WHY IS THE WEST SO WEAK (AND RUSSIA SO STRONG)?
THE ROLE OF HUMAN CAPITAL AND WESTERN EDUCATION
BY GAIUS BALTAR | AUGUST 2, 2023
It is becoming increasingly clear to more and more people in the West that something has gone terribly wrong with the Ukraine project. Predictions and projections didn’t pan out and the West doesn’t seem to know what to do. The Russian economy wasn’t a house of cards as predicted, Russian weapons weren’t inferior as predicted, Russian soldiers and commanders weren’t incompetent as predicted, and Russian technology wasn’t inferior as predicted.
In some respects the Russians even seem to be superior to the West. Their weapons are effective and in many cases outright technologically superior, as clearly demonstrated by their hypersonic missiles, SAM systems and electronic warfare systems. Their economy appears to be surprisingly advanced and diversified and based on real wealth creation rather than financialization and debt like the West’s. Their strategic and tactical thinking also seems to work, while the West‘s clearly doesn‘t.
The whole mess is often explained as a result of a miscalculation by the western elites – they underestimated Russia and overestimated the West. The situation, however, is far worse than that. Every day that passes reveals the impotence of the West more and more and the situation is becoming outright humiliating. At this point the rest of the world either shakes their heads or simply laughs at the West and its politicians and diplomats – not to mention its crazed populations.
The dysfunction of the West is far deeper than just the situation around the Ukraine project. It’s absolutely everywhere. The West can’t do diplomacy in general, it can’t run its cities or countries except into the ground, its high-tech projects fail almost as a rule, its infrastructure is crumbling, its economies are crumbling, and all public policies seem to have a civilizational suicide as a final goal. The West’s control mechanisms over the rest of the world are also crumbling, including the dollar, sanctions, color revolutions, military interventions and threats. Nothing seems to work and everything the West does seems to make things worse.
Any rational person upon hearing a western leader, diplomat or “expert” speak, asks himself this question: “Are they just lying or are they really this incompetent and delusional?” The answer is “both” but the incompetence factor is far greater than most people can imagine.
Why has this happened? It’s clear that the cause is far deeper than the deindustrialization of the West or economic problems in general. The economy doesn’t explain the incredible incompetence shown by the West before and during the war in Ukraine.
I suggest that the cause of this unfolding disaster is a serious structural problem in the West – which Russia seems to have largely avoided. This structural problem is a necessary condition for the current western system and has been purposely created to bring it about and maintain it. This problem is the subject of this article – as well as the “mechanism” behind it. This is unfortunately a long article, but the subject matter demands it.
The current ideologically-based power structure of the West outright requires that certain types of people be in positions of influence and certain types of people be sidelined. This applies to all steps of the social ladder; from kindergarten teachers to university teachers and corporate executives, and all the way up to the leaders of society itself. This has been progressing steadily for the last five decades or so, and has resulted in a major structural problem for the West. That problem is the obvious and massive degradation and misallocation of human capital in the West.
Human capital can be described as the quality of a company’s or nation’s workforce, or more specifically how competent the employee pool is – how well they are trained, how quickly they can be trained, how they are educated in general, and how they make decisions. In order to understand what competence really means, let’s define it further.
Competence can be described as specific or general. This distinction is extremely important and must be understood by anyone who attempts to manage human capital on a small or large scale.
Specific competence is the ability to do a certain type of work. This can be carpentry, coding, chemistry, medicine, piloting an airliner, and so on and so forth. Some of these types of jobs may require a lot of competence, training and intelligence, but what they have in common is that their scope is limited and clearly defined. They exist within clear boundaries, separate from the complexities and vagueness of the world in general. Each type of work requires certain abilities innate in the person, as well as varying degrees of training. People, of course, differ a lot in their level of specific competence within each field.
General or high-level competence is the ability to do work that is beyond clearly defined boundaries. The subject matter of those types of work exists in a complex “variable universe” and can be exceedingly vague and confusing. It requires the ability to be adaptive and be able to transfer skills between different types of work. This also applies to expertise in one field being applied to a completely different field – such as applying psychology to economics or astrophysics to climate science.
Examples of positions requiring general or high-level competence people are corporate executives, all kinds of planners and administrators, product developers, inventors, high-level consultants and analysts, military leaders and planners, diplomats, judges, political leaders, and high-level scientists and theoreticians, to name a few.
Specific and general competence types of work are not two separate things. Types of work or “jobs” can be said to range from almost completely specific up to almost completely general. Almost all types of work have elements of both but in varying proportions. To illustrate this I will take an example from a company I’m personally familiar with. This is a software company with several owners, most of whom work at the company. One of the owners is an exceptionally competent database specialist. However, when he contributes to decision making for the company as a whole, he becomes an outright problem. The management structure of the company had to be “modified” to neutralize him in that role, as well as a few others. This employee has exceptional specific competence but very poor general competence. He cannot “transfer” his specific database competence over to competence in moving the company into the future. He simply cannot operate objectively or sensibly outside his database job.
So what makes this employee have such poor general competence – or more specifically – what is general competence? General competence requires three necessary conditions: a) High general intelligence or IQ, b) the ability to be objective, even in situations where the result of your conclusions may not be to your liking, and c) the ability to reach conclusions without being influenced by others (i.e. independent thinking). The latter two conditions are a direct result of how the human brain interacts with the environment. The mechanism behind it is too complicated to describe here, but in simplistic terms it can be said that humans range in their relationship with reality from the emotional-outward/subjective to the introspective/objective. This variable, like all evolutionary traits, including IQ, is normally distributed. This has rather disturbing implications which may be difficult for some people to understand.
Let’s first look at IQ, or general intelligence. In order to be able to deal with seriously complicated work or get through a real university program, an IQ of about 125 is necessary. Only about 5% of the population in the West has this IQ or higher. This means that the pool of potentially high-level competence people is very small to begin with. Even if we use a cut-off of an IQ of 115, which is sufficient for most semi-complicated work, the potential pool only goes up to 16% of the population.
Now let’s take a look at the other variables, i.e. objectivity and independent thinking. Those two are correlated and we will, for the sake of convenience, handle them as the same variable or trait, even though they aren’t. They are normally distributed, much like IQ, with most in the middle and fewer toward the extremes in both directions. On one side of the distribution are people who, to state it bluntly, are incapable of thinking objectively about any issues that may interact with their personal views about anything at all. They can be competent in a limited field which is “neutral” to them (such as databases), but not involving anything else. They can’t run a company in a competitive environment, except into the ground. They can’t run a city, a country, a military campaign, an economy, or anything requiring general competence, except into the ground, regardless of their intelligence. These people are clearly not suitable for general/high-level competence jobs.
So, what is the proportion of the population that is objective enough and independent thinkers enough to be suitable for those jobs? That’s difficult to determine but it’s clear that it is maximum 50% of the population. In reality it’s far less but let’s be generous and say it’s 30%. What does that mean?
IQ and objectivity/independent thinking are somewhat correlated but let’s assume they are not. Let’s say that we have a pool of potentially objective and rational people that is 30% and a pool of people with IQ of 125 that is 5%. That means that the pool of high-level general competence people is 5% of 30%, or 1.5% of the population.
If we are really generous and assume that 50% of the population is objective and rational and an IQ of 115 is sufficient for those jobs, then we have 16% of 50%, which is a pool of 8% of the population.
The importance of this cannot be overstated. This group, whether we define it as 1.5% of the population or 8% of the population, is extremely valuable. This is essentially the only group in society that can reliably evaluate complex situations and make subsequent rational decisions. Without it, modern technological society simply cannot be built or maintained – let alone advanced. Let me rephrase this – if we do not identify and utilize this group, we cannot run our complicated societies except into the ground.
Modern western society is from a governance standpoint ideologically motivated and ideologically controlled. It is being pushed in a very clearly defined ideological direction, led by the European Union and the current US administration. This ideology is not the subject matter of this article, but it can be seen everywhere by any rational and independent-thinking person. For the uninformed-curious a good place to start is the website of the EU’s policy-making body; the World Economic Forum.
In order to achieve these ideological goals for the West, two things must happen: a) The right people must be put into power at all levels of society and b) any disruptive elements must be eliminated or suppressed. Since all ideological goals tend to be more or less in conflict with reality, there is no group more disruptive to them than the one who operates objectively and independently. People like that simply cannot be allowed into positions of power, and if they must be, they must be kept quiet and/or forced to toe the line.
The objective/rational/general competence group, whether it is 1.5% or 8% of the population, therefore becomes a problem rather than a resource. This is exactly the situation in the West today.
Many people have noticed that meritocracy has been systematically abandoned in the West and the relationship between competence and reward severed in giant swaths of the economy – and almost completely in government. What few people seem to realize is that this is a necessity for the West’s ideological goals to be reached. High-level competence cannot be promoted because it is a threat. It cannot therefore be rewarded.
In order to illustrate this, let’s take a look at what happens when a member of the 1.5% is allowed to gain significant power. Elon Musk is a smart man, probably with an IQ of 150 or more. He is also quite objective and realistic in his assessments, and an independent thinker. His ownership and governance of Twitter/X is a major problem for western ideological goals. Free speech is an obvious threat to any ideology and, to rub salt in the wounds, Musk belittled the guardians of the Ideology at Twitter by making fun of them, then by firing them all and only keeping the competent ones. This cannot be allowed to stand and we can already see the response. The EU is planning to use force to stop this affront to the Ideology and may actually block Twitter in Europe. Ideological champion (and suspected lizard robot) Mark Zuckerberg was even instructed to cook up an ideologically pure Twitter copy in response – but seems to have failed. We eagerly await further responses, which may range from lawfare up to more “direct” actions, and will most likely be directed at Musk personally.
As previously noted, two things must happen for the ideological goals to become reality: The right people must be promoted and the wrong people must be suppressed. This process of elevation/suppression has become the main goal of the western education system – all the way from kindergarten up to university. If we look at what the education system has been doing, this becomes extremely obvious. Here are a few examples:
- Evaluation of competence is being systematically degraded to avoid comparison between the competent and the incompetent. Exams are being discarded in favor of constant “projects” and students work in groups so the incompetent may hide. Schools avoid testing the individual directly as much as they can – and thereby comparing him to others. The competent ones must not be encouraged, and if at all possible, they themselves must not realize that they are above others.
- Universities are increasingly basing admittance on other criteria than competence, including quotas based on non-competence variables. The most insidious selection method is the “personal essay” which applicants must submit – and is sometimes even more important than grades. All applicants know that the more they signal virtue in the essay, the more likely they are to be admitted. On the basis of the essay, the universities can pick the ideologically pure – which is the only purpose of the essay requirement to begin with.
- Almost every academic subject is being turned from the objective to the subjective to assist the irrational-incompetent student. This even applies to hard subjects such as mathematics – where nowadays 2+2 doesn’t necessarily equal 4. Even intelligence is now subjective and the stupid can be as smart as the intelligent – it’s just a question of perspective, the right measuring tools, and idiotic inventions such as “emotional intelligence.”
- Almost every subject has been made easier than before to help the incompetent students and even critical fields such as medicine are now graduating people who are utterly incompetent and clueless – on a large scale. This systematic lowering of standards also has the added benefit of creating disinterest in smart and rational students. A smart student performs better and better relative to others as the subject gets harder. If the subject is easy or made uninteresting, he will sink down to mediocracy – which is a part of the purpose of lowering the standards to begin with.
- Disciplines which may be a threat to the irrationality of the Ideology have been massively subverted and corrupted. This applies to several fields, but particularly to psychology and history, which in their proper forms would be a massive threat to western ideological goals. Psychology has been twisted into an almost unrecognizable abomination, and history is mostly just lies these days.
- Fake disciplines have been invented from the ground up for the purpose of training the ideologically pure without the need for competence or intelligence or any connection to reality. These disciplines can be found in lists of “most useless university degrees” all over the internet, but that is a misunderstanding. Those degrees are not useless at all – they elevate the ideologically pure in society by awarding them university “certification.” This certification justifies giving them important positions in society.
I could go on but you get the picture. What we are looking at here is not the failure of the western education system, but a very carefully planned “pivoting” toward new objectives. The primary purpose of the education system is no longer education. The entire education system of the West has been reconfigured to carry out a “filtration” process. The purpose of this process is to identify, instruct and elevate the ideologically pure while suppressing the dangerous 1.5/8 group. The education system, particularly the universities, has largely abandoned real education and is almost solely focused on this mission. This mission is not just carried out by the education system, but by all institutions of governments and a large part of the corporate sector. A side-result of this filtration process is the degradation of all education in the West, and subsequently, degradation of its human capital in general.
Western society, in general, has abandoned rationality and replaced it with subjectivism (formally designated as “post-modernism”). The purpose of that is not just to train and advance the ideologically pure, but to use subjectivism as an oppression tool against the 1.5/8 group and the rational part of the population outside of it. The best way to suppress a rational person is to subject him to an existence of total and constant irrationality. It is essentially gaslighting on a civilizational scale, directed at the dangerous rational group.
While the dangerous rational group is being suppressed and subverted, the ideologically pure “leaders of tomorrow” are indoctrinated rather than educated, given university certifications rather than real degrees, and finally provided with an unending amount of fake and well paid jobs in both the private and public sector. This well-paid ideologically pure group then becomes the power base of the new ideological system.
The goal of this deliberate intervention into the educational system is to create what you might call a “migration pattern” in society based on (lack of) competence and ideological purity. The right people need to be put into the right positions and the right jobs, and since they are incompetent, this needs to be managed for them. After they leave school with their certifications, government and the private sector take over and actively push them upward, while pushing the dreaded 1.5/8 group away from influence and well-paid jobs.
Two developments in the West have been godsends for these efforts: the outsourcing of western manufacturing to Asia and the virtual abolition of competition in the corporate sector. This massively decreased the complexity level of the western economy and subsequently the need for the 1.5/8 group. When most companies operate services in a protected environment, there is far less need for high-level/rational people – while in a “real economy” these people simply cannot be sidelined. Also, when you can get away with operating a fake economy based on the dollar reserve status, you can also operate a fake society run by incompetents.
Let’s take a closer look at how this upward migration of the ideologically pure is managed after they receive their university certifications – and how the 1.5/8 group is systematically blocked. There are five main methods being employed – which together form a long-term takeover process of society. These methods are the following:
- Public sector filtering
- Public sector stuffing
- Job-creation by decree
- Private sector filtering
- Private sector stuffing
Public sector filtering – This describes the job selection process in the public sector. Initially the “foot-in-the-door” method is used. A few ideologically pure politicians and bureaucrats position themselves within the system and start controlling who is hired. This increases exponentially over the decades as more and more purists gain access to the levers of power. Currently the process is so overt that it is starting to become expressed in recruitment policy papers – such as the recent example of the British government excluding “white men” from becoming fighter pilots. The West has almost completely been able to exclude the 1.5/8 group from public-sector positions using this method – including its armed forces.
Public sector stuffing – As the public sector filtering process advances, the purists inside the system start creating more and more positions for their purist brethren. New departments are created, work groups and committees appear, and the public sector expands. Publicly owned companies, such utility companies, hospitals and schools are also often used as storage units for large numbers of the ideologically pure. This is extremely obvious in the West. Every unnecessary law or initiative requires more and more people – and these people are all carefully selected.
Job-creation by decree – This method is directed at the private sector, as well as the semi-public sector. Government purists start creating new laws and standards which all companies must fulfill. Those are justified on the basis of “goodness” and usually involve the environment, equality, safety and such things. This creates a large number of positions within private companies which are tailored for the ideologically pure – particularly in support functions such as human resources, compliance functions and others. This enables a “foot-in-the-door” situation in the private sector and gives the purists access to the levers of powers there – much like they already have in the public sector.
Private sector filtering – As the purists have gained access to the private sector – particularly human resources (which is the standard purist Trojan horse in private companies) – they start filtering new recruits exactly the same way the public sector does. As in the public sector, this filtering process is becoming more obvious. A significant number of companies are now specifying which groups will not be hired in their job advertisements. Since they can’t overtly say “we don’t hire smart, independent thinkers” they usually use “white men” as a proxy for that group for some reason. That group is considered to be a particular threat, although you can be sure that anyone who doesn’t follow the program will be fired, regardless of their gender or the color of their skin.
Private sector stuffing – Shortly after Elon Musk bought Twitter he fired something like 80% of its employees. That 80% was the company’s private sector stuffing ratio – quite high. Companies, particularly in sectors which can influence public opinion – but not solely, are increasingly creating a large number of positions which are either totally superfluous or intended for influence operations against the public.
Those filtering and stuffing methods are the primary mechanisms that have been used for the takeover of western societies by the ideologically pure. There are other mechanisms, such as ESG, filtering by certain banks and investment funds regarding who gets financing and who doesn’t – and the uncontrolled immigration engineered by the ideologically pure which is seen by them as a continuation of the internal migration process. However, all that is beyond the scope of this article.
The ideologically pure have systematically been moved into almost all positions of power in the public sector and a large part of the private sector – and the situation in the private sector is increasingly mirroring the public sector in hiring practices and employee stuffing. The dangerous 1.5/8 group is being kept away by all means, and with great success. The power base of the Ideology is firmly in place.
This job migration program hasn’t been cheap. Millions of unnecessary jobs cost money and it is clear that a significant part of western public debt can be attributed to this program, a fact which doesn’t seem to have been noticed by many people.
The consequences
The main thing to understand is that western societies and economies have been put on an ideological footing. Productivity, competitiveness, technology and science are simply not priorities anymore in the West. Explaining the consequences of this process for the West would take many articles, or a book of several hundred pages. Still, let’s mention a few examples.
The inverse competence crisis – The goal of this entire project has been to place the ideologically pure in all positions of power at all levels of society. These positions are, in a normal and competitive society, occupied by the highly competent 1.5/8 group. The process has now reached near-completion with most positions of power occupied by the ideologically pure. Some of those people have high IQs but they are neither objective nor independent thinkers. The Ideology they must subscribe to is simply incompatible with those qualities. This has some serious consequences.
Remember that positions of power and influence are more likely to demand general competence than other positions (as opposed to specific competence). The greater the power, the more the position demands general competence. The people in these positions now are selected by ideological fervor and reliability – so the higher you go, the more ideologically enthusiastic the people who hold them. This means that the least objective and independent thinking people hold the positions which require the greatest objectivity and independent thinking. Therefore, in the West incompetence becomes greater and more common the higher you go. As someone said – “a general is an incompetent colonel.” This can be seen absolutely everywhere except in some holdout private companies. Those exceptions are of course being addressed as we speak.
The second problem is that many of the irrational/subjective people holding all the power have reasonably high IQs. That may seem to be a positive thing but it has a major disadvantage. Moderate to high IQ irrational/subjective people are the easiest to brainwash of all people. The reasons for that are complicated and need to be addressed in another article – but what this means is that the top tier in the West is not only the most incompetent it can possibly be in comparison to what their jobs require – but are also the most malleable and delusional.
The cost and debt crisis – The migration of the ideologically pure into the ideological power base and positions of influence has created millions of jobs in western societies which create no value. These jobs are much more numerous and more widespread than most people realize, and I wouldn’t be surprised if something like 20%-30% of the entire labor force of the West could be fired without any adverse effect. In fact, the effect would be positive, especially if those people could be made to work the (mostly menial) real-economy jobs they are suitable for.
Deindustrialization has been blamed for the extreme debt levels and tax burdens of the West. That is, as far as it goes, true – but maintaining this giant group of incompetents in their fake jobs is also placing an extreme burden on the West. Western societies are now completely unsustainable and cannot be run without constant debt increase.
The competition crisis – This crisis can be explained by the following example: Let’s say there are three companies with combined 100% market share in some sector. There is no real competition between them and everybody can just relax because the customers can’t go anywhere else. These companies can get away with absolute incompetence on most levels, including in management. They don’t need to think about efficiency, safety, productivity or costs, except on their websites and in annual reports. However, if a competitor with competent employees manages to infiltrate the sector, those three companies will hit a wall. There will be an enormous crisis and one or more of them will most likely go under.
This is exactly the situation in the western economies now. Monopoly and oligopoly is the rule and the main objective of most large western companies is to prevent anyone from infiltrating their sector – usually by bribing regulators or by buying the competition. This is a necessity because a huge number of western companies are now run by incompetent management and staffed by incompetent people, particularly in support and management functions. The immortal words of the nameless Boeing employee about the 737 MAX apply to most large western companies; “this airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys.” Western companies are no longer competitive. They cannot compete with Chinese companies now and soon they won’t be able to compete with companies in general outside the West. They simply can’t function except inside an economic safe-space. In fact, the situation is such that the Chinese already do the real work for many of them and reshoring the work is problematic because of (surprise!) the human capital degradation in the West caused by the repurposing of its education system.
This also applies to western societies as a whole. The entire leadership and diplomatic classes of the West are no longer competitive against the rest of the world for exactly these reasons. They are being outmaneuvered by the Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, and everybody else at every turn. Even African leaders are now more competent than western leaders. They have consistently made decisions that are better for their people than leaders in the West – for the last few years anyway.
The complexity crisis – Earlier in this article I stated that the 1.5/8 group is extremely valuable for modern societies and without it complicated modern societies cannot be managed. In the West this group has been successfully sidelined to a great degree and a good part of it doesn’t even bother with university education anymore. The situation, however, is even worse than that. The reconfiguration of the education system and the break between competence and reward in the job market has fundamentally changed the decision making process behind the selection of university education. Why study engineering (which is hard) when you can get an even better paying job with a degree in psychology (which is easy nowadays)? The reconfiguration of the western education system has changed the reward structure, encouraging young people to pursue easy and useless education – simply because the “system” will provide them with jobs.
This has already caused a major crisis in western societies, particularly in the US. The “maintenance” of complex aspects of US society needs a large group of engineers and people with related education. This maintenance is faltering now, and significantly relies on foreign engineers educated in US universities. You see, why would Americans study engineering in a system which doesn’t reward it? If China and India could somehow recall their engineers and others with hard education from the US, the US system could probably not be maintained, let alone advanced. This will get progressively worse and we will soon reach a point where complex systems which underpin society cannot be kept running. That will require some kind of “reset” to a less complex society, with less prosperity of course.
There are far more crises than those four, but I wouldn’t want to sound like a doomsayer by listing more.
So, what about Russia? Firstly, there are clear signs that the Russians have figured out what is happening in the West and are learning from it. Recently they left the “Bologna process” which is a European education standardization system. The Bologna system has the express purpose of diluting education in member states, implementing certifications rather than real degrees, and filling European societies with badly educated and generally incompetent “experts” who follow the consensus, no matter what. The Russians saw this system as a threat to their country, which it is, and have, at least partly, reverted to the older and more hardcore Soviet system.
Secondly, the Russians seem to be carrying out purges of the incompetent and corrupt within state structures, including the military. Meritocracy seems to be on the agenda, a radical concept these days. The Russians most likely see these efforts as critical to the continuation of their state and nation – and they would be right.
The situation in China is much the same and there are indications that the rest of the non-western world is catching on. Remember that one of the results of the recent Russia-Africa summit was a Russian-organized education effort in Africa. I doubt that women’s studies will be a part of that curriculum.
The current clash between the West and Russia – and increasingly between the West and the rest of the world – is becoming a clash between the incompetent and irrational and the competent and rational. The result is obvious – but what happens when an irrational person who is backed into a corner has access to nuclear weapons? That’s anybody’s guess.
By putting its societies on an ideological footing the western elite has backed itself into a corner. They can’t compete; they can’t develop their economies or societies; and they can’t go back. Fixing the problems of the West will require an economic revival, where a real economy will replace the current fake financialized service economy. This cannot be done without putting the hated 1.5/8 group into positions of power. Therefore, it will not be done as long as the current western ruling class is in power. Western societies will not survive an economic revival in their current ideological configuration. Conflict is therefore the only remaining option for the ruling class to hang on to power.
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.
FBI Memo Linking Catholic Faith to ‘Extremists’ Drafted by Several Offices – GOP Lawmakers
By Fantine Gardinier – Sputnik – 10.08.2023
House GOP lawmakers have blasted the FBI director for “inconsistencies” in his testimony after he claimed that a report from the bureau’s Richmond, Virginia, field office identifying “radical traditionalist Catholic ideology” as a potential source of “violent extremism” was an isolated incident. They say that new evidence suggests otherwise.
In a Wednesday letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray that was published by US media, US Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), who chairs the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, requested a slew of bureau documents related to communications between FBI field offices in Richmond, Virginia; Portland, Oregon; and Los Angeles, California.
“From information recently produced to the Committee, we now know that the FBI relied on information from around the country – including a liaison contact in the FBI’s Portland Field Office and reporting from the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office – to develop its assessment,” they wrote.
“This new information suggests that the FBI’s use of its law enforcement capabilities to intrude on American’s First Amendment rights is more widespread than initially suspected and reveals inconsistencies with your previous testimony before the Committee,” they lawmakers said. “Given this startling new information, we write to request additional information to advance our oversight.”
They noted that in his testimony before the committee last month, Wray claimed that a January 2023 memo on the potential of right-wing activists motivated by “radical traditionalist Catholic ideology” to pose a violent threat to certain minority groups had been the sole product of the field office in Richmond, the Virginia state capital.
The memo, which was leaked to the press in February, said the office had received a tip from a local informant leading them to believe in an “increasingly observed interest of racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) in radical-traditionalist Catholic (RTC) ideology.” This, they said, was especially associated with the sect of Catholics who rejected the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in 1965 and with “white supremacist ideology.”
This threat, they said, “presents opportunities for threat mitigation through the exploration of new avenues for tripwire and source development.”
Notably, the unredacted parts of the document do not contain the words “potential terrorists,” as reported in some parts of the American press.
In response to the lawmakers’ letter, the FBI gave a statement to US media on Wednesday doubling down on Wray’s testimony, saying the lawmakers had become confused by similar terminologies used by multiple FBI field offices.
“Director Wray’s testimony on this matter has been accurate and consistent. While the document referred to information from other field office investigations of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremist (RMVE) subjects, that does not change the fact the product was produced by a single office,” the statement said.
“To be clear, the document was a domain perspective which is an intelligence product designed to address potential threats in a particular area – in this case, the Richmond Field Office’s area of responsibility,” the bureau continued. “Because the product failed to meet FBI standards, it was quickly removed from all FBI systems and a review was launched to determine how it was produced in the first place.”
The situation has revived anger at the FBI for its wiretapping activities and profiling of religious groups, for which the bureau became notorious after spying on American Muslims in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
However, conservatives especially have accused the FBI of political bias for years, pointing to its investigation of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in the months preceding the 2016 presidential election and its August 2022 raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to serve a search and seizure warrant for hundreds of classified files Trump did not return to the National Archives after leaving office. The former president is facing dozens of criminal charges related to alleged mishandling of the secret files.
Biden Asks Congress for $13 Billion in New Ukraine Military Aid as Opposition Grows
Sputnik – 10.08.2023
WASHINGTON – US President Joe Biden in a letter to Congress has asked for an additional $13 billion in supplemental funding to continue military assistance to Ukraine next year.
“$9.5 billion for equipment for Ukraine and replenishment of [US Department of Defense] stocks; and $3.6 billion for continued military, intelligence, and other defense support,” the document said.
Biden is also asking for $7.3 billion for economic, humanitarian, and security assistance to Ukraine.
The proposal for additional Ukraine aid totals some $24 billion, including some $2.3 billion intended as leverage to gain more aid from other donors via the World Bank.
However, combined with an additional $2.65 billion in funding for border security, $12 billion in disaster relief efforts, and $416 million in combatting the fentanyl crisis, among other domestic matters, the congressional request totals upwards of $40 billion in supplemental aid.
The Thursday filing marks the first such request by the Biden White House since Republicans claimed control of the House of Representatives at the start of the year. While previous requests had been largely met with Congress’ backing, GOP members have grown increasingly hesitant toward continued aid.
In fact, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy vowed in early June that any requests for supplemental Ukraine aid would not be taken up in the lower chamber – regardless of bipartisan efforts taken up in the Senate.
At the time, McCarthy explained that any additional funds would need to be cleared as part of an annual appropriations process, underscoring finances would have to be shifted elsewhere from the Pentagon’s funds.
“I think what we really need to do, we need to get the efficiencies in the Pentagon,” the House speaker told US media in June when referring to the Pentagon’s budget. “Think about it, $886 billion. You don’t think there’s waste? … I consider myself a hawk, but I don’t want to waste money. So I think we’ve got to find efficiencies.”
Shortly after the Thursday request was issued, US Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) told Sputnik that US President Joe Biden must focus on supporting efforts to improve security within the United States, rather than on spending more funding on a proxy war in Ukraine.
“Rather than spending a single penny more fighting a proxy war in Ukraine and killing more people, a more worthwhile effort would be if Biden would put America first by allocating resources in our country to secure the southern border,” Gosar said, touching on the US’ continued fight to combat illegal immigration.
He added that resources could also be better spent on “funding law enforcement efforts to combat the violent crime and drugs destroying cities across America, or aiding our homeless population, including countless veterans, who are sleeping on sidewalks.”
The hefty request also comes as the US public has grown increasingly cold toward such military aid.
A recent poll determined that 55% of surveyed Americans opposed Congress approving Ukraine aid, with only 45% disagreeing. Earlier Wednesday, the White House attempted to shoot down the sentiment, telling reporters that continued efforts were paramount to the “national security of the American people.”
US National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby touched on the polling on Thursday and opted to reiterate the White House’s stance that the American people understand why Biden requested billions more in aid for Ukraine.
“The polls notwithstanding, I think the American people understand what is at stake here,” Kirby said.
To date, the US has provided Ukraine with more than $100 billion in aid since the start of the conflict, with the majority of the funds being designated specifically for military equipment.
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.
The Sino-Russo Naval Patrol Near Alaska’s Aleutian Islands Flipped The Tables On The US
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | AUGUST 10, 2023
Alaskan Senators were apoplectic after Russia and China just carried out a previously unreported joint naval patrol near their state’s Aleutian Islands last week. Those officials condemned what they claimed was an “incursion”, though the US Northern Command confirmed that the patrol “remained in international waters and was not considered a threat.” In any case, this was an interesting turn of events since it’s usually the US that conducts such exercises near those two’s borders.
The Sino-Russo Entente isn’t an alliance, but rather an unprecedentedly close strategic partnership focused on coordinating efforts to accelerate the global systemic transition to multipolarity. To that end and in the context of last week’s joint naval patrols, these Great Powers decided to signal to the world that they’ll reciprocally respond to similar such exercises by the US. Up until now, each reacted separately and largely restricted this to rhetoric, but now they’re reacting jointly in a tangible way.
Several of their interests were served in this way. First, the US now knows that the Sino-Russo Entente isn’t reluctant to sail flotillas as close to American shores as is legally possible. Second, they voluntarily complied with the terms laid out in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) regarding where foreign warships are allowed to sail despite the US not recognizing that framework. Third, this example demonstrated the sharp contrast between them and the US on the issue of international maritime law.
The fourth interest that was advanced through their joint naval patrol near the Aleutian Islands is that it made locals in that state, and likely also Americans elsewhere, experience how it feels when their geopolitical rivals conduct such exercises near their borders. Those drills won’t influence the formulation of US policy, but they can help shape some voters’ opinions about the wisdom of their leaders’ policies towards Russia and China considering that those two are merely responding to the US’ own such moves.
And finally, these drills importantly remained below the threshold of triggering an escalation, thus proving that it’s indeed possible to reciprocally respond to American provocations after both Great Powers were hitherto reluctant to do so. About that last-mentioned observation, they previously reacted separately and largely restricted this to rhetoric except on those rare occasions that they were accused by the US of flying or sailing their respective units too close to the latter’s.
Even so, those incidents took place near their own borders and not the US’, but this time they jointly sailed their warships near the Aleutian Islands in order to give America a taste of its own medicine. These plans were likely agreed to long ago but weren’t implemented until now since they each wanted to give the US the opportunity to stop making them feel uncomfortable by operating so closely to their shores. Russia and China’s patience has clearly run out, however, hence why they’re now jointly reacting.
This wasn’t their first joint naval exercise, but it’s the largest one near American shores thus far, which makes it a milestone. The Mainstream Media will predictably try to spin it as so-called “unprovoked illegal aggression” despite those two strictly abiding by international law per UNCLOS and carrying out their drills in response to the US’ earlier countless ones near their borders. By finally turning the tables on the US, the Sino-Russo Entente wants to show the world that the era of military unipolarity is over.
Is America behind the massive surge in Kiev regime’s child trafficking?
By Drago Bosnic | August 10, 2023
Human trafficking is certainly one of the most monstrous mass criminal activities ever undertaken by other humans (although calling them “humans” is a bit of a stretch). And yet, there’s a special kind of this deeply repulsive crime that pushes it to diabolical proportions – child trafficking. Underage kids, particularly those who were abandoned, sold or have very poor/abusive family backgrounds, are by far the most vulnerable group. The depraved criminals who engage in such illicit activities specifically target unfortunate children and given there are millions of them all around the globe, particularly in war-torn areas, the “recruitment pool” is effectively endless. Unfortunately, the demand on the black market also seems to be constant and growing, making it a very lucrative and appealing prospect for criminals.
Children are usually forced into literal slavery that includes forced labor, sexual exploitation or prostitution, drug smuggling, forced begging, organ harvesting, etc. Many terrorist groups and narco-traffickers even use them as child soldiers, forcing them into dangerous firefights with rival groups or even official security forces such as the police and/or military. Although estimates vary significantly, as the exact data is incomplete at best, expectedly, the world’s most populous countries have the highest number of child trafficking victims. And yet, it seems the United States is the most profitable market for such criminal activities. Back in 2018, Tim Swarens of USA Today calculated that adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the US alone. Worse yet, this is only based on available data.
In reality, this truly appalling number might be several times higher. It is estimated that up to half a million children are trafficked in the US every year, with another 300,000 at risk. Some are abducted, others are runaways, while some are sold by relatives, acquaintances and even closest family members. This is a massive business in America and it’s not only present in big cities and core urban areas, but virtually everywhere, around the entire country. Everyone from regular people to those in the highest positions of power take part in it. As recounted by authors John and Nisha Whitehead in a report published by the Rutherford Institute in late January this year, “sex trafficking (and the sexualization of young people) is a cultural disease that is rooted in the American police state’s heart of darkness”.
“It speaks to a sordid, far-reaching corruption that stretches from the highest seats of power (governmental and corporate) down to the most hidden corners and relies on our silence and our complicity to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing,” authors posit, further describing several deeply disturbing instances where American police were involved in horrendous sex crimes against underage children (including 4-year-olds) and teenagers.
In 2016, the US State of California, infamous for its extremist ultra-liberal policies, passed SB1322 which decriminalized prostitution for “sex workers under the age of 18” (i.e. children). This law, coupled with SB203 (passed in 2020), makes it virtually impossible for police officers to approach, arrest or engage in any way with “underage sex workers” (i.e. children forced into prostitution), meaning there’s nothing even law enforcement can do to prevent clearly evident child trafficking and sexual exploitation. Worse yet, in 2021, California passed SB357 that “repealed the law that makes it a crime to loiter with intent to commit prostitution and applicable evidence is no longer enforceable, including dress and geographical location as a reason to investigate acts of prostitution”.
In other words, police officers are effectively banned from investigating underage prostitution taking place in plain sight, as their expertise and experience in positively identifying children forced into sex slavery simply by observing their behavior is rendered obsolete. This strongly implies that the US political establishment is directly involved in soliciting child trafficking. In late April, whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas testified to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, revealing shocking details about this and warning that “the US government has become the middleman in a large-scale multibillion dollar child trafficking operation… … run by bad actors who are seeking to profit on the lives of children”.
In 2022, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) received 31.9 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation — up from 29.3 million reports in 2021 and 21.7 million in 2020. This further implies that the black market has grown exponentially in recent years, meaning that more and more children are being trafficked into the country. And while kids from all over the world enter the US this way, recent reports indicate there’s a massive surge of Ukrainian child trafficking victims. However, what’s happening in Ukraine is even more astonishingly evil, as the traffickers are now trying to smuggle even infants to sell them for organ harvesting. Namely, in late June, the Daily Mail reported that an employee of a charity organization was detained for trying to take an 11-month-old baby out of Ukraine.
According to the British daily, the 43-year-old perpetrator was planning to sell the child for organ harvesting after paying $1,000 to the infant’s mother, a woman from Zhytomyr, while falsely claiming that the little boy would be adopted. In total, the mother was promised $5,000 for the baby, who the trafficker then intended to resell for $25,000. He is also suspected of trafficking at least three other infants under the same pretext. And yet, in late July, South Front reported that the same child trafficker, identified as Denis Varodi, a former teacher from the city of Uzhgorod in the Transcarpathian region of western Ukraine, was released only several weeks later. The decision was made by the judge of the Uzhgorod interdistrict court Natalya Shumilo after Varodi posted a 1,000,000 hryvnia (₴) bail.
The court could’ve easily denied this possibility to Varodi, but decided otherwise. Worse yet, Shumilo even reduced bail from ₴3,000,000 to ₴1,000,000 or approximately $27,000, which is just a bit more than the amount Varodi would’ve made had he succeeded in his diabolical intentions. Still, this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to organized child trafficking from NATO-occupied Ukraine. Another group of perpetrators was recently detained while trying to smuggle newborns. According to reports by local media, the criminal group consisted of 12 child traffickers and included the heads of several medical institutions. They were looking for women who agreed to become surrogate mothers and sell their babies for €12,000, who would then be resold for up to €70,000.
Although the child traffickers are reportedly facing up to 15 years in prison, given how easily Varodi got away with his criminal activities, they have nothing to worry about. The complicity of the Neo-Nazi junta in this truly Mephistophelian scheme is implicit (no pun intended). And yet, as if the Kiev regime’s involvement wasn’t bad enough, the US Department of Justice (although its relation to actual justice is purely lexical) recently removed child sex trafficking information from its website. According to the Epoch Times, the updated version of the webpage completely erased all three sections that previously showed the data which was added during Donald Trump’s presidency. This was done quietly and without any explanation as to why such important information would be hidden from the public.
It’s worth noting that the crackdown on child trafficking awareness in the US is not only limited to corrupt officials and government institutions (as evidenced by numerous “unresolved mysteries”, both in the cases of Jeffrey Epstein and the Biden crime family’s illicit activities). Namely, the mainstream propaganda machine is now also looking to suppress any information about mass crimes against children, including through a witch-hunt aimed against movies and other media dealing with this issue. The case of “The Sound of Freedom” illustrates this perfectly, as even some formerly reputable media have joined the chorus of those trying to push a sort of crawling smear campaign against the movie. Luckily, there’s significant pushback against this, as proven by the film’s remarkable box-office success.
On the other hand, those attacking “The Sound of Freedom” should definitely have their hard drives investigated, albeit not by the people who were supposed to inspect the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, but “somehow” managed to “lose” it, obviously, in a similar manner to how the Neo-Nazi junta judge Shumilo “lost” her moral compass and credibility by releasing a child trafficker and murderer.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Judith Curry: How Climate “Science” Got Hijacked by Alarmists
John Stossel | August 8, 2023
Climate alarmists insist there’s a “scientific consensus” that says climate change is a crisis, and man causes it! Researcher Judith Curry tells me, “it’s a manufactured consensus.”
Curry was a department chair at Georgia Tech when she spread alarm about climate change.
The media loved her then. She claimed there was an increase in hurricane intensity.
But then some researchers pointed out gaps in her research: years with low levels of hurricanes.
“Like a good scientist, I went in and investigated.”
When she acknowledged a lack of evidence that hurricane intensity had increased, she was ruthlessly attacked by climate alarmists. Her career suffered.
Now Curry reveals nefarious ways “the science” about climate change has been corrupted.
We are told climate change is a crisis, and that there is an “overwhelming scientific consensus”.
“It’s a manufactured consensus,” says climate scientist Judith Curry in my new video. She says scientists have an incentive to exaggerate risk to pursue “fame and fortune”.
She knows about that because she once spread alarm about climate change.
Media loved her when she published a study that seemed to show a dramatic increase in hurricane intensity.
“We found that the percent of Category Four and Five hurricanes had doubled,” says Curry. “This was picked up by the media,” and then climate alarmists realised, “Oh, here is the way to do it. Tie extreme weather events to global warming!” …
“I was adopted by the environmental advocacy groups and the alarmists and I was treated like a rock star,” Curry recounts. “Flown all over the place to meet with politicians.”
But then some researchers pointed out gaps in her research – years with low levels of hurricanes.
“Like a good scientist, I investigated,” says Curry. She realised that the critics were right. “Part of it was bad data. Part of it is natural climate variability.”
Curry was the unusual researcher who looked at criticism of her work and actually concluded “they had a point”.
Then the Climategate scandal taught her that other climate researchers weren’t so open-minded. Alarmist scientists’ aggressive attempts to hide data suggesting climate change is not a crisis were revealed in leaked emails.
“Ugly things,” says Curry. “Avoiding Freedom of Information Act requests. Trying to get journal editors fired.”
It made Curry realise that there is a “climate change industry” set up to reward alarmism.
“The origins go back to the… U.N. environmental programme,” says Curry. Some U.N. officials were motivated by “anti-capitalism. They hated the oil companies and seized on the climate change issue to move their policies along.”
The U.N. created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
“The IPCC wasn’t supposed to focus on any benefits of warming. The IPCC’s mandate was to look for dangerous human-caused climate change.” …
The researchers quickly figured out that the way to get funded was to make alarmist claims about “man-made climate change”.
Last Stop Before Willoughby
By William Schryver – imetatronink – August 9, 2023
“What the West has, and has had for some time now, is a single-shot military. One serious campaign, whether finally won or lost, would disarm the West for a decade.” — “Aurelien“
This, folks, is the simple truth of the matter.
The US simply could not, at this moment — nor at any time in even the medium-term future — mount and sustain a campaign the size, intensity, and duration of what we have seen in Ukraine for the past 18 months.
US logistical chains would have long-since broken down; losses in men and equipment — including LOTS of cargo ships and their warship escorts — would have been calamitous.
Oh, sure, there’s the huge chorus of people who are gung-ho convinced that US air and naval power would overcome all obstacles in a matter of days, bringing the presumptuous Russians to their knees.
That’s not what would happen, you dopes.
What would happen is that, despite a few spectacular successes to stuff the first 24-hour news cycle, the “full-spectrum dominance” everyone believes the US wields would suffer severe immediate losses across the entire military spectrum.
Dozens of US aircraft of all types would be shot down in the first 100 hours of war. Several US ships would be damaged or sunk. US bases in both Europe and around the globe would be struck. US airborne ISR assets would be aggressively targeted; military and communications satellite arrays would be disabled.
Within literally just a few days, the US would start to experience severe stand-off strike munitions shortages, greatly exacerbated by the high interception rate Russian air defenses would achieve.
The Russians have already demonstrated, over the past 18 months, that they can shoot down ANY manner of strike missile the US can field against them — not all of them all the time, but most of them most of the time.
No other military on the planet has previously attested this level of capability. The US does not have it, and is almost certainly at least a decade away from developing it.
And, make no mistake, if the US were to strike at targets on Russian soil, the Russians would strike back at targets on US soil. I do not believe they would launch a nuclear “first-strike” against the US, but I can guarantee they would use their submarine fleet and conventional long-range airstrike capability to hit strategic targets on US soil.
It would be a shocking exhibition of 21st century great power warfare.
Both sides would be hurt badly, but the Russians would not be even severely depleted, let alone defeated, whereas the US would be hurt in a fashion it has never experienced in its history, only to then look around and discover itself in a state of acute logistical crisis after only a fortnight of high-intensity combat operations.
That will be the moment of decision; the last stop before Willoughby, as it were.
And, if the scenario I have sketched were to actually develop, there will come a moment, fairly early on, when saner heads within the halls of empire — those who have, hitherto, acquiesced as this catastrophe unfolded — well, they will have to choose to finally act to stop the madness, or stand idly by as they and all the rest of us are acted upon by events that spiral out of control.
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.
Biden family received money from Russia – Congress
RT | August 9, 2023
The House Oversight Committee on Wednesday published receipts showing Hunter Biden, the son of current US President Joe Biden, receiving money from Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan by trading on the family name.
The committee says it has identified $20 million in payments from foreign sources to Hunter Biden’s company, which they describe as a front to sell access to the “Biden network” while his father was Barack Obama’s vice-president (2009-2017).
“During Joe Biden’s vice presidency, Hunter Biden sold him as ‘the brand’ to reap millions from oligarchs in Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine. It appears no real services were provided other than access to the Biden network, including Joe Biden himself. And Hunter Biden seems to have delivered,” said committee chair James Comer, a Kentucky Republican.
The third bank memo Comer has published so far shows a February 14, 2014 wire transfer from “Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina” to Rosemont Seneca Thornton, a shell company run by Hunter Biden and his business partner Devon Archer. Of the $3.5 million wired by Baturina, $1 million was transferred directly to Archer, while the rest was used to start up Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a new account used to receive more funding from abroad, the committee said.
Another memo shows that Biden and Archer were both appointed to the board of directors of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company run by Mykola Zlochevsky, for $1 million each per year. Burisma had previously paid Biden as counsel, but invited him and Archer to the board after a meeting hosted by Zlochevsky and Burisma corporate secretary Vadim Pozharsky in the spring of 2014 at Lake Como in Italy.
“Then-Vice President Joe Biden visited Ukraine soon after their first payments,” the committee noted, and Hunter claimed that the visit showed “value” that he provided to the company.
The third notable transaction took place in April 2014, when “Kazakhstani oligarch” Kenes Rakishev wired $142,300 to Rosemont Seneca Bohai. The very next day, the company paid Hunter Biden the same exact amount for a sports car. Hunter had met Rakishev at a Washington, DC hotel in February.
“Hunter Biden received millions of dollars in payments from Yelena Baturina, Burisma, and Kenes Rakishev. Vice President Biden had dinner with them in the spring of 2014 and 2015 in Washington, DC,” the committee pointed out.
Joe Biden was the Obama administration’s point man for Ukraine policy after the 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev, and famously bragged at a 2018 DC event about getting a prosecutor fired by threatening to withhold loan guarantees. The prosecutor in question had been investigating Burisma. When then-president Donald Trump brought the incident up in 2019 talks with Kiev, the House Democrats impeached him, claiming this somehow violated US laws.
‘Woke’ extremist ideology in US military – danger or blessing for the world?
By Drago Bosnic | August 9, 2023
For decades, when referring to the US military, the mainstream propaganda machine has been parroting about “the most powerful force in human history”. And while that assertion might’ve held in the late 1990s/2000s, at the time when Russia was still suffering the consequences of Soviet dismantlement while China was far from its zenith, the situation is vastly different nowadays. Namely, the US-led political West has been taken over by what many Americans themselves call the “woke mind virus”. And while such terminology may sound harsh or even offensive, it’s exceedingly difficult to disprove it, as demonstrated by the current disastrous state of Western/pro-Western societies.
The forced proliferation of this truly depraved ideology has become virtually omnipresent, despite the fact that it destroys virtually anything it comes into contact with. In terms of economics, it ravaged so many companies that the catchphrase “go woke, go broke” has become an axiom of sorts. And yet, for some inexplicable reason, the “woke mind virus” keeps expanding. Its influence is so far-reaching that it’s even become the dominant ideology in the US military, effectively rebranding the catchphrase to “go woke, go weak”. During the so-called “pride month”, the US Army shared a story about a “transgender Major who now identifies as a woman after previously being suicidally depressed”. If you’re dumbfounded by this word salad, wait until you hear the rest of this bizarre story.
The US Department of Defense (DoD) tweeted that “Major Rachel Jones embraced authenticity” and that “this should inspire us all” after “she” became the head of the US Army Sustainment Command’s Cyber Division. Proponents of such policies usually (over)use the phrase “stunning and brave” to show their support, so much so that those opposing “wokeism” now regularly use it as a sarcastic remark. And this is certainly not an “isolated incident”, as the case of Major Jones is neither a rarity nor is “she” the highest-ranking “transgender” officer. Namely, Rachel Levine (for some reason, the name Rachel seems to be very popular in such circles) holds the rank of admiral in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.
In addition, Levine is also the Assistant Secretary for Health and is infamous for claiming that “puberty blockers” and “transition surgeries” are supposedly “necessary” to curb suicide rates among children. Apart from Levine, the US government employs other “transgender” people, even ignoring their criminal activities in order to fill its “woke quotas”. Last year, the Department of Energy (DoE) hired Sam Brinton as a “nuclear waste guru”. After months of attempts to conceal his scandalous behavior which also includes a kleptomaniacal tendency to steal women’s purses, the administration was forced to fire him. In May this year, he was even arrested after repeatedly dodging police due to his former high-ranking position.
And while the DoE is officially not part of the military command structure, its cooperation with the DoD is of prime importance for the US military. Namely, DoE’s subdivisions dealing with nuclear technologies are partially responsible for maintaining America’s strategic arsenal and Brinton was employed precisely by one such office. Having deeply mentally unstable individuals in charge of anything (much less nuclear facilities) casts serious doubt on the very mental capacity of those who hire them. And yet, “woke” extremists are adamant that raising such concerns is supposedly “transphobic”. Back in July, during testimony before Congress, Air Force Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. Richard Clark declared his full support for the ideology.
When Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) asked him about this, Clark admitted that not even he could define many of the gender ideology terms the Air Force Academy officially endorses. This includes something called “demi-gender”, as Clark “doesn’t know what on Earth that even is”. The program includes other terms such as “cisgender, non-binary, a-gender, bi-gender, two-spirit”, etc. Clark also insisted that “inclusivity” and “diversity” are a “war-fighting imperative”. Apparently, having more “two-spirit” lesbians in the military will make it bulletproof. Maybe the US should test that theory on the battlefield and see how it goes. However, in all seriousness, the results of this obsession have been disastrous for the Pentagon. The already low interest to join the US military has now dwindled to almost nothing.
And yet, the political leadership doesn’t want to deal with this. On the contrary, it’s seeking culprits in others, including those who fought in America’s endless wars around the globe. Namely, the Wall Street Journal is now blaming the veterans for abysmal recruitment numbers, as they’re actively discouraging their family members from joining the military precisely because of “woke” extremism. Thus, on one hand, this obsession is certainly dangerous when people with obvious mental illnesses are placed in high-ranking positions (particularly those involving nuclear tech). On the other hand, disincentivizing participation in US aggression against the world is actually a net positive for everyone, including Americans themselves.
Why would anyone want to die in yet another pointless war halfway around the world for the sake of people with highly questionable mental health, only to then have their families be forced to pay for the repatriation of the remains? Worse yet, after it somehow managed to lose a horribly one-sided 20-year war against outnumbered and outgunned AK-wielding insurgents in sandals while wasting trillions of dollars, the US chose a virtually direct confrontation with a military superpower armed with the world’s most powerful thermonuclear arsenal and whose highly motivated and superbly armed/trained soldiers have been able to easily overcome even the best NATO-backed troops, as evidenced by the recent case of a single T-90M neutralizing an entire armored column of Kiev regime forces.
However, it should be noted that, most unfortunately for the Russians, each T-90M crew member reportedly has only one mom, meaning that the Russian military is sorely lacking in “war-fighting imperatives”. It seems Moscow’s generals and strategists are busy with “trivialities” such as postulating new unbeatable military doctrines and modernizing their arsenal with unstoppable missiles. That probably explains why even goats and pickle jar-wielding old ladies are “defeating Russia”.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
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USS Liberty Massacre: A Pivotal Moment in the Hostile Takeover of America
By Kevin Barrett | Crescent | Dhu al-Qa’dah 24, 1445
In corporate America, hostile takeovers are commonplace. They occur when an aggressor—a larger corporation or rich individuals—seizes control of a smaller corporation without asking permission.
What few recognize is that the United States itself has been subjected to a hostile takeover. Since the aggressor, the illegitimate settler colony known as “Israel,” is much smaller than the US, the takeover has necessarily been surreptitious.
As of June, 2024, Israel’s gradual takeover of the US has become obvious and undeniable—a proverbial “elephant in the living room.” … continue
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