on the news, or listening to a clip of a presidential debate on the radio, or reading an article about a new campaign update—remember that you have the power to change U.S. foreign policy in your own backyard first.

Have you called your state representative and state senator and told them to sponsor a Defend the Guard bill?

Have you asked your family and friends to make that same call?

Have you joined one of our phone banking operations?

Have you written a letter to the editor of your local paper about Defend the Guard?

Have you shared Bring Our Troops Home content and Defend the Guard material on your social media?

Most importantly, have you joined our supporters’ group and made a financial contribution to the cause?

In my opinion, Defend the Guard is the most important cause happening in these United States. And every morning I wake up wondering what more I can do to make it successful. You must have the same mindset.

Enlist in the Defend the Guard movement so that no matter who wins in 2024, the War Party is still defeated.

May 12, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

UK Shipment of Long Range Cruise Missiles to Ukraine Radically Changes the Conflict

By Gilbert Doctorow | May 12, 2023

Americans have taken umbrage at the now commonplace habit of Russian media personalities to speak of “Anglo-Saxons” as the principal opponents, or enemies if you will, of their country. In Russia the term is meant to include the USA. Given the high percentage of Blacks, Hispanics and Orientals in the U.S. population, there is some substance to American objections. However, as regards the British, they have not a leg to stand on: they are Anglo-Saxons like it or not. And by their behavior towards Russia right to the present day, they have well earned the intense dislike bordering on hatred that a large swathe of influential Russians feel towards them.

First you had Boris Johnson, who ruined the nearly agreed peace accord between Russia and Ukraine back in March 2022. Boris threatened to put a stop to Western assistance to Kiev if Zalensky took the draft treaty through to signature. Zelensky then backed out of the negotiations and went all out for war.

Now we have Prime Minister Sunak sending long range cruise missiles to Ukraine supposedly to help them succeed with their counteroffensive and recapture lost territory from the Russians. The missiles are to be fitted onto existing Ukrainian Soviet era jets and have a 250 km range. This will theoretically enable Ukrainian forces based in Kharkov or Zaporozhie to deliver highly destructive warheads to anywhere in Crimea, for example.

Yes, you may say, but the Ukrainians already have been making daily drone attacks on Sevastopol. However, the new missiles will be far more deadly and less easy for air defense to bring down because of the inherent advantages of their speed, very low altitude and variable flight paths.

The new weapons are potentially a game changer in a way that the Leopard or Abrams tanks that have attracted so much public attention over recent months are not.

Why a game changer? Because with each incrementally more powerful artillery or tank delivered to Ukraine the Russians could say they only meant that Russia would have to push the Ukrainian border back that much further to keep Russian territories safe from attack. But there is no way for the Russians to push back the line of confrontation with Ukraine 250 km in the short term. That might be possible in a matter of months if not years. But in the meantime the missiles could do vast damage in purely Russian territories and create enormous numbers of casualties among both civilians and military.

I can easily imagine the popular reaction in Russia of a Ukrainian rocket attack on Sevastopol that killed, say 400 civilians. There would be a great public uproar and it is hard to see how the Kremlin could avoid responding with its own devastating counter blow. But counter blow against whom? Against the Ukrainians or against those truly responsible for the atrocity, namely the British? Here is where the current strong dislike for “Anglo-Saxons” in Russia may come into play. It comes on top of the recent Russian outrage over delivery of depleted uranium artillery shells to Ukraine by Britain.

In effect, by delivering these weapons to Ukraine Britain is wrecking the hitherto generally accepted notion that the war between Russia and Ukraine will be decided on the battlefield. That is precisely how the EU’s foreign policy and security chief Borrell put it more than half a year ago. Instead the outcome in Ukraine may now be decided by a war between Russia and Britain. This is a war that Britain is as likely to lose as the ongoing war being fought by Ukraine. And what comes after that? A full NATO-Russia war? A nuclear war?

The dangers have now been vastly raised by Mr. Sunak’s ill-conceived decision on arms shipments to Ukraine. It would be a positive step towards their own survival if EU authorities took cognizance of this British idiocy and brought their British colleagues to their senses.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023

May 12, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

As Donetsk civilians live in constant fear of Ukrainian shelling, a reporter on the ground details the terror

By Eva Bartlett | RT | May 11, 2023

Heavy Ukrainian shelling of central Donetsk on April 28 killed nine civilians – including an eight-year-old girl and her grandmother – and injured at least 16 more. The victims were burned alive when the minibus they were in was hit by a shell.

The attack also targeted a major hospital, apartment buildings, houses, parks, streets, and sidewalks. All civilian areas – not military targets.

According to the Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DPR) Representative Office in the JCCC (Joint Monitoring and Co-ordination Center on Ukraine’s War Crimes), Kiev’s forces fired high-explosive fragmentation missiles “produced in Slovakia and transferred to Ukraine by NATO countries.” Regarding an earlier shelling on the same day, the JCCC noted that US-made HIMARS systems were used, targeting “exclusively in the residential, central quarter of the city.”

I was outside of Donetsk interviewing refugees from Artyomovsk (also known as Bakhmut) when both rounds of intense shelling occurred, the first starting just after 11am. I returned to see a catastrophic scene, with a burnt-out bus – still smoking – and some of its passengers’ charred bodies melted onto the frame. This tragic picture was sadly not a one-off event.

Elsewhere, city workers were already removing debris and had begun repaving damaged sections of the roads. I’ve seen this following Ukrainian shelling many times, including on January 1 this year, when Ukraine fired 25 Grads into the city centre. Similarly, in July 2022, Ukrainian shelling downtown killed four civilians, including two in a vehicle likewise gutted by flames. When I arrived at the scene about an hour later, workers were repaving the affected section of the street.

The damage to the Republican Trauma Center hospital was quickly cleaned up, but videos shared on Telegram immediately after the shelling show a gaping hole in one of the walls. The room concerned contained what was, apparently, Donetsk’s sole MRI machine.

Along Artyoma street, the central Donetsk boulevard targeted countless times by Ukrainian attacks, the destruction was evident: Two cars caught up in the bombing, residents of an apartment building boarding up shattered windows and doors, the all-too-familiar sound of glass and debris being swept away. In the residential area, the first to be targeted that day, in a massive crater behind one house, the walls and roof of another home were intermixed with rocket fragments.

Another year of Ukrainian war crimes

In April 2022, following strikes on a large market area in Kirovsky district, in western Donetsk, which killed five civilians and injured 23, I went there to document the aftermath, not expecting to see two of the five dead still lying in nearby lanes. This shelling was just before noon, a busy time of day in the area. Bombing at such periods is an insidious tactic to ensure more civilians are maimed or killed.

Double and triple striking the same areas is another method used by Ukrainian forces. In an interview last year, the director of the Department of Fire and Rescue Forces of the DPR Ministry of Emergency Situations, Sergey Neka, told me, “Our units arrive at the scene and Ukraine begins to shell it. A lot of equipment has been damaged and destroyed.”

Andrey Levchenko, chief of the emergency department for the Kievsky district of Donetsk, also hit by Ukrainian attacks, said: “They wait for 30 minutes for us to arrive. We arrive there, start assisting people, and the shelling resumes. They wait again, our guys hide in the shelters, as soon as we go out, put out the fire, help people, then shelling resumes.”

I was here in Donetsk in mid-June, during a day of particularly intense Ukrainian shelling of the very centre of the city, which killed at least five civilians. The DPR authorities reported that “within two hours, almost 300 MLRS rockets and artillery shells were fired.” One Grad rocket hit a maternity hospital, tearing through the roof.

The following month, Ukraine fired rockets containing internationally-banned ‘petal’ mines. The streets of central Donetsk, as well as the western and northern districts and other cities, were littered with the hard-to-spot mines designed to grotesquely maim, but not necessarily kill, anyone stepping on them. These mines keep claiming new victims to this day – when I last wrote about them here, 104 civilians had been maimed, including this 14-year-old boy. Three had died of their injuries. Since then, the number of victims has risen to 112.

In August, heavy Ukrainian shelling of the centre of Donetsk hit directly next to the hotel I was staying in, along with dozens of other journalists and cameramen. Six civilians were killed that day, including one woman outside the hotel, as well as a child. She been a talented ballerina due to leave to study in Russia soon, and along with her grandmother, her ballet teacher was also killed that day, herself a world-famous former ballerina.

Three bouts of Ukrainian shelling of the city centre in a span of just five days in September killed 26 civilians. Four were killed on September 17, among them two people burned alive inside a vehicle on the same central Artyoma Street. Two days later, 16 civilians were killed, the remains of their bodies strewn along the street or in unrecognizable piles of flesh. Three days later, Ukraine struck next to the central market, killing six civilians, two in a minibus, the rest on the street.

In my subsequent visits to Donetsk and surrounding cities in November and December, I filmed the aftermath of more Ukrainian shelling (using HIMARS) of civilian areas of Donetsk and the settlement of Gorlovka to the north. The November 7 shelling of central Donetsk could have killed the toddler of the young mother I interviewed. Fortunately, after hearing the first rockets hit, she ran with her son to the bathroom. When calm returned, she found shrapnel on his bed.

The November 12 shelling of Gorlovka damaged a beautiful historic cultural building, destroying parts of the roof and the theatre hall within. According to the centre’s director, it was one of the best movie theatres in Donetsk Region, one of the oldest, most beautiful, and most beloved buildings in the city. He noted that the HIMARS system is a very precise weapon, so the attack was not accidental.

The shelling goes on

Early morning during Easter Mass on April 16, the Ukrainian army fired 20 rockets near the Cathedral of the Holy Transfiguration in the centre of Donetsk, French journalist Christelle Neant reported, noting that one civilian was killed and seven injured. The shelling extended to the central market just behind the cathedral. Just over a week prior, on April 7, another shelling of that market killed one civilian and injured 13, also considerably damaging the market itself.

Ukraine continues to shell the western and northern districts of Donetsk, also pounding Gorlovka, as well as Yasinovatya just north of Donetsk (killing two civilians some days ago).

On April 23, shelling in Petrovsky, a hard-hit western Donetsk district, killed one man and injured five more. The same day, in a village northeast of Donetsk, a rocket killed two women in their 30s. Security camera footage shows the moment when the women attempted to take cover. The munition that killed them hit directly next to where they huddled.

A few days later, on my way to interview refugees from Artyomovsk sheltering in another city, I passed along the tiny village where those women were killed. It’s a road I’ve driven a dozen times or more, a quiet, calm, scenic region of rolling hills, a lovely river, a beautiful church. It’s far from any front line. The murder of these two women was another Ukrainian war crime.

The people here are constantly terrorized by Ukrainian shelling or the threat of it, and have been since Kiev started its war on the Donbass in 2014.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

May 12, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Kiev tries to disguise the failure of its counteroffensive plan

By Lucas Leiroz | May 12, 2023

In a recent interview to a Western media outlet, the head of the Kiev regime stated that his country needs more time before starting the counteroffensive against Russian troops. According to Vladimir Zelensky, the Ukrainian forces would be “ready” to start the move, but before that they need to receive more equipment and wait for the ideal conditions for action to emerge – which is obviously a contradictory, ambiguous and unsubstantiated narrative.

Zelensky’s words were spoken during a conference with the Eurovision News Network and were then reported by the BBC. The Ukrainian president claims that he could give orders to launch the counteroffensive now, but that would mean too many casualties for Kiev, which is why it seems more prudent to wait for more favorable conditions to arise in the future. At the time, Zelensky also emphasized the importance of receiving more armored vehicles from the West, which would operationally facilitate the counteroffensive.

Another interesting point of the interview was Zelensky’s response when asked if he has been under pressure from his western partners to resume negotiations in case the counterattack plans fail. The president suggested that his army would continue fighting regardless of the outcome of the counter-offensive and said that no Western country could pressure Ukraine to surrender territories to Russian forces. Zelensky also said that Moscow intends to “freeze” the conflict, as it would be territorially favored, which supposedly will be prevented by the counteroffensive.

“We’d lose a lot of people [if we started the counteroffensive now] (…) I think that’s unacceptable. So, we need to wait. We still need a bit more time (…) [Western powers] can’t pressure Ukraine into surrendering territories”, he said.

The most curious thing about Zelensky’s narrative is how extremely contradictory it is. At one moment the president says that his country is “ready” to start the maneuver and at another he says it needs to wait. Either Kiev is ready to start an effective counterattack, or in fact it is not and needs to wait for better conditions in the future. There is no possible synthesis between both possibilities. This confused and irrational rhetoric sounds like a desperate attempt to have control over the military situation of the conflict, when in fact this control does not exist.

Also, by reaffirming that Kiev will continue to fight to recover the territories liberated by Russia, Zelensky makes it clear to the Western media that, in practice, the outcome of the counteroffensive does not matter. Even if the plans fail, Ukrainian forces will continue to be forced to fight and keep looking for virtually unattainable results. And, as Zelensky himself stated, no western power is opposed to that – which was already well known, since NATO countries are the most interested in keeping Kiev active in the conflict.

In the same sense, Zelensky lies when he says that Russia wants to freeze the conflict. Moscow’s position is clear on achieving an effective and lasting resolution to the crisis. However, Russia does not see the fight against Ukrainian forces as a war, but as a special military operation inserted in a broader context – the war with NATO, which is the organization that uses Kiev as a proxy. Russia avoids escalations and big maneuvers because it wants to avoid as much as possible the death of Ukrainian civilians, seen as part of the same people by most Russian citizens. So, Russia does not want to freeze – it really wants to win and end the problem, but it wants to do it in the least harmful way possible for Ukraine itself.

However, what is most interesting about Zelensky’s speech is to see how Ukrainian rhetoric has changed in a few days. In the most recent wave of terrorist attacks launched by the regime, several officials claimed that the moves were part of the counteroffensive, which had already begun. Zelensky even promised that he would launch more attacks on Crimea, until he “recovered” it, virtually assuming the terrorist nature of such a counteroffensive. Now, however, the rhetoric has changed and apparently the move has not yet started, with the Ukrainians waiting for a more opportune moment to avoid casualties.

In fact, what seems to be happening is the formulation of a narrative by Zelensky and the western media to disguise the failure. Many analysts, citing sources on the battlefield, believe that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has already begun. The intensity of Kiev’s attacks – both on the trenches and in terrorist operations – has already escalated. The special troops that had reportedly been sent to Poland for training during the winter have already returned to the country and there have been practical results of their work. For example, the head of Russian PMC Wagner Group recently showed on his social networks several Russian soldiers killed after Ukrainian massive attacks in Bakhmut.

The problem is that, contrary to what was promised by the regime’s propaganda, this counteroffensive has been weak, inefficient and incapable of guaranteeing territorial gains. Kiev managed to increase combat capability and generate more casualties on the Russians, but this had no military relevance. The regime’s forces are still unable to capture and occupy territories, which is why the media has run out of arguments to maintain its previous narrative and is now changing it, stating that the move has not yet started.

In a realistic analysis, it seems evident that Kiev is incapable of reversing the military scenario of the conflict with its counterattack. The promise of occupation of Donbass and Crimea is absolutely inconsistent with the reality of Ukrainian troops, which have been weakened, demoralized, and poorly equipped since 2022. So, indeed, the counteroffensive is happening, but it is not what the propagandists promised.

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

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

May 12, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine uses chemical weapons – Russian journalist

RT | May 11, 2023

Ukrainian forces have used chemical weapons, which caused loss of consciousness after inhalation, during an attack in the Orekhov sector, military correspondent Alexander Kots reported on Thursday.

The use of substances banned by international conventions appear to be part of the much-anticipated Ukrainian offensive, said the reporter for the outlet KP.

According to Kots, Western-supplied tanks have been spotted outside of Kharkov, while Ukrainian troops have launched attacks on Russian positions north and south of Artyomovsk, which they call Bakhmut.

Multiple Western officials have said over the past week that all the weapons, ammunition and supplies required for Ukraine’s grand counter-offensive had already been delivered. On Thursday, the UK confirmed it had supplied Kiev with long-range ‘Storm Shadow’ missiles.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, however, claimed he needed more time and more armored vehicles before he could launch the assault, in order to avoid casualties. In the same interview, Zelensky claimed Ukraine had nothing to do with the drones that attacked the Kremlin last week.

According to US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose son had volunteered on Kiev’s side for several months last year, Ukraine has suffered around 300,000 military casualties and is taking losses at a far higher rate than Russia.

Donetsk People’s Republic authorities had accused Ukrainian troops of dropping chemical weapons from drones back in February, pointing to frontline reports and videos shared by Ukrainians on social media.

In late February, the Russian military warned that the Ukrainian forces in Kramatorsk had received 16 containers with riot control agents CS (chlorobenzylidenemalononitrile) and CR (dibenzoxazepine), as well as the incapacitating agent BZ (3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate), accompanied by “citizens of foreign countries.” Moscow suggested the US might be planning a “false flag” attack in the Donbass.

Chemical warfare is forbidden under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), an international treaty that took effect in 1997 and to which both Ukraine and Russia are signatories.

May 11, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

US confiscates assets of Russian businessman for ‘rebuilding Ukraine’

Press TV – May 11, 2023

The US Justice Department has announced the first transfer of assets illegally confiscated from a Russian businessman to a fund purportedly intended for “rebuilding Ukraine” amid its persisting efforts to punish entities on good terms with Moscow.

US Attorney General Merrick Garland declared in a statement on Wednesday the first transfer to the Ukraine fund of assets seized from the US accounts of Russian businessman Konstantin Malofeyev, who Washington has accused of funding pro-Russian forces in Crimea in 2014.

“While this represents the United States’ first transfer of forfeited Russian funds for the rebuilding of Ukraine, it will not be the last,” Garland boasted in what appears as more of a pro-Kiev publicity move.

Last year, the US Justice Department pressed charges against Malofeyev — a Russian banker whose business interests include the pro-Moscow Tsargrad media group, described by American officials as “one of the main sources of financing” Russian interests in eastern Ukraine and Crimea — for violating sanction against Russia.

At that time, Garland further claimed that millions of dollars had been seized “from an account at a US financial institution traceable to Malofeyev’s sanctions violations.”

Moscow has repeatedly warned that the US-led sanctions imposed against Russia as well as the massive transfer of advanced weaponry to Ukraine will further prolong the war and add to the casualties that have reached several hundred thousand since the Ukraine conflict began in February 2022.

Garland’s announcement came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin lashed out at Western governments for unleashing a “real war” against his country, vowing that the battle with the US and its allies over Ukraine will end in Russia’s victory.

“Today, civilization is again at a decisive turning point. A real war has been unleashed against our homeland,” Putin said in a Tuesday address on Moscow’s Red Square marking the anniversary of Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two.

He also vowed to continue to defend the pro-Russian population in eastern Ukraine and protect Moscow’s interests against Western ambitions.

Putin further slammed “Western global elites”, saying they are “sowing hatred, Russophobia, and aggressive nationalism.”

The development also came after US President Joe Biden called on the nation’s divided Congress to make it easier to transfer confiscated assets of Russian businessmen to Ukraine. In December 2022, Congress passed a law that allowed certain assets seized by the Justice Department to be funneled to Ukraine via the US Department of State.

Among the Russian assets seized by Washington was a fleet of super yachts, including a 106m (348-foot) vessel owned by Suleiman Kerimov valued at over $300m, which had been docked in Fiji.

It is quite unclear, however, how the assets transferred in this case will be used by Ukraine or when they will be available to Kiev. This is one of the issues G7 finance ministers gathering in Japan for a meeting, ahead of the leaders’ summit in Hiroshima later this month, will be discussing.

May 11, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

America faces major hurdles trying to form ‘Asia-Pacific NATO’

By Drago Bosnic | May 11, 2023

While serving as the UK Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss pompously announced that so-called “Global NATO” was in the making, while also calling for the United Nations to be reformed to the political West’s liking (although quite the opposite is sorely needed). However, the ever-belligerent power pole seems to be having trouble forming even the “Asia-Pacific NATO”, let alone a global organization that would gather virtually all of Washington DC’s vassals and satellite states. The main issue seems to be stemming from the unresolved historical disputes of the Second World War and the way it affected the Asia-Pacific region.

It should be noted that attempts to create a NATO equivalent in the region are hardly new. The United States has been trying to accomplish this for decades during the (First) Cold War. However, the deals would usually fall apart faster than it took them to be signed by all parties involved. Such disunity greatly contributed to the humiliating defeat of US aggression in Vietnam/Indochina half a century ago. Nowadays, similar disunity is once again emerging among America’s East Asian satellite states, specifically between South Korea and Japan. The US insists that the two countries should set their differences aside and go for a historical push that would lead to complete reconciliation.

However, numerous Japanese war crimes during WWII (as well as in the decades prior) are deeply ingrained in the minds of the Korean people, on both sides of the 38th parallel. In fact, it’s one of the few things both Seoul and Pyongyang actually agree on, albeit tacitly. A recent South Korean court case was supposed to resolve the issue of several major Japanese companies using forced labor in Korea during WWII, but Tokyo was still left unscathed by the process, which angered many Koreans. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol dubbed the court decision “a step towards trilateral cooperation to defend freedom, peace and prosperity not only in our two countries, but also around the world”.

The “trilateral cooperation” he was referring to is between the US, Japan and South Korea. However, only a third of South Korean citizens support the deal, as they consider it didn’t truly address Japanese war crimes. Worse yet, this isn’t the first time such deals have fallen through. In 2015, a similar arrangement regarding the so-called “comfort women battalions”, another Japanese war crime that went largely unpunished, collapsed shortly after it was announced, as the vast majority of South Koreans rejected the deal. On the other hand, Japan considers this to be a “case closed”, further antagonizing the (rightfully) angered Korean people who suffered tremendously during decades of Japanese occupation.

To add insult to injury, South Korea is doing all this so it could firmly join an explicitly anti-Chinese coalition (and also implicitly anti-Russian), becoming the first country in the line to get quite literally obliterated in a possible superpower confrontation, as if the US inability to deal with North Korea wasn’t enough already. And while Seoul might feel “motivated” by incessant US pressure, the people of South Korea are wholly unmoved. They see China as an important trade partner, as well as a virtually endless market for South Korean pop culture. Thus, they have no interest in an open confrontation (or any other kind) with their giant neighbor. On the contrary, they prefer the current status quo.

The US is worried this could greatly weaken their ability to form a wider and more compliant anti-Chinese coalition. For years, Washington DC has been trying to enlist Beijing’s neighbors in a “freedom and democracy alliance”, the bulk of which would be composed of Japanese and South Korean forces. Precisely this is the reason why Tokyo started a massive rearmament program last year, while Seoul engaged its fast-growing domestic military-industrial complex to arm several key US vassals around the world (particularly Poland). However, the question remains, how ready this anti-Chinese/anti-Russian coalition would be to deal with powers that make North Korea’s nuclear program look like a footnote?

America’s usual warmongering doesn’t only bring instability to the region that enjoyed decades of relative peace, prosperity and economic cooperation, but it also risks leading to the complete fracturing of US-imposed alliances, which itself could backfire and cause Washington DC to lose influence in the region. Naturally, this would be fantastic for the advancement of actual peace, but it makes America’s foreign policy framework look completely self-defeating and even suicidal. Similar efforts have already led to such results, with the Quad (Japan, UK, US, India) effectively dead as New Delhi has outright rejected anti-Russian rhetoric. The only exception to this is the AUKUS (Australia, UK and US), but even this alliance has created issues with other US partners.

Apart from being virtually redundant, as the so-called Five Eyes (UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) covers its functions, AUKUS created a lot of controversies after Australia backed out of the extremely lucrative submarine deal with France and opted for an arrangement with its Anglo-American overlords. This didn’t only make Canberra look like an outright satellite state, but also made Paris deeply frustrated, which might have contributed to its (for now only apparent) tilt towards Beijing, the very superpower AUKUS is aimed against. Such dictatorial US moves are creating multilayered problems in other geopolitical theaters as America is effectively forcing others to prioritize its national interests over their own.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

May 11, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

The US, Poland, & Germany Are Responsible For Russia Formally Withdrawing From The CFE Treaty

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | MAY 10, 2023

The Kremlin revealed on Wednesday that it’ll formally withdraw from the long-defunct Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) that it had already partially suspended participation in and then pulled out of its mechanisms in 2007 and 2015 respectively due to NATO failing to fulfill its commitments. This arms control pact did exactly what its name implies by limiting the deployment of conventional forces in Europe, the purpose of which was to preemptively avert future security dilemmas.

That noble goal was sabotaged by the US as part of its global power play that began after the former Bush Administration’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002 on the false pretext of needing to build a “missile defense shield” in Europe to protect against Iran and North Korea. In reality, this was actually aimed at eventually neutralizing Russia’s nuclear second-strike capabilities in order to place it in a position of nuclear blackmail so as to coerce never-ending concessions from it.

Despite being defunct for eight years already, Russia had thus far been reluctant to formally withdraw from the CFE Treaty since it held out hope (naively in hindsight) of US-led NATO once again complying with this pact as part of the larger deal that it sought to negotiate with the West. Even after Moscow was compelled to commence its special operation in Ukraine, its leadership still thought that the West’s return to the CFE Treaty could factor into a forthcoming peace treaty for reforming European security.

The timing behind this decision, being over one year since the start of this proxy war’s latest phase, suggests that some of the subsequent events that unfolded since then were most responsible for the Kremlin’s recalculations in this respect. In particular, this likely concerns the US, Poland, and Germany’s military buildup plans, which collectively leave no doubt about their intent to not even keep up the prior pretense of supposedly complying with the CFE.

Whatever well-intended but ultimately naïve hopes the Russian leadership previously had about this pact playing a role in a post-conflict peace agreement were shattered by these developments, but even then, there was a delay between their respective announcements and this decision. That was likely attributable to still holding out hope against the odds that these were mostly just rhetorical statements that wouldn’t be tangibly acted upon, yet now nobody can deny that these plans are indeed sincere.

America was going to deploy more assets to this theater no matter what since its leadership believed that this aligns with their unipolar hegemonic interests, but what Russia apparently didn’t expect was the gusto with which Poland would seek to exploit events to accelerate its rise as a regional power. The military-strategic complementarity between the US and Poland in this respect exacerbated the Kremlin’s threat assessment of their coordinated moves, which was made all the worse by Germany’s later on.

Chancellor Scholz waited until last December to signal his country’s hegemonic ambitions in a lengthy article for the influential Council on Foreign Relations’ official magazine, which were arguably influenced by its regional competition with Poland for leadership of Central & Eastern Europe (CEE). Accordingly, “Russia Needs To Once Again Brace Itself For A Prolonged Rivalry With Germany”, which is fighting tooth and nail not to cede control over the EU’s foreign and military policies to Poland.

The US is masterfully playing Germany and Poland off against one another as they compete to remain or become its top partner in Europe respectively, to which end they’re literally in an arms race with each other that’s driven by their shared desire to lead the continent’s containment of Russia. Amidst these newfound military-strategic dynamics, remaining party to the CFE in any capacity makes absolutely no sense, hence why the decision was finally made to formally withdraw from it.

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

Syria’s Return to Arab League Shows US Gulf Allies Tired of ‘Regime Change’

By James Tweedie – Sputnik – 09.05.2023

Syria’s secular government is still standing after more than a decade of sectarian terrorist insurgency backed by the US and its regional allies. Independent investigative journalist Christopher Helali said its readmittance to the Arab League was a sign of waning US power in the Middle East.

Return of Damascus to the bosom of the Arab League after 11 years of pariah status shows the failure of the US doctrine of regime change, a journalist says.

The regional group of nations voted on Sunday to reverse its 2012 decision to expel the Syrian Arab Republic over President Bashar al-Assad’s resistance to religious-sectarian ‘rebels’ backed by the Western powers and several of the Gulf monarchies.

The tide of the conflict turned in 2015 with Russia’s military assistance, helping to break the sieges of Aleppo and other cities alongside volunteers from Iraq and Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Christopher Helali told Sputnik that the major change of stance by the Arab nations was “part of the ongoing geopolitical shifts that we’re seeing in the wider region.”
“Syria being allowed back into the Arab League is certainly a coup, not only for the Arab countries, but I think for countries like China behind the scenes who have been pushing diplomacy and pushing rapprochement between different sides in the Syrian civil war,” Helali said.

The welcome back for Damascus and President Bashar al-Assad showed there was “no more appetite for regime change” or for backing the “alphabet soup of jihadist groups” funded and armed by Washington — the al-Nusra Front, Islamic State, various al-Qaida affiliates and the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

Those sectarian terrorist forces were supported by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and possibly Qatar and Jordan, the journalist said.

The journalist noted there was “growing discontent” among the Arab states over how the conflict has progressed and its unwanted effects. “People are saying, okay, let’s just let’s finish it and let’s send a lot of these refugees back.”

The other question is who Assad must negotiate with to finally end the 12-year conflict, given the Gulf monarchies previous insistence on a political “transition” that brings the “rebels” into the mainstream.

Those groups have been “allowing different Western journalists there to show that ‘we are moderate rebels… we are Islamists, but we’re not fanatical like ISIS, even though they are underground’,” Helali said.

“Ultimately, Assad would have to speak to the great power brokers in this conflict — the people who supported those groups. So you’d have to think about Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, the United States, Russia, Iran, everybody would have to be at the table,” he continued. “But of course, nobody’s coming to that table except for the people already on Assad’s side. Plus Turkiye, because it’s being pushed to find a settlement, especially for the northern part of Syria, especially by Russia and as well as Iran.”

The elephant in the room remains the illegal US occupation of north-eastern Syria, with its concentration of lucrative oil fields, along with its outpost at al-Tanf in the southern desert near the border with Jordan.

“There can be no peace plan, there can be no situation in which everything is resolved so long as foreign troops, including US troops, still occupy sovereign Syrian territory and so long as arms and equipment and funding keeps funnelling in to Syria, to other armed groups,” Helali stressed.

“Once that stops and once there can be sovereignty over in territorial integrity, Syria reclaiming all of its borders, then there can be some plan. But that plan will have to be Syrian-led” and not imposed form outside, he said.

The ultimate significance the republic’s return to the League is the tacit admission that the US-led plan to overthrow Syria’s government failed — with disastrous consequences for her neighbours.

“What the Arab League is saying is that we’ve tried, it’s failed. Assad is here to stay and we have to find some normalization because we’re also dealing with millions of refugees in the region,” Helali said. “There has to be some political resolution to this conflict so that people can return home. Turkiye has 5 million Syrian refugees. Everybody wants a resolution to this.”

May 9, 2023 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russian citizen killed in Israeli raid

The aftermath of the Israeli strikes on Islamic Jihad targets in the Gaza Strip, May 9, 2023 © AP / Yousef Masoud
RT | May 9, 2023

The Israel Defense Forces launched operation ‘Shield and Arrow’ against the leaders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza on Tuesday morning, allegedly killing several high-ranking militants – as well as their wives, children and other civilians nearby.

A spokesperson for the Palestinian Health Ministry, Ashraf al-Qedra, told RIA Novosti that one of the victims was a citizen of Russia, Jamal Abu Haswan, who “died in Gaza City as a result of shelling by the Israel Defense Forces.”

A neighbor and friend of the deceased told the agency that “a rocket hit the apartment where Abu Haswan lived, which led to his death along with his wife and son.” According to RIA, Abu Haswan worked at a medical facility that “specializes in physical therapy and medical rehabilitation.”

The air raid took place at around 2am local time and left at least 20 people injured in addition to the 12 killed, according to the latest estimates.

The IDF has issued a rare statement confirming its military operation against the PIJ, claiming to have neutralized three top members of the group.

The Palestinian Health ministry said the militants’ families and other civilians were killed in the strikes on an apartment building in Gaza City and a house in the southern city of Rafah.

May 9, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Assassination Bid on Putin to Provoke Furious Escalation… for Whom?

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 7, 2023

Just as the Western public is growing increasingly skeptical of the U.S.-led proxy war against Russia and the insane military and financial aid being pumped to prop up the corrupt Kiev regime, we then see a daring assassination drone attack on the Kremlin.

Russia called it an act of terrorism to kill President Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin has also pointed  the finger at Washington for authoring the assassination bid as well as the Kiev regime for having a hand in it.

The White House denies any American role in the air raid as does Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Western media are reporting claims that Russia may have carried out a false-flag terror attack on itself to justify ramping up military force in Ukraine. Those claims echo those put out earlier by the West about Russia blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines under the Baltic Sea last September. In both cases, the notion of Russian false-flag attacks seems absurd.

Would Russia really risk making itself look incompetent by staging an audacious aerial raid on the seat of political power in its capital?

Two small unmanned aerial vehicles were apparently brought down over the Kremlin in the early hours of Wednesday. The lightweight devices could hardly have posed a serious threat to kill Putin in his official residence. So, it can be dismissed as a realistic attempt at assassination. The Kremlin said Putin was not even in the building at the time.

Nevertheless, the mere fact of explosive drones breaching the iconic walls of the Kremlin and targeting the Senate Palace is certainly an outrageous provocation. One may aver that this provocative act per se was the main aim.

Moscow’s initial response was that it would retaliate accordingly at a time of its choosing. There are many voices calling for Russia to kill Zelensky. A furious reaction by Russia is understandable, but is it prudent?

It seems highly pertinent that there is growing skepticism and even disgust among the Western public about the U.S.-led proxy war in Ukraine. Polls are showing increasing numbers of Americans critical of the “blank checks” that Washington is throwing like a drunken sailor at the Kiev regime. Across Europe too people are angered by the unlimited money showering a corrupt cabal and the reckless danger of inciting an all-out war between NATO and Russia that could spiral into nuclear armageddon. This while Western workers are being drummed into poverty and social misery.

Skimming hundreds of millions of dollars by Zelensky and his cronies in Kiev is undermining Western public tolerance of this completely unnecessary conflict. The war is increasingly seen as a racket for the American military-industrial complex, a racket in which Zelensky and his ilk are indulged with their embezzlement and thievery of Western tax payers’ money.

The Ukraine conflict is blatantly being fueled indefinitely. There is brazen repudiation by Washington and its European minions of any diplomatic solution. A diplomatic solution was obviated from the very beginning when Russia’s reasonable security concerns and offer of dialogue in December 2021 about NATO and Ukraine were arrogantly brushed aside by the Joe Biden administration.

The war racket is too lucrative for the Pentagon industry and its ancillary European weapons firms.

But the Western propaganda narrative of “defending Ukraine for as long as it takes” is wearing thin for public consumption. The Kiev regime is burning down churches, ruthlessly repressing opposition political and media voices, glorifying Nazis and beating its own citizens on the streets in forced conscription for the military.

Vladimir Zelensky is seen as a wheedling character whose begging bowl for more weapons and funds is a black hole.

Without public support (or ignorance) in the West, the whole U.S.-led proxy war against Russia comes unstuck. The American presidential elections are approaching and the Ukrainian debacle could become a decisive factor for voters.

In order to salvage the shaky situation, therefore, what better than for Russia to launch an attack to kill Zelensky? Such an event would be spun to death by the pliant Western media as “evidence of Russian barbarism”, thereby giving the NATO proxy war in Ukraine a new lease on life and most importantly for the weapons racket to find a new throttle.

The American deep state, the CIA and Pentagon corporate oligarchy would be the most plausible agency to author the drone attack on the Kremlin. Just as this faction did with the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines. Technically and militarily, this faction has the capability. Just like the Nord Stream diversionary media stories about Ukrainian military agents being responsible for that sabotage, it is doubtful that the Kiev regime could have carried out the Kremlin attack – alone.

The timing of the Kremlin attack points to a big calculation to incite a wild reaction from Russia. It comes days before the annual May 9 Victory Day parade in Red Square commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. The last time the Kremlin was attacked in an air raid was reportedly in 1942 during Hitler’s invasion. Throw into that incitement that President Putin was targeted.

Arguably, Russia should push to defeat the NATO-backed Kiev regime. The longer that regime survives, the worse the danger persists for Russia from uncontrolled instability on its border. But taking out the contemptible Zelensky and his cronies in a bloody assassination? Such a reaction might be just what his American puppet masters want.

May 8, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

US can’t explain what happened to Nord Stream – Russia

RT | May 8, 2023

Washington hasn’t responded to Moscow’s demand for an explanation of what happened to the Nord Stream pipelines after veteran journalist Seymour Hersh published a bombshell report blaming the US for destroying the key gas route, high-ranking Russian diplomat Konstantin Gavrilov has said.

“We haven’t received any clarification yet and it’s unlikely that we’ll ever get any,” he told Izvestia newspaper on Monday. “There’ll be nothing new [from the US],” added the official, who heads Russia’s delegation at the Vienna talks on military security and arms control.

Gavrilov said he was surprised by the behavior of the EU nations that were most affected by the sabotage of crucial energy infrastructure, which was built to deliver Russian gas to Europe through Germany.

Germany, Sweden and Denmark, which have been carrying out probes into the explosions on Nord Stream 1 and 2 last fall, have so far been reluctant to open up about their findings. They also rejected offers from Russia to assist with the investigations.

“The stance of Europe, which is being openly humiliated, is something that I can’t fully understand,” Gavrilov said.

In early February, Hersh authored a report claiming that US President Joe Biden had given the order to destroy Nord Stream. According to an informed source who talked to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, the explosives that were detonated last September had been planted at the pipelines in the Baltic Sea back in June 2022 by US Navy divers under the cover of a NATO exercise.

Hersh later suggested that Biden had chosen that very moment to blow up the infrastructure because the conflict between Russia and Ukraine “wasn’t going great” for Kiev and its backers in Washington.

US National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson denied the report, calling it “utterly false and complete fiction.”

In late March, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he “fully agreed” with Hersh’s findings that the Nord Stream sabotage had been organized by the American Special Forces.

Other Russian officials have also noted that the only party to benefit from the destruction of Nord Stream was the US, which has seen supplies of its more expensive liquefied natural gas to Europe increase massively since the blasts.

May 8, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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