Category Archives: Ukraine

Is the collective West nearing the end of a cycle?

Or are we still in mid-cycle? And could it be an epochal point of inflection?

Writes Alastair Crooke:

The levelling project being essentially nihilistic becomes captured by the destructive side of the revolution – its authors so absorbed with dismantling structures that they do not attend to the need to think policies through, before launching into them. The latter are not adept at doing politics: at making politics ‘work’.

(Interenstingly, this applies not only to foreign policy, such as Ukraine and Taiwan, but also to Covid and climate change policies.)

Thus, discontent at the welling string of western foreign policy flops grows. Crises multiply, both in number and across different societal dimensions. Perhaps, we are closening to a point of beginning to move through the cycle – toward disillusionment, retrenchment, and stabilization; the prerequisite step to catharsis and ultimate renewal. Yet, it would be a mistake to underestimate the longevity and tenacity of the western revolutionary impulse.

“The revolution does not operate as an explicit political movement. It operates laterally through the bureaucracy and it filters its revolutionary language through the language of the therapeutic, the language of the pedagogical, or the language of the corporate HR department”, Professor Furedi writes. “And then, it establishes power anti-democratically, bypassing the democratic structure: using this manipulative and soft language – to continue the revolution from within the institutions.”

The connection between supporting Ukraine and supporting standard Covid measures

General thoughtlessness

Tom Woods writes in a recent e-mail newsletter: “This will lose me subscribers.”

He continues:

But if I censored myself instead of saying something that might be unpopular, I wouldn’t be worth a whole lot.

So, here goes.

“I stand with Ukraine,” everyone said in unison in February 2022.

They hadn’t said, “I stand with Yemen,” where the greatest humanitarian disaster in the world had been taking place, because the people they allow to form their opinions for them hadn’t particularly wanted them to, and they themselves didn’t bother to find out about it.

But when all the powerful people demand they say something? Doggone it, whatever it is, they’ll say it!

Polling data shows a close correlation between people’s opinions on Ukraine and their opinions on Covid, even though the two issues have nothing to do with each other.

Except one thing.

In both cases, the official opinion molders took one side, and dissident voices were portrayed as evil.

And human beings are readily tempted into going along with whatever the influential and powerful say and do. (If you went to high school, you will recognize this phenomenon.)

In short, there are tens of millions of Americans who, whatever they’ve been told to say when confronted with dissident arguments, will say it.

The result is that we live in an unserious society, in which it is impossible to discuss anything important. Challenge any aspect of the CIA’s perspective on Russia and Ukraine and you’re a “Putin lover” or you’re repeating “Russian talking points” – or, worse still, the dreaded “Russian disinformation.”

On the Tom Woods Show I spoke in 2022 to Pierre Kory, a physician who was aghast at the official Covid response – which, as you know, was almost defiantly unscientific and self-contradictory. He couldn’t believe the utter lack of curiosity among his colleagues.

Well, that episode in history did something to him. He realized: if the New York Times publishes scientific nonsense in a subject area where I’m an expert and can recognize it, in what other areas, where I am not an expert, has it been misleading me?

So he further concluded: I’m not changing my social media avatar to whatever the symbol of The Current Thing is ever again, unless I see overwhelming evidence that The Current Thing is legitimate. I refuse to be a lemming. I have too much self-respect for that.

I think a lot of us have reached that point.

It’s of course not metaphysically impossible that the American establishment – a group of profoundly unimpressive people – could get something right. It’s just highly, highly unlikely. And I’m likewise not saying that no one could have an honorable disagreement with me on this issue.

What I am saying is, the treatment of the issue has been cartoonish, and Americans could stand to hear a bit more context.

Hence today I am releasing this free eBook: “Your Facebook Friends Are Wrong About Ukraine“

The purpose of this book is not to be contrarian for the sake of contrarianism – every once in a great while, in spite of themselves, the establishment manages to get something right, though usually for the wrong reasons.

Instead, its purpose is to remind people of a lesson that Americans in particular need to learn: history did not begin five minutes ago.

Now if your attitude is that the American government is awesome and the only reason anyone around the world might dislike it is that they’re jealous of our awesomeness, then the arguments in this book will not find fertile ground.

A lot of conservatives have been tricked into thinking this kind of vulgarity is the correct conservative position, although many of them are thankfully beginning to see through that.

Our ruling class, which is bipartisan – the uniparty, some call it – has been extremely cavalier in its words and actions under circumstances in which a wrong move could mean the end of the world.

I don’t think it’s a Russian talking point to call the end of the world a bad thing.

Get your copy for free.

China Declares War On The United States

In cool, calm terms, the ancient country has thrown down the gauntlet to the big bully

Gonzalo Lira points out in a 10-minute video how China, four days ago, basically declared war on the USA.

Today, practically all the Western media was rah-rahing for more and deadlier weapons for the perfectly pure and saintly Ukrainians (whose government’s corruption rank prior to the invasion one year ago was hardly better than Russia’s) in order to defeat the perfectly and purely evil Russians.

Consequently, the Abbey of the city I live in hoisted the Ukrainian flag today on its tower (for the first time since some weeks after the invasion). Rendering to Caesar . . .

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Eurasian landmass, the second largest boy in the classroom, who himself is no angel, has now decided to properly stand up to the biggest bully of all. And the above mentioned media has basically ignored this momentous event.

In a paper titled “US Hegemony and Its Perils” the Chinese government, on the website of its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, details with ice-cold precision what everyone with a brain knows to be true, but what most prefer not to talk about.

China, a country conscious of its 5,000-year-old culture, is throwing down the gauntlet. Let’s hope the heirs of Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War will heed the famous general’s advice: “Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”

The Chinese are about to prove whether they are worthy of their ancestral sage. We will see.

How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline

Seymour Hersh's report

“The New York Times called it a “mystery,” but the United States executed a covert sea operation that was kept secret—until now“.

Most of the media say “one anonymous source” is not enough proof.

Correct. So, when are they going to start doing their job and looking for more – or to find indications that refute the above claim?

Here‘s Tucker Carlson on the whole thing.

Update (10/02/2023):

Independent Evidence Video Confirms Key Part of Sy Hersh’s Report on the Attack on Nord Stream 2

Update (13/02/2023): Tom Luongo calls Hersh a “useful idiot” who is “advancing what is clearly only half the story”. He points out that Hersh mentions the US and Norway as culprits, but never mentions the UK: “This pathological need to absolve the UK of any involvement in the Nordstream bombings and setting the world on a course for total infrastructural war, like Russia is now doing in Ukraine, borders on creepy.”

Luongo’s conclusion:

I could spin out a host of possible Act IIIs here:

  • A quid pro quo between sovereigntist US forces and NATO to keep the UK and Poland out of the story to scapegoat “Biden” and begin cleaning up the State Department of the Nulandistas and British Intelligence influences to begin winding down the war in Ukraine This is my preferred story.
  • Further put the US and Russia on a collision course by having a journalist of Sy Hersh’s reputation confirm what everyone wants to believe, the US is a rogue state. This further degrades the US’s reputation and hastening the collapse of the US (Soros’ openly stated goal) on the eve of the Munich Security Conference (next week).
  • Leave Putin with even fewer domestically-palatable political options at home other than further escalation pushing the world closer to the brink of nuclear war to effect Davos’ Great Reset

To name a few.

But what’s really clear here is that there are no Ethan Hunts or even Jason Bournes out there to swoop in at the last second and stop this runaway train of evolution through catastrophe from going off the cliff and going boom.

Update (14/02/2023):

Edward Snowden Says UFO Hysteria Is “Engineered” Distraction From Nord Stream Pipeline Bombshell

Update (15/02/2023):

Pepe Escobar has some interesting things to say about this (“The Plot Thickens“):

The Special Military Operation (SMO) was launched on February 24, almost a year ago. The Nord Stream 1 and 2 blow up happened on September 26. Hersh assures there were “more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to ‘sabotage the pipelines’”.

So that confirms that the terror attack planning preceded, by months, not only the SMO but, crucially, the letters sent by Moscow to Washington on December 2022, requesting a serious discussion on “indivisibility of security” involving NATO, Russia and the post-Soviet space. The request was met by a dismissive American non-response response.

While he was writing the story of a terror response to a serious geopolitical issue, it does raise eyebrows that a first-rate pro like Hersh does not even bother to examine the complex geopolitical background.

In a nutshell: the ultimate Mackinderian anathema for the U.S. ruling classes – and that’s bipartisan – is a Germany-Russia alliance, extended to China: that would mean the U.S. expelled from Eurasia, and that conditions everything any American government thinks and does in terms of NATO and Russia.

Hersh should also have noticed that the timing of the preparation to “sabotage the pipelines” completely blows apart the official United States government narrative, according to which this a collective West effort to help Ukraine against “unprovoked Russian aggression”.

[…]

What everyone already knew by then – as the record shows even on YouTube – is that the combo behind “Biden” were dead set on terminating the Nord Streams by whatever means necessary. After the start of the SMO, the only thing missing was to find a mechanism for plausible deniability.

Stuff you should know about Ukraine

Setting the record straight

On February 16, 2022, a full week before Putin sent combat troops into Ukraine, the Ukrainian Army began the heavy bombardment of the area (in east Ukraine) occupied by mainly ethnic Russians. Officials from the Observer Mission of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) were located in the vicinity at the time and kept a record of the shelling as it took place. What the OSCE discovered was that the bombardment dramatically intensified as the week went on until it reached a peak on February 19, when a total of 2,026 artillery strikes were recorded. Keep in mind, the Ukrainian Army was, in fact, shelling civilian areas along the Line of Contact that were occupied by other Ukrainians.

We want to emphasize that the officials from the OSCE were operating in their professional capacity gathering first-hand evidence of shelling in the area. What their data shows is that Ukrainian Forces were bombing and killing their own people. This has all been documented and has not been challenged.

So, the question we must all ask ourselves is this: Is the bombardment and slaughter of one’s own people an ‘act of war’?

Continue reading here.

Ukraine: German Tank Controversy

It's about curtailing German influence in Europe and beyond

Says the blogger Eugyppius:

This war is about Russia primarily, and about Germany only secondarily. It’s an attempt of the Global American Empire to hem in Russia via an extended proxy campaign. In the longer term, this effort will require that Europe remain an American outpost, as it was during the Cold War, and this means the economic and political influence of Germany must be sharply curtailed. America – and not Germany – must dominate the Continent. The Scholz government have gone very far in making concessions to the Americans, but they appear to have finally drawn a line of sorts, at giving the Americans a pretence to sell their tanks in Europe. It will be important to see whether they can hold out.

The Farce of Europe

Made obvious by the war in Ukraine

Writes the “Z-Man“:

Wars often define countries. The two industrial wars of the 20th century changed America from a republic to a global empire. Wars can also destroy countries. This is what happened with Europe. Those two wars plus the Cold War drained the vitality from Europe, reducing it to an economic zone, a dependency of the Global American Empire. That is obvious now.

The hope for Europe is that this reality is made so clear by Washington’s war on Russia that the farce can no longer be maintained. Perhaps some elements of the European political class grow tired of the humiliations they must endure and seek to regain their nations from the clutches of Washington. Perhaps the cost of war loosens the grip of Washington on the empire. Otherwise, that grip will squeeze what little life remains in Europe and the lights go out forever.

Western Civilisation under attack

Nothing new, just gathering the evidence

Taki writes an article titled “Woke Joke“. Excerpts:

One year later I still don’t know what was worse, a blatant lie over WASP tennis clubs forcing Jewish competitors to take short showers, or calling Lee a traitor. I suppose it has to do with a meticulously prepared campaign by the media and the Washington swamp to vilify and destroy this country’s past and its admirers. Mind you, it is undeniable that certain country clubs back then excluded Jews, as did and still do many Jewish clubs today that exclude Christians. But the idea that USLTA-sponsored tournaments would force invited Jewish players to cut short their showers is so incredible and so outrageous, I should have thrown the bum out of the car for such a gross lie. A year later, I now clearly see what the couple was up to: nothing in particular, but just being woke and with-it.

This disinformation campaign about America’s past is no accident. It is a well-thought-out plan to disunite Americans and keep in power those who already wield it: corporate leaders, left-wing politicians, entertainment tycoons, media hustlers, and college czars eager to brainwash our youth. Another ploy is to put Christianity on the back burner, where it belongs, according to the entrenched ones. Once you get religion out of the way, the West becomes a formless entity, with materialism and globalism replacing Christianity.

In disuniting America, those profiting by it are helped by mass immigration of different colors and creeds, not to mention cultures. The archvillains disuniting Americans are the media, starting with The New York Times and The Washington Post, both owned by billionaires eager to keep their billions by pretending to be for the common man. Purporting to care about progressive values is simply virtue-signaling while distracting from the true motive of financial gain.

Unfortunately, many well-meaning people have been fooled by the anti-American rhetoric of Hollywood, the media, and the universities. The unimaginable abuses perpetrated by African regimes against their own people, not to mention the corruption, are never mentioned, and if they are it’s considered racist. And corporate leaders know how to protect their monopolies. When Facebook and Twitter banned the Donald, he had around 88 million glued to their screens. Trump’s new site has, at best, 4 million today. See what I mean about corporate do-gooders? Politically biased journalists spread the fiction that the Zuckerbergs and Dorseys of this world are godlike figures, and the public eats it up. I don’t know what’s worse, the above-mentioned nerds or those know-nothing student enforcers of PC who use their phones in the manner the Gestapo used their clubs while denouncing anyone for using the gendered “guys.”

Let’s face the facts. America is split in half, with the left bringing in nonstop support from Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, which is not exactly cricket, as they say over on the other side. Racism is now a capital offense and considered the most abhorrent of sins. Western culture and civilization is under attack, and teaching it is on a par with using the N-word. Take it from someone who knows all about discrimination. When I played all those tennis tournaments long ago, I was made to shower for two minutes only because I was Greek. And if you believe that, you believe in woke.

Despite everything, Ira Katz gives us a ray of hope:

My dear western civilization seems to be going down the tubes. Now the Western values are primarily hypocrisy and cynicism such that we would destroy Ukraine just to harm Russia. Western civilization has been captured by evil forces that would be better to be defeated today. However, there was a bright spot to the evening that is for me a tiny ray of hope. Estonia, like the other Balitic countries, has been exuberant in their hate for Russians and everything Russian. The orchestra that evening was the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra. And yet they played Tchaikovsky!

Electric War

Some anti-propaganda on the mess in and around Ukraine

Article by Pepe Escobar.

Excerpts:

Spare a thought to the Polish farmer snapping pics of a missile wreckage – later indicated to belong to a Ukrainian S-300. So a Polish farmer, his footfalls echoing in our collective memory, may have saved the world from WWIII – unleashed via a tawdry plot concocted by Anglo-American “intelligence”.

[…]

That brings us to the key issue of reach and depth of Electric War, in terms of setting up what would be a DMZ – complete with no man’s land – west of the Dnieper to protect Russian areas from NATO artillery, HIMARS and missile attacks.

How deep? 100 km? Not enough. Rather 300 km – as Kiev has already requested artillery with that kind of range.

[…]

The Straussians/neo-cons and neoliberal-cons permeating the Anglo-American intel/security apparatus – de facto weaponized viruses – won’t relent. They simply cannot afford losing yet another NATO war – and on top of it against “existential threat” Russia.

As the news from the Ukraine battlefields promise to be even grimmer under General Winter, solace at least may be found in the cultural sphere. The Green transition racket, seasoned in a toxic mixed salad with the eugenist Silicon Valley ethos, continues to be a side dish offered with the main course: the Davos “Great Narrative”, former Great Reset, which reared its ugly head, once again, at the G20 in Bali.

That translates as everything going swell as far as the Destruction of Europe project is concerned. De-industrialize and be happy; rainbow-dance to every woke tune on the market; and freeze and burn wood while blessing “renewables” in the altar of European values.

A quick flashback to contextualize where we are is always helpful.

Ukraine was part of Russia for nearly four centuries. The very idea of its independence was invented in Austria during WWI for the purpose of undermining the Russian Army – and that certainly happened. The present “independence” was set up so local Trotskyite oligarchs could loot the nation as a Russia-aligned government was about to move against those oligarchs.

The 2014 Kiev coup was essentially set up by Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski to draw Russia into a new partisan war – as in Afghanistan – and was followed by orders to the Gulf oil haciendas to crash the oil price. Moscow had to protect Russophones in Crimea and Donbass – and that led to more Western sanctions. All of it was a setup.

For 8 years, Moscow refused to send its armies even to Donbass east of the Dnieper (historically part of Mother Russia). The reason: not to be bogged down in another partisan war. The rest of Ukraine, meanwhile, was being looted by oligarchs supported by the West, and plunged into a financial black hole.

The collective West deliberately chose not to finance the black hole. Most of the IMF injections were simply stolen by the oligarchs, and the loot transferred out of the country. These oligarchic looters were of course “protected” by the usual suspects.

It’s always crucial to remember that between 1991 and 1999 the equivalent of the present entire household wealth of Russia was stolen and transferred overseas, mostly to London. Now the same usual suspects are trying to ruin Russia with sanctions, as “new Hitler” Putin stopped the looting.

The difference is that the plan of using Ukraine as just a pawn in their game is not working.

On the ground, what has been going on so far are mostly skirmishes, and a few real battles. But with Moscow massing fresh troops for a winter offensive, the Ukrainian Army may end up completely routed.

Russia didn’t look so bad – considering the effectiveness of its mincing machine artillery strikes against Ukrainian fortified positions, and recent planned retreats or positional warfare, keeping casualties down while smashing Ukrainian withering firepower.

The collective West believes it holds the Ukraine proxy war card. Russia bets on reality, where economic cards are food, energy, resources, resource security and a stable economy.

Meanwhile, as if the energy-suicide EU did not have to face a pyramid of ordeals, they can surely expect to have knocking on their door at least 15 million desperate Ukrainians escaping from villages and cities with zero electrical power.

The railway station in – temporarily occupied – Kherson is a graphic example: people show up constantly to warm up and charge their smartphones. The city has no electricity, no heat, and no water.

Current Russian tactics are the absolute opposite of the military theory of concentrated force developed by Napoleon. That’s why Russia is accumulating serious advantages while “disturbing the dust in a bowl of rose-leaves”.

And of course, “we haven’t even started yet.”