VietnamVet
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“Who done it?”
Three separate accidental explosions at approximately the same time fairly near each other of four buried underseas pipelines away from the terminals is basically impossible. There was a warning and an earlier incident of possible sabotage.
1) Possibly it was Ukraine with a buddy state like the UK with operatives from the Syria adventure? But the sabotage occurred outside of their Area of Operations (AO) and was so competent that who did it has got away undetected and unblamed so far.
2) A cinema culprit is an off-book operation by a Davos NGO/NATO faction of the supra corporate/state – the Western Empire — that gathered together Military Contractors, Neo-cons, Haters, and True-believers for whom the overthrow of the Kremlin is worth risking the loss of billions human lives to gain control of Russia’s resources.
3) It was not the German State or Western European nations already hooked up to Nord Stream pipelines. The EU is in its death throes. It is unable to protect its citizens or industry. Western Europe is running out of energy for industry and heating this winter. After what the EU did to Greece it is schadenfreude that the chickens have come home to roost.
4) It is impossible that Russia would destroy its own energy infrastructure worth billions of dollars that also had leverage over Germany unless the Kremlin has already decided to start WWIII. If this is the case, they will shortly use tactical nuclear weapons to end Ukraine’s counteroffensive. An armistice and peace would disprove that Russia intentionally started WWIII.
5) The USA is not blameless. It went along with the UK’s scuttling of the April’s proposed Armistice. The State Department is involved somehow. The DOD is an unlikely participant. By experience, and it is their job to know, that the Pentagon is the second most important political/military target in the USA after Manhattan Island and before the US Capitol. They’d know that this operation would trigger WWIII. They are the target. This could bring down the Biden Administration or elect Donald Trump, if a global nuclear war is avoided. “Did the White House sign-off on the Nord Stream shut down?” Airlifts like 1948 will be required to supply energy to any bases left within Western Europe which will need to be refitted to burn coal for this and any future winters.
6) Then there is Poland. After Ukraine, it is the most likely nation to be struck by Russian tactical nuclear weapons. They have a thousand-year history with Russia. The operation took place right next-door. Within living memory Poland was moved 100 miles west into Germany and was occupied by Russia for decades. Revenge and hatred are natural. But anyone who has contact with reality knows that Poland is the frontline. The old joke is; “How many Polish guys does it take to screw in a light bulb? Five: One to hold the bulb and four to turn the chair.” And, yes, Mr. and Mrs. Applebaum are certified Polish neocon true believers. But is Poland so stupid it is willing to be destroyed to get back at Russia? No, but factions could have assisted the operation, ignoring the risk.
If we are very lucky, we will learn the reasons for the start of WWIII. WWI was reported to have happened due the strict timetables for German Railways for the mobilization of their Army. Others disagree. Having historians to argue this point in the future would be a blessing.
“The War on Germany Just Entered Its Hot Phase” post on NC has been taken down. Probably because it no longer can be denied that WWIII has started. For the reasons below, whoever wanted a world war, got it.
The global free movement of goods, people, services and capital was imposed upon the old nation-state structures which were then privatized and dismantled to reduce taxes and to aid in the exploitation of humans and resources. But the Coronavirus Pandemic and then the Russian invasion of Ukraine, forced globalism into a tailspin.
Russia would never destroy its own paid for energy infrastructure, potential cash cow, and leverage over Germany; likewise, neither would any nation connected the Nord Stream distribution pipelines. US fracking companies and petroleum giants like Exxon Mobile may profit in the short term, but even the stupidest CEO in the world must realize that once their pipelines become targets of opportunity, they are out of business.
The only state actors that may be involved are Ukraine and the United Kingdom together. This operation in three different spots blowing up the pipelines buried deep in sea mud is too complex and sensitive of an operation, right next to Denmark, undetected, for non-state actors or mercenaries. A Blob Evangelical/Diaspora faction may have teamed up with culprits, but I just can’t believe the Pentagon, itself, would have sent this scheme up the chain of command to the White House for sign-off. If the CIA did warn Germany of the possibility of sabotage, it wasn’t them. Once Russia finds out who did it and they are not on their nuclear weapons target list, they will be added.
The Hounds of War have been unleashed. One more dog has bit the dust. Unless an armistice is signed and a DMZ built, and everyone works together to survive this winter’s dark and cold, an atomic apocalypse is next. I hope I am wrong. But whoever thought of this operation and executed it is so dangerous and psychotic that they are willing kill billions to reach their goals.
These are existential times with stupid incompetent leaders on all sides who put WWI politicians and generals to shame. Ukraine is the homeland of the Goths and Vandals. Histories, human nature and cultures are ignored. People killed to increase corporate profits. Public services and the military looted to make Western and Russian Oligarchs richer.
This is where we’re at now; 1) Sanctioning Russian piped natural gas assures a frozen European economic depression this winter, 2) Russia adding the four regions of Donbas under its nuclear umbrella forces NATO and Ukraine to decide either to stand down their counteroffensive or risk a Russian tactical nuclear weapons strike that would quickly escalate into a global nuclear war, or 3) a way out, like the Korean War, is to sign an armistice and build a DMZ from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea.
This century, if peace is given a chance, if the West survives intact, and remains a feudal hierarchy based on wealth; the broke, apparatchik run, monopolistic corporate/state will continue avoiding dealing with overpopulation, climate change and resource depletion. They will let nature take its course. But the Overlords will have to kowtow to China to have access to manufactured goods.
There are very good reasons for the fear, anxiety, and animosity between commenters.
Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev and détente ended Nuclear Brinkmanship in the 1980s. It is back. Either Ukraine stands down or Russian tactical nuclear weapons will be used to stop the counteroffensive into Donbas.
The reasons for the current situation are myriad. Besides being bombarded with big lie propaganda, real or imaginary pandemics, my main explanation for the current unrest is that capitalism has gone nuts in the West. Cheap energy is disappearing. Basically, western plutocrats are rolling the dice, one more time, to see if they can gain control of Russia’s energy and resources. If they don’t start a global nuclear war and if they don’t get cheap sources of energy, a never ending economic Depression starts this winter.
The way things are isn’t top secret. To convert the political/economic system to “free trade” for corporations and to privatize public services, democracy and functional governments were intentional terminated. The oligarchy replaced it with identity politics that pits peoples against each other (divide and rule).
“How Bill Gates and partners used their clout to control the global Covid response,” linked above, is explicit for the reasons why the world’s governments failed, except China, to mitigate coronavirus. Four Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) took control the responses to the pandemic by spending almost $10 billion on Covid. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the other three NGOs could care less about the sick. They are the Insiders who profit and increase their stock values by marketing mRNA vaccines. They support the “for-profit” private medical system. They “deep-sixed” alternative treatments and non-pharmaceutical interventions. The Public Health system collapsed. Over a million Americans died with Covid — currently between 300 and a thousand Americans die each day with Covid (NC says 541 died today) — compared to the average number of deaths per day in WWI of 6,000 soldiers.
With the proxy world war, energy/supply shortages, illness, and under-staffing; it is uncertain if Europe can make it through this winter intact. In two to three years, if governments by and for the people are not restored, it will all be over. By then, there will be nothing left to exploit by the plutocrats. The real question is who and what will be left.
The Ukrainian Russian war is much like the First World War because the Western and Russian, oligarch controlled, Empires are fighting to defeat each other and all have forgotten the lessons of WWII that mass mobilization and maneuver warfare wins wars.
The propaganda on both sides is worse than by Reich Minister Joseph Goebbels in WWII.
To win the war, the oligarchs on one side or the other will have to give up their war profiteering. That is not going to happen. Much more likely is the use tactical nuclear weapons to halt the invasion of Poland by Russia or Crimea by Ukraine. This will inevitably escalate to a global nuclear holocaust.
ZeroHedge reports that the April Ukraine and Russia were near an armistice but Boris Johnson flew to Kiev to scuttle it. Victoria Nuland, architect of the 2014 Maidan Revolt, is reportedly in Kiev now. There are profits to be made from the war and the energy spot markets. The only country that is successfully combating the coronavirus pandemic is China. The rest of the world is letting the virus rip and the pharmaceutical industry is profiting from it. No matter how good the propaganda and surveillance are, if the war drags on for years, people who are hungry, cold, and have nothing to lose, will revolt like they did in 1917 — that is if the earth is still inhabitable for humans.
Oscar Wilde’s cynic “knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”, Upton Sinclair’s “It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it”, plus “Profits over Lives” are simple descriptions of the current western political/economic system. This describes the Ivermectin saga. Anything that could challenge the profits from injecting over 12 billion mRNA shots were ignored. Then, actively buried if the treatment gathered notice outside of corporate media. This is the very essence of the current ruling western ideology. It allows the enriching of oneself at the expense of everyone else. “Greed is good.”
This also accounts for the strange behavior concerning the proxy world war in Ukraine. Anything that suggests the West is at war is ignored. Europe is totally unprepared for the cut-off of piped cheap natural gas from Russia. The West is treating the conflict solely as a profit opportunity for military contractors.
Only restoration of sovereign democratic national governments that serve their people can halt the inevitable collapse of western civilization that will occur, if left unaddressed.
The greatest difficulty, going forward, is that the current western elite’s “neoliberal” ideology (that enriches them at the expense of everyone else) is simply insane. There is no “invisible hand”. Market prices will soar to infinity if there are shortages of critical life sustaining energy, commodities, shelter, or labor. Wheelbarrows of Cash, like Zimbabwe and the Weimar Republic before, will return.
The EU is at war. To win it, people, resources and industry must be mobilized. This is what General George Marshall did during WWII for the USA. With natural gas to Germany cut off by Russia due to the proxy world war; energy production, transport and use must be nationalized. Mobilization and nationalization are the very last thing the oligarch-controlled Europe will do. Europe does not have sufficient stored and available energy to get through next winter without killing and indebting its inhabitants. Basically, for Europeans to have a sustainable decent life requires the restoration of government by and for the people. Without it, Europe will devolve into a barely habitable medieval depletion zone ruled by those who do have resources and working governments – The Eastern Axis.
War “big lie” propaganda has never had any relationship with reality. What works is the truth massaged to sell a political/economic message. However, what happen with the rise of neoliberalism and rule by global Brahmins is that they don’t give a damn what the “hoi-polloi” think.
This is clear in the coronavirus pandemic. Telling the truth and spending money on public health mitigations that work were trashed to create more billionaires by injecting everyone they could with for-profit mRNA vaccines. There were no data to prove that the injections were safe and effective though they said they were. The vaccines were approved for emergency use without intensive monitoring to see if there were any adverse effects in those injected. Off-patent alternatives were “deep-sixed”. They succeeded. They are wealthier. There are adverse effects. The mRNA injections loose effectiveness within weeks and do not prevent transmission.
The real problem is that to become apparatchik in the new world order, leaders and managers must believe the propaganda. This makes the western corporate/state stupid and incompetent. One example reported by ZeroHedge are the sanctions on Russia. China is selling Russian Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) to Europe to fill their storage tanks for the coming winter at 2 to 3 times the pre-war price. If Europeans don’t freeze to death this winter, they will be broke and deeper in debt next summer. China is making money from the proxy world war. Russia is earning more money from selling fossil fuel than before the sanctions.
Karl Rove was telling the truth when he said “We are an Empire Now. We create our own reality”. But, it was only for a short period until 2015 when the Kremlin popped the bubble and its successful military intervention prevented a regime change in Syria. Donald Trump gummed up the works and delayed the world war for four years. The Russia, China and Iran Axis and its commodity based financial system is an existential threat to the Western corporate/state Empire — Wall Street and the City of London.
The Imperial Blob is intentionally sacrificing Ukrainians and soon other Europeans to maintain their hegemony. Their “only money has value” ideology and the possible loss of status (not being an Insider any more) means that they cannot acknowledge that it is all over. They must forever believe their own propaganda.
Actually, this is now a multi-polar world. The only way humans will survive the catastrophes of a possible nuclear war, climate change, pandemics, resource depletion, and over population is if good government and peace are restored. The West and the Axis must sign an armistice and build DMZs to separate each other; just like the First Cold War.
This winter in Europe will determine if human beings survive on earth or not.
The world is at war. Russia, China and Iran want their own commodity based financial system to split away from the western corporate/state “free” market system that is designed to increase short term business profits by any means necessary. Western sovereign nations that served the public are no more. Hungary is the exception that proves the rule. The only response to shortages due to the pandemics and the proxy world war is to raise prices. Mobilization, peace negotiations or rationing are ignored.
Simply, this moment in time is to milk out the last penny of corporate profit. The current system has no interest or intention of helping the poor sick slobs who have no jobs, electricity or warmth. They are invisible. The possible replay of the 1830 Paris revolt is oblivious to the elite inside their current bubble of enormous wealth and power.
This post is an accurate portrayal of the current crisis.
In a sense, the ruling ideology, “individualism above all – there is no such thing as society” has come to an inflection point. The western corporate/state that controls the world through “free trade” and “war profiteering” is being challenged by Russia’s and China’s withdrawal from it. The West’s flailing about is due to the global oligarchs’ overseers refusing to admit that this is a multi-polar world once again. Being the Hegemon is their religion, their gravy train.
But this is also about life; food, shelter, health, education and safety. Western government was dismantled to cut taxes and end regulation. Commoners are of no concern to the new aristocracy — an inconvenience like fire ants.
There are a very few possible outcomes to the proxy world war now being fought in Ukraine and the skirmishes around Taiwan. One is a global nuclear war. If Russia’s armored army breaks through Ukraine’s defenses and approaches Poland, only tactical nuclear weapons can stop the invasion. This is why Finland and Sweden are joining NATO to get under its nuclear umbrella. Another scenario is that western civilization simply crashes under the stresses of the endless wars, pandemics, resource depletion, famines and becomes a no man’s land.
Only peace can address climate change. The latest harbinger is the flood in Death Valley California.
The smart thing to do is sign an armistice with Russia, let them have the Czar’s land back and the Crimea Canal, before they take Odessa that assures a forever war in the Balkans, if not a nuclear war. Build a DMZ on the line of contact and man it with Eastern Europeans. Restore democracy and government by and for the people in the West.
If deadly chaos sweeps the world, the one sure thing is if any humans survive on the surface of earth, they will find a way to get into the billionaires’ bunkers underneath.
These are interesting times.
Money and propaganda birthed a hegemon, the Western Empire, starting in the 1970s, that ruled the world with trade pacts — solely to make more corporate profit each quarter and increase management bonuses. A corollary to this “greed is good” ideology is that only individuals matter not society. So, the USA assassinates Al-Zawahiri was on his Kabul balcony; or, Russia executes by rocket Oleksiy Vadatursky and his wife, Raisa. He headed a Ukraine grain production and export business. The exact hit was not just in their house, but in a specific wing, the bedroom.
Democratic government and feedback from the populace have been trashed. Oligarchs could care less about the workers except to exploit therm. Western rulers are completely and totally divorced from reality. They piled up enormous US dollar debts to increase billionaires’ digital wealth. Nancy Pelosi is a clear example of the dementia of the gerontocracy. None of them hear or are told the truth. They made their own reality.
Unless good governance is restored that serves and protects the people, in this strictly transactional world, humans will steal from each other and deplete resources until riots and wildfires burn civilization down. Or, the losing side of the endless western wars of profit and, now, China’s and Russia’s war of independence from Wall Street and the City of London, will push the red button to avoid defeat.
Only peace can mitigate the looming climate change catastrophe or avoid a global nuclear war. Either event will likely eradicate human beings on earth.
The war propaganda on both sides will never admit that Russia and NATO are quite similar – both are oligarchies ruled by the wealthy who exploit other humans and the earth to get richer. Both Empires are fighting an industrial war of attrition but without full mobilizations, except for Ukraine. Like WWI, if the proxy world war lasts 3 to 4 years, it will end the same as a little over a century ago with worker revolutions and forced armistices imposed on the losing nations. That is if human beings avoid extinction in a nuclear war and also address climate change. Already there are historic heat domes in place over Europe and Texas. Next winter without natural gas and with electrical blackouts, the poor will die hungry in unheated dank rooms or outside if homeless.
The world is off-kilter just like Edward Hopper’s painting of the Chair Car 1965 with an impossible high square ceiling for a railroad car. The fraying apart is clear in my tiny sliver of suburbia; the bank temporary losing cleared withdrawals online, hyper aggressive drivers, packages undelivered, or mail not picked up.
The propaganda coming out of the pandemic debacle, energy & food shortages, and the war in Ukraine are truly astonishing on all sides. The ruling western private/state “Insiders” have totally lost contact with reality. The closest historical parallel is Reich Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, declaring glorious victories that kept coming closer to Berlin. Then, it was only Germany and its allies facing rapine destruction and city destroying atomic weapons; now, it is the whole world.
They are alchemists, the neo-aristocracy. In an infinite universe guided by “invisible hands”, shortages are impossible. Fabulous wealth is to be made by profiteering at the expense of human life. Except, this winter, with Nord Stream 2 still turned off; the freezing, hungry Europeans could do what bankrupt Sri Lankans did, throw out the incompetent corrupt government. If not, tactical nuclear weapons will be used if Russia mobilizes, overruns western Ukraine, and storms across the Danube River into Western Europe (or vice versa). Without an armistice and a DMZ to separate Russia and Ukraine, this proxy world war is guaranteed to escalate into a nuclear holocaust.
It is frustratingly weird that the rising authoritarian regime in the West has no single despot to rule the failing Empire. Joe Biden is certainly no Caligula. Instead, today’s Western Empire is a reign of Insiders — the very worst of rule by committee.
This post highlights it. The Insiders keep showing up. I first noticed the Spin Admiral, John Kirby, in the Pentagon briefings in 2014 during the Ukraine Coup. With the Biden Administration, he returned to the Pentagon. Now, he has been promoted to National Security Spokesman for the White House. He made no sense then or now. Where Victoria Nuland went, he followed.
Really, it is quite simple, if it makes money, it is greenlighted, no matter the consequences, from war to pestilence and famine. It is called profiteering.
An Iron Curtain must be rebuilt and manned to separate Western Europe from Russia. Or, if history rhymes again, the current proxy world war will escalate to the third one in little over a century and it will make the earth a desert. Any survivors will call it peace.
Both Russia and the West are ruled by oligarchs — plutocracies. It is just the degree of their control over what is left of government. Democratic republics are long gone. The militaries have been privatized. This is why the proxy world war is starting out just the same as WWI. Though a century has passed, the ruling aristocracy hasn’t changed a bit. There is no public health, public education or public safety left for one basic reason — they are profitless. The USA is #1 and Russia #4 with total COVID deaths.
It is not a coincidence that the ultra right is similar in the USA or Russia. Humans revert to old beliefs when under stress. Actually, the rational political left and right are approach similar positions; everyone else is crazy. This is just like WWI, incompetent leadership on all sides; artillery trench warfare. If the proxy world war escalates and last four years, the Western and Russian Empires will collapse. If China isn’t destroyed by nuclear weapons, it will be the last human civilization left on a polluted depleted earth.
Mark Shields, PBS’s pundit extraordinary, has died at 85. He was in my generation and he too served in the US military. I watched him from day one on PBS. I believed, until 2016, when it became obvious that Hillary Clinton wanted a war with Russia. She got it. He never changed. On both sides of the proxy world war, the propagandists still believe, despite being exact contradictions of each other. Truth and justice have disappeared. It has gotten to the point that a world war, illness, hunger, early death, inflation in energy costs, and deflation of store warehoused goods are inevitable because the cascading problems will never be addressed since the rich profiteering off everyone else is the only game left. Western democracies were dismantled. Public Health, Public Education and Public Safety all gone.
With the loss of the public health system in the West, everyone is on their own. “Trust but verify.” If meeting with relatives, vaccinated, boosted, or not, as long as coronavirus is surging, like now in the USA, wear a mask, meet outdoors, try to distance, and everyone must test negative prior to the gathering. Even with these measures, the risks may be too great for the elderly.
To work in public, today, to have an income, is a guarantee of cognitive dissonance. Every child who brings coronavirus home or is killed or wounded while the police stand-down in the hallway, assures the death of public education in the USA.
Russophobes and Russophiles believe their own side’s propaganda despite being the exact opposite of each other. Both sides, Russia and NATO are armed with nuclear weapons. They are fighting a proxy WWIII that will inevitably escalate to a nuclear exchange. Ukraine is in fantasy land if it thinks it can retake Crimea. Russia is similarly crazy if it thinks it can win a months’ long scorched earth – trench war with its downsized professional army and then make peace with Ukraine. This is an ethnic war. Either Russia conquers Odessa, Kiev, and then Western Ukraine or Russia partitions the west with Poland and lets them fight the Ukrainian resistance; like both have done before. If Poland occupies Western Ukraine, this is the end of NATO. If Poland doesn’t and NATO resupplies the Ukraine resistance, Russia invades them to destroy the guerrillas’ safe haven.
The only way to stop further invasions is with nuclear weapons. This is why Finland and Sweden have to join NATO to get under its nuclear umbrella. The only way to save the Europe that existed prior to February 24, 2022 is an armistice, right now, and a manned DMZ between the Ukrainians and the Russians.
Reality is so ugly that most are in denial. To be explicit, western democratic republics must be restored, corporations disenfranchised, and the oligarchy taxed at a flat 75% rate on all of their rents and income; or human civilization (cooperation) is finished.
Today’s post highlights the intentional splitting apart of the American people in order that government can continue to not protect or serve the public. It is called divide and conquer. “Liberal” or “Conservative” are false political descriptions. Today the structure of the West is quite simple. It is profiteers on top who are free to exploit the chumps (the hoi polloi) on the bottom and not go to jail. War, plague and famine make money until they don’t anymore. The Ukraine proxy World War III, Baby Formula shortages, Omicron variants new surge, and Tesla stock plunging now that Elon Musk is trying to spend $44 billion so Donald Trump can tweet, are all writings on the wall. This describes “end times” pretty well. The only way out is a reformation that makes western governments work once again for the people not corporations.
The ruling Western ideology is that only money matters. Everyone is own their own but rich individuals benefit unequally at the expense of the worthless. The last US CEO jailed was Jeff Skilling, Enron, who embarrassed the Bush II Administration by turning off the lights in California for a profit.
The proxy World War III in Ukraine is being fought by others to benefit outsiders and oligarchs. There no longer is public education, public health, or public safety in the West. It is only propaganda – information warfare that says there is any community left. No one mentions that Russia Federation Army has been unable to break through the Ukraine trench defenses. The Red Army could have. The question is can Russia breakout of the Black Sea Lowlands and take Odessa and deny a rump Ukraine access to the sea?
The next months will see if peace returns to Europe. It requires a peace treaty/armistice, now, and Russia withdrawal to east of the Dnieper River behind the Line of Contact and a manned DMZ. If the Biden Administration continues to nix the talks and if the Russian Armored Army does finally breakout; only tactical nuclear weapons can stop the invasion of Poland which almost guarantees the use of both side’s strategic nuclear weapons.
If this were only so.
This is time for negotiation to build a new Iron Curtain across the Balkans to separate Ukrainians, Poles, Romanians, Hungarians, Slovaks from the Russians (Swedes and Finns too). Ukraine’s only chance of survival is keeping Odessa and access to the Black Sea. Russia has to accept that it made a huge mistake by invading even if they think they had no other alternative. Western Corporate Oligarchs have to give up their attempt to destabilize the Kremlin, splinter the Russia Federation, and gain control over Russia’s energy, food, and mineral resources. Unfettered profiteering always results in corruption, destruction, collapse, then death.
North Americans and Europeans have to accept and plan ahead to live in the future within the resources boundaries of each nation and continent, learn to share, and restore governments by and for the people. All of this is needed if western civilization is to survive.
Good luck doing it!
I admit my bias. After Vietnam, in my remaining year in the U.S. Army, I could have been deployed to Germany if the Soviets invaded. We would have been lucky to survive a week against the Red Army.
I am currently slowly watching the French TV Show “The Bureau”. Its war sections are good enough to bring back recollections. It really highlights the power of informational warfare – PSYOPS. The Kurds who retook Raqqa Syria with NATO air support are completely ignored in the USA. Keeping the troops in Syria finally was acknowledged by Donald Trump as keeping Syrian oil for the USA. There are no Sunni English culture ISIS web sites in the West. NATO has become quite effective at using minorities as proxy forces against its enemies.
The USA/UK + EU (NATO) are now fighting a proxy World War III against the Russia Federation. The active Russophile and Russophobe web sites mostly ignore this basic fact and present absolutely contradictory misinformation. The basic national strategic imperative is never to fight your enemy’s war. Sorry to burst bubbles. But neoliberalism has infested both the West and Russia. Its primary characteristic is that rulers believe their own propaganda. If Ukraine was about to invade, be smart, not stupid. Replay Pearl Harbor. But no. Instead Russia invaded and is in a long slog with a nuclear war as a very real outcome. The only way out is a peace treaty that allows ethnic Ukraine to keep Odessa with its access to the Black Sea and Russia regains most of the Czar’s land east of Dnieper River it has reconquered. A manned DMZ (a new Iron Curtain) is needed to stop the shelling between ethnic Russians and Ukrainians and to restore detente.
Although one tries not to admit it, since this existence could vaporize instantaneously, living around five miles from an Air Force base, my uncertain future is in the hands of Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin and whomever is pulling their strings and my avoiding coronavirus aerosol transmission.
Past experiences, education, culture, and language shape human biases. So I believe that, yes, there is a Coronavirus Pandemic still underway. Okay, WWIII is in its initial stages. If there is no peace treaty/armistice shortly, the carving up of Ukraine will get out of hand. Obviously, both governments of Russia and the USA are dysfunctional due to privatization, incompetence, and corruption. USA is #1 and Russia is #4 in the total deaths with Covid-19.
NATO provoked and prodded Russia until the Kremlin invaded a sovereign nation next door. After two months, amazingly, the war is still underway. We are drowning in overflowing propaganda from all sides. Yet the global conflict is simply over currency – can the West in the future buy Russian resources with US dollars or not?
Peace now, or the alternative is a nuclear war. If a holocaust is somehow avoided, human beings still have to address climate change, resource depletion, pestilence, greed, and our innate ethnic hatreds to have a future on earth.
Awash in propaganda pollution from all sides, the truth is a diamond in the rough. It is only recognized by experience and gut feelings.
The birth of a commodity-based Russia/China currency has commenced. When the US dollar is only supported by the resources, labor, and intellect of Americas; the gambling debts, derivatives, and Eurodollars become worthless.
The US government is patently bad — run by and for corporations. The US President is the proxy Emperor of the Western Empire. The Imperial Blob incompetent. Over a million Americans died with COVID-19 with no notice of this deadly milestone. Despite the intentional cutoff of Russian resources due to sanctions, the US government is incapable of rationing scarcity.
WWIII is underway between nuclear armed empires that cannot even talk to each other. Either there is peace or humankind will exterminate itself.
Only the restoration of good government that provides law and order, controls pandemics, mitigates climate change, and win wars, can certain catastrophe be avoided.
“War is over! If you want it.” Is an apt thought. Five decades ago when Times Square was photographed, the Best and Brightest lied to themselves and ignored intelligence that Vietnam was a civil war and the American invasion was really in support of the wrong side. The decades long Ukraine conflict is an ethnic civil war between Western Ukrainians and Russians within the Soviet created nation. The Russia Federation invaded to support their brethren. Except, it is hard wired for humans to defend their homes and families from invading outsiders i.e. Yankees. Rulers keep forgetting this. Untermenschen simply do not matter to Overlords.
WWIII is in its initial stages. All side’s PSYOPS are spreading big lie propaganda that contradicts each other. Russia is gathering armor and manpower for attack west when the grain fields dry out. NATO is resupplying Ukraine. If enough howitzers and ammunition make it to the front lines, together with human courage, this will determine if Ukrainians will blunt the Russian attack or not. Russia’s goal is clear, demilitarized Ukraine and eliminate neo-Nazis. If Russia seizes western Ukraine, NATO will use tactical nuclear weapons to prevent the invasion of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. Likewise, Russia will use tactical nuclear weapons, if its goals are thwarted.
The only way out is a peace treaty/armistice that partitions Ukraine with Russia keeping Crimea, Donbass and the conquered land east of the Dnieper River. A DMZ must be established alone the line of contact manned by Eastern Europeans to prevent shelling and future conflicts. Like past partitions, there will be ethnic cleansing on either side of the DMZ.
But, Talks have broken down. The battlefield will determine the future. As long as the West continues to push for regime change in the Kremlin, and won’t accept a peace settlement, the use of tactical nuclear weapons becomes inevitable.
WWIII has started. This is a war about money, culture, land and resources. The next few months will see if the privatized corrupt Russian Army can defeat an invaded nation that’s mobilized its people. I admit I am prejudiced. I was drafted into the U.S. Army that afterwards was privatized and corrupted. I doubt that the Russian Federation has the manpower or the will to sweep to the borders of Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland and subject the survivors. If Russia does, it is sure to start a nuclear war.
The only real alternative is for Ukraine and Russia sign a peace treaty/armistice that gives Russia Donbass and the conquered land east of the Dnieper River. Ukraine keeps Odessa and access to the Black Sea. The line of contact becomes a DMZ between the two nations manned by other Eastern Europeans to end the shelling and prevent future conflicts. The resources, labor, expertise and leadership will be on the eastern side of the divide.
The West faces starvation and freezing winters as a result of illness, dysfunctional governments, and the collapse of fiat currency. But there will be survivors.
WWI started in 1914 when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Russia’s support of Serbia brought in France. WWII started in 1939 when Russia and Germany partitioned and invaded Poland. WWIII started in 2022 when the Western Empire prodded Russia into invading Ukraine. It is near impossible to determine the truth due to information warfare from all sides. The best one can do is surmise reality from what is linked and commented here and the internet with a bucket full of salt.
This is not happenstance. The western corporate/state used the same PSYOPS (PR) to sell “for-profit” mRNA vaccines as the only government response to the coronavirus pandemic. Over a million Americans have died with COVID-19 and this milestone has passed unnoticed on purpose. Nursing home elderly were injected with morphine and left to die. Non-pharmaceutical interventions trashed despite the Washington DC super spreader events of the latest coronavirus variant.
It is not a coincidence that two nuclear armed nations that are number #1 and #4 on the list of total COVID-19 deaths are on the verge of a shooting war. Both nations are titular heads of oligarchical empires. Neither are democracies. Lower classes (the 90%) simply do not matter. “Profits over human lives.”
The reality of food and energy shortages, missing workers, and WWIII are denied. Except the truth can’t stay hidden forever. Sri Lanka and Peru are harbingers of global unrest. “Nine meals from anarchy.”
Since I am in the last generation of Americans to be drafted, I couldn’t help but notice that the Kremlin promised their current conscripts that they aren’t going to serve on the front lines in Ukraine. That sure defeats the purpose of a conscript army or it is a lie.
There are excellent arguments that since 2014 when sanctions were first imposed on Russia that it has been at war with the Western Empire.
I served in the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (“Brave Rifles”) after Vietnam. We were reinforcements to be flown to Germany to be thrown in the carnage if Russia charged through the Fulda Gap. It is simply impossible for me to overlook the fact that Russia aggressively invaded another country 51 years later. The poking and prodding snapped the Russian Bear. If the Kremlin just had waited and was prepared for the purported Ukraine invasion of Donbass, the Russian Army would not have any problems with conscripts going to the front lines to defend the motherland against the Nazi aggressors.
The Russian Army has been privatized just like the U.S. Army. People’s Armies are no more except perhaps in China. They instead are composed of mercenaries fighting for pay. Unless a peace treaty is signed shortly, for Ukraine is to remain a viable nation, the western “pay to play” logistics system must manufacture, ship, and then transport military supplies through Russian counterattacks to the Ukrainian front lines. This will determine if the world war continues, fades away, or escalates to a nuclear holocaust.
The Korean War is forgotten. But it cemented the first Cold War into place until the Reagan/Gorbachev detente. Due Strategic Communications bombardment from all combatants, it is simply impossible to determine the front lines and the flow of battle in these initial stages of WWIII. If Russia seizes Odessa, Ukraine will be a rump state. The West will try to keep a guerrilla war going in Western Ukraine if occupied.
The underlying problem is that the Western Empire wants to maintain the fiction that it still a hegemon and the dollar the global reserve currency. NATO/Russian Federation, both, are likely to take risks that could blow the conflict up into a nuclear holocaust. Europe is resource depleted. The basic problem for the Russian side is that the Kremlin could not wait to be attacked first by the neo-Nazis but invaded Ukraine on three sides in a war of aggression and lost the high moral ground. The tragedy is that all of the combatant states have been neoliberalized and are dysfunctional. None care how many of their citizens are killed or maimed.
The only way to stop the slaughter and lower the risk of a nuclear war is to partition Ukraine and make the Dnieper River the DMZ between East and West the same as the 38th parallel is in Korea.
Since humans discovered agriculture that grows surplus food to feed standing armies, tribes and then nations have been killing, looting and capturing slaves from other tribes and nations. Nothing has changed in the last 10,000 years except a nuclear war now will destroy the earth for human habitation.
The West poked and prodded the Russian Bear to destabilize it and to allow western corporations to profit from Russian resources until the Kremlin snapped and invaded with two strategic goals; demilitarize Ukraine and eliminate the Neo-Nazis. As long as the West supports ethnic Ukrainians fighting ethnic Russians; the Russian Ukraine war will go on until either WWIII blows up or the Western Empire collapses.
The FED has just raised the interest rates to control inflation. This has been used in the past when the economy over heated. Usually costing workers there jobs. Except, today, inflation is due to shortages from the collapse of just-in-time logistics and the missing workers due to illness, isolation, and early deaths. The FED has made a bad situation worse. This is the third Chartreuse Swan. The first Black Swan is the pandemic itself and the building BA.2 variant surge at the same time the West is ending all mitigation measures. The second Red Swan is WWIII that is just in its initial stages.
Western government is too old, corrupt, and believes its own propaganda. The West is simply incapable of dealing with one black swan event, let alone three.
This is now the Ides of March War. With the internet you can get propaganda from both sides; or world views, but not for long. Reality, the truth, is hidden from everyone and by one’s own viewpoint.
Much like WWI there will be no real winners, except China, the new world power. Globalism is death. An iron curtain is circling the world. Once again there are three worlds. But the West is decaying into third world status; assets and labor depleted; euro-dollar’s value crashing. Industry and resources dominate within the Russia, China & Iran Axis. The West is de-industrialized, facing severe shortages, ill with coronavirus, and suffering under the reign of the supranational death cult (the corporate state, i.e. the Western Empire). All the Kremlin had to do was wait. But they couldn’t/didn’t and invaded Ukraine.
Neither the EU or the Russian Federation will be able to construct a European Security Agreement. The USA is not agreement capable. This means a constant new cold war 2.0. The rise of nationalism and guarded borders. Nuclear armed forces, locked and loaded, facing each other over tens of thousands of miles. Mankind’s survival depends on neither side making one mistake that destroys the world.
This isn’t new news for TAE, but Zerohedge posted Gail Tverberg’s “Russia’s attack on Ukraine represents a demand for a new world order”. Basically the article says the invasion is due to oil depletion and Russia’s demand that it be paid more for its oil and natural gas exports. This is one explanation for the inexplicable decision to risk WWIII and invade Ukraine. I do agree that this is a resource war. Western corporations want to profit off of Russia’s resources by destabilizing the Kremlin. Also, this is an ethnic war. It can only end when Ukraine is partitioned. Except likely there will be nothing left to partition after the attempted extermination of all the “neo-Nazi” Ukrainians, the collapse of the West from worker, energy and food shortages, and current corrupt governments that are so incompetent they appear unable to prevent the ignition of a nuclear war.
The black and red banner Chrystia Freeland is holding says “Glory to Ukraine”.
Globalist Oligarchs’ “free movement of people goods capital and services” requires the purposeful dismantling of nation states and supremacy of the corporate Empire. “Profit over lives.” The former democracies have become so corrupt and incompetent that they no longer serve or protect their people; just message propaganda.
The Russian Federation was baited and the Kremlin snapped.
To destroy Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Ukraine, and the USA, globalists use ethnic conflicts to do the hard work to divide and rule. National western armies have been privatized and downsized. In Ukraine it is a province in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, Galicia that has been overrun by Poles, Germans and the Soviets in the last century that will provide the grunts in the take down of Russia like the Kurds were used in Syria to destroy the Sunni ISIS. It is sad feature of human nature that it works.
Just as the coronavirus pandemic waxes and wanes across the West unaddressed except for profiteering, shortages of workers, energy, food, water and goods are about to engulf Europe and the Americas with the start of the new world war in the Balkans that is intended to regain Russian resources for western profit. Delusional but the death, maiming, grief and suffering are real.
Since I did duck and cover drills in elementary school, we are revisiting a childhood trauma. Old imprints are reactivated.
The Kremlin acted out. All Russia had to do was wait for the flailing Western Empire to collapse. But instead, they invaded Ukraine on the cheap without a “shock and awe” preparation as shown by Ukraine soldiers walking about Russian tank convoy ambush sites with no concern for counter artillery or air strikes. Russian leaders believe their own propaganda just as the Western ones believe theirs. Unless a peace treaty is signed today or tomorrow; to save Kiev from neo-nazis, Russia will destroy it.
The world is now partitioned with deranged neoliberal leaders on both sides who seem to have no concept that World War III has started. Without a quick end to the European War, the likely outcome is that the earth will be turned into a nuclear hell hole.
The Kremlin did it. There is a lot of history behind the Russian invasion of Ukraine; the 2014 Western directed Coup, the fall of the Soviet Union, or Joe Stalin’s reshuffling the Balkan borders after victory in WWII. The main one is that Slavs have and will be subhuman to the haute Western European aristocracy. Deplorables aren’t much better to new money American globalists.
Europe, the World, has just been partitioned. The red button for WWIII has been pushed. The Western baiting of the Russian Bear succeeded. But the corporate neoliberal ruling class can’t see beyond the next three months. There are only a few possible outcomes to the world war; 1) Russia halts it advance and withdraws to old borders and the West agrees to something similar to the Minsk Agreements, 2) the West resupplies and inserts Catholic/Protestant Eastern European volunteers into West Ukraine and ties down Russian forces in a forever guerrilla war, or 3) Russia masses its forces to invade Poland and Bulgaria to cut off the supplies and NATO uses tactical nuclear weapons to destroy them. The use of the nukes inevitable will result in igniting of all of the 3200 currently deployed nuclear weapons on both sides.
Even if the West survives the Russia Ukraine War, extremely tough times are ahead; energy disruptions (blackouts), food shortages, missing essential workers due to COVID and vaccine side effects, unrest, significantly decreased life expectancy, climate change wildfires and heat domes — not enough natural gas to keep warm during polar vortexes like the Texas freeze last winter, plus hurricanes, the crash of the petrodollar, gasoline lines and finally dysfunctional privatized western governments that are unable to address any of the multitude of disasters afflicting their populations.
This is quite the day.
Iceland and Australia did everything right to hold coronavirus off until Omicron flowed over them and like the USA/UK, they’ve given up. Together, the raw data from UK and Israel, life insurance claims and undertakers’ increased profits; all point to the unavoidable conclusion that mRNA vaccines are not safe or effective. As long as coronavirus is endemic and mutating, thousands will continue to die daily or suffer from long-COVID, and life-expectancy will continue its sharp decline.
Right now, Russia is conducting a shock and awe attack on Ukraine. The full-blown Russian invasion of Ukraine and rounding up of neo-Nazis is underway. The problem is that as they approach Western Ukraine and Poland, the use of tactical nuclear weapons will be the only way to stop the advance. Every wargame conducted indicates, at this point, ICBMs are launched to avoid their loss. The USA and Russia have 1600 deployable nuclear weapons each.
Missing workers, shortages, seizing financial assets, the Eurasian War, and toxic vaccines are all interrelated. This is what happens when the only thing of value is money; not human beings, not morals, not good governance.
Invasion Day Wednesday, February 16, 2022, has come and gone in Ukraine with no Russian Invasion. The Russian Foreign Minister has a reason to laugh at the West. The CDC says excess deaths in the last two years in the USA surpassed 1 million but may be even more if insurance losses for life insurance payouts are real. The US government is a complete failure. Nothing it says can be believed.
Canada points the way to the coming western dystopian future. Any surviving middle-class with bank accounts will have assets frozen or fines imposed if one’s social credit score drops below set amounts. For example, a fall from 600 to 500 for bad mouthing the PM will cost 10,000 Loonies.
The craziness is spreading across all five-eye nations. The only way I can explain it is that the western democracies were terminated. The Blob, a couple thousand oligarchs and their overseers, reign in a neo-feudal corporate/state — a 21st century version of Mussolini’s fascist organization. Except, no one dares admit it. The only way out is a general strike and the restoration of democracy. The tragedy is that there is election process to do this system restoration peacefully but the western ruling cult will never agree to it voluntarily and they have wealth and power.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said of Liz Truss the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, “I’m honestly disappointed that our conversation turned out like the mute with the deaf. We appear to be listening but we’re not hearing anything. Our detailed explanations fell on unprepared ground.”
Well! So much for diplomacy! Let’s have a war!
This same laissez-faire attitude towards the coronavirus pandemic permeates the USA/UK/Canada/Australian governments. Now that truck drivers are hurting corporate profits; not to mention, threatening to kick the bums out; five democrat blue state governors end mask mandates.
Thank God. The pandemic is over. Except, it isn’t.
February 9th’s weekly average of daily deaths with COVID-19 in the USA is 2,411. This is equivalent to the 2500 Americans who died in the deadliest day of combat in US history, D-Day Normandy Landings in WWII. Every day, over and over again, for how long? The simple truth is that it does not matter how many Americans are dying to the Western Empire’s current rulers.
Masks are one of the proven interventions that lower the risk of transmission of the virus. Like finding early off-patent treatments to prevent and cure illness; inconvenient mitigations are discarded to make more money and stay in power; not prevent illness. Public Health is of no importance in the West.
Perhaps prayers will be answered and hope wins out. But Omicron BA.1 is the cause of current second highest surge of deaths in the USA. It may be the last variant to sweep the world unhindered but, on the other hand, Omicron BA.2 variant is 2/3 of the new cases in Denmark and has been detected in half of the US States.
There is no doubt that humans have cognitive bias. Mine is that I could not have been holed up at home (except for going out public once) for two years for nothing. The impact of the pandemic is very real. Although hyped to spread fear; almost a million Americans have died early with COVID-19. It is also clear that the pharmaceutical/medical — corporate/state fiefdom mercenaries have a vested interest in saying “mRNA vaccines are safe and effective” which is a lie. They are a type of gene therapy that causes heart inflammation in young males and are only effective in preventing severe symptoms for several months. The “vaccines” do not prevent transmission or infection by SARS-CoV-2 virus. There is also wide spread cognitive bias among those responsible for the death and chronic illnesses. This is what the propaganda and censorship are hiding.
Identity politics has grabbed a hold of the vaccine mandates to further divide and rule Western populations. Canada’s Freedom Convoy is one result. Western society will have been permanently broken apart by neoliberalism if we cannot discard the mandates immediately, right now, because the mandates do not work with the non-sterilizing mRNA vaccines.
I cannot let pass the idea that public health measures (which have proven to work over the centuries) failed. They didn’t. They are working in China, Taiwan, Japan, New Zealand and Western Australia. Quarantines, contact tracing, ventilation, air filtration, masking and social distancing , all together, work but cause economic disruption, cost lots of money, require public health workers, and a society that helps each other. The West’s dismantled national governments are too corrupt and incompetent to do proper quarantines. The only intent of the half-ass lockdowns and fear mongering was to exploit untermenschen to make more money for the rich by keeping hospitals open and increasing the number of injections. It worked.
“Omicron is the Best Vaccine” is a hope, a prayer. The people who let coronavirus variants sweep across the world four times already are still in power in the West.
