One of the puzzles from the Great War is how the leaders on both sides allowed themselves to get drawn into the war. There are plenty of reasons why each country would want war, including the infamous one that caused a certain Austrian fellow to coin the term “the big lie.” The problem with all of the reasons is they made little sense in light of the obvious costs of war. As a result, the Great War is a great example of how events can tale on a life of their own.
The remarkable thing about that war is that once it settled into trench warfare no one realized the hopelessness of it. One can understand how the initial events would spiral into a global conflict. That is not a new phenomenon. Similarly, you can see how the initial moves in the war made a lot of sense to the leaders on both sides. This was the first industrial war, so they had a lot to learn. New weapons needed new tactics but few people realized that at the start of the war.
The great puzzle of the war is that the sides did not see the hopelessness of the situation once in settled into a stalemate. Both sides were losing tens of thousands of men with each attack, only to gain a few yards of ground. The Battle of the Marne and the subsequent race to the sea made sense. The losses were high, but both sides had hope for quick victory. Two years later the French and Germans lost over a million men at Verdun and the winner got nothing for their trouble.
A century on and we are getting some fresh insight into why the Western leaders in the Great War were incapable of seeing things clearly. The war in Ukraine is proving to be nothing like Western planners imagined. They assumed the Ukrainians would stall the Russians into a stalemate of urban warfare. The world would rally to the sanctions regime and it would quickly be a question of how long the Russians could suffer the economic consequences of the sanctions.
After just one month it is clear this is not happening. The Russians did not fight like the NATO planners imagined. Instead of rushing to Kiev, they pinned the Ukrainian army in the north, using classic maneuver tactics. Meanwhile their main army is systematically destroying the Ukrainian army in the south and east. It also appears the Russians were well prepared for the Ukrainian tactic of digging into urban areas. It is now just a matter of time before the Ukrainian army in the east is lost.
That is just one miscalculation by the West, but it should be concerning. The Russians are not doing anything novel in Ukraine. They are using classic tactics that have been used in Europe since Napoleon. Further, they are following a doctrine they evolved in the Second Chechen war. That was a doctrine Vladimir Putin created as the guy running that war for Russia. It seems that no one in the west bothered to study the man they claim is the new Hitler.
That is only one small part of the miscalculation. The decision to cutoff the Russian central bank appears to have been a massive blunder. The Russians, faced with the threat of their dollar and Euro assets being seized by Western banks have told the West they must pay for goods in rubles. Otherwise, they are forced to send product to the West but not be paid for it. Alternatively, they would have to make concessions in order to get their assets unfrozen by the West.
Why anyone in the West thought this was a good idea is a mystery. It turns out that the Biden administration did not consult with the Federal Reserve. Europe appears to have just followed along without questioning the policy. Now that Russia has countered their move, Europe is in a terrible position. They either support the ruble with massive purchases or they face an imminent shortage of natural gas. That means rationing of energy products could happen as soon as next month.
Of course, the words “shortage” and “rationing” will trigger the natural response, which is hording and price gouging. That will also mean a political response. The German political elite appear to be embracing their inner Marie Antoinette by telling the Germans to wear a sweater as they shiver in the dark. Presumably, they will tell the people to eat bugs when the food shortages hit this summer. Maybe German TV will start celebrating the Turnip Winter as a way to motivate the public.
In fairness, we have to no idea how the Russians and Chinese are viewing this thing as Western media refuses to cover that aspect. We should assume the lack of food riots and social unrest in Russia means they are not teetering on collapse. This was the prediction at the start of this war. The best and brightest in the American managerial elite predicted the Russians would have collapsed by now. They also assumed China would be wavering in their support at this stage.
The point is, we are seeing in real time how supposedly clever political leaders can stagger from one blunder to the next. Unlike the Great War, this war has one side that seems to have updated its thinking since the last century. The Russians are planning for tomorrow, while the West is planning for 1985. The Biden people actually thought his speech in Poland would be his Brandenburg Gate moment. That is the most terrifying event of this crisis so far.
There we see the best parallel to the Great War. The men moving pieces on the board were men of a prior age. They were trying to fight the old wars. Similarly, the political leaders were operating in a 19th century mindset. The trouble was they were armed with 20th century weaponry. Today, the West is led by 20th century men desperate to maintain 20th century arrangements. Their opponent is not Russian, China or the new world order, but the passage of time.
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Actually many people, high and low, saw the “hopelessness” of the war.
Hence the Christmas Truce (among the actual warriors), and the fact that the British were ready to sue for Peace in 1916 until the Zionists cut a deal with them to bring in the Unites States in return for Israel (the Balfour declaration).
So without the threat of firing squads for peace loving soldiers expressing brotherly love between two very similar people (British and German), the war would have been over that first Christmas.
Without Zionist meddling it would have been over in 1916.
Christmas through Summer 1916 may be on the fools running European Governments, but 1916 through the end (and the Versailles treaty, which arguably set the ground for World War 2), is on the Zionists and the compromised Western politicians they controlled.
You cannot clarify history by screening out some of the primary bad actors.
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The United States is currently ruled, at least nominally, by a baked potato in chief with a cackling crow as next in line to the throne. Their lack of competence was clear in 2020 and recent reports have only confirmed the suspicion these folk are not fit to run their daily lives, much less a large nation. A bigger puzzle are the subordinates and the shadow powers; these are the real levers of power. They probably aren’t as debilitated, or are they? Our civil service and military have been preened, perhaps “pruned” would be a more apt term, for many years so that Party (that’s the Orwellian “Party” if you missed it…) loyalty is foremost. Independent thought, resourcefulness and a willingness to buck the system are rare in the best of times. They have been extirpated. To add the finishing touch, these drones have little if any knowledge of history. What little they have has been filtered, Wokened, to the point it’s not of much value in decision making.
The same analysis probably applies for many of our allies, with various modifications.
I say let Russia and China help themselves to whatever they think they can get. Barely one month into the Ukraine conflict, Russia may be on the verge of successfully splitting the world’s monetary systems, without even really trying, but as a necessary response to the West’s boneheaded sanctions. I doubt that many foreigners are rushing to amass Ruble accounts, but it looks like that is what Mother Russia will demand in payment for her energy.
The USA, the government at least, is an empty shell. Oh we can still do some damage all right, chaotic harm, but any guiding light of wisdom burnt out long ago. I say the sooner the whole rotten structure collapses, the better. The world will be better off for it, as will the descendants of who ever survives here to do any rectification.
The comparison of our contemporary situation here in the USA under the Biden cabal to that which obtained (fictionally, that is) in Rohan when Theoden fell under the malign influence of Sauron, via Grima Wormtongue’s intervention. The question for our time is whether a Gandalf the White will appear in time to break the spell and whether Rohan/America retains sufficient vitality to rally behind the revivified Theoden. It made a great and compelling tale, but living it is another matter entirely. To continue the LOTR analogy, flash forward to Sam Gamgee’s monologue to Frodo regarding the participation as characters in what will become a great story, told for ages to come. Or perhaps Gandalf’s admonition about doing what we must with the time that is given us. It worked out acceptably in LOTR; I can only hope and pray that it does so for us. But the vision in the Palantir remains clouded.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing left for it but that. However, George Washington saw a vision of this happening. The good news is that not all the country will be destroyed, and there will be a remnant that will carry on. In what the United States should have been, instead of what it became.
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So an odd story in RT that the biolabs were developing pathogens for use by drones in Donbass and Russia.
http://www.rt.com/russia/553004-ukraine-biolabs-drones-hunter/
The Russians say they have captured docs for this, but did not provide names as of yet.
It seems a bridge too far to be true, yet they claim they are going to share more info on the docs later.
Who knows what is the reality here, but given the massive over-reaction on everyone involved to the point of sticking a shotgun in their own mouth, the last 2 years of twilight zone happenings and the bat shit insanity of these ghouls it might well be true, or a warning message to those involved to alter their approach.
Russia has been surprisingly reticent about dirt on Western activities and figures up until this point. What you linked very well may be a shot across the bow—if true. Agreed as to the frenetic behavior. We aren’t seeing or hearing something yet. I do think the United States already got what it wanted–Germany and Russia divorced–so the non-stop and increasingly unhinged propaganda and rhetoric are being prompted by something else.
Could simple counterintelligence. The former Soviet Union, had quite an extensive, not to mention very technologically primitive, biowarfare program that was never completely cleaned up. Russia was broke in the ’90s. I’m not saying Russia continued those programs, but if they’re going to play the white knight in this shindig, the “reticence” makes sense.
I’m not sure why anyone is worried.
The governor of the state of Washington, noted for its sunny clime and mild winters, has declared an end to all fossil fuel usage in 8 years, by 2030. That includes shutting down all gas stations.
See? Nobody needs Russian LNG.
No problem, eh!
“How to convert your state into an economically noncompetitive backwater in five easy steps.”
Fear not, NY has a very similar plan!
Thinking themselves wise, they are become as fools.
“We” may not have been paying attention to Russia’s wars, but have learned from ours. The invasion of f Iraq was a mess. Once the objective became speed, our forces bypassed Iraqi units and raced to Bagdad – leaving well armed instant insurgents in their rear. Then we occupied every city and made our patrols easy targets.
The Russians aren’t doing any of those stupid things.
Strange that actually having an exit strategy, predefined goals and not bombing the shit out of a million civilians for weeks and putting it on TV is considered losing.
One problem in Gulf War II was the insistence on replacing the entire Iraqi army, rather than just the top leadership. This left a lot of folk out in the cold who thought they’d pick up where they left off after Saddam. The thinking was ideological on our part and the results were predictable. We should have replaced the leadership with another slimeball and called it a day. Instead we went nation building—rarely successful with room temperature IQ’s.
Nation building worked here in the US post Civil War.
Sure, it took 100+ years, and there was a common language, race, bonds of kinship, religion, accepted forms of government, etc, and formed the seeds of the total collapse of federalism and Constitutional government…
But by golly, it worked!
But they’re “running out of tanks!”. 🙄
That was Ukraine
Eh, kind of true. Those insurgents came from the total disbanding of the original Iraqi army, not the little snots who ran away from the initial fighting.The invasion ran according to standard doctrine for combined arms in general, and the brigade combat team model in specific. Bypassing fortified fixed positions and so-called “soft” objectives (logistical support areas, sub-divisional unit HQs, etc.) to block and control land paths isn’t as dumb as it seems.
Proof again that history rhymes instead of repeats. Mark Twain was right and our retard rulers were wrong. An ironic twist on the past instead of another round of it is now underway. Biden is the syphilitic European Monarch whose population hates him and regards him as a joke, and the Russians are basically like the English were in the Great War, ready both physically and spiritually to endure the burdens that are coming. The oft-repeated lie that the English were “lions led by donkeys” is also nonsense, by the way. Their officers were teak tough madmen, despite their prim accents and Oxford don bona fides.
An old system is definitely breaking and a new one is being born. Self-obsessed Jews are worried about Hitler, but they needn’t flatter themselves so: aside from a handful of billionaires, they’re no longer relevant. They’ve lost control of their great powerful tools, begging for free speech in their media while cowering from the new hires under their desk, or sitting idly in the audience at their entertainment award shows while the diversity slap each other. Plus, with Asia (both Chinese and Indians) ascendant, we’ve got even more viciously nepotistic playmates to keep us entertained.
This isn’t going to be fun, but it is going to be interesting.
If anyone is interested I recommend Dan Carlins hard core history. “Countdown to Armageddon ”
Goes into depth on the roots of the great War.
Z you are so right, the parallels between the out of touch leadership then and now are striking.
That is an excellent podcast series. Highly recommend it.
Got a link for that one fellas?
Its actually a series. There are 6 parts in this one and the total time of all of them is almost 20 hours. I concur with the others… this is an excellent run down on the build up and course of WW1. Sadly it is one of his older episodes… before he started a youtube channel… its not available for free anymore. You can buy the series at this link:
https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-55-blueprint-for-armageddon-series/
He did a great series on the Jap going into WW2 as well.
Be warned, he’s not “our guy” but he has a genuine passion for history and does as good a job as any professional academic.
I suggested he do an episode on the Lowry War of 1864 as a follow-up to his recent episode on the slave trade. My suggestion was quickly deleted by his fascebook moderators. A story of a free mixed race people who were pressed into slavery to build fortifications for the confederate army in order to spare the more valued human capital that the Civil War is known for.
Yes, the passage of time is their enemy, and their greatest weakness. This fact, as we all know, is also glaring with Poopy Joe Biden himself, personally. The thing is, as Sun Tsu, pointed out, every weakness is also a strength (and vice versa). The way the Globohomo Empire could apply this here and right now is to start a new front of bombarding Russia with Poopy Joe’s used diapers. This would bring those Rooskies right to their knees!
It would appear that many have lost sight of the first rule of value. That is: a thing’s value is what you have to pay for it. I would add, and in what manner. Russia could probably squeak by for quite some period of time with no income from natural gas sales, but how long can the German economy last with a reduction of about 15% in their electrical generating capacity?
Watch France push this Rubles business. They’ve always had a strange relationship with the Russians, plus poking Germany in the eye with a sharp stick.
The French poke everybody in the eye with a sharp stick. That’s why I love them.
Let us not panic. This is a bush fight. That’s it. Putin wants a deal. Enforced neutrality in the Ukraine, an end to Zelensky’s trade piracy in the oil and gas markets, and NATO the hell off his grass. All this is reasonable, and the west WILL deal. The talks are underway as we speak. Russia has eased the bombardment of Kiev while the negotiations take place, and if the Ukranians get stupid, the bombardments and shelling will resume. The Ukes can have the carrot, or they can have the stick. Kissinger did the same thing to the North Vietnamese.
And there are a lot of people seeing this for exactly what it is. Putin is shoving it straight up Globohomo Inc’s collective arse. The establishment chose Zelensky for the Ukraine, he was to be their proxy in the region and Vladimir has had enough of their trained zipper and his BS.
We are nowhere near a fight yet. When Joe started popping off at the 82nd airborne about an impending field trip in the Ukraine, and talking about regime change for Russia – the establishment fell over themselves to make it clear that their dementia patient does not speak for them.
As for Zelensky, he has cooked his own goose. If he was smart, he’d retire to one of his mansions scattered round the world, and pray the KGB hit teams don’t come for him. Given Vlad’s reputation, though, that is not a good way to bet.
The problem here is that Globohomo faces an adversarial peer. Putin could snap his fingers, and Bill and Hillary would commit suicide with a nail gun tomorrow. Or Hunter Biden would be found with his head shoved down to the second bend in the toilet with a 12″ log up his arse. Somebody has to die here… and the only question is who dies first. Pawns won’t do here, it’s the bishops, kings and queens that are in play now. The bush fire in the Ukraine was supposed to be a distraction from Covid, but now it is a roaring dumpster fire.
As the Blabbers and dissidents like to say, everything now from our establishment is fake or gay. Don’t be surprised if our esteemed black jewish blog host is hired to publicly b*tch slap his fellow black gang banger, Cornelius Rye on Gab. 😉
I know this sounds strange. But what leverage does Putin actually have to force a deal?
Leverage assumes you have something the other side needs.
Zelensky and his string pullers want Ukraine to be Afghanistan, he does not give a shit about the people in the country. It can all burn for all they care.
Similarly, the west want their own population dead and impoverished in order to bring about their grand vision of immolating all of society on a funeral pyre of wokeness and nihilism.
These people have no reverse gear and simply accelerate their death wish at every opportunity. Threatening them with misery for the population is no threat, when that is what they intend anyway.
I am not sure the Russians really get this. they think they are dealing with people like themselves.
“I am not sure the Russians really get this. they think they are dealing with people like themselves.”
———————————————
They are – or at least, Putin is. Apparently Putin just turned off the valves on a major oil pipeline. If you think gas prices are crazy here… take a close look at what is going to happen in western Europe.
This only ends one of two ways:
– Putin gets his deal
– WW3. If the options are nukes, the Establishment is in very real danger. Their own skins will be in the game and that changes things. Macron flipped the bird at Putin and said that Fwance will not pay in Rubles. Putin shut down the pipeline. The carrot-and-stick method of negotiation continues.
I am in western Europe and I can well see what is happening, as will my massively increasing fuel bills (probably 250% within a year), lack of food and coming electricity blackouts.
The European leaders are suicidal on behalf of their population.
Its like negotiating with schizophtrenics hearing God command them to torch the world. They DGAF.
Biden may well be a potato, but the US can ride this out. Europe is going to have a depression on the scale of the Weimar republic in a population twice the size which are 15% third world.
And no one gives a fuck in the political class. They would gladly burn the countries for 10 more minutes of TV time as the “statesman” and a ride round in a ministerial limo..
Sorry to hear this. Personally, I’m a bit tickled. One of my since deleted poison Ivy friends-I was called racist and fascist one too many times-recently got a 2 year stint teaching on a fellowship at a U south of Munich.
I didn’t love trump but I knew the Russian hoax was just that almost right from the beginning. All the liar started jumping on and I knew it was likely just propaganda. My friend and I went back and forth about this with him calling me a Putin supporter. This was back between 2017 and 2020.
I can ‘t say I was a Putin supporter or not back then, I just knew our elites were professional liars and propagandists.
Unfortunately after watching much of Putin, and hearing his reasoning, and seeing his Patience in the matter. I”m not neutral on the matter anymore. If only we could have such leaders.
Anyway, I hope my ex-friend is contractually tied into that fellowship and is stuck in Germany for the next 2 years and that he freezes his ass off while eating his turnip dinners. In fact, I wish he’d put his money where his mouth is and suit up and head for the Ukraine to assist in their war effort. No such luck here, they always just talk, and talk, and talk about the duties we all have collectively.
Of course, the last time I *saw” him. 2 profile pics on FB. The first was the I support BLM margin and the last was his “I got the vaccination.” I don’t know what it is now.
@norham
You never know maybe his next one will be died suddenly, but it could have been worse if he was not jabbed.
The only positive comment (?) I can make is that at least you won’t have great need of gas for heating for about the next six months.
And if the US swings to the rescue and provides products to the Euros, while shutting off production for us rubes, the optics will be …. Unfavorable.
It’s worse. The Russians think these are the same Americans and Westerners they faced in the Cold War.
I don’t think so. Putin and his Rooskies strike me as far shrewder evaluators of the West than Westerners are of Russians. Putin and his people understand the postmodern perversion of the West and they find it repellent. Their traditionalist nationalism is the response.
I hope that’s the case although I am dubious
because the rot is so overwhelmin. The West’s miscalculations are problematic enough.
Putin had great respect for the American schemers in the cold war. It took him several years afterward to believe his own eyes, that the West had become entirely degenerate and that the ridiculous things being said were not another ploy to fool him yet again. Once he got the hang of things he became a reserved and measured comedian speaking about things West. He’s the best act on the world political stage although it should be said he has no competition.
Russia has oil and gas. And everyone needs these resources.
Here in the US we can tolerate (barely) paying an $1/gallon extra for some period of time (a few months, maybe). Europe is suffering from these increased oil prices and, even worse, high natural gas prices as well. US and Europe are on the clock. The embargoes on Russia resources purchases can’t last. There will have to be some kind of deal cut with Russia in the next few months so that normal European economic relationships can resume.
Why must a deal be cut? Why can’t the world move on without the West? There would be growing pains, but it’s worth it to seal away our insanity. I think this is a geographic shift of power from the West to Asia.
The west placed the embargoes on Russia in response to their Ukrainian invasion. I have seen no indication that Russia intends to maintain (or even currently has any substantial embargo) on Western goods. And certain Western exports can not be replaced easily by non-Western countries, commercial airplanes for example.
Even though Russia has a bad current relationship with the West, it doesn’t mean that they will have great relationships with the East in the long run. The USSR and China fought against each other in the 1960s. They are not natural allies and will be wary of each other regardless of their relationships with the West.
Also, it looks like some kind of deal got cut two days ago. Euro’s buying rubles to pay for Russian gas:
https://twitter.com/StranNik142857/status/1509120884602249217
You are all missing the point. Putin’s ‘war’ in Ukraine is just a weekend training exercise. They have crushed Ukraine entirely and effortlessly. And most of all, procedurally, avoiding civilian casualties and making that a feature and talking point. It was almost Providence that Madeline ‘a half million dead Iraqi babies was worth it’ Albright died right in the middle of this. Putin doing war better than America ever did and he’s got the cameras in place to document it. It’s as much about optics as it is about war.
The real war is financial. Because we are a weaker foe on that front and that war is very winnable. Putin has oil and he will sell it to someone. In Rubles. With the proceeds Russia is buying gold at 5000 rubles per gram effectively pegging the Ruble to gold. The competition to that, which is also the only thing propping up our failed economy, is the purchase of oil in US dollars. And by pegging the price of a significant share of the oil market to gold backed rubles, it effectively pegs it to the price of gold. Something we had been able to suppress via the Breton Woods Agreement, but won’t be able to suppress now. With gold floating unsuppressed against dollars while pegged to Rubles, Rubles paid in exchange for a key productive commodity,, the dollar is going to tank. Remember those wheel barrels of money to buy bread in Weimar? Well we have about a thousand times more dollars in circulation. They don’t buy shit for gold, nor will they buy shit for oil pegged to gold. Or anything that depends on oil to exist, which is everything including solar panels and windmills. You haven’t even seen the real inflation yet. But when you do it will be brought to you by Putin, via our sociopathic ‘leaders’ , economists and baked potato President. None of whom have any fucking idea what they’re doing nor do they care. People who can’t even keep their hands off of kids are not the people you want doing the negotiating in matters this serious. Instead we have a vegetable pedophile negotiating the fate of the world against an ex KGB agent. Can’t fully explain how we got here but I promise the shit show is only beginning.
The chance of Wylodymyr Zeylyeynskyyy getting whacked by a legit Russian at this point seems low. He is not even in charge of the southeastern 1/3rd of his famous democracy/gas field/server farm (if he ever was). However, a friendly wellness check from The Company or Epstein treatment are not out of the question should he fail to keep singing like his life depends on it.
Russia wants him alive. When their war objectives have been achieved, they need to negotiate some sort of peace treaty with the Ukrainian government. After all, the comedian is the elected leader. If peace is to be negotiated, it has to be negotiated with somebody!
What will the peace treaty look like?
The east and south of Ukraine will no longer be part of the future Ukraine (instead, they will be independent or part of Russia). The remaining part of Ukraine (approximately the western third of the country) will have mutual security assurances with Russia that will be similar to those of cold war Finland: no joining NATO, possibly no joining EU. This new country built on the western portion of Ukraine might still be called Ukraine but, in actuality, it will have fulfilled the political vision of Stepan Bandera. Any Russian/Ukrainian peace deal will be supported by Europe because they need Russian resources and need Russia as an export market. Relations could also be easily restored between the US and Russia once elections sweep the Dems out of office. Just like the end of covid, everyone will be amazed at how quickly the deep state changes political direction once this conflict ends.
When Russia finishes this war, they will have taken something like 1/3 to 2/3 of the current country of Ukraine. It will take them decades and 100s of billions of dollars to absorb these 10s of millions of new Russian peoples and rebuild the infrastructure of these lands. Russia is not a rich country so this project will be all that Russia can handle for the next generation at least. The new Russia will not be a threat to anyone (west or east) for a long time.
“In fairness, we have to no idea how the Russians and Chinese are viewing this thing as Western media refuses to cover that aspect. We should assume the lack of food riots and social unrest in Russia means they are not teetering on collapse.”
The Western media would be crowing about it 24/7 if there was any suffering or unrest in either Russia or China. This alone tells you that the Russians and Chinese are doing OK and that they do not agree with the West on any of this matter at all.
I have to agree. I saw a new article two weeks ago where some no named band in Russia complained, and an article with a picture of one dude (and I am not exaggerating) holding a sign being arrested, and they portrayed it as a mass rebellion.
The post today was comically similar to my own thoughts this morning (before I read). Our system was built by the grandparents of our current “leaders.” First generation wealth is usually cagey and thoughtful. Second generation on… awful.
We see this with the handling of Russia. Every counter move Russia has made has to counter Western actions seems to have completely caught the West off guard. I guess the West has gotten so used to bossing around third world dictators or some isolated Middle Eastern country that they are not used to an opponent that has some semblance of equal leverage. This scares me. They are not equipped to deal with a cagey opponent who has probably spent a great deal of time thinking about options. Our leaders are used to: “bomb them and give weapons to local militia.” Seems the plan is not working this time.
What scares me is that they are conducting international affairs the same way they conduct domestic politics. Their war has been an attempt to cancel Russia. They don’t seem to realize they aren’t dealing with a bunch of pussy Republicans, but actual opponents that aren’t secret allies.
“There we see the best parallel to the Great War. The men moving pieces on the board were men of a prior age. They were trying to fight the old wars. Similarly, the political leaders were operating in a 19th century mindset. The trouble was they were armed with 20th century weaponry. Today, the West is led by 20th century men desperate to maintain 20th century arrangements. Their opponent is not Russian, China or the new world order, but the passage of time.”
First, that’s very eloquent, beautifully written.
Next, I’m not certain it is right (it may be, it just doesn’t seem so at first blush). The people operating now seem to be doing something that doesn’t have historical precedent. They are 20th Century men, for certain, but their tactics don’t have real analogies to the past. People always have done evil things, but this seems unique in the scope of harm and malice.
It is something for me to mull over, and thanks for that.
Exactly what are “20th-century arrangements”? It seems to me that the 20th century can be broken into the Imperial Period (1901-1918), the Interwar Period (1919-1938), World War II (1939-1945), the Cold War (1946-1990), and the American Hegemony (1991-2000), which continues to this day.
Oddly enough, what’s occurring right now seems to reflect a hankering for the Imperial Period, albeit with a far stronger ideological motivation than an economic one. Having said that, there are also echoes of the Cold War, with one major proviso: contemporary Russia, unlike the USSR, is not attempting to export its views globally. Fundamentally, Russia is ideologically inwardly directed rather than expansionistic, and for that reason, attempts to conjure Cold War II are fatuous.
Ideological imperialism was once the Soviet creed but this is even more unhinged. I agree there’s an element of imperialism but it’s far beyond communism or Islam in its fanaticism.
“The passage of time”. VP Harris can tell you about the passage of time.
One of the many, many appalling things about the West’s stupid reaction to Russia-Ukraine is: if a middle-age, drunk, scifi writer saw this coming four years ago, just how stupid do our rulers have to be? Those of us on Our Side I think have known for a while but perhaps Mr & Mrs Normie are finally waking up.
machciv.com/2022/03/03/the-ria/
Thanks for the link. I think.
Another aspect of the fixation on the Ukrainian War is that it effectively distracts common folk from the systemic insanity that is sweeping over US culture and society. The Senate is about to approve an affirmative action hire to the Supreme Court who is more than just incompetent, she’s overtly an advocate for criminal sexual perversion. This is really happening.
The spring winds tighter and the rubberband will eventually snap. Most believe that this will manifest as an election wipe-out for the Ds in November and that will mark the end of the insanity. But as in the Ukrainian War, there are alternate scenarios that can also play out in unexpected ways. Nuclear war is a low probability, civil war is a medium probability, and large-scale violent social unrest is likely a higher probability.
So what to do? In none of the above does the root problem get addressed and solved. At the end of the day, that same disease cells are still hard at work metastasizing and debilitating the host organism. At best, we just die more slowly. And that is no way to live, literally. The disease cells must go. Any other focus is just suicide by civic masturbation.
TomA:
Would you entertain the idea that becoming a gray man, an invisible man, is akin to hunkering down in a trench? — thus, analogous to a type of trench warfare that may have worked in the past but may be a relic of the past and does not represent an effective strategy for the present? Does it make one a stationary target?
Or rather should we instead be nimble? Elusive? Chamelion-like? Moving around quite bit, slippery as an eel? Hard to hold and to grasp the next move? This might be the way to fight the psychological war we are living in right now?
I personally believe a fine strategy is to put on an act like you are on board, assume the role of the leftist retard. I know this is difficult for most men because we have only one mode and one face, and that is being true to ourselves and upfront about it is the only way. But we also need to see the value in becoming a moving target, someone that can’t quite put a finger on, a man in a costume. Or is this simply a variation of your Gray Man?
The grey man is a fantasy for people who love the thought of killing political leaders. It’s not reality.
My advice is to move to or live on a productive pieces of property in a place where fellow citizens own productive land, and to simply pay lip service to official dogma when dealing with officials. Regarding the former, people who own productive land have political clout and incentive to use it to their favor (hence all the subsidies and tax benefits for farmers). Regarding the latter, it really only makes sense to stick your neck out for a political faction if you have the ambition to eventually lead it. If you don’t want to lead, it’s historically been the best practice to simply negotiate with whatever faction is in charge and mostly ignore them. Most Americans treat politics like a sports game, in that there is a faction you root but ultimately don’t get to vent out of shape of they lose. There are, however, a minority of people who treat politics like a death match. If you’re not there latter, it’s best to simply ignore politics and, when necessary, negotiate with whoever takes charge.
The Fifth Gen warrior is a nobody that nobody ever notices because he/she is ordinary in every respect and just goes about his business in a very typical and unobtrusive manner. Then one day, he inadvertently finds himself in the right place at the right time and opportunistically seizes the initiative. His actions are essentially no different than that of most Medal of Honor recipients. He rises to the occasion as necessity demands.
Antibodies do not “swim” to the disease cells. They float around in the blood stream and eventually attach to disease cells that they just happen to bump into. There is no practical defense against this ancestral nature remedy and the more numerous the antibodies, the faster the remedy manifests.
Now add in Z’s emergent behavior effect and you’re cookin’ with gas.
Some time ago I read a story about Jeb Bush being out in public walking a city street at night for some reason. Reading about that occurrence led me to similar thoughts. If you had encountered him, would it have been your moral imperative to kill him when you have the chance? Yes, you would be caught, but that doesn’t really change the math does it?
So have we all agreed to not notice that TomA literally always fedposts encouraging violent and illegal acts? He’s at best a LARPing dufus who likes to leave an electronic record of all the mysterious nefarious acts he always talks about doing super secretly. At worst he wants YOU to eave an electronic record of the nefarious things he is always encouraging you to do.
Either way, bad actor.
If they start sending us to camps, I’m not going to avoid it. You can not be destroyed twice as hard, so once you’re damned by your online history, you’re damned by your online history. Zman likes to say that we didn’t vote our way into this and we aren’t going to vote our way out. We all know what that means.
I’m sure that some people who fedpost are actually feds, but some of us just don’t think it really matters at this point. If it comes to that we’re already on a list, somewhere. The only real problematic part is for Zman who is attempting to have influence. Comments like these are a bad look for him and I apologize.
Who or what are the disease cells?
The Air Force wants to send 33 F-22 Raptors to the boneyard to free up funds:
https://www.defensenews.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/03/28/air-force-wants-to-send-tyndalls-f-22-jets-to-the-boneyard/
Huh.
I was told those things were the greatest things since sliced bread.
Not really. They spend more time in the hangar than they do flying. You can have the best fighter in the world but if it’s a maintenance queen it’s not gonna do much fighting.
Crikey.
Back when I was a lad, I had a collection of binders into which I could put files for each aircraft in existence (past or present). It was called Aircraft of the World. I always looked at the F22 as cutting edge, and still do today; but then I’ve not really been keeping up to speed with it all.
It sure is one good looking aircraft. Saw it at RIAT years back, the thing took off… then went up almost vertical. Lovely to see. Mark you, it had nothing on the Vulcan taking off, neither the B1 Lancer, which set off all the car alarms.
Never saw the B-52. The F-16 always impressed me, though.
OF-
The story of how the, “Fighter Mafia,” developed the F-16 out of the Lightweight Fighter program is a fascinating tale of intelligent mavericks in the MIC who knew exactly what they wanted to do and did it.
They wanted a pure, agile fighter that was cheap and easy to build. It was a pleasant surprise that it also turned out to be a good air-to-ground platform.
The beginnings of the F-16 program are one of the few entrepreneurial episodes in the last 60 years of US military procurement.
The U. S. Navy plans to decommission 24 ships and fund 9 new ships. They are getting rid of 9 LCS class ships, so that is a plus. We have “Top Men” in charge.
Andrei Martyanov has some trenchant observations about the limitations of weaponry such as the F-22 and the Javelin in considerstion of new developments in military countermeasures (i.e., Russian), and practical application in the contemporary battlespace.
http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2022/03/some-importnat-issues-not-covered-in.html?m=1
Worth a read.
Yes, his points are mostly spot on.
I don’t have time to go into detail why I tend to agree.
I would only add that the Patriot SAM is getting embarrassed by failing to prevent Houthi attacks on Saudi and UAE.
Word is Saudi is seriously eyeballing the Russian S300v4 and S400 and their point defense systems.
Everyone on the establishment sites that I read are convinced that Russia has already lost the war. It’s all over but the crying. They act like they think Russia will be completely out of Ukraine by Easter and Putin gone by June.
It’s a truly amazing level of delusion.
instacuks are the worst this way. all of their labias are in a lather. truly pathetic wanna-be’s.
This reporter noted the Pentagon has cut its planned procurement of Javelins:
https://mobile.twitter.com/JackDetsch/status/1508517753413636096
The grillers in the replies are dusting off their uniforms for the victory parade in Kiev.
Wow wow wow. The zombies chanting “fewer Russian tanks on the battlefield nowadays” is amazing.
This slavish desire to see victory of the noble Ukrainian is why so many “videos” of combat are video game footage. They are so desperate to believe, they will accept any fantasy to make it come true.
Anglin had a pretty rough clip of Russian soldiers being tortured, shot in the kneecaps, bleeding crotches three guys dragged out of a vehicle & shot.
These are the people we are supporting.
Spingehra: I saw that. I mention that to as many as I can. Spread the gospel lol.
Last photo I saw—today—showed a dead soldier. Was labeled “Dead Russian Soldier”. Thankfully, the first comment was “No he’s Ukrainian, look at uniform camo pattern”. Included were ref’s to camo pattern photo’s of Russian and Ukrainian issued uniforms. If the ref’s are not bogus, the commenter was correct.
This is precisely why I simply refuse to view/read these things. Lies, disinformation, half truths. People who should know better, simply pass on these bogus sources as *fact* because they meet their preconceived bias’s—which of course is pro-Ukraine for the most part.
No one knows anything believable. We won’t know what really has happened until sometime after it’s all over. Something similar to what has now occurred with the Covid scam. However, that does not preclude some critical thinking/commenting/analysis on our part in the meanwhile.
If I have learned anything from the last few years and of course more recently, it is that we really do deserve what’s coming to us. Well, most of us.
I just made this comment to my wife this morning, with the exact same caveat at the end.
I almost make sure to say ‘the royal we/us’ as in not literally us.
Check out Hannity one evening. Wow. Just wow.
I’d rather have rectal cancer.
Watching Hannity is the main way people GET rectal cancer.
Yeah, but you need to check him out once at least. He’s got a large audience and it’s good to understand just how bad things are in the hinterlands. These are the people we think are our potential converts. They are no where near “lefties”, but they are in whole—dumber than a box of rocks.
You would think that the younger crowd in D.C. would be on the other side of a vast social chasm, watching all of this in wonder and horror. But no, they’re right up there with these geezers singing from the same songbook. They’ve been carefully vetted through a lifetime of nepotism, group-think, and outright stupidity to be the same people only younger. D.C. is the only city on earth with cold warriors who were five when the wall came down. Only the sting of defeat will remove these people from power. Either economic or militarily, but total regime defeat is the only way out.
New blood alone doesn’t solve anything. Somehow, some way, the social vetting process creates clones of what’s there like some be hive.
wait until a draft is instituted; they’ll be singing from a different book then.
Only in the few that come back.
The first round, they will be lined up in their covid masks at the recruitment office to strike a blow for WorldWarSodomy.
Must second Karl below (or above): these boys will cheer for war and intervention… with someone else’s sons. Someone else’s blood.
If they’re that eager, let them stand broad shoulder to shoulder with Admiral Levine at the front lines.
I’m sure Jesse Ventura had a good name for those sorts of people, but I can’t remember it (he may not of made it up, but he was the first one I heard use it).
That’s why I’ve always promoted my policy for war: “Everyone plays and everyone pays!”
Everyone of appropriate age and physical condition is subject to the draft—no exceptions, no deferents. Everyone immediately has a tax hike/surcharge (proportional) to the expense of the current war effort.
Nothing got us out of Vietnam faster than when Nixon hinted at an income tax surcharge for the war effort.
Or when “student exemptions” ended.
OF:
Jesse Ventura called them “Bananas”
Hard on the outside.
Soft and mushy on the inside.
Great comment! It’s hard to explain to the non-native the massive level of institutional groupthink and utter mediocrity of the Beltway classes. I have friends (old guys) and younger relatives (sister/nephews/cousins) back home in DC Metro who wouldn’t last one day on Wall St. or in Silicon Valley. They make a nice comfortable living in bureaucracy, lobbying or MIC; they’re not giving that up willingly.
Since there is no feedback loop, it will take utter destruction to unseat the current regime, since the middle/younger echelons have absolute blind faith and allegiance.
Spot on Captain Willard. Board any plane to D.C. and you don’t even have to look up to make sure you’re at the right gate. There’s a certain “look” to them. It’s hard to explain. It’s the way you know Mormons on bicycles are Mormons. And of course as soon as you land at Dulles it’s like diving into an alternate universe. D.C. people are like my grandparents vinyl covered furniture from the 70’s. You just wanted to get the hell off and never walk back into the room.
You’ve nailed it quite well. I spent (nearly) my whole life living/working around DC into my 40s. My upbringing was comfortable middle class, by very conservative parents even by the standards of 1960s-70s. I surely don’t claim to have turned out “well,” by any means, but even growing up I could tell that my parents didn’t “fit”, nor did I. It’s hard to explain to outsiders. Of course, I was never privy to the Inner Party, but I sort of grew up between the Outer Party, who still condescended to send their spawn to the (then) relatively good public schools and the Proles, those who actually worked for a living. There were still blue-collar families and jobs there, even into the 1980s!
Of about three neighborhoods spanning my public schooling years, one might be described as ‘Working Class CIA employees.” My family seemed the poor one on the block: black and white TV (just one!), Aging VW and a Rambler (later a Ford F100) out front when Coupe de Ville or at least newer sedans were the rule. One of my childhood friends was a 2nd generation CIA employee, although he did not make a career of it, to my ken.
The young in DC today are grandma’s boys and girls. The are not truly young people in spirit and thought but merely younger people who have adopted the thinking and mannerisms of their grandparents. When the old elites die off, these particular young people will fade away into irrelevance.
The future belongs to the dissidents. The energy and spirit is youthful and virile in them.
So keep doing what we’re doing and keep our heads on straight.
All true. As they drop their William and Mary bonafides. A school with so much eminence in that area that no one has even heard of west of the Rockies.
Yes, but we saw this in the Reagan era too. All my striving classmates were dressed in khakis and blue blazers while talking like Lee Atwater. It’s clear in retrospect that the Reagan Era wasn’t a revolution insomuch as it was a quixotic, revanchist interlude in the Globo project. Meanwhile, the lasting revolution was happening 3000 miles away in Silicon Valley.
The last “new generation” in DC came with JFK. Everybody since have been grannies, as you correctly observe. It’s not clear who or what is next, but it ain’t from this crowd.
If it comes to war I hope Putin targets DC first when they are in a joint session of congress.
Total economic isolation of Russia makes sense as a prelude to all-out war. Alternatively, USA just became the biggest exporter of LNG in the world… thanks in part to domestic demand being strangled by government dictats… so maybe it’s just another massive, global grift.
The tiebreaker will be whether the Bidenreich calls for a military draft. That would be insane but my contacts in the MIC say Brandon is testing the waters.
“Largest exporter of LNG in the world…” Avista, my natural gas utility, sent a letter that arrived yesterday. Our bill was raised from $100 per month to $136 a month. Even I can do the math. I feel so righteous paying to help the citizens of the rest of the world. (Hold that thought)
Your own government caused that.
Good old avista sarc.
Seems all the company’s are playing games with costs and billing lately.
Call to get something straightened out & the drones say the same thing.
” it’s the computer”
We would have to draft all “persons” because draftees can swear they identify as a woman (what ever that is) and get a deferment.
The last I read, women were definitely going to be included in a draft.
The LNG shenanigans look like nothing more than the latest scam the controllers concocted to loot the plebes coming and going.
There is a “ship” that never moves off the coast of Australia that does nothing but produce and compress natural gas. They should be using that not stealing our natural gas and selling it to foreigners.
Conventional gas peaked in the late 2000s. Tight gas has been a boon, but it will be short lived like all the tight fossil fuel.
A fundamental problem with US elites is everyone is older than eighty and no new generation of talent is being nurtured.
Young talent is seen as a threat and ruthlessly suppressed.
This is because US politics is akin to a crime family. The Cosa Nostra in its heyday was also famous for being run by seniors. A healthy organization isn’t ossified. Say what you will of the evils of Silicon Valley, but it’s run by the comparatively young.
This is nothing new. I think it’s in one of the dialogues of Plato. Ancient Greece, which many educated folk think of as having laid great groundwork for later civilization provides a sobering lesson. (I concede the point.)
In one of their less democratic city-states, a local ruler found it was to his advantage to periodically kill off any of the commoners who showed just a bit too much talent or initiative.
Based on my limited reading of history, even Greek, I think this was far from the norm. But killing off real or perceived rivals and sometimes their entire extended family is one of the less noble traditions of our race.
Russia in the 80’s with Biden subbing in for Yuri Andropov
“It turns out that the Biden administration did not consult with the Federal Reserve.”
First of all, the “Biden administration” and the Federal Reserve are just sock puppets. The same people that own them both give them the script they need to follow.
“The point is, we are seeing in real time how supposedly clever political leaders can stagger from one blunder to the next.”
Clever political leaders? Talk about an oxymoron…..
The thing I sort of don’t get is that before this Russia was being allowed, over protest and threats, to reconstitute its empire and sphere of influence. Maybe this is signaling that enough’s enough, or maybe there’s been a change in policy. Hillary Clinton had her Russian Reset (another reset!), of course.
My suspicion is that the Soros/color revolution/prog faction has overrun the corrupt Clinton Democrats, which fits with the notion that the country is being run by full-on traitors/foreigners and not merely being sold out. The neocon leftovers in the Republican Party still get aroused by war and haven’t realized their bosses have abandoned them, and the new right remains suppressed because the entertainment on offer the last couple of years has been too entertaining.
Still, if the WWI parallel is accurate, it’s reason for optimism. The old world of royalty and nobility lasted for over a millennium. If this new world spends itself in a century, we should be popping champagne.
Better open up a garden and start growing your own food. I’m picking up a couple feeder pigs and some chickens and making sure I have a little bit of junk silver just in case.
The elites are bound to try and destroy us but if you just live simply they have a harder time hurting you.
Absolutely.
Unfortunately, many will be tempted by riches (which, in the future means the right to dine in a reasonably priced restaurant) and succumb to The Evil. But they’re not our concern.
Of course, going it alone, living simple and forming local community are not without their hardships; but at this point, I cannot see any other (practical) way.
I guess the questions for the discerning gentlefolk of ‘this thing or ours are:
What can I live without and still have a fulfilling life in this realm?
and:
What will I be prepared to die/get put in prison for?
Because I think that’s where it’s going. Scary indeed, but I do think that there is hope.
If we get through the next 5-10 years by getting back to basics and just making it through, there will be plenty of opportunities to make riches on the other side. I was telling my son as much, to the subdued consternation of my parents — his grandparents — who still don’t see what is coming and want him to live his life thinking tomorrow will be 1980 again.
No, time for families to start pooling their resources and abilities and energies and just make it through and be ready to make a move to make money, if one so chooses, once we get to the other side. Time to act as one. What it is not time for is for everyone to be acting independent and chasing their personal dreams because the environment that would contain those dreams, the bottle that housed that genie, is about to be shattered.
This one hundred percent, Falcone.
Now is the time for family; even though it has been severely weakened.
So true! My many siblings and I are talking about pooling for a family farm. All the kids (cousins) are running around on Instagram like nothing is happening and of course they think we’re insane.
DC has been running roughshod over the world (particularly the third world) for so long now, they just know everyone will fall in line with their actions/narratives without question. Wrong dips****. Your globohomo days are numbered, so you’d best quit thrashing around and come to accept your 2nd tier status – if that.
The reality is that Russia has won the war, and Ukraine is suing for peace. Ukraine has already agreed to be a neutral state outside NATO, and Russia has agreed Ukraine can be in the EU.
Apparently the other Russian demands are still being negotiated: demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, independence of the Donbas republics, and recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea. Denazification will be the sticking point. Although they are a small percentage of the Ukrainian people, and were repudiated in Zelensky’s election, the Nazis have infested large parts of the Ukrainian military and government, and they exercise significant control over both. E. g., with American and British support (and French and German acquiescence) the Nazis have prevented implementation of the Minsk accords.
The UK’s MoD and MI6 and the US’ DoD, DoS, and CIA are the main sources of disinformation in this war. Believe them at your own risk.
Ukraine in the EU is de-facto the same as Ukraine in NATO, especially given that there are elements within the EU pushing for a common EU military. Why would Russians agree to that?
no, it isn’t the same at all.
“de-facto”
The point is, there is a difference between attacking an isolated country and attacking the EU. And if the EU moves on to have a common European military, then the neutrality will be 100% meaningless.
Could be that soon enough the EU will be 100% meaningless?
Perhaps Putin understands that. Sure, let them hitch their wagon to that dying horse. By the time they realize the horse has but months to live the world of Russia and China will have moved on and will be robust and forward-thinking.
….that said, I doubt either way that Russia would ever sign on to allow Ukraine into the EU. That part of the agreement seems like it is being entertained until Russia can gain more ground on the Ukraine troops in the Donbass. This time next week, those troops should fully surrounded with Russians increasing their strangulation twist by twist until either they tap out or face mass slaughter. Their choice. Either way, Russia will be in full control of the negotiations.
Incidentally, call me crazy, but I want to see what happens with the EU and whether they break down and agree to pay for gas in rubles. IOW I want to see them squirm. I want to see every technocrat POS hiding for his life from enraged citizens.
That is possible, but I think that the chances of the EU breaking up/dying within a few months are less than 1%. Within a few years, we are moving in double digit %, but it could as well keep going for a few decades.
Short of a nuke war, the potential of a Russia (partnering with China perhaps) alternative trade currency “muscling in” on the long established Dollar is a puzzler.
Barring some miracle, the cold fact is that those two nations would seem to be rather short of inspiring confidence as far as being stalwarts of property rights and by inference, providing anything to resemble a currency as a store of value.
What does seem highly likely, at least short term, is that Russia has power to demand payment in Rubles for its stuff. But internationally, those Rubles aren’t going to be in very high demand. Other nations may have to PAY in Rubles, but it seems unlikely that they will ACCEPT them. So there will have to be some roundabout laundering of Ruble to Euro or Dollar, basically the old barter system but with intermediaries.
Although I don’t think Russia intended it as a direct action, the West’s sanctions, freezes and other actions against Russia have greatly damaged the credibility of the Dollar and the West (especially USA) financial system. No small feat.
In sum, Russia’s stature has increased, but not because it offers a viable financial system alternative, but primarily because the West is shooting itself in the foot with an Uzi on full auto.
It’s getting very close, as soon as the Russians made a move the EU started send money to the Ukraine, which was used to fight the war. Not 100% a millitery alliance but as close as makes no difference in my book
Is there anything re Ukraine the French or Germans could NOT acquiesce to once Vicky Nuland and her coterie have made their decision?
The Saker is claiming that the Russians managed to decapitate the Azov leadership.
If true, that potentially gives Zelenskyyyy breathing room because we know Azov was in contact with Cookies Nuland, who is clearly in charge of the West’s Ukraine op.
This comes at a curious time: To hear Zero Hedge tell it, legacy media is admitting that the Hunter Biden laptop is not a hoax after all. Witness Sen. Cruz’s antics Tuesday while grilling the FBI’s IT guy. They’ve had this data for three years and done nothing with it???
That the censorship and panels of “intelligence experts” denouncing the laptop as a hoax in late 2020 to swing the election is old news. What is food for thought is why is the Swamp coming around NOW and countenancing the dirt? This is as odd as the rehabilitation of the lab leak hypothesis just about a year past.
One reading, of course, would be that the Deep State has decided that Biden must go and that past “crimes” may now be allowed to come to light, that he may be denounced.
But the back story seems to be that the Bidens, perhaps the Clintons and who knows who else, have all sorts of connections to Ukraine.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/hunter-biden-dam-about-burst-wapo-cnn-go-scorched-earth-over-laptop-hell
The problem is that Zelensky is demanding that not entering NATO be accompanied by security guarantees from other nations, including Western Europe and the US – meaning that he’d end up not being in NATO, but still having what was objectionable about NATO membership in the first place, which is de facto Article 5 protection from Uncle Sam. This is the kind of offer you’d make to a losing party to let them save a tiny bit of face as they capitulate to you. Ukraine isn’t in any position to be making those kinds of offers, but DC is convinced that they are – they’re convinced that Russia is losing this war badly and that the Russian military has essentially destroyed itself in Ukraine, so they’ve ordered Zelensky not to offer any real concessions in negotiations, just token face-savers like this. Thus, the peace talks are non-starters that will go nowhere.
Back in 2004, some neocon Bush official famously said that “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality”. It’s been nearly 20 years since then, and the tendency to really believe that has only gotten worse in DC. Of course, there are consequences to living in your own reality instead of in actual reality, but these, like the humiliating loss of Afghanistan, have been shrugged off and pushed down the memory hole. There’s no reason to believe this time will be any different. DC will continue to live in its own reality and will demand that its global puppets do the same, and as for the consequences – like a wrecked global economic system, food and energy shortages, and tens of thousands of unnecessarily-dead Ukrainians – DC will try again to merely whistle past them.
>It turns out that the Biden administration did not consult with the Federal Reserve.
I have heard this repeated for the past two weeks. It makes sense and I want to believe it.
But I have not been able to find anything to back it up except someone named Tom Luongo claiming he heard this from people supposedly in a position to know.
I went looking for a source and just found lots of people saying it. Frankly, it is one of those things that is the natural default until contradicted. People from the Fed comment about everything, so the total silence is the dog that does not bark, as they say.
Like that matters.
Janet Yellin gave an interview on how the US should move quickly to non fossil fuel economy and stop lending for traditional energy projects
One group of retards asking advice from the next door special needs class is not that useful.
Well, at least we’re moving into spring, so a sweater might be all that a German needs to keep warm. Doesn’t help when they get hungry though. Also, the gas is used for a lot more than heating homes.
The real game of chicken is about to begin. The problem for Europe is that it’s a bunch of countries, not just one like the US. They need all of the countries to hold firm. Greece is already holding an emergency meeting to discuss paying in rubles. It appears that the Vatican (tiny but influential) transferred 10 million Euro to buy rubles to pay for its gas. (This after the woke pope did his usual speeches praising the evil of the week.)
We’ll see. But the longer this goes on, the harder it will be to get things back to normal. Russia is already looking to slow production at many facilities as they run out of storage space. You don’t just turn their facilities off and on like a light switch. That means potential problems next winter.
The fertilizer issue could linger into the 2023 harvest. Many farmers already secured fertilizer for 2022, though some haven’t, so you could have a low harvest for the next two years, not just this year. Again, hard to say, but certainly a possibility.
We’re running out of time before we screw stuff up big time – even if there’s a peace agreement.
Back to normal, eh?
The Shamdemic took care of that one good and proper. These are people who had no trouble ‘shutting it all down’ because China Flu.
Whatever happens, since the Kovid Kult Klumsiness we’ve been in the mire; I’ve lost count of the number of small businesses that I’ve seen go under. And I cannot begin to comprehend the long term effects of said actions on the global economy… and the Russia-Ukraine affair. Tiresome indeed.
I discovered (via the wife) yesterday that the reason that baby nappies are now in shortage is twofold: first, many manufacturers have their base in Ukraine. Second, a host of GoodWhites have been buying stocks of nappies like crazy and sending them to refugees in Ukraine. One lass even tried to buy over 200 pounds worth of nappies, but was prevented from doing so.
I learned the value of nappies and paper products when I was in Afghanistan. Bagram had an incident about 10 years ago where some Koran’s were found in the burn pit and the locals went nuts and blockaded us. We didn’t have showers and almost ran out of TP before things settled down. I’ve always kept a six month supply ever since of TP, paper towels and some nappies.
I was ready for covid.
Interesting.
Had they held out the outrage over the course of a further year and a half, how do you think the military would’ve coped?
To me, it’s just another insight into how simple things can help to bring GAE to xzher’s knees.
Some guys were almost down to their last roll of toilet paper. The worst part for me was the lack of coffee. We scored some off some SOF guys by doing some work for them though, also I had my mom send a care package that arrived just in time with some essentials. .mil logistics system was jacked up. FedEx and UPS would do better. Makes me shake my head at all the armchair quarterbacks mocking ruskie logistic issues.
Is it possible that COVID was just a roundabout way of doing sanctions against the us so Biden could get elected. Because the sanctions on Russia seemed all too familiar.
It appears the Russians calculated that they can live on the price China and India are willing to pay for their products, which may be lower than Europe is willing to pay, but it is enough.
People forget that Russia has dealt with numerous periods of economic disruption and inflation since the fall of the Soviet Union. This ain’t their first rodeo.
I don’t know who’s going to win this fight, but I know which side has the most experience.
Also, the West still has the issue of debt. A recession (reduced tax receipts and corporate profits) in an inflationary environment, i.e. rising interest rates and production costs, is a very dangerous combination when you’re highly levered.
I’m not sure that our rulers understand this.
Russia makes most of what it needs to get by. I think though he wouldn’t say it President Putin would like it if EU products were not on Russian shelves so long as Russian products filled the gap.
This keeps money at home where it belongs and with some exceptions, its best to do this.
Zman: In all sincerity, since we exported our industry to China, what do we possibly produce that Russia couldn’t get elsewhere? And when most Russians think of luxury goods, they think of consumer electronics from Germany or clothing from Italy or France. As you’ve repeatedly noted, this isn’t the 1980s and Russian youth aren’t desperate for Levis and rock concerts.
The US exports to Russia in Dec 2021 were only $545 million, slightly less than the US exports to Poland and Indonesia, and about the same as Ecuador and Egypt, So probably would make not much difference.
Russia’s exports to the US were $17537 million.
It seems the sanctions are on themselves (as with Europe), as a lot of that is raw material that could get routed elsewhere in the world.
Why would Vatican be paying for gas in Rubles? I doubt they are buying directly from Russia.
Citizen-
There are looming shortages everywhere.
Just look at the lack of helium reserves and offline production:
https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/how-a-helium-shortage-could-crash-the-internet-2022-02-15-8197132
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Free-For-All-In-Helium-Market-Could-Send-Prices-Sky-High.html
I wish the WEF and CCP good luck building out their global techno-dystopia in light of the fact we’re scrambling to keep current systems running.
u.s. politicians and business people are soon going to find themselves bottled up in a small corner of the world. it won’t be safe for them to travel outside of their much shrunken sphere of influence. on top of their being shunned for being such unstable maniacs. there will even be large swathes of the u.s where they won’t be safe. which is why picking an external fight *now* is such a fatal miscalculation (for the biden claque).
Ya, during the 2021 “election” campaign Trudeau got pelted with gravel in a suburb just 30 minutes north of Toronto. Everywhere he went he was followed by angry mobs and protestors.
They’re not safe anywhere except the most controlled libtard areas surrounded by heavy security. They were spooked by the anti-lockdown and vaccine mandates outside their personal homes, too. I’m sure they hate us and don’t want to talk to anybody, but yes, Globohomo is very unwelcome in many areas now which could present challenges.
Despite that, Turdeau and the rest of the elites seem to be enjoying themselves just fine, while the plebs have to deal with the effects of inflation.
And that invidious comparison between the Dirt Peoples’ fortunes and those of the Cloud People only fuels the waxing hatred for the Clouds.
TomA may be on the right track…
These people obviously have never picked up a history book. I can see a substantial number of Clouds dead in the near future. The bolt hole countries like New Zealand are getting uncomfortable about their potential new neighbors, too.
That’s also why they’re so hot to get the guns out of people’s hands. Payback is a bitch, and they owe for a lot of deaths, destruction and chaos their policies have spawned.
Ancient Rome erected statues of men who effectively battled Roman armies, as an example of a worthy adversary.
Modern America just cancels anyone it doesn’t like. Including our OWN generals.
“The Biden people actually thought his speech in Poland would be his Brandenburg Gate moment.”
Brandonborg Gate.
It is surprising at this point the Washington Post is still printing Jennifer Rubin. Who are her readers? My impression is that even other people in the Washington press don’t respect her.
There’s plenty of make work to go around. Just come to my private sector corporation and see for yourself.
Doesn’t she bill herself as the house conservative at Wapo?
“The German political elite appear to be embracing their inner Marie Antoinette by telling the Germans to wear a sweater as they shiver in the dark.”
Well, there we go. I must say, the old jumper tactick is something that I’ve been practicing most of my life. Never did make much sense to me to spend shed loads on soaring gas/electricity when a jumper would do just fine (mind you, southern english winters tend to be mild – I cannot advocate this approach for Siberia).
I get that people don’t want to cede their immense comfort, but it is a stark reminder of how many unnecessary comforts many enjoy – and they are nice comforts. But, like most things, they can be taken away by government incompetence and government malice.
It’s a bad position to be in for sure, but the salient point remains:
The days of western governments helping their people are long gone. There is nothing more for them to give, so we must make our own arrangements. We have no state level representation, only our will, families and outer networks that we cultivate in our immediate communities.
It’s going to be tough, indeed.
I grew up in a commie country, poor by western standards, and I never had to wear a sweater inside to stay warm. I don’t remember the heating failing even once. In a shitty commie country.
Only later, I learned that people in the West and especially in Anglo countries for some reason like to have cold homes and pretend to be cozy in thick sweaters while watching their TVs.
Hun-
It sounds like they built properly insulated and heated homes in your country.
I’ve lived most of my life in the northeastern US and I’m constantly amazed how few homes are properly insulated and heated.
I lived in a classic communist block. Something like this: https://files.catbox.moe/7g7hd9.jpg
It was raw concrete, with no outside insulation (they only started adding that layer in late 90’s, long after communism fell).
However, all windows were double pane. I had no idea single pane windows existed until I first came to North America, where it seems to be the norm. That was truly mind-boggling to me – single pane windows in locations where winter temperatures regularly go below -20C.
Orange Frog: BlackRock’s Rob Kapito wants you to tighten your belt. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10667971/BlackRock-president-warns-entitled-generation-needs-brace-shock-shortages.html
Well, maybe for us Dirts, but certainly not for Clouds such as him.
The war will end when the Washington elite realizes a $150,000 Mercedes soon will cost $300,000.
Does not matter as you and other tax donkeys are usually the one paying for it anyway.
Till they can’t. Inflation wrecks jobs too as people aren’t going to spend on anything except preps.
Even the grasshoppers are prepping somewhat these days.
I am not sure inflation affects taxation rates, as its mostly current and future tax revenue supporting the spending in DC ill it make much of a difference to them?
A.B. Prosper: Is that true, though? Perhaps DFW is a bubble, but I have not noticed any great crowds or bare shelves at the grocery stores. And when we’re forced to go out on the weekend, my husband and I marvel at the packed roads and full parking lots at restaurants and movie theaters. Where on earth is everyone going and what on earth are they doing? We cannot wait to go live far from the madding crowds.
Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD was eerily prescient. We bought some tinned beef today and noticed it was getting short and had risen in price about 25 percent or so. People are still hitting the bulk meat sales as if the electrical grid is forever.
The war will end when there is a shortage of expensive German vehicles like BMWs and Mercedes to lease to Kneegroes because German industry is having to live with the scarcity of natural gas to provide power. Those people will slap you silly if they perceive you disrespectin’ them, something sedulously to be avoided.
That’s certainly possible. Trouble will announce itself in many other ways too. For example, when the gazingus pin or the veeblefitzer on the Benz needs to be replaced, they will be very expensive, perhaps out of stock and on back order. But we need not envy the wealthy and powerful in this case. Rest assured the same disruptions will affect the commoner too. I think it’s already beginning. Long tenuous supply chains are one problem. Runaway inflation, trade embargoes and price controls are another.
My only quibble is “the first industrial war.” That was the War of Northern Aggression, 1861-1865. The siege of Petersburg, VA, looked almost exactly like the Western Front, for one example. With balloons rather than aircraft, the only thing lacking in 1865 were tanks.
Regarding the Ukraine-Russia dust-up, the economic miscalculation by the west in general and DC in particular will have the machine historians 100 years from now wondering how we could be so stupid.
The Ukraine war, and the Western reactions to it, is one more example of the high level ineptitude that characterizes our so-called elites. One more nail in their well deserved coffin.
From your typing fingers to God’s ear.
The puppets might seem inept but they’re a means to an end. This is a well planned demolition with malice and forethought. You can’t have a new world order with an existing American middle class. You destroy them, death by a 1000 cuts.