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It’s A Trap! The Wave Of Repercussions As The Middle East Fights “The Last War”

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By Brandon Smith

Source: Activist Post

Few people are familiar with a little event around 1200 BC called the Bronze Age Collapse in the region known as the Levant (now known as the Middle East). Most folks are taught that history and progress travel in a straight line and that each generation improves upon the culture and innovations of previous generations. This delusion is constructed around a Smithsonian-influenced view of the past. In reality, history tends to go in a circle, or a spiral, with innovation leading to ease, ease leading to laziness and corruption, and corruption leading to weakness and collapse.

Over and over again, humanity reaches for Elysium on Earth only to be slapped back down. The survivors then build grass huts on top of the ruins of the old empires and they start over from scratch.  Why does the Bronze Age catastrophe matter?  Obviously, because history tends to rhyme.

The Levant at this time was rich with civilization and trade, composed of a host of kingdoms that represented the known world including the Egyptians, Babylonians, Minoans, Mycenaeans, Hittites, etc.  They had vast economic networks, agriculture, industry and written libraries. The proximity of the kingdoms allowed for such extensive trade relations that this period is often referred to by modern historians as the first “globalized economy” (sound familiar?).

What took centuries to build was destroyed in a single generation by a series of disasters. A “mega-drought” caused kingdoms without consistent water resources to lose agricultural production leading to widespread famine and disease (yes, the climate can and does change dramatically regardless of human carbon footprint). Trade was disrupted by internal disputes, and a mysterious invasion of a group of roaming raiders called the “sea people” is documented as a primary factor in collapse.

The Sea People attacked numerous kingdoms, but many of them were also refugees flooding into the region. They disrupted cultures and economies and dragged a number of empires into the dust. This all happened in less than 30 years. Sadly, because only the elites of these civilizations were able to read and write, languages and historical documentation were lost.

This initiated a dark age which lasted for centuries. Humanity was set back, essentially to zero, while scratching and surviving among temples and pyramids of past generations. They must have looked up at those decaying marvels of architecture from hundreds of years ago and wondered “What the hell happened to us?”

Not everything perished, of course. The Egyptian dynasties were in decline, but they managed to hold together far better than their counterparts across the Levant.  However, the event represented a setback to human knowledge that was detrimental. One might suggest that if the Bronze Age Collapse never occurred we might be a space borne species traveling the stars by now.

Then again, maybe these cultures were so corrupt that they needed to fail so that something better could be built in their place?

What does any of this have to do with the state of the Middle East today? The smart readers out there surely see what I’m getting at. The intricate relationships and trade mechanisms of the Bronze Age led to great wealth and prosperity, but they were terribly fragile. That same interdependency resulted in their demise as they tumbled like dominoes on top of each other.

The globalization and collectivist war mongering of today is leading to a similar worldwide implosion. Our irrational ties to foreign entanglements and economies could very well destroy civilization again. Consider what are we about to see as the Israel/Palestine war unfolds…

Multiple Nations Dragged Into The Conflict

If you were wondering what the “October surprise” was going to be, well, now you know.  I will make my position on this situation clear – I don’t care about either side.  I care about innocent civilians, but other than that the war is irrelevant.  I am an American and I care about America. The same goes for Ukraine and Russia. Their wars are not our wars, and I am highly suspicious every time our political leaders try to lure us into choosing a side when foreigners start shooting each other. To summarize:  All wars are banker wars.

The Israelis enjoy our money but they have a history of proven elicit operations to lure us into war (USS Liberty, anyone?). The Palestinians and most of the Muslim world despise the West and Christianity in general (and I don’t really care who started it, the fact remains that our cultures are completely incompatible and this will never change).  Just because we happen to find common ground on fighting back against the insane trans agenda does not mean I’m willing to accept draconian Sharia Law in my community.

Both sides use tactics that deliberately target civilians. I’m not talking about collateral damage like we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, I’m talking about groups that are consciously and brazenly engaged in plans for genocide. Bottom line? There are no “good guys” to join with. It’s a complete sh*t show of ancient tribal nonsense that Westerners should stay away from.

For those who disagree, ask yourselves this – Are you truly willing to go pick up a rifle and fly to Israel or Gaza to fight and die for either side?  If so, then go do it and stop demanding others do it for you.  If not, then shut up.

But here’s what’s going to happen:  the establishment will seek to force Americans and Europeans into these wars regardless.  The corporate media and some political leaders are already suggesting that the recent full-scale attack on Israel was planned by governments outside of Gaza. Some are accusing Iran, and others accuse Lebanon. From the extensive amount of footage of the attack that I have examined, I have no doubt that someone other than the Palestinians orchestrated the event. The tactics were far too advanced and far too coordinated; the Palestinians have never been all that smart when it comes to military strategy.

Who drafted the attack is another question entirely. So far there are a lot of rumors but no hard evidence leading to any specific governments. Another big question is, how did the Palestinians manage to organize all of this and execute the invasion WITHOUT Israeli intel services knowing about it? Mossad is known to be one of the most intrusive and pervasive covert agencies in the world, yet they were caught completely off guard by this unprecedented attack?  I think not.

I’m reminded of the events of 9/11 and the strange series of intelligence failures that preceded it. I’m also reminded of the lies, propaganda and the reactionary response which led to two decades of meaningless war.

I’m going to call it here – in a couple of weeks we will hear reports that many of the soldiers involved in the incursion were NOT Palestinian. They will claim some of them are from Iran, Syria, Lebanon, etc. There will be intel that says Iran was a major backer of the plan (The Wall Street Journal already claims this is the case, but they have not provided any compelling proof, yet).

A US carrier strike group is on the way to the region now, and this is just the beginning. Europeans will be pressured to go to war, American conservatives in particular will be waterboarded with propaganda telling us that an “attack on Israel is an attack on the US.” It will be a lot like the rhetoric Neo-cons and leftists used during the initial invasion of Ukraine, but multiplied by a thousand. To be clear, both Biden and Trump have been rattling sabers and testing the waters of war, so don’t think that we can avoid this simply by voting.

Multiple Fronts

Israel is going to pound Gaza into gravel, there’s no doubt about that.  A ground invasion will meet far more resistance than the Israelis seem to expect, but Israel controls the air and Gaza is a fixed target with limited territory.  The problem for them is not the Palestinians, but the multiple war fronts that will open up if they do what I think they are about to do (attempted sanitization).  Lebanon, Iran and Syria will all immediately engage and Israel will not be able to fight them all – Hell, the Israelis got their asses handed to them by Lebanon alone in 2006.

This will result in inevitable demands for US/EU intervention.

East vs West

Depending on the extent of the Western reaction, the BRICS nations may be compelled to get involved. This may not be on a kinetic level, but there is a chance. Russia has strategic security treaties with Iran and Syria. China has numerous economic interests and influence in the region as the world’s largest importer/exporter.

These nations might retaliate with the same kind of financial warfare that the West used against Russia – with China and the BRICS cutting off the dollar as the world reserve currency. This would add to the crippling inflation we are already experiencing.

Terror Attacks And False Flags

If you thought things might be eerily quiet on the terrorism front lately, that’s now over. I would be shocked if we made it another six months without multiple attacks tied back to Islamic groups. Some of them will be real and some of them will be staged, and telling which is which will be difficult.

The thing is, wide open borders in the West have made this far more likely and the establishment knows it. In my opinion they WELCOMED IT. If they can get at least one crazy Muslim to shoot up a strip mall or blow up a football stadium, they will have all the leverage they need to con Americans into another ground war in the Middle East.  Do we need to “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here?”  That’s garbage thinking.  We should not be letting them over here in the first place.

Europe in particular is playing with fire. National governments and the EU have invited tens-of-millions of these people to their doorsteps and now they face a serious conundrum. There are Sharia Law communities all over Europe, there are millions of military-age Muslim men with every opportunity to do great harm. And, there are millions of woke leftists currently cheering them on, thinking that this is some form of “decolonization.”

Closure Of The Strait Of Hormuz, Skyrocketing Oil Prices

I have been warning about this scenario for many years; it was only a matter of time before tensions with Iran gave them a rationale to close the Strait Of Hormuz and shut down 30% of all oil exports from the Middle East to the rest of the world. Keep in mind, Europe is suffering from extensive energy inflation, in part because of the economic crisis and also because of sanctions against Russia.

Biden has been trying to hide inflation by dumping oil from the strategic reserves onto the market, but now those reserves are the lowest they have been since 1983.  Conveniently, this happened right before the strike on Israel. Our reserves are depleted as we go to war. Oil prices and gasoline prices will explode if Iran is implicated in the Israel attack. Iran will run a few giant oil tankers into the Hormuz, sink them, and make the strait impassable for months. Don’t be surprised of we see $200 per barrel oil next year, which will translate to around $7 per gallon gas or higher for much of the US.

A Push For A New Draft

Let’s be honest, current US recruitment numbers are a joke and the wokification of our military is making it weaker by the month. No American citizen with a legit warrior mindset or combat aptitude is going to join that circus freak show voluntarily. The establishment will try to regale conservatives and patriots with visions of “fighting the good fight for family and country” but most will not buy in. With attempts to ignite multiple fronts against Russia, China and the Middle East, they will start talking about a new draft system.

My belief is that this will fail miserably and would start a civil war rather than fill the ranks of the Army or Marines, but they may have a scheme to deal with this outcome…

Is This The Real Reason Why US Officials Are Encouraging The Migrant Invasion?

The reality is, America has its own invasion to deal with.  During the Bronze Age Collapse certain empires (like Egypt) survived using an odd tactic – instead of fighting off the invading hordes of refugees, nomads and sea people, they HIRED them and inducted them into important positions within their military. Corrupt authoritarian rulers ultimately found that they faced more of a threat from their own starving peasants than they did from the outsiders, so they joined with them to put down local rebellions.

This might not be as useful in Europe, but in America I wonder if this was the intention all along; to bring in millions of military-age foreigners with little sympathy for the existing culture, then in the midst of collapse and conflict offer them automatic citizenship and benefits if they join the military. Not on the small scale the federal government has going today, but on an enormous scale the likes of which we have never seen.

Maybe the plan was always to leave the gates open and allow illegals to stroll in so that they could act as a mercenary contingent to fight in foreign wars or fight against American citizens should rebellion arise…

Plan C

The timing of the conflict in Israel is incredibly beneficial to globalists, and this might explain Israel’s bizarre intel failure. Just as US and British leaders had prior knowledge of a potential Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 but warned no one because they WANTED to compel Americans to fight in WWII, the Palestinian incursion serves a similar purpose.

The covid pandemic and mandates failed to get the desired result of a global medical tyranny. The war in Ukraine failed to get desired results as the warhawks’ demands for boots on the ground against Russia fell apart. Perhaps this is just Plan C?

The establishment seems particularly obsessed with convincing US conservatives and patriots to participate in the chaos; there are a number of Neo-cons and even a few supposed liberty media personalities calling for Americans to answer the call of blood in Israel. Some have described the coming conflagration as “the war to end all wars.”

I believe that the real war is yet to truly start, and that is the war to erase the globalists from existence. They want us to fight overseas in endless quagmires in the hopes we will die out. And when we do, there will be no one left to oppose them. It’s a predictable strategy, but its success is doubtful. Another interesting fact about the Bronze Age Collapse – the elites were some of the first groups to be wiped out after the system broke down.

‘Al-Aqsa Storm’ Operation: Far-reaching Geopolitical Implications

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By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

Source: GlobalResearch.ca

A major conflict is beginning in Palestine. On October 7, Hamas launched a military operation against the Israeli occupation forces. Using missiles, drones and paragliders, Palestinian soldiers managed to surprisingly attack Israeli troops and advance through occupied territory, liberating many areas. Tel Aviv responded with a declaration of war and several brutal attacks on civilian areas in Gaza, however, the Jewish State’s forces still appear unable to expel Palestinian soldiers from their occupied territory, with Hamas advancing rapidly.

In addition to territorial disputes, the attack seems to have direct religious reasons. Palestinians call the assault “Al-Aqsa Storm Operation“, referring to the famous Al-Aqsa Mosque, an important Islamic holy site. Jewish militants have frequently attacked the site and extremist religious groups have pressured the state to demolish the Mosque and build a Jewish temple in the region. The constant desecration of Al-Aqsa appears to have been a red line for Palestinian Muslims.

The surprise effect of the Hamas attack shocked Israeli authorities and Tel Aviv’s supporters around the world. Hamas’ ability to destroy the illegal siege imposed by Zionist forces was seen as a historic defeat for Israel. Furthermore, many experts are criticizing the intelligence capabilities of the Jewish State after the start of the battle, as the country’s spy forces were inefficient in predicting Palestinian moves and taking preventive measures against Hamas, which is a militia, not a regular national army, therefore having much more limited resources than Israeli Defense Forces.

Immediately after the start of hostilities, many videos and images began to be shared on social media showing the violence of the clashes. Many of these images are spread out of context, mainly by the Western pro-Zionist propaganda machine. Anti-Palestine activists accuse Hamas of murdering civilians, while anti-Zionists claim [erronously] that all those killed are military targets – even though some of them are unarmed. It is important to remember that in Israel military service is mandatory for almost all citizens (including women), with most of the Gaza borders’ settlers being actually military, even if they were eventually killed or captured while off duty.

Israel’s reactions were harsh. Netanyahu declared a state of war and ordered a series of bombings against the Gaza Strip.

Hundreds of Palestinian civilians died, non-military facilities were destroyed, and a severe blockade is being imposed on any type of food, energy or water supply. The retaliation, did not prevent Hamas’ advance into the occupation zone. There is still a strong presence of Palestinian troops and an absolute Israeli inability to expel them. Furthermore, thousands of Israeli citizens are leaving the country, creating an unprecedented crisis.

Around the world, reactions to the escalation were as expected. Most Arab and Islamic countries have expressed support for the Palestinian resistance, but without committing to direct military cooperation. The Collective West has voiced support for Israel, with the US, EU, UK and their allies harshly criticizing Hamas, which they consider a “terrorist group”. On the other hand, Russia and China called for an immediate ceasefire and emphasized the importance of recognizing a Palestinian State as an existential condition for peace in the Middle East.

Washington is moving significant extra military aid to Tel Aviv. The Jewish State already receives 3 billion dollars in military assistance annually from the US, but with the escalation of hostilities, the tendency is for this assistance to increase substantially. Obviously, this will have a severe impact on the proxy war against Russia, as it will be impossible for the US to continue backing two high-intensity conflicts at the same time. The pro-Israel agenda is unanimous among American politicians, bringing together Republicans and Democrats much more cohesively than Ukraine, which many conservative politicians dislike. So, it is most likely that Kiev will be progressively “abandoned” by Washington as the crisis in Palestine worsens.

However, it is unlikely that American aid will automatically be a “game-changer” for Israel. There will be many local reprisals as Iran will certainly exponentially boost its participation in the conflict and send weapons and irregular troops to help the Palestinians. Furthermore, Hezbollah from Lebanon and some Syrian military units are also on combat readiness and could openly enter the conflict if it escalates. Iran also controls Houthi dissidents in Yemen, who could also take part in hostilities. So, instead of an “easy” military effort, with systematic killing of civilians and territorial expansionism (as seen on other occasions), this time, Israel may be facing a serious security crisis, putting its very existence at risk.

To avoid this disastrous scenario, the right thing to do for Tel Aviv is to stop territorial expansionism and the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. The Jewish State needs to respect international law and start thinking seriously about returning its borders to the limits of the 1948 UN plan – with possible changes, as long as they are negotiated with the Arabs under mutually beneficial circumstances. Aggressive policies of apartheid and territorial annexation, as well as desecration of Islamic religious sites, will only result in more conflicts.

However, Tel Aviv seems not only committed to the most extreme wings of Zionism but also shows a willingness to act as an American proxy against Iran in the Middle East, which brings very negative expectations. If Israel chooses the path of war, it could become a “new Ukraine”.

Bill Kristol’s Refreshingly Honest Ukraine War Ad

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One of the dumbest things the empire asks us to believe is that this war simultaneously (A) was completely unprovoked and (B) just coincidentally happens to massively advance the strategic interests of the government accused of provoking it.

By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com.au

The Bill Kristol-led group “Republicans for Ukraine” has released a TV ad to help drum up GOP support for Washington’s proxy war against Russia, and it’s surprisingly honest about what this war is really about: advancing US strategic interests using Ukrainians as sacrificial pawns.

Here’s a transcript:

“When America arms Ukraine, we get a lot for a little. Putin is an enemy of America. We’ve used 5% of our defense budget to arm Ukraine, and with it, they’ve destroyed 50% of Putin’s Army. We’ve done all this by sending weapons from storage, not our troops. The more Ukraine weakens Russia, the more it also weakens Russia’s closest ally, China. America needs to stand strong against our enemies, that’s why Republicans in Congress must continue to support Ukraine.”

“Republicans for Ukraine” was launched last month by “Defending Democracy Together”, another Kristol-led narrative management operation which is funded by oligarchs like Pierre Omidyar. Kristol, who as a neoconservative thought leader played a pivotal role in pushing for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, tweeted on Saturday that the ad “will air on the Sunday shows tomorrow in DC.”

One of the dumbest things the empire asks us to believe is that this war simultaneously (A) was completely unprovoked and (B) just coincidentally happens to massively advance the strategic interests of the government accused of provoking it. From the moment Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 westerners were aggressively hammered over and over and over again by the mass media with the uniform propaganda message that this was an “unprovoked invasion”, but ever since then we’ve also been receiving these peculiar messages from US empire managers and spinmeisters that this war is helping the United States crush its geopolitical enemies and advance its interests abroad.

This bizarre two-step occurs because the US-centralized empire needs to convey two self-evidently contradictory messages to the public at all times:
1. that the US is an innocent little flower who just wants to help its good friends the Ukrainians protect their democracy from the murderous Russians who invaded solely because they are evil and hate freedom, and
2. that it’s in the interest of Americans to continue this war.

The second point is required because the message that the US is merely an innocent passive witness to the violence in Ukraine necessarily causes certain political factions to ask, “Okay, so what are we doing there then? Why are we pouring all this money into something that has nothing to do with us?” So another narrative is required to explain that backing this proxy war also just so happens to be a massive boon to US strategic interests abroad while creating American jobs manufacturing weapons at home.

And of course this war advances US strategic interests. Of course it does. Only an idiot would believe the US is pouring weapons into another country because it loves the people who live there and wants them to be free, and that it is only by pure coincidence that this happens to kill a lot of Russians, bolster NATO, and advance US energy interests in Europe. It doesn’t benefit normal Americans at home, but it absolutely does serve the interests of the globe-spanning empire that’s centralized around Washington. That’s why the empire deliberately provoked it.

Empire managers were openly discussing the ways a war in Ukraine would directly benefit the US empire long before the invasion. In 2019 a Pentagon-funded Rand Corporation paper titled “Extending Russia — Competing from Advantageous Ground” detailed how the empire can use proxy warfare, economic warfare and other Cold War tactics to push its longtime geopolitical foe to the brink without costing American lives or sparking a nuclear conflict. The US Army-commissioned paper mentioned Ukraine hundreds of times, and explicitly discussed how a war there could be used to promote sanctions against Moscow and attack Russia’s energy interests in Europe.

In December of 2021 John Deni of NATO propaganda firm The Atlantic Council authored a piece for The Wall Street Journal titled “The Strategic Case for Risking War in Ukraine,” subtitled “An invasion would be a diplomatic, economic and military mistake for Putin. Let him make it if he must.” Deni argued that “there are good strategic reasons for the West to stake out a hard-line approach” against Moscow and refuse to negotiate or back down over Ukraine, because if doing so provokes Russia to invade it would “forge an even stronger anti-Russian consensus across Europe,” “result in another round of more debilitating economic sanctions that would further weaken Russia’s economy,” and “sap the strength and morale of Russia’s military while undercutting Mr. Putin’s domestic popularity and reducing Russia’s soft power globally.”

The minds on the inside of the empire were talking about how this war would benefit the US before the invasion, and they’ve been talking about how much it benefits the US ever since. As the Washington Post’s David Ignatius put it this past July: “these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost (other than for the Ukrainians). The West’s most reckless antagonist has been rocked. NATO has grown much stronger with the additions of Sweden and Finland. Germany has weaned itself from dependence on Russian energy and, in many ways, rediscovered its sense of values. NATO squabbles make headlines, but overall, this has been a triumphal summer for the alliance.”

The managers of the empire are getting everything they want out of this war. In public they rend their garments and cry crocodile tears and call it a terrible criminal atrocity, but every now and then they look at the camera and flash it a quick Fleabag-style grin.

They knew exactly what they were doing when they provoked this war, and they know exactly what they’re doing by keeping it going. 

And they’re loving every minute of it.

Washington Wakes Up to Harsh Reality Amid Ukraine Proxy War

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By Brian Berletic

Source: New Eastern Outlook

Long gone are Western headlines heralding Ukraine’s NATO-trained and armed forces and the prospects of them able to “sweep Putin’s conscripts aside,” as former British Army Colonel Hamish De Bretton-Gordon claimed in an article published as recently as June this year.

As Ukraine’s offensive forces broke across extensive Russian defenses all along the line of contact from Zaporozhye to Kharkov, the realization that Washington, London, and Brussels underestimated the Russian Federation economically, politically, diplomatically, and most importantly, militarily and industrially, began to set in.

Russian Military Production Grows, Western Stockpiles Dry Up 

Today, different kinds of headlines now appear across the collective West’s media.  The New York Times recently reported in an article titled, “Russia Overcomes Sanctions to Expand Missile Production, Officials Say,” that Russia ammunition production was at least seven times greater than the collective West.

The same article acknowledged that Russia had increased its tank production two-fold and was producing 2 million artillery rounds per year, a number that is larger than the combined planned expansion of shell production of the US and European Union some time between 2025 and 2027. Not only is Russia out-producing the West, it is producing weapons and ammunition at a fraction of the cost of Western arms and munitions.

As Russian military industrial production expands, producing more tanks, artillery, cruise missiles, and ammunition for the ongoing special military operation in Ukraine, Ukrainian forces find their sources of arms and ammunition drying up.

The BBC would report in a recent article, “Poland no longer supplying weapons to Ukraine amid grain row,” that:

One of Ukraine’s staunchest allies, Poland, has said it is no longer supplying weapons to its neighbour, amid a diplomatic dispute over Kyiv’s grain exports. 

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Poland’s focus was instead on defending itself with more modern weapons.

While both Poland and the BBC attempt to frame the decision as motivated by growing tensions between Poland and Ukraine, the reality is Poland had a finite amount of expendable arms and ammunition it could send Ukraine, and it has expended those stocks. This leaves a much smaller number of more modern systems Poland has acquired for its own defense. Neither Poland nor its foreign arms suppliers produce weapons and ammunition in the quantities required to sustain Ukrainian forces on the battlefield, meaning that should Poland continue supplying Ukraine from this point forward, it will eventually find itself “demilitarized.”

Other nations are failing to deliver much anticipated weapon systems. This includes the ATACMS ballistic missile Ukraine has demanded from the United States for months now, and despite claims of its arrival being imminent, Reuters in a recent article has ruled them out once again ahead of the Pentagon’s next assistance package.

Germany’s air-launched cruise missile, the Taurus, has also failed to turn up in additional assistance packages. Bloomberg in its article, “Germany Plans Additional $428 Million in Military Aid to Ukraine,” noted that Berlin is still weighing “a multitude of political, legal, military and technical aspects,” before finally sending any.

It should be noted that neither missile, along with a wide array of other so-called “wonder weapons,” has any prospect of changing the outcome of the fighting in Ukraine. While the missiles, if delivered, will result in tactical victories for Kiev, they will have little to no impact on the fighting strategically.

What remains of Western military assistance to Ukraine is inadequate amounts of ammunition, older and/or increasingly inappropriate armored vehicles including relics of the Cold War like the Leopard 1 main battle tank, and “training” for Ukrainian soldiers conducted in compressed timelines producing entirely unprepared soldiers almost certain to perish within days of arriving at the battlefield.

The US-led proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is unsustainable, and it appears many in the halls of power across the collective West are coming to grips with that.

Delusion Persists

However, elsewhere in the Western media, a deep sense of delusion is still reflected in articles that, despite admitting Ukraine’s failures, believe a “rethink” of Ukraine’s military strategy could help win what is obviously transforming into a “long war.”

For example, The Economist in its article, “Ukraine faces a long war. A change, of course, is needed,” admits the long-anticipated offensive “is not working,” but goes on to demands more offensive and defensive capabilities for Ukraine, including additional air defense systems and “reliable supplies of artillery,” both of which objectively do not and will not exist in the necessary quantities Ukraine requires for years to come.

At one point in the article, The Economist insists on Europe “beefing up its defense industry,” apparently oblivious to the lead times involved in doing so being measured in years – years Ukraine does not have.

The collective West apparently realizes their plans are failing to end the war in their favor sooner rather than later, but appear unaware that the “long war” they now realize awaits them is beyond their capability to fight by proxy or otherwise. The proxy war, designed to “extend Russia,” is now making Russia stronger militarily and industrially. At the same time, the conflict and the sanctions the West imposed on Russia are serving as a catalyst for other nations to pivot away from the US-led unipolar world and instead invest in a multipolar alternative, fearing that eventually the West may target them in a similar manner.

It is clear that the harder the collective West attempts to place Ukraine in a stronger position at the negotiation table, the weaker Ukraine and its Western sponsors become. The longer this conflict continues, the worse it will be for Ukraine and its sponsors. For the collective West, winning their proxy war is impossible militarily and industrially, but accepting this reality appears equally impossible for the collective West’s leadership psychologically.

Not ONLY Ukraine Lacks Options, No Plan B for US Hegemony: Pouring Sand Down a Rat Hole

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By Henry Kamens

Source: New Eastern Outlook

When a title in the Washington Post is so revealing, you can understand that the handwriting is on the wall, and that really is SO revealing, and if it is not an “I hate to tell you so, but I told you so” moment, then how else can we interpret the headline “Ukraine’s inability to demonstrate decisive success on the battlefield is stoking fears that the conflict is becoming a stalemate and international support could erode?”

Not only appears to be!

Has not the veneer of legitimacy not already eroded enough to lay bare the bedrock of a military conflict that never had to be, but is instead is a conflict of choice, especially for the West—but the SHOW MUST GO ON—at least until after the US presidential elections. The Washington Post’s Susannah George is saying what even laymen know, Ukraine appears to be running out of options in a counteroffensive that officials originally framed as Kyiv’s “crucial operation” to retake significant territory from occupying Russian forces this year.

Yes, the military conflict is stalemated, and few want to be used as cannon fodder.  It is only a matter of time until the West and the coalition of the willing will lose interest and start asking the hard questions: such as “where did all the money go, and how did the supposed NATO standard weapons disappeared so quickly and how did the West get engaged in this mess in the first place?”

All the promises of one weapons system after another, be it artillery, Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs), or anti-tank or anti-aircraft systems have all proved to be more talk than firepower, and only now will some F-16 get delivered. But who is qualified enough to fly them and use them for the purpose and manner they were designed for, and what is a ground offensive without air cover and close air support?

“Pouring sand down a rathole”

Is a figurative expression that refers to a futile or pointless action—a waste of time and money, and the lives of a generation.  The phrase fits the effort made in Ukraine by the West as having been ineffective and wasteful. And most certainly, there are more than a few rats in the Ukrainian government, its Western sponsors, and partners in organized crime.  They have shown themselves for what they REALLY are!

And now the West has the audacity to complain that Ukraine is casualty averse, not willing to die in droves for some greater cause, the American cause! As the headline, based on the work of Caitlin Johnstone sums it up well, The West Keeps Whining that Ukrainians Are Cowards, and how Western officials – under the cover of anonymity and from the safety of their desks – are expressing disapproval of Ukraine’s aversion to being killed!

It is an understatement to highlight that this proxy war has not brought about any meaningful results, and it has not gone well for regional security. Sand down a rathole sums it up well, as the expression often used to convey a sense of frustration or disappointment when someone is engaged in some action or causes that seems to have no real value or purpose—at least for normal people

The gathering clouds are not looking good for Kyiv, it has not been able to deliver on the battlefield, and as a result, its backers are backing off, as they know that political and physical (as in terms of the financial costs, and conceivably even worse) blowback is coming, reputations and careers are at stake. More aid to Ukraine is like pouring sand down a rathole, it just disappears, no result, other than negative consequences.

But just how much longer will it be before the West does an Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Vietnam, and just walks away and moves on to the next war to be orchestrated? But first it will look for a scapegoat, and that should not be difficult among the minions of the corrupt in Ukraine.

All the wonder weapons have thus far failed to live up to the hype, now the west is moving to supply early model F-16As, admittedly upgraded to an extent, from the forty-year-old examples still operated by Holland and Denmark.

But who is qualified enough to fly them and use them for the purpose and in the manner they were designed–and only too soon will they crash and burn, if they are able to get airborne- and are not simply destroyed on the ground by Russian cruise and hypersonic missile systems, as happened too much of the Ukrainian Air Force in the first days of the war.

As we have discussed before in NEO, about how American policymakers in their many attempts to isolate and antagonize Russia should have been asking, “How many more ‘redlines’ have to be crossed in order for Putin to fully act?”

Were any of them actually so naïve to have considered that Putin would not have acted when the Ukrainian government invaded its predominately ethnic Russian regions in the East of, not to face dire consequences as a result?

The answer to these questions should be a no-brainer in the BIGGER scheme of things, and that now includes the potential blow back over China and punitive action to anyone who refuses to toe-the-line and march to the same music as proffered by the collective West.

It becomes the question of staying power, and the financial lifeline that the West is willing to provide—but for how long?  Already, the writing is on the wall, considering that Ukraine’s apparent inability to demonstrate decisive success on the battlefield is stoking fears that the conflict is becoming a stalemate.

There were high hopes that Ukraine’s counteroffensive would turn the tide in its favor. While the West was trying to convince itself of its own rhetoric, with wishful thinking that the Russian army would panic and flee at the first sign of NATO supplied Wunderwaffen such as the Bradley IFV and Leopard 2 tanks, and constantly trumpeting the upcoming offensive to cut the land bridge to Crimea by retaking Melitopol and reaching the Sea of Azov, the Russians took the time to dig in along the front line spanning east to south Ukraine, creating deep defensive lines that are in parts made up of networks of mines, bunkers, trenches and layers of anti-tank obstacles over 75 kilometers deep.

Without more advanced weapons to buttress the front line or troops enough in reserve, as reported by CNBC, quoting [unnamed] Defense experts who say “it’s unlikely that the Ukrainian counteroffensive will see any breakthroughs this year. But they note it’s crucial for Ukraine to be able to show at least some gains in order to maintain Western support for the war into 2024 — and perhaps beyond.”

This translates,

“We don’t care if you can achieve any strategic objective, only to gain ground, for PR purposes, so to placate Western taxpayers.  You need not concern yourselves about the mistakes of the German army who also thought military gains could be measured by territory gained.  It also does not matter the causalities taken, as you still have enough warm bodies to conscript, young and old, to be used as fresh cannon fodder.”

“The question here is which of the two sides is going to be worn out sooner,” said Franz-Stefan Gady, a senior fellow with the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Center for a New American Security, who visited Ukraine in July. “We shouldn’t expect the achievement of any major military objectives overnight.”

And the question for NATO and its new turn on life, what is its purpose of existence, and has it really evolved? You can do anything in the name of combating the other side; just ask the people of Haiti under Papa Doc. The only rational conclusion is that NATO has to fulfill some mission in a post-Cold War world. It is pursuing a two-pronged strategy to try and find one.

One prong is to try and start another Cold War by declaring everything Un-American to be wrong and hostile—including alternative media that takes exception to what is being done for the sake of the few well-connected elites who are becoming rich through arms sales.

Collective West and Claimed Supremacy

The other is to insert terrorist groups into various countries to give the “international democratic order” something evil to fight against. There is no reason a defensive alliance should have a cultural dimension.  Westerners need to stop claiming credit for the West’s achievements, while disassociating themselves from its crimes. This only reinforces misplaced loyalty to a civilization and policy that is based on greed and misguided values.

The West, especially the United States, wants to take collective credit for good things but to individualize blame on others. The villains of the West are grouped together as being foreign, even when they are home-grown; Hitler was a product of Western Civilization, King Leopold, Harry Truman, and most of those who came after them – in their dirty wars that span the last 70 plus years of “peace”.

Very different political models can co-exist, side-by-side, and even within the same country, as the differences between local councils in pluralistic countries often demonstrates. But NATO insists on its partners having a one culture, one value system—it being the one the US likes and trusts, which is always something close to what the US itself claims it has developed, and mostly on its own.

You can’t talk to Communists, Muslims, or Russians, and if you do, you will pay the price, as Ukraine is discovering the hard way now. NATO is aware of this weakness, but has no real intention of addressing it. This leaves it only one way out – coming out of the stockade with all guns blazing, like Robert Redford and Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Probably with much the same result…

So which state is next on the list of countries to be knocked off?

Could it be that Biden and team is finally realizing the US is putting itself further up that list by the day? US policy is in flux and is already overextended, (in actions and recriminations), and its own worst enemy. It has to win. However, this begs the question, where are the troops coming from? As clear as day, we can see that Biden wants to be a war president and let someone else die for that war.

US policy lacks consistency, and media spin is the solution.  Take for instance, Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, who was always constantly warning that Moscow that Washington, as the collective West,  will “respond” to any acts of aggression or recklessness carried out by the Russian government, as if this function is his sole claim to fame.

He knew very well that allowing the Ukrainian government installed by the west after the Maidan revolution (or coup?) to attack and murder local citizens in the East of Ukraine was crossing one of many redlines for Putin. However, he still does not cut back on the rhetoric, doubling-down as [if the US is REALLY willing] to back its statements with direct support for Kiev for the long-term, at least until after the presidential elections.

For the Biden administration, Ukraine is a way to demonstrate America’s claimed “unwavering support” for the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and a collection of claimed Western values, all of which are neatly wrapped in propagandized sound bites.  But we know better, and based on the political and military reality, nothing new can be added to the discussion of Ukraine from a policy position.

Screaming Foul

US Secretary of State Mr. Blinken is always screaming foul over something: China or Russia, and now West Africa, as if it is going to really make some difference in how the world spins.

He forgets what NATO does  is invariably on the orders of the US Federal government, even if it goes against the needs and best interests of the majority of its members,  and against claimed Western values. Ukraine, Poland and other NATO members, even fledging potential members, only have the future of being transformed into outposts of men and equipment—in order for the US to have the ability to take “protective reaction” measures if necessary—so that the Hawks can trumpet “America will respond!”

It comes as no surprise, since 2014 nothing has actually really changed, and even with the extra baggage, rhetoric and range of military hardware delivered by Biden and team. It is all but a continuation of a failed bullying policy, a familiar but UGLY FACE  in the long-running Washington-Moscow standoff over Ukraine, and confirmation that the world is no longer unipolar.

Biden and his minions are still pushing hegemonic actions to interfere and topple actual and fledgling democracies—and spilling the blood of so many innocents in the process.  Sooner rather than later all this will backfire, for the sake of civilization, and the survival of the species, and the sooner, the better!

America’s Domestic Party Politics Fuel the Ukraine Catastrophe

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The war can only end when it helps Biden reelection

By Philip Giraldi

Source: The Unz Review

I am surely not the only one who has noticed that the defensive propaganda lines that are flowing out the Democratic Administration have become more than ordinarily ridiculous of late. One is astonished at the melding of fact and fiction to create narratives that depict the White House and all that pertains to it as forging a new and more wonderful country. Wasn’t “Build Back Better” the battle cry, whatever that is supposed to mean? And the spin is endless, even when a clueless Joe Biden belatedly winds up in Maui to relate to the tragedy in which at least 1,000 died, only to be greeted by surviving local residents saluting the president with their middle fingers upraised. As the president looked out over the destruction of an entire city by fire he reminisced by recalling his long ago “almost” encounter with a fire in his kitchen. Locals who were screaming for help from government were, in fact, getting almost nothing while the nation’s Chief Executive was in the Oval Office gloating over sending another $23 billion to the arch crook Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, money to fight a war that Biden encouraged and has blithely entered into.

Washington politicians characteristically have no morals and are driven only by their desire to perpetuate their party’s dominance so that the corruption that makes so many of those who adhere to the process rich, including Joe Biden. How do 500,000 dead Ukrainians and Russians matter if a myth about the United States and its values can be exploited to obtain electoral victory for Biden in 2024? As the greatly esteemed monster Madeleine Albright once put it, “I think it is worth it!”

I would suggest that our political class and the parasites that surround it are approaching depths not yet plumbed when I occasionally peruse articles or listen to speeches produced by the Washington DC spin machine. But even by that measure, I was appalled by a recent article that appeared in Politico and which immediately received considerable replay in other publications frequented by the inside-the-Beltway crowd.

Politico was acquired by Axel Springer, a German publisher in 2021, Europe’s largest newspaper and magazine conglomerate. Ideologically, some have described Springer publications’ political bias “as leaning left of center or moderate” but my personal exposure to the group since my army days in Germany has led me to believe that it is actually much more conservative than that. All employees at Springer, to include Politico, are expected to support the European Union, NATO, Israel, the war against Ukraine, the open society, and free market policies.

The article is entitled “Here Are 3 Ways to End the War in Ukraine. One Might Actually Work” with a subtitle “Putin has a veto over two endgames for Ukraine. But there’s a third that would bypass him.” The piece was penned by one Tom Malinowski, an assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor in the Obama administration before serving as a Democratic Party congressman from New Jersey’s 7th district between 2019 and 2023. He is currently under investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics over “substantial reason to believe” that he had violated federal laws relating to conflicts of interest. He had reportedly traded and failed to disclose approximately $1 million of stock in medical and technical companies that would be receiving taxpayer assistance as part of the COVID-19 pandemic response, which would inevitably result in a large surge in stock values.

Malinowski is currently a senior fellow at the McCain Institute, one of those foundations funded by defense industries where politicians go to hide and get rich between terms in elected office. The Institute is a Washington DC based allegedly “nonpartisan think tank established in cooperation with Arizona State University.” Its declared mission is to “fight for democracy, human dignity, and security for a world that is free, safe, and just for all people.” Inevitably, it is rather selective in terms of who exactly benefits from its largesse and one might recall that its eponymous founder Senator John McCain hardly ever saw a war he didn’t like and once dismissed Vladimir Putin’s Russia as a “gasoline station pretending to be a real country.” McCain was also a major player in the “regime change” operation in Ukraine in 2014, suggesting that his judgement about America’s relationship with the rest of the world just might be a little flawed.

Malinowski is inevitably fully on board with the White House view of why the United States has gone whole hog in a proxy war against Russia that uses Ukraine as its instrument of choice . He says in his first paragraph that “’Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia — never,’ President Joe Biden said in a speech in Poland this year, and rightly so. For the war in Ukraine to end on terms consistent with American interests and ideals, Ukraine must be seen to have won, and Russia’s invasion must go down in history as a decisive failure, enough to deter other authoritarian powers from launching similar wars of aggression in the future.”

Malinowski poses his “3 Ways” as follows: first, for “its armed forces to take back all the territory Russia has unlawfully seized since its first invasion in 2014 — including Crimea. This would be a fantastic outcome. It is still possible. And the United States should do everything possible to support it, including, if Congress approves more funding, by providing the more advanced weapons Ukraine has requested.”

If Malinowski thinks armed victory by Ukraine is “still possible” he is delusional, but he does not seriously expect that outcome, except for the “more funding” part. His Second Way, also a “red herring” to disguise where he really wants to go, would be “through a diplomatic agreement. Earlier this month, 40 countries, including China and the United States, met in Saudi Arabia to discuss President Volodymyr Zelensky’s 10-point plan for peace, which would require the withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukraine, the return of abducted children and justice for war crimes. Any settlement based on that plan would, of course, be wonderful. But Russia under Putin has never ended its wars at the negotiating table; at best it has frozen them, keeping its options open. Russia has shown zero interest in making concessions that would come close to the minimal requirements of Ukraine and its allies. As long as his military avoids total collapse, and he believes there is a chance of political change in the West, Putin will likely keep sacrificing Russians to stay in the fight.”

So Malinowski’s Second Way is a deliberately designed dead end and he, of course, blames it all on Putin. His actual “solution” would be the Third Way: “So if Russia manages to stymie plans A and B, where would that leave us by, say this time next year? Should Ukraine and its allies simply carry on, hoping for a breakthrough in 2025 or beyond? Given what’s at stake — not just the survival of Ukraine but of the whole international order — that would be risky. It would make success dependent on events we cannot predict or control, including on the outcome of elections in Western countries, including the United States. And while we have no right to tell Ukrainians to stop fighting before their country is whole, we also have no right to expect them to keep fighting at any cost. Fortunately, there is a third possible way to satisfy the need for Ukrainian success and Russian failure, over which Putin would have no veto.”

Malinowski requires that “the United States would give the Ukrainian military whatever it needs to advance as far as possible in its counteroffensive. At an appropriate point next year, Ukraine would declare a pause in offensive military operations and shift its primary focus to defending and rebuilding liberated areas while integrating with Western institutions. Then, at its July, 2024 summit in Washington, NATO would invite Ukraine to join the Western alliance, guaranteeing the security of all territory controlled by the Ukrainian government at that point under Article 5 of the NATO treaty… This would be a defensive pact, but not a commitment to take direct part in any future offensive operations Ukraine might choose to undertake. Ukraine joining NATO could itself be how the war ends, consistent with Biden’s current policy — and at a time and on terms set by Ukraine and its allies, not by Russia. Gaining security within NATO as a strong, pluralistic, democratic state would absolutely count as a victory for Ukraine — arguably as big as quickly regaining Crimea. It might make it politically possible for Zelensky, if he so chooses, to emphasize nonmilitary strategies for reclaiming any parts of his country still under Russian occupation, which Ukraine’s allies would also continue to support — potentially including anything from diplomacy and sanctions to blockade and sabotage… Adding a democratic Ukraine in NATO would mark the utter and permanent defeat of Putin’s crusade to absorb it into a Russian empire… Yes, Russian forces could try to go on the offensive again, but the likely futility of attacking fortified Ukrainian positions now backed by the threat of NATO firepower would be a strong deterrent. Meanwhile, sanctions on Russia would remain; its economic and military strength would continue to erode; and Putin could only watch as his frozen assets abroad are drawn down to pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction.”

It is easy to see what is wrong with the Malinowski Third Way apart from it being an open door to initiating a nuclear World War III. And one might suggest that it is also possible to discern the US domestic politics that are driving it. How the war in Ukraine ends all depends on Zelensky behaving rationally, which he is not renowned for, and he is quite capable of joining NATO before using a false flag or otherwise provoking an incident with Russia that would require NATO Article 5 intervention. Also, all the other parties involved would have to act predictably and sanely, including the US, which is unlikely. Zelensky in particular is desperate to draw the US and NATO into his war and will do whatever it takes to arrive at that point and his non-negotiable demand for full restoration of all Ukrainian territory including Crimea, endorsed by Malinowski, is a deal breaker that in any event Russia could not accept.

Even the up-until-now supportive US mainstream media is beginning to see the light and is admitting both that the highly touted Ukrainian counteroffensive has been a failure and that Ukraine has no ability to defeat Russia no matter how many weapons are put in the pipeline at great cost to sustain it. And there is also the fraud from the Biden regime that is taking place with reports that even the normally biddable CIA has been warning to no avail that the war is unwinnable. The fact that as many as half a million Ukrainians and Russians have already been killed or wounded is starting to hit home with both Americans and Europeans and will increase demands to end the fighting as unconditionally as necessary.

A final but very important point that must be made is the deliberate timing of Malinowski’s “3rd Way” which very conveniently presents Joe Biden with a great military victory just before the US presidential election, erasing all memories of the disgraceful withdrawal from Afghanistan. It apparently matters not that in doing so it continues a bloody and pointless war and destroys Ukraine as a state and as a people. Online substack observer Simplicius the Thinker describes how “Democrats will need all the help they can get. If a plan could be designed and packaged in a way where it can be sold as a major ‘victory’ then certainly Democrats will attempt to drag it out until the eve of the election to try to use ‘Biden’s major Ukrainian victory’ as a huge final hour boost.” Joe and Malinowski apparently believe that victory in an election is more important that finding the sanity to take steps to save hundreds of thousands of lives and they will continue to do whatever it takes to “win.” Sickening.

The Third World Revolt vs American Greatness

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By Christopher Roach

Source: Covert Geopolitics

Although losing a war and taking a blow to prestige can be a painful process, the American people’s interests require the dismantling of the American empire.

Back in my high-school debating days, policy debate teams frequently concluded their arguments with an extreme and somewhat absurd parade of horribles. This was a testament to their intelligence and creativity, plus being dead wrong carried few consequences. Through convoluted chains of logic, they argued that some small change in environmental or trade policy would lead to nuclear war or America’s domination by the “global south.”

Even then, this all struck me as ridiculous. How could the Third World, with its periodic famines and coups, ever threaten the United States? Back then we were fully dominant over the entire world after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.

A lot has changed.

The Birth of the Nonaligned Movement

During the Cold War, the various nations on the periphery acted, in some ways, as judges of the two competing systems. While the United States and Soviet Union were accused of manipulating the Third World for selfish reasons, the manipulation went both ways. Being coy, Third World leaders often managed to squeeze real benefits, like infrastructure projects, discounted military equipment, and other forms of aid by siding with one side or the other.

During the Cold War, the nations of the Third World were wary of being compelled to take sides, risking conflicts orthogonal to their own interests and sacrificing their sovereignty through excessive dependence on a patron. This is why the nonaligned movement gained power, with India in particular at the forefront, where it was joined by interested Middle Eastern, African, and Latin American nations.

These nations, which had gained sovereignty only very recently from their colonial masters, were understandably touchy about their independence. They did not want to exchange a formal colonial structure for an informal one.

When the Cold War ended, the United States remained the sole superpower for some time, but, rather than achieving worldwide assent, this instead fueled envy, fear, and resentment. No longer able to chart their own path, every nation became subordinate on some level to American power.

Aggressive Idealism Fuels Anti-Americanism

At the height of its military power, starting during the Clinton presidency, American leaders began to embrace an aggressive “idealism” that set out to change the character, values, and customs of other countries. Purely “humanitarian” interventions like Kosovo and Somalia became common.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, this idealism meant feminism and democracy. In Eastern Europe, it meant the promotion of gay rights and secularism, alienating the conservative and religious people who once idealized the United States. In Latin America, idealism demanded capitalism and loosened trade restrictions.

The invocation of “Freedom” and “Democracy,” while it sounds noble and idealistic to our ears, began to sound like a threat to nations who were out of step with the West’s ruling classes. Unilateral American military intervention in such diverse places as Panama, Iraq, Serbia, Syria, and Libya made nations on the sidelines wary that they could be next.

Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa—the so-called BRICS—do not have much in common. They have diverse economic and political systems, distinct languages, very different histories, and members appeared on both sides of Cold War alliances. But they share a common orientation to American power:  our aspirations to maintain “sole superpower” status threatens their national power and independence.  Perceiving this as a zero-sum game, they seek to pivot world attention, prosperity, and power away from the United States and its Western European allies.

Among these American competitors, China and Russia stand out most of all. Through their de facto alliance, they now dominate the Eurasian landmass. Their industrial capacity has revealed significant advantages in a war of attrition. And, finally, with their history as former American enemies, they have a habitual and strong resistance to American interference with their destinies.

While Russia and China’s conduct is easily understood, the growing and diverse anti-American coalition, along with these other nations’ willingness to accept Russian and Chinese leadership, needs explanation.  The heart of the matter is sovereignty. American demands and desires currently constrain each of the BRICS nations and the many smaller nations of the Third World, whether it is in energy, central banking, sanctions, trade, or even domestic policies on issues like feminism and gay rights.

The proposed “multipolar world” has a lot of momentum because it does not require submission to a particular Chinese or Russian model for internal governance. Russia and China are mostly agnostic about internal affairs, unlike the “idealistic” United States. Rather, the alternative promotes a more organic (and potentially chaotic) distribution of power from the current system.

Finally, neither Russia nor China could displace the United States. Thus, at most, they can usher in a world of “multipolarity,” where all countries will be less constrained, and larger countries like them have, at most, regional strength.

Ukraine War Now Existential for the American Empire

The current war in Ukraine is bringing a lot of things to a head. The United States and Europe imagined the rest of the world would view the conflict as a morality play: a big, powerful bully dominating its innocent and unassuming neighbor. This, indeed, is how most leaders and many people in the West perceive events.

But this has been a tough sell in the Third World, which is the chief reason sanctions have faced resistance. While Russia is bigger than Ukraine, Ukraine is big relative to its separatist eastern provinces, with whom it has had a conflict since 2014. Since most developing nations began as anti-colonial movements for national liberation, Ukraine’s attempts to forcibly reintegrate the East does not look so different from the types of struggles Brazil and India had during their independence movements.

Moreover, with Ukraine aligned so closely with the West—using NATO tanks, NATO mercenaries, and NATO money to prosecute its defense—much of the world does not perceive a bully pushing around its stalwart neighbor, but rather an American bully using its Ukrainian lackey for realpolitik designs against Russia. This is a particularly popular view in China, of course. But, judging from editorials and open source comments, it is also widely held in places like Africa and India, where many people view Russia in a positive light because of its opposition to the United States.

Until now, American power rested on actual American superiority in economics, military power, and cultural influence.  The United States soundly defeated Iraq in the first Gulf War, emerged from the Cold War intact and wealthy, and soon proceeded to project power with great skill in the early days of the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. But since that time, we have departed Afghanistan and Iraq without a victory. In parallel, we spread chaos in Libya and Syria, failing to conclude regime change operations in the latter.

American military prowess is no longer undisputed or inevitable, undermining the broader claim of America as the “sole superpower.” This was all avoidable, but having overextended itself, the visible evidence of American decline is now confirmed. This is what happens when a nation is ruled by disloyal, short-sighted, and foolish people.

To state the obvious, losing wars is never good for an empire. The Ottoman and Russian empires dissolved under the stresses of the First World War. While part of the victorious allies, World War II cemented the subordinate status of France and the United Kingdom, and their empires fell apart after the war. Finally, and most recently, the Soviet Union broke apart after its costly and controversial campaign in Afghanistan.

Russia’s attempts to assert power in its near-abroad fueled America’s interest in the current Ukraine War.  The theory was that we would pursue our interests on the cheap, prevent challenges to American hegemony, with the added benefit that Ukrainians would be doing the dying. Because of our military and economic superiority, supporters claimed the war would kill Russians, weaken their military, and destabilize Putin’s hold on power.

Proponents of the war did not really consider what would happen in the reverse case. What if not Russia, but the United States found itself strained economically, losing critical and hard-to-replace weapons in a war of attrition, visibly demonstrating its impotence and weakness on the world stage? Wouldn’t the same dire consequences intended for Russia now happen to us?

Indeed, they would. Luckily, actual American security does not depend on the continuation of America’s dominance of the globe, nor does American prosperity. Indeed, our prosperity has declined as the requirements of the military industrial complex and the behemoth welfare state devalue our currency and impoverish taxpayers. Further, our aspirations to maintain sole superpower status has endangered us by fueling anti-Americanism, while encouraging significant moral compromise at home.

Although losing a war and taking a blow to prestige can be a painful process, the American people’s interests require the dismantling of the American empire. Our current course risks manifesting the dire and once-implausible scenarios popular on the high school debate circuit. It is time to change course.

NATO Now Acknowledges that Western Media Lie About Ukraine’s War

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By Eric Zuesse

Source: The Duran

On September 7th, NATO’s Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, acknowledged that the war in Ukraine did not start on 24 February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, like Western ‘news’-media say, but much earlier, in 2014, and that Russia’s invasion in 2022 resulted from NATO’s efforts to bring Ukraine into NATO and to bring NATO’s military forces closer to Russia’s borders: “He [Putin] went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.” In other words: Russia’s invasion actually was defensive, not aggressive, on Russia’s side. And Stoltenberg proudly proclaimed that Russia has been defeated in that defensive objective, because instead both Sweden and especially Finland (one of the nearest nations to The Kremlin, other than the nearest of all, which is Ukraine) rushed to join NATO as a direct result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Stoltenberg was so proud of having turned to dust Putin’s goal of making Russia safer, that Stoltenberg repeated many times NATO having done the exact opposite of what Putin was urging. Stoltenberg was clearly proud to have overseen the frustration of Russia’s need for a defense against a possible blitz-nuclear attack by NATO.

Furthermore: Stoltenberg acknowledged that this war is and has been good for NATO because it’s forcing NATO member countries to increase their expenditures on military weapons, and is thereby forcing down these countries’ expenditures on other matters that voters usually care more about.

Here are excerpts from what he said:

https://archive.ph/HKPPW

“Opening remarks by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the joint meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) and the Subcommittee on Security and Defence (SEDE) followed by an exchange of views with Members of the European Parliament”

07 September 2023

The war didn’t start in February last year. It started in 2014. The full-fledged invasion happened last year, but the war, the illegal annexation of Crimea, Russia went into eastern Donbas in 2014.

Since then, NATO has implemented the biggest adaptation on this Alliance in modern history, in decades. And part of that is to invest more in defence. I think I’ve told you before that I know it’s hard to allocate money for defence, because most politicians want to spend money on health, on education, on infrastructure instead of defence. …

The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty, that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.

The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.

So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite. He has got more NATO presence in eastern part of the Alliance and he has also seen that Finland has already joined the Alliance and Sweden will soon be a full member.

Earlier, Stoltenberg had said on 9 May 2023, “The war started in 2014.” He even was explicit that “You have to remember that the war didn’t start in 2022” (referring to Russia’s response on 24 February 2022 by invading Ukraine). Here is the best short video (only ten minutes long) accurately showing in the original historic video clips how Ukraine’s war started, and it is very clear there that the U.S. Government, U.S. President Obama, started it in February 2014, by means of a coup, which the Obama Administration had had in the planning stages for quite some time. The founder and head of the ‘private CIA’ firm Stratfor even called it “the most blatant coup in history”. The smoking-gun piece of evidence proving that it had been a coup by the U.S. Government is this recording of Obama’s mastermind of the coup, Victoria Nuland, telling Obama’s Ambassador in Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, a month before the coup became climaxed, whom to get appointed to lead the post-coup Ukraine. And, then, the smoking-gun piece of evidence proving that even the top officials of the EU didn’t know that it had been a coup instead of the ‘democratic revolution’ that the U.S. regime claimed, is this recording of the EU’s minister of foreign affairs being told in a phone call from Kiev, by her investigator there, immediately after the coup was over, that it had been a coup. On 4 November 2019, after enough verified evidence had become known about it and about how the war in Ukraine had actually been started by the U.S. Government, I headlined “The Obama Regime’s Plan to Seize the Russian Naval Base in Crimea”, which was the only part of Obama’s plan that failed; and that article documented also how the war had been started by that coup.

Stoltenberg’s speech on September 7th ignored America’s coup, and he even ignored that the coup was quickly followed by the breakaway of Crimea because a plebiscite was held there on 16 March 2014, which produced a 90%+ vote for Crimea to again be a part of Russia, of which Crimea had been a part from 1783 to 1954. And he ignored that the breakaway of Donbass resulted after the Obama-installed Ukrainian government started in April 2014 an ethic-cleansing invasion of Donbass because over 90% of the voters there had voted for the Ukrainian President whom Obama’s coup had replaced, and Obama didn’t want those voters ever again to vote in a Ukrainian election.

So, although what Stoltenberg said there was true, it was very incomplete, because it failed to mention the coup, and the coup-regime’s ethnic-cleansing campaign, though those American initiatives were actually the things that started the war in Ukraine.