Note: In case you missed it, the long awaited release of my talk with Greg Hood of American Renaissance has finally arrived. You can listen to it here. The Monday Taki post is up and the topic is clowns. Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green door along with other postings. SubscribeStar and Substack.
Is the Biden administration planning to use tactical nuclear weapons against the Russians in defense of Ukraine? It should be unthinkable but we live in an age in which the most offensive and absurd is celebrated, so we can no longer assume anything, no matter how monstrous, is beyond the pale. The bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines was an outlandish act of provocation, so we cannot assume there is anyone in the admiration on the side of restraint.
The first clue that the Biden people are talking about the use of nuclear weapons is their endless talking about the use of nuclear weapons. For months they have been talking about it, in the context of the Russians threatening to use nukes. The trouble is, the Russians have never threatened to use nuclear weapons. Western media keeps making this claim, but an examination of the record shows that Russian officials have repeatedly said the exact opposite.
It is a well known aspect of regime psychology to project what they are doing or plotting onto some enemy of the regime. In 2016 we got the Russian collusion hoax in which Trump was accused of plotting with foreigners to rig the election. What we eventually learned is that it was the regime that was working with foreign intelligence services to not only rig the election but undermine the Trump administration. The opposite rule is an iron law of understanding regime behavior.
There is also the fact that Russian nuclear doctrine does not include tactical use of nuclear weapons in the battlefield. They have tactical nuclear weapons, but Russian nuclear doctrine has always been rooted in deterrence. Their nuclear arsenal is designed as a deterrent against any use of nuclear weapons. In the Cold War they took mutually assured destruction seriously. It is the West that has the weapons and doctrine for the limited nuclear war scenario.
Recent actions in the Ukraine make clear that the Russian plan is to rely on conventional forces to finish off the Ukrainian army. Despite Covid-like narratives in Western media, the Ukrainians have not been winning. Their army has been slowly and methodically depleted. This next phase aimed at making it more difficult for Ukraine to function at all will be followed by fresh offensives. This time there will be a quarter million fresh Russian troops, rather than militias.
It is clear that the Russians see a path to victory using their conventional army and the facts on the ground support that view. The Ukrainians are acknowledging this, which is why Zelensky has been sounding the alarm in calls to Western media. The point is, there is no reason to think the Russians are even thinking about using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, but the Biden administration keeps talking about it as if it is something they think about all the time.
There is another bit of projection at work. The West has said from the start that Putin cannot afford to change course in Ukraine. Even while the Russians were negotiating with the Ukrainians at the start of the war, the claim from the Biden administration was that Putin had no reverse gear. Again, the opposite rule seems to be at work here as the Biden administration has repeatedly said that they will never make a deal with Putin to end the war in Ukraine.
Further, the Biden administration has been repeatedly asked about the limits on supporting Ukraine and the answer is there are no limits. Hundreds of billions have been spent on this project already. Biden was given a blank check to send weapons, contractors and support. The administration has repeatedly said that they are willing to support Ukraine for as long as it takes. In other words, the only option they will accept is the total defeat of Russia.
This leaves the administration little room to maneuver. If their goal in this war is the total defeat of Russia and they will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to accomplish it, then it is the regime that has no reverse gear. If the fortunes of Ukraine continue on the current path, Zelensky will be faced with surrender or abdication. The West is quickly approaching a crossroads with Ukraine. Do they continue to throw good money after bad or do they find some other option?
As it stands, there are three options. One is to strike a deal with the Russians, which will be on their terms as far as Ukraine is concerned. The second is to abandon Ukraine entirely and let the Russians sort it out after their victory. The third is some sort of game changer that resets the war in favor of the West. Something like a small nuclear bomb smuggled into the Crimea could be such an answer. After all, the West did smuggle a truck bomb onto the Kerch bridge.
When you reduce it all down, the West has given itself just three options, nuclear war, forever war and capitulation. If the third option is off the table and the second option is failing, then the nuclear option is what we have left. Perhaps the reason Joe Biden keeps babbling about nuclear Armageddon is that the people running this war keep talking about using nuclear weapons in his presence. Past regime practice suggests this it at least a possibility.
From the perspective of the people running this war, the nuclear option may make more sense now than a year ago. They have poured massive amounts of arms into Ukraine and launched an unprecedented economic war on Russia. The response from the Russians has been pretty much nothing. Then you have the assassination of Dugin’s daughter, the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines and the bombing of the Kerch bridge in the Crimea. Russia did nothing in response.
The regime may look at this and conclude they can roll the dice with a tactical nuke into the Russian lines or maybe aimed at the Black Sea fleet. Maybe this would be another red line that was not a red line after all. Alternatively, the use of a nuke would cause the Russians to mobilize their nuclear arsenal and that would be the pretext for a first strike on Russia by the West. This is a well known tactic of the West. They cry out in pain as they strike and use that as a reason to strike again.
Again, it sounds insane, but giving the government the right to mutilate children in the name of transgenderism is just as insane. A regime that is willing to torture children is not going to draw the line at launching nukes. Just as they can spin tales about the ghost of Kiev, they can create a scenario in which the first use of nuclear weapons only kills Russians and Europeans. After all, that would then be a tremendous opportunity to build back better and begin the post-post-Cold War era.
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I’ve worried about NATO doing a false flag radioactive operation for a while, in order to justify something horrible. In other words, they would do it and then claim Russia had done it. Thus justifying God only knows what.
Maybe they gauged how gullible people were with their Nord stream pipeline explosion when yey tried to claim Russia had done it. It’s so important we push back on these things or they will get the nerve up for something catastrophic.
Our current course of monetary debasement will supply them with all the courage they need. They are not planning to go off a cliff all by themselves.
here is a report on the situation in ukraine from a man living in ukraine. this is why NATO will nuke first. https://seemorerocks.is/gonazalo-lira-the-turning-point-is-about-to-happen/
heaven help us all. victorial nuland will finally get us all killed. after years of trying.
If all that is true some major sh-t is about go down, and I wouldn’t be surprised given that I’m sure they’ve had enough of NATO meddling. So time for ‘real’ war. They tried this same strategy we tried in Afghanistan for 20 years “hearts & minds” BS that simply doesn’t work. But it only took them months, not decades to realize it.
So now its old school, scorched earth time. I would definitely expect a NATO false flag nuke sooner rather than later because once they see that Russia has arrayed enough force to put an end to the latest Military Industrial Complex grift and it won’t last a decade they will need something quick to rally the Average American Retard around the flag. Muh Democracy! Muh Freedom for Ukrainians wherever that is…
yeah. this war reminds me of the first gulf war. in the run up to desert storm, the press was saying the war would be vietnam on steroids because the iraqis had a much bigger army than north vietnam ever had. . then the shock and awe and the road of death showed just how much uncontested air power could defeat conventional forces.
in Ukraine the russians have SAMs that deny The ukrainians any air support , and they are being crushed . the US/NATO/Ukrainian way of war doesn’t work without air dominance . which is buckets of icewater in the face of western military planners.
I suppose one can hope that Russia has the ability to take out D.C. without a missile as the delivery vehicle. D.C. doesn’t speak for me when it comes to using nukes anywhere, much less on Putin, and I hope Putin recognizes this, and acts accordingly.
this confirms what Z has said , and why NATO will nuke first.
Late afternoon thought:
So, I thought the vaxx was the Killshot.
But it turns out, Market Ticker guy is guesstimating a 3% casualty rate.
So if the Idiot Kings go nuclear…
Instead of WWlll, all we’ll get them taking out the Kum-n-Go in Resume Speed, Iowa.
These maroons can’t even keep themselves from f**king up the end of the world!
We are led by such a bunch of goofs that I’d bet hardly any of our tritium nuclear triggers are functional.
I’d also bet that over 95% of Russia’s triggers would work just fine.
the WEF wants to make north america a giant UN world national park anyway. they see this as a feature , not a bug.
market ticker guy is a genius , but the sterilizing effect of the vax is showing up BIG time in highly vaxed countries . so the effect over time will be much larger than 3%. It is still a kill shot
Our political class may well get us into a war we cannot win, and it may be the result of using nuclear weapons. The end result might be something like the “Moscow Treaty” in the David Gerrold novels “War Against the Chtorr”. In short, the first novel starts out with a series of plagues that devastates the world about 10 years after a war where the U.S. used nuclear weapons, and lost. The result was a variant of the Treaty of Versailles where the U.S. was no longer allowed to maintain an offensive military capability.
you wild eyed dreamer , with all your optimistic talk. that would be a walk in the park compared to what happens if the kremlin is convinced we are going to take them out.
Nice piece in Taki’s. It made me smile that you keep the serious stuff for your blog.
Today’s piece is a great concise distillation of what all of use hear are thinking: A sum of all fears.
I enjoyed listening to the AmRen podcast, but Mr. Hood sure talks a lot. One wonders why he invites guests.
Agreed. He did pretty much hog the conversation.
I thought it was a fantastic conversation, and I don’t care who talked the most. It was one of the better podcasts I’ve heard in a while. Both have a lot of insightful and intelligent things to say. Notice that Zman refers to it as a “talk” and not an interview. That’s how I see it. It’s a great discussion.
I agree. Mr Hood is one of the better minds on the Right. As is our own Mr Z, of course.
I thought the same thing. I might not have minded the fact that Mr. Hood talked so much, if only he didn’t interrupt his guest so frequently.
Still a great talk though. It could’ve been twice as long, and I would’ve enjoyed listening. It went by surprisingly fast.
There seems little reason (meaning none at all) to believe anything whatsoever coming out of Washington. Governments make public statements all the time, usually stupid and utterly divorced from objective reality. Just look around.
Second, it is simply not true that the lunatics in Washington are crazy. Evil and greedy beyond all telling, oh, my yes! But stupid? Or crazy?
Here we have consummate liars and thieves who have looted the WHOLE WORLD for DECADES and are even now continuing apace. And they have arranged the “justice” system so that they can continue their looting with perfect impunity. And they will.
And they have arranged things so that even if we knew where they were, we couldn’t get anywhere near them.
Does that spell “stupid” or “crazy” to you? Shrewd, yes. Ruthless, yes. Amoral, yes. Satanic, yes. But Mr Scratch blushes at his own amateurishness compared with these thugs.
What did they do in Viet Nam, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Serbia, Libya, and where all else? They did the SAME thing: Loot the place, leave it in ruins, and move on to the next criminal venture. And that’s what they’ll do in the Ukraine, too. It’s what they do. It’s who they are. No other behavior is possible from them.
As for the options open to them, the one they will use is not mentioned: Wreck the place after looting it, then abandon their victims to their fate and declare victory.
That’s what they will do here, too. It isn’t as though they sit around weighing their options. They don’t. What they do is look for what they can grab, grab it, wreck the joint, and then move on to their next victim.
They don’t give a tinker’s damn about public opinion or international law or the niceties of diplomacy. They are thieves, period. And murderers, too, when their robbery victims don’t co-operate.
They don’t have to concern themselves with what the American public think or want. They have CNN and FOX for that. As for the rest of the world … WHAT “rest of the world”?
They break in, rob the local populace (and kill those who get in the way), then they go on to their next crime. When have they done differently? Why should they act differently this time?
We have normal diplomatic relations with Russia. Both countries have fully functioning embassies in the other country. When those embassies are recalled, the buildings locked, and all their citizens recalled home, THEN we might concern ourselves with something beyond their stupid and incredible public statements, but until that happens, which it won’t, all that is happening is business as usual.
These are people who act exclusively in accordance with their own interests, and they are VERY good at it. Blowing up the world–including themselves–is not in their interests, which is why, regardless of their inane public statements, they are not even thinking about that. It’s a show. A “continuing daytime drama.” Public statements for public consumption. A smokescreen.
These thieves are not going to act against their own interests. When they have grabbed all they can–and bravely fought to the last drop of Ukrainian blood (and treasure!)–they will just walk away. They’ll very earnestly explain how they “defended democracy” or some equally thread-bare propaganda, and that’ll be that. They have never done anything else. It’s what they do b/c it’s who they are: scorpions who must act in accordance with their nature, and the devil take the hapless frog.
All their embarrassing bluster and bombast about “never” and “as long as it takes” is just drivel for public consumption. It gives “the press” their talking points to hide the looting.
There will be no nuclear exchange. It’s not in their interests and that is ALL that matters to them.
Here endeth the lesson.
You’re just personalizing the net effect of the systemic outcomes from these IYI pampered college kid bureaucrats and diagnosing them “crazy like a fox,” which is just your superstition talking. Many have imposing but objectively deranged job descriptions, Undersecretary for Overthrowing Iran’s Govt, etc. but are not wearing a Napoleon hat to this job, rather, soaking in the frisson of Historical Relevance from journalist courtiers who want the inside scoop on being an important D.C. action princess like from the movies.
This type does not have to be “insane”, like the Joker or something, to pursue perverse incentives. The materialist Noam Chomskyian interpretation of the Vietnam War was that it was profitable. Turning Minneapolis into a shantytown is not profitable, yet it happened.
Actually I figure Minneapolis turned into a shantytown because the thieving democommies stole all the money they claimed was necessary for ‘the poor”, “the children”, the “women”, blacks/Hispanics/Muslims/trannies/fags/dykes and all the rest. It’s their MO.
Next they’ll be tapping the feds for the Rebuild America Act that will pop up as soon as all the gelt from the last grift is all distributed to the millionaire and billionaire donors.
Precisely.
The “mostly peaceful protests” in Minneapolis were a real estate acquisition scheme. They burnt out the “free enterprise zones” which were then bought up for pennies on the dollar. Same was true in other cities.
Catherine Austin Fitts plotted the actual locations and, oddly enough, the presence in the various BLM cities of branches of the Federal Reserve Bank and found that the whole thing was a real estate acquisition scheme. That’s why the “mostly peaceful protestors were let run wild.
What an impressive word salad!
I have to observe, though, that your brain dysfunction speaks considerably louder than my superstition.
Better luck next time, buckra.
I generally agree with your take. My only concern is that there be a “true believer” who didn’t get (or understand) the memo and sends things sideways. In our AA government, that possibility is too high for my comfort level.
The GAE should have engaged the Russians last winter by agreeing in principle to something vague and then dragging the matter out in inconclusive talks under the rubric of a “peace process.”
The present dispensation could unravel much faster than anyone imagined eight months ago. Not much we can do about this except prepare the mind.
Practically, every veteran here might want to engage with their local VFWs, just to see who is who. Non-veterans should be asking to volunteer, again for the same reason. Nov 11 will be here before we now it. Z has addressed the need for community in the past and vet orgs are a good place to start, since I don’t know as we will have time to build our own.
Addendum: the Author’s pairing of an essay on clownocracy with one on nuclear war was appropriately cruel… but still appropriate.
I agree with the idea that first, the regime will try to ignite a Chernobyl ll as a pretext for NATO to start the big war.
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What’s better for the GAE than Putin using a nuke in Ukraine? The GAE using a nuke in Ukraine and making the world believe Putin did it.
Half the world (well the governments of the ZUSA vassal states) might believe it, or at least go along with the story. A significant number of people even in ZUSA wouldn’t. What they could do about this non-belief is another issue.
At this point, even if Russia did do it, the ZUSA has cried wolf so many times I would not believe it.
“The GAE using a nuke in Ukraine and making the world believe Putin did it.”
And the motivation for and goal of such an action would be … ?
To turn Putin and Russia into absolute pariahs. Isolate them completely. A Russia without allies would be much easier to topple.
Animals don’t have “motivation.”
you goof , a pretext to take nato to war , while simultaneously decimation russian forces .
https://seemorerocks.is/gonazalo-lira-the-turning-point-is-about-to-happen/
If America is planning on using nuclear weapons, they are playing a dangerous game indeed. But somehow–and call me an optimist–I can’t see them doing it. Russia is a nuclear power, after all, and what can be sent can be retaliated against.
We all have a long list of things we could never see America doing, yet here we are.
What are the chances that our demented commander in chief would give an order that his subordinates, having a little more sense (?), would chose to ignore, thus allowing us all to live a while longer?
The problem with those chances is the demented CiF is not the one who would be giving the order.
If its not the Commander in Chief, C Matt, then the same usurper who ordered the pipe line bombings would be a good first guess.
Unsettling that we have to rely on that person’s sanity/judgment/good will, whoever it is. Hopefully, they know it is not in their best interest and would put a serious cramp in the grifting process. That is our best hope this side of the mortal veil.
I loathe Joe Biden. I think he is a worthless rootless piece of shit. However, I think it more likely he would resist signing off on such an order. His handlers, who are Satan’s minions on this Earth, would in a heartbeat IF they thought they could get away with it.
It’s PedoJoe’s watch. I hope his dementia hasn’t and doesn’t degrade to the point where he will just sign whatever he is told and then be convinced that is was his idea all along.
zero and none. the most propagandized people in the world are cops and military, they already believe santan and hitler bred and produced putin.
Agreed. Those of us old enough remember this exact same posturing and sabre rattling from the 70’s. Anything is possible with the Biden regime… but nuclear war will not be profitable at all to Globohomo and it’s palm rubbing happy merchants.
Cold War 2 might however, offer significant profiteering assuming we don’t collapse first. I note with some interest that Turkey is making overtures to Russia suggesting a possible and probable economic alliance with them. If true, the rest of our allies in Europe are sure to bolt too. Our Globohomo elites are chitting bricks which is why they are posturing so enthusiasticly.
I believe we are watching history; we could be seeing the final days of Globohomo and its American Empire.
Can anyone imagine the collection of low IQ affirmative action Orks and neocon warmongers in the administration debating in a backroom the advantages of using nukes vs not using nukes?
Most of them could not be trusted to operate a lawn mower.
George 1: “could not be trusted to operate a lawn mower”
What’s sad – frankly tragic – is that your satire is literally the God’s honest Truth.
When do you suppose was the last time Joe Biden yanked the starter rope on a gasoline push mower?
1960 [age 18]?
1955 [age 13]?
He slithered his way out of law skrewl in 1968; do you suppose he ever even once in his entire life changed a spark plug on a gasoline push mower?
I rather doubt that Karine Jean-Pierre even knows what an internal combustion engine is.
While this seems like an incredibly dangerous situation the response to it, at least in Yankee land, is mysterious.
How likely is it–REALLY–that Victoria Nuland and Hillary C and Nancy P and Lindsey G actually expect to spend up to five years in some underground bunker at the Denver airport or in New Zealand?
There’s your answer.
And how likely is it–REALLY–that those same creatures think that after the radioactivity dissipates and it is “safe” for them to return to the surface of what had been really quite a lovely planet, they would be able to resume their charmed lives at all the right Georgetown cocktail parties or sipping Chablis in Chappaqua or eating gourmet ice cream from a de luxe freezer the size of a station wagon or admiring their own reflections in the Potomac?
There’s your answer.
Excuse me; could you say again? Where’s my answer?
From Taki: “If you let the clowns roam free, you end up with a circus.”
Worse than that, you find your community burglarized and your women assaulted. Circus clowns, like the rest of the carny folk, are a bunch of degenerates who the community was eager to have move on when the circus or carnival was finished. Nobody wanted them hanging around.
It’s a perfect metaphor for our ruling class.
This scenario (and many similar contingencies) have been modeled extensively. Mean probability is approximately 40% (US military command is still adamantly against). But CIA has the means and resources to implement anyway (aided by MI6). If they proceed, Russia will try to interdict and stop the attack as a first measure. If that fails, Kiev will likely be bombed into rubble via conventional munitions and all utilities infrastructure in Ukraine will be destroyed soon thereafter. That is the local response. But what will happen in the US?
Most likely outcome is real action leading to a potential civil war. Several states will likely begin secession talks and citizen militias will begin formation all across the midwest and south. This will scare the shit out of the DC cucks, who will work behind the scenes to oust Biden and Heels-up. This will also enable an attempted cancellation of the November elections. If that happens, there will be violence on a large scale. Then its Katy bar the door time. Things change slowly until the they change very fast.
Get out of the big city.
Entirely plausible.
Good post.
But it looks like Russia is going to finish things up pretty quickly now, and dictate peace terms. NATO will wash its hands of the devastation and carnage and go on to their next robbery victim(s). Russian regulars are almost ready to take over from the People’s Militias. And they are shutting the Ukraine down anyway by removing the electrical generation and storage and transmission infrastructure.
You are right, though about MI6. The Russians have already publicly pinned the Kerch Bridge Caper on the Brits. They are dangerous and fanatical.
I don’t, though, expect any kind of attempt to put off the mid-terms. But it doesn’t matter b/c *neither side* will accept the results, regardless of what they are. It’s too late for political solutions anyway, so it doesn’t matter what happens with the “voting.”
But I don’t think we’ll see states breaking away from Washington until Joe Sixpack FINALLY gets it through his pret-ty thick skull that FedGov–and numerous states–really DO mean to take away his car. For good. THAT is when the states will take final action. Joe will take a sudden and very keen interest in politics, and things will happen.
States for some years now have had their own immigration policies, their own drug policies, and now (Chicago) their own citizenship laws. So states going their own way is well-established now. When Joe Sixpack figures it out about his CAR, that will be the final straw.
Good post. Very plausible.
they are taking meat and milk “off the table ” Too. and dammed fast
“When you reduce it all down, the West has given itself just three options, nuclear war, forever war and capitulation. If the third option is off the table and the second option is failing, then the nuclear option is what we have left.”
With respect to our host, I don’t think the second option is failing at all. It depends what you think the objective function is for this war. Forever War keeps the graft flowing, keeps everyone terrified, it’s an excuse for the Green nonsense, suppresses internal dissent in Europe and the US (to some extent). Forever war is good business for the MIC. (Jack Dobson below made this point).
Meanwhile, The Russians can either dig in or try a high-risk offensive over open steppe without air superiority/combined arms capability. I think they will just try for some limited gains (to set up sustainable, defendable positions) and then dig in and consolidate the (Russophone) Oblasts that they wanted in the first place. Both sides will lob bombs back and forth, whatever, but just enough to keep the money flowing. The US Taxpayer will get the privilege of “rebuilding” Ukraine with 10% for the Big Guy and whomever succeeds him.
The Global Elite will be happy with this arrangement – Permanent Enemy. China and India get discounted gas. The world keeps spinning. Kiev becomes the new Berlin or Beirut, with “spycraft”, intrigue, discos, hot chicks.
The Russians can wreck the Ukraine with missiles and drones, its Air Force controls the skies, and the armor that has been flowing into the Donbas will easily finish what’s left..General Armageddon will take care of it…
Russia’s airforce obviously doesn’t control the skies. Let’s keep it real here.
I think you are wrong.
I’m interested in your assessment.
Why do you think this?
I’ve seen this opinion expressed before, of course, but it was on sites frequented by excitable and generally confused readers.
Anyway, what do you know that makes you way that Russia is not in control of the air space over the Ukraine?
Western inventories have been emptied to the point where it is impacting frontline US units.
Germany is so hollow that Ukraine is getting their IRIS air defense system before any Jerry units.
Just one example of replenishment woes would be Raytheon, who has stated they won’t have Javelin production running full-steam until 2023.
Yes Howard. They are “talking their book”. Once a cost plus 50% contract shows up, they will miraculously expand production.
It might be time for a lawsuit. I’d really like to know if Raytheon’s employees are fully vaccinated and sufficiently diverse.
One of the sources I follow is the military and foreign affairs network on youtube. He’s a little thin on details but usually can give a decent update on what is happening on the front lines and at least pretends to be neutral and level headed. But even he is now constantly talking about the risks of the use of a nuclear weapon.
But none of the people talking or writing about Russia using a bomb never really explain how Russia goes from a limited military operation to nuclear bombs in one step. They had not even conducted the limited general strikes on the grid of a week ago. I would think there would be many steps between “limited military operations” and full on nuclear war.
And why in God’s name would Russia want nuclear fires on its border? Every single particulate in the air become a killer. You breathe in or eat something with this irradiated dust/particles and it’s inside your body attacking your cells. They are at the mercy of the winds.
And the winds typically blow east.
The Voice of Reason at Military and Foreign Affairs is an excellent commentator, though he will be frustrating to some since he regularly admits what he does not know.
I agree that Moscow doesn’t want either to nuke the border Slavs or London or Paris, or get secondhand nuke smoke from a Pakistan/India hootenanny in Kashmir. In Washington unfortunately by contrast we have people not only indulging in loose nuke talk as just the high-status way to conduct themselves, they’re self-convinced it’s a badass effective strategy. They are more like pathetic characters from a Coen brothers film than a very special episode of The West Wing.
“But none of the people talking or writing about Russia using a bomb never really explain how “Russia goes from a limited military operation to nuclear bombs in one step. They had not even conducted the limited general strikes on the grid of a week ago. I would think there would be many steps between “limited military operations” and full on nuclear war.”
^^^ THIS ^^^
I have said this on comment threads here and there until I am blue in the face. The way I put it is that international relations do not go from 0 to 60 in three seconds.
Beyond that, Russia and GAE have a LOT of arrows in their quivers. Russia might go nuclear if triumphant NATO armies are approaching the gates of Moscow, but not before that. (You know–the conquering armies from those military powerhouses like Estonia and Germany, where they can’t keep the lights on–yeah, THEM.)
There are cyber-attacks on the power grid or banking systems of water works. Assassinations. Blowing up Hoover Dam. Releasing bioweapons in Washington and Moscow. Etc., etc. TONS of arrows in everybody’s quivers to use before blowing up the whole world–including the rulers of both sides.
But all of that stuff lacks two things: (1) publicity and (2) drama. So nobody thinks about them because it is not currently fashionable to do so. Nobody scores points at the office water cooler for telling people to “Get a grip!” and stop the dramatizing about blowing up the world with nukes. It’s just not fashionable.
And that is the world we live in.
It has to be on TV, and it has to be dramatic. Otherwise, it ain’t nuttin’.
” Pssst., Tars.” i’ll let you in on the gag. see russia is winning big , and the Uke’s are gonna collapse soon. but those Washington guys got it figured out . they are telling the world that putin is gonna use nuke caus he’s loosin. See , then we go in and set off a couple . walla ! The world demands we respond. NATO gets to have an air war that leads to regime change and the breakup of Russia. Then all that Oil, Gas, Gold, Grain, and metals are our for the takin’ . just like we planned from the Maidan color revolution. in 2014. https://seemorerocks.is/gonazalo-lira-the-turning-point-is-about-to-happen/
It is all a bizarre situation. Why so much obsession with Ukraine? How deep does Biden’s money laundering go there? What about the rumors of bio-weapons labs? Why are Europeans willfully destroying their economies? Are they purposely destroying the West to make way for a pan-Asian century?
I would imagine that 99% of Americans had never even heard of Donbass or Crimea before 2014. Even in 2014, it wasn’t as hysterical as it is now. I had never heard of them, and I’m (somewhat) knowledgeable about geography. The status of the Donbass region is not high on the list of what motivates me to get out of bed in the morning.
The hysterical and rigid tactics kind of mirror what the ruling class at home. They seem to be pathologically unable to leave normal people alone – for example, sending the FBI to raid Amish farms, coercing to 100% vax compliance, promoting transgenderism to your kids, etc. Most normal people just want to be left alone. There is no negotiation or moderation, their only tactic is to go full scorched earth.
The Western elite operate only on moral terms, not practical ones. They are again unable to adjust when relatively strong nations operate with different ideas. India wants cheap oil for itself so industry can run, and people can heat their homes. Same with China. They don’t care about a White on White conflict. Barring truly monstrous human rights abuses in Ukraine by Russians (which won’t happen), it’s unlikely that they will be swayed by any kind of emotional appeal to (fake) Ukrainian nationalism, or “Russia did a mean thing” type of crying.
Being threatened, humiliated, and lectured, publicly at that, instantly turns those countries away. Most of Asia is still bitter about being colonized in the 19th and 20th century, and the last thing they want is to be scolded by “Whitey”. Now, we have enemies India and China moving closer, and Saudi Arabia and Iran moving closer. All these places are underpinned by Russian natural resources.
There are so many questions about what’s going on. To me, it seems like a controlled demolition. But there are many very stupid, very arrogant, and very crazy people in the West. The logical outcome of the Green agenda = mass die-offs. The logical outcome of “diversity” and mass immigration = death of the West. The logical outcome of the “overpopulation” myth, transgenderism and abortion is a mass decline of births which over time = mass die-offs. Anti-meat = anti-food which again is death. Many White libs very deeply hate Western society as well as themselves.
So, it appears that all the elite/lib fads point to eventual death and destruction of various things. Why not get there faster with nukes? I certainly wouldn’t say it’s any crazier than telling people that food is a privilege. Maybe they have given up and are just going straight into suicide mode.
As was observed almost 200 years ago by Charles Mackay, people go mad in groups, but only recover their sanity individually….
It’s the self-hatred and its consequences that is all so exasperating. A central facet of moral growth is getting over one’s hang-ups. Why can’t our crop get this basic task right?
I’m not sure.
The fact that it seems prevalent and deeply engrained makes me think it was at some point a useful trait in European people, maybe long ago. Perhaps, willing to go to great lengths to sacrifice for the survival of the overall tribe. Or, willing to work with stranger tribes, resulting in both tribes surviving rather than perishing. Not sure if that’s correct since Europeans had plenty of wars and most definitely were not self hating during those battles.
Anyways, it’s some kind of trait coming out that is maladaptive for today’s environment. Being an “outsider” not interested in following the herd, and not feeling guilty about myself, is a benefit for me and others like me today.
Even if they hated themselves, I wouldn’t really care except for the fact that they want to destroy the normal people who don’t share their crippling guilt and insanity. Now it’s my problem, too.
B/c when you are already morally perfect … .
Do you think that Hillary C and Nancy P think they have hang ups to overcome?
When they look into the mirror, do they see a deplorable?
You know?
” Are they purposely destroying the West to make way for a pan-Asian century?”
This is happening be it intentional or not. I keep thinking this might be some sort of D.C.-Beijing double-cross of Moscow, but it just doesn’t fall into place. Best bet is greed combined with sanity, although there is something else at play and we do not see it. Utter madness. I just heard the former lefty CIA director Panetta gave the odds of nuclear war to be 25 percent. Iran has now supplied Russia with replacement drones. Utter madness.
We are watching the death of Socialism. Fifteen years of rock-bottom-low-low interest rates have destroyed the pension funds of the world’s rich countries. The leaders can tell the truth and be torn to pieces in the streets OR they can stage a pandemic hoax that wrecks the world economy in front of a very credulous public, and then blame it all on “the hidden enemy.” The virus.
It’s all coming down–all the Socialist schemes (paid leave, pension schemes, retirement)–ALL of it. It HAS to be hidden from the public. And that’s what they are doing.
The members of the various political classes are not crazy. They just prefer not to be torn to pieces in the streets.
It is ALL coming down. Unravelling. It won’t happen overnight, so it won’t be particularly dramatic. But we’ll all end up in the same boat, with a 17th-century living standard–at least for a while. Then sane people will get moving and rebuild and repair.
But that won’t happen next week. And Socialism will take a lot of things and people with it when it goes, but go it must. They have finally run out of other people’s money.
With regard to today’s Zman post at Taki: His depiction of Western politics as a clown show/circus is great, yet I think he takes the clown show/circus too literally. Liz Truss isn’t actually running England any more than Joe Biden is actually running America. Western so-called leaders are mere puppets. My own suspicion is that anyone with genuine power is smart enough to stay off our television sets and avoid publicity in general. Politicians are prestige whores who crave attention, as Zman aptly explains. Those with genuine power cherish power for its own sake and don’t give a damn about getting attention. I even suspect that famous big tech figures such as Gates, Zuckerberg, Musk, etc., are mostly front men for powers much greater than themselves. Who is really in charge? It may be impossible for regular folks to answer that question.
I have reached a point where I no longer believe in the world presented to us by governments, media, corporations, etc. Perhaps I’m too skeptical/cynical.
Z has talked about how Kremlinology has come to the US and we have to take a look at everything that comes from the GAE in terms of who behind the scenes is saying it and what power play is going on. We saw this with Trump quite explicitly, where every time he said anything, some story would come out in the NYT/WaPo/CNN/whomever stating “unnamed sources” undermining him. It was obvious he wasn’t running the show and it was the media’s job to normalize this. Of course this has continued, with the difference being that they installed an obvious vegetable in the White House. It is just blatantly obvious that the stuff “his” administration is saying and doing is not coming from him, and they dare us to notice it.
The visible politics we see have become a gross carnival act because the GAE wants us to debase ourselves by signaling our consent to be (visibly) ruled over by these freaks and ghouls. Imagine taking time out of your day and going to the polls and pulling the lever for a guy like Fetterman in PA (his opponent isn’t that much better). It’s just humiliating, but that’s what they want.
My cynicism about politics now runs so deep that I am no longer sure that any American president in history was truly “running the show.” Did George Washington have genuine power when he was in the White House — or were monied interests pulling the strings from behind the scenes, merely using Washington as their puppet/decoy? How can anyone in our own time even know the answer to that? It’s lost to history.
I try not to speculate too much about the motives of those who run the GAE. However, consistent with your post, Mycale, it certainly appears that they are subjecting the public to an incessant campaign of demoralization. Every indication is that they wish to fill regular folks with feelings of defeat and dread. Consequently, I think it’s in our best interest to ignore them. Nothing they put out can be trusted anyway.
There’s always going to be monied interests. An aspect of political leadership was always balancing and playing the various factions off each other, drawing strength off the right ones when appropriate. It’s quite possible for a skilled leader to use these factions to get what he wants, with the obvious risk of drawing their ire. The Ancien Regime in France, or the various imperial power struggles in Rome, are classic examples of this. Making a mistake could be quite literally deadly for the leader in these courts.
That said, it seems the big difference between then and now is that it really does not feel like there are various factions. There is one faction of elites, moving in lockstep, across all issues. That is why they hated and undermined Trump every step of the way (which seemed to baffle Trump from the start).
Some writers lately (on Substack and the like) have said this elite unity is a strong point in favor of the continued dominance of the GAE, but I tend to think it turns the regime brittle and susceptible to failure in crisis. I guess we have no choice to wait it out, and we’ll be the ones paying the price no matter what.
The GAE is done. The economy is largely comprised of bullshit financial services and debt.
Here’s an example. This threeway fan switch cost $7.97. at Home Depot.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Commercial-Electric-3-Way-Fan-Light-Switch-82355/306596875?
I can buy 5,000 of them in China for $250. That’s 5c each. That leverage of 16,000 % is advertising packaging transport and profit and grift at each step. That’s probably a bit extreme. One half of one percent real, the rest?
While president, Obama was asked what was the most surprising thing about being president. “How little power I actually have,” was his answer.
Au contraire, mon frere! Actually believing what is presented to us is the very apex of naivety. But the vast majority of people seem to do it anyway. Credulity is much easier than actually thinking. And for Leftists, much more self-serving.
I found the answer on Gab:
“If I do what my tv tells me and eat bugs and give more money to the government the weather will be gooder.”
“Credulity is much easier than actual thinking.”
Tis true, but thinking is not very productive either. Too many unknowns, lies, propaganda. Facts are precious and few and you cannot even be sure that you have one when you really do.
Serendipity, mistakes, miscalculations, misunderstandings, black swans, false flags. Actually, nobody is in control. Like a tag team wrestling match.
Why, I say there, old boy! You sound like an epistemological anarchist!
If I had more time I would have touched on who really is calling the shots in the UK. It is fascinating to see how the British media is looking past the fact that the BoE is basically doing regime change. They are forcing a crisis to force new elections which will bring the other party to power.
Similar to the plot of ‘Cleanskin.’ (Decent Sean Bean film).
“A regime that is willing to torture children is not going to draw the line at launching nukes.”
That’s a terrifying line and something to think about when I am asked why do I care so much about the trans issues.
Now in darkness, world stops turning
As she is aware there’s bodies burning.
No more war pigs of the power
Hand of God has struck the hour
Day of judgement, God is calling
On their knees, the war pigs crawling
Begging mercy for their sins
Satan, laughing, spreads his wings
Or all this (the drumbeats of nuclear war) could just serve as yet another psyop (see Covid, climatism, anti-Whiteism, energy crisis, etc) to further dishearten the Western volk. For the US, maybe it’s a way to tamp down the vote (why vote if the world will end by Xmas?). I dunno. The bottom line is don’t expect any good news – EVER – as long as these psychopaths are in charge.
Yes. The sheeple of the west have finally lost their fear of the china coof so now it is time to ramp up the fear levels of Putler’s nukes so that they will be good little children and get back to doing what the government says.
“For the US, maybe it’s a way to tamp down the vote (why vote if the world will end by Xmas?).”
It is a mistake to think that most Americans are aware of anything other than what is strictly personal and private. They don’t hear all this loose bombast and drivel about democracy and Putin and all the rest of it. Strike up a conversation with somebody in the grocery store.
My bet for the “October Surprise” has been either a nuke going off somewhere by someone, or Biden (maybe Trump) getting the Kennedy treatment. Both scenarios would be sufficient pretext to cancel the midterm elections, declare martial law, and install a never-ending emergency that gives the swamp everlasting power.
“install a never-ending emergency that gives the swamp everlasting power”
The ruler of my Blue hive controlled midwestern state just signed “emergency” declaration numer 37 (38? 39?) because Covid and reasons.
From week-to-week, I’m unsure if I can leave the US or work in certain states because of my “vaccination status”.
Nothing is permanent in this world, but I figure if things have been going on for over 2.5 years (arbitrary Covid rules, voter fraud, political prisons for those who object) then that is close enough to permanent.
They already have it.
They are now just making sure you cannot escape the realization you are suffering under its spite every minute of everyday.
And just who would enforce a declaration of martial law? And where? And how?
And suppose there are men in the general population who don’t WANT martial law? And suppose those men take out the nine (9) electrical installations that bring down the WHOLE American power grid?
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/could-terrorists-really-black-out-the-power-grid/241192/#:~:text=If%20nine%20key%20substations%20are,for%2018%20months%20%E2%80%94%20or%20more.&text=The%20possibility%20of%20a%20terrorist,Commission%20(FERC)%20says%20yes.
Martial law is not enforceable.
And the elections don’t matter b/c neither side will accept the results, regardless of what they are.
There are NO political solutions. It’s FAR too late for that.
Hey, Infant, I hope you aren’t implying that the lovely, beautiful Tulsi who all the post-menopausal male conservative commentators are going whoozy over isn’t going to save the Republic when she’s shooed into the WH?
I certainly hope you’re wrong, but can’t say I’m confident you are.
That said, one thing that has marked out the behavior of this regime is that while they’re happy to inflict misery on the dirt people, they generally cover their own asses.
For example, defunding the police is fine for them, because they have private security. Destroying public education by any means is fine, because they have private schools, and so on.
That shit goes out the window when Russia launches its nuclear arsenal…
I am not so sure about the private schools. They may be worse than the public schools. The most recent example is Maryvale in Maryland. There are many interesting things about Maryvale. One being that the DIE administrator got caught on camera advocating giving more resources to the POC students. She said that the and the teachers are warned when donors come to the school so they can keep the CRT lesson subverted until the donors leave. Then she said that they all smile at the donors faces and then flip them off behind their backs when they turn around to leave.
Now, where she said this is the interesting part. She said this at a NAIS event. NAIS is the governing and I believe certifying body of independent, non public, schools. Maryvale fired the DIE director but affirmed its commitment to diversity. More appalling is that the DIE director was accompanied in these videos by the school’s head master – an Asian man Viktor Shin with a PHd in nothing from Penn. She claimed that Viktor gives her everything she asks for and he admitted being her foundation of support. He has not been fired. The NAIS is infiltrated and guiding this project.
So, perhaps the private schools that are exempt from this indoctrination are religious schools of a certain non-Western religion, or more aptly, an anti-Western one. The implication here is that the white elite have been duped into waging war on themselves and their children as well as on the Deplorables in the Dirt. I wonder if any of them are waking up to this.
In any case, the private schools are probably in a more advanced state of rot given that they are run by more competent people who can implement utter destruction of the future far more ruthlessly and efficiently than the guvv run schools.
A Catholic school near us fired a guy I know for speaking against trannies in a respectful manner. Basically a bunch of rich liberals enrolled their kids in the school to avoid the failing public schools during Covid, then immediately started bullying administration to water down religious teaching.
It’s a war on all fronts, and the only solution is burning the education credentialing apparatus to the ground and strict separation.
Believe it or not, I heard the Claremont guys say the exact same thing the other day. I believe it was, “… and, figuratively, burn the teacher credentialing system to the ground and salt the earth with it.”
The only question is how many kids will be committed to reconstituting it after it gets burnt to the ground. To me, this is the great argument for peaceful separation. We just can’t engage in a never ending game of whack-a-mole with the anti-civilizationists.
The only hope is to separate and be free to embark on building what we want and maintaining it the way we want it. The money following the student seems like a path to that – where eventually the system is, the money never leaves the parent.
A man can dream.
A man can do more than dream:
https://wittenbergacademy.org/
Totally online. Totally accredited. Totally affordable.
Classical trivium & quadrivium. Available NOW and to ALL.
No nonsense.
There are Catholic schools, and then there are “Catholic” schools. And then there are Jesuit schools.
And then there’s homeschooling.
Yes, there is that, but there is also this, which is much easier, quicker, and more immediately effective b/c it is available NOW:
https://wittenbergacademy.org/
Thanks I was hoping to hear of that again, to bookmark it.
As to home-schooling, the same guy in CA who pushed thru SB277- mandatory school covid vaccination- is now pushing SB18, where the state can kidnap (repossess) kids for either vax resistance …or home-schooling.
Private school(s) are not a unitary entity. They vary greatly. The state of rot as you call it is not—and can not—be universal. Only the State can mandate universal “rot”. In this State, the leader across the nation in Charter Schools, school funding follows the student. Private schools abound.
If a family dislikes their public school or a particular private school, they can enroll their student elsewhere. That is the answer to CRT. The parent is responsible for understanding their children’s curriculum. It has always been so—or should have been so.
Further, if even that fails, funding follows student and there is the development of small groupings of “home schooling” cooperatives. These are cooperatives among the parents where they group their children into small neighborhood groups and parents trade off days to “teach” in these cooperatives. Even better—although I do not agree—the State has prohibited mandatory State proficiency testing for these students, thus eliminating remote control of curriculum.
Totally online. Totally accredited. Totally affordable. NO American child or family is trapped in the guvvermint skool systim.
https://wittenbergacademy.org/
Classical trivium & quadrivium.
“The bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines was an outlandish act of provocation, so we cannot assume there is anyone in the admiration on the side of restraint.”
“The trouble is, the Russians have never threatened to use nuclear weapons. Western media keeps making this claim, but an examination of the record shows that Russian officials have repeatedly said the exact opposite.”
“There is also the fact that Russian nuclear doctrine does not include tactical use of nuclear weapons in the battlefield.”
“After all, the West did smuggle a truck bomb onto the Kerch bridge.”
Are any of these statements actually true? They are unsupported by or directly contradict everything I have been reading in the mainstream press. A responsible blogger would feel the need to justify these statements with extended arguments involving links to and quotes from “the record”. But Z doesn’t even try to do this, he just makes assertion after assertion, and expects you to trust him because of the “opposite rule”, and because transgenderism or something. But the opposite rule is total bullshit! I don’t think the MSM is quite as untrustworthy as everyone here seems to, but even stone cold liars will happily tell the truth when the truth happens to cut their way, so how do you know they are not telling the truth about Ukraine? And what does transgenderism have to do with the war? Again, the fact that the New Religion is wrong about gender does not imply that Z is right about anything — he could be nuts too.
This is my big complaint about Z; he has interesting ideas sometimes, but he never justifies anything he says, he just pontificates. And he doesn’t like criticism! He dismissed my last comment about Ukraine with a non-sequitur about me being wrong about Covid, and then like a wuss he blocked my reply. I’m traveling today, so I’m posting this partly as an experiment to see if posting from a different IP with a different handle (I’m JEB) will get me past moderation. Let’s see what happens…
Try thinking of Z’s writing as essays rather than as news stories.
Here is a literate, civilized man man who looks around at the world we live in, tells us what he sees, and what he thinks about it.
He isn’t trying to convince us of anything or teach us anything. He merely writes about what he sees and what he thinks about whatever that happens to be. And he does it with style and, often, with wit.
Documentation is for another literary form. I daresay that Z would have far fewer readers if he bored us with whatever you or any other reader might consider “documentation.”
Z does not write for Breitbart readers. Not that you are one, but just that Z’s readers are somewhat more shrewd and well-informed than readers of Breitbart or Gateway Pundit, and considerably less prone to drama, let alone the hysterics that one gets from, say, Hal Turner (who, to give credit where due, does do a yeoman’s job of work for his readers, however silly most of them are).
Z is an essayist, not a reporter. If you think of his work in that way–because that’s what it is–you will be less inclined to compare his writing with that of more mainstream sources.
According to Wikipedia, “An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author’s own argument…”, so an essayist who won’t argue, and who, as you put it, isn’t trying to convince or teach anybody, would seem to be a little unclear on the concept. Worse, he damages his own cause. I’m already a racial nationalist, and if many of the things Z says seem dubious even to me then he is never going to reach the people who need to be reached. The respectable people. The people who can actually make a difference.
You might say reaching those people is hopeless, and you might be right, but if so we are doomed, because right now people who think like us are too few and too weak to matter. If there is one great goal, it’s to make it possible for the respectable people to say things like “white people may have been the problem 100 years ago, but things have changed, and today it’s black people who are the problem” or “if blacks are less intelligent than whites it would certainly explain a lot” without getting fired or destroyed socially. Racist ideas (but only those that are true!) need to be made respectable again; otherwise, well, as I said, we are doomed. I really don’t think Z is helping with this, which is why I occasionally try to inject some dissent into his comment section. I want to make him argue, not just pontificate.
(Hmm, despite switching my IP and handle my comment went into moderation anyway, but it also seems to have gotten approved, so that’s promising!)
JEB, are you that hot soldier chick weirdposting for the Army recruiters?
In other words, the GAE is a synonym for Dumpster Fire. Let’s pray it isn’t a nuclear one.
On your Taki column, I am puzzled by genuinely wealthy people who run for office. The Bill Gates type path towards purchasing influence and getting declared an expert by the media and political leaders in any topic you wish to pursue seems much more appealing to me. Some of the occupations listed for current Senators on Wikipedia are comical, but a lot of them can’t even attempt to hide the fact they have never worked outside the regime. Chris Van Holland has listed, US Senate staff member, legislative advisor and lawyer. Then if you click through to his bio, you find out he was born in Pakistan because his parents were CIA spooks. The public is far less upset about this than they should be.
It’s a power trip. Why buy off a middle man when you can directly operate the clown show? There are perhaps different reasons for different folk—Bill Gates being an example. He was always an overbearing narcissist. In the early days of MS, we’d subscribe to MS support. They’d send monthly packs of CD’s with software updates and tools and documentation and so forth.
One of the first CD’s was always a staged “interview” with Bill during which he’d answer questions put to him on a variety of topics—not limited to technical advise and prognostication. It was obnoxious.
“I am puzzled by genuinely wealthy people who run for office.”
For one example, members of Congress are exempt from insider trading laws. That’s how the Pelosi cartel operates. So long as Nancy is in the House, her husband’s stock market plays are legal.
Good news, Gunner!
The Congress just exempted itself from IRS tax audits too.
Because as Longie Zwillman said the only way to make real money in the US is politics or organized crime.
And now they are melded into the same entity, running a mob is public politics.
The public is blissfully unaware.
Of all people, even Angela Merkel gets it. Her recent remarks showed she’s now willing to publicly say Washington has Germany in a corner.
One must not gloss over another critical cause for escalation of the energy «crisis» and that is the truculence of Germany’s Greens, best represented by Germany’s “other” Angela. We often assume this faction amounts to harmless hippies, but they have become a dangerous faction with sophisticated means for bringing the West to its knees.
In Germany the Greens played an important role in deadlocking Nordstream. Put another way, the Biden admin didn’t blinker Nordstream acting alone. Germany’s ruling coalition voluntarily did some vital legwork on its own.
In the US, Engine One’s tactics against Exxon was perhaps US green’s big opening night performance a couple years ago. Now there are scads of activist investor funds (at ALL levels) harassing boards and holding them hostage for shakedown ala Sharpton/NAACP style. Oil companies don’t just awoken of their own accord – much of their behavior is a result of behind-the-scenes arm-twisting from these noisy and disruptive activist investment groups and foundations.
Green ideology demands the oil companies behave “morally” (instead of behave to protect their shareholders’ interest, subject to applicable laws and regulations). The Green definition of “moral” is protecting Gaia’s interests – everyone else is irrelevant and you WILL eat the bugs!
Then of course we have the Biden admin and its stellar disinterest in (and scrupulous avoidance of) any and all tools of soft power. It’s not clear to me that the dollar tanking would stop these people. In Normal World, the adults would recognize that brinksmanship is not best played by a broke empire with internal contradictions unwinding past the point of repair.
“ Engine One’s tactics against Exxon” The United States needs to prevent companies like Blackrock from casting proxy votes on behalf of the actual owners of the funds. There was/is a push to end the tyrannical actions of the Larry Finks of the world.
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/bill-would-require-passively-managed-funds-to-vote-proxies-instructed-investors
Rumor has it that Nancy Pelosi purchased a significant amount of stocks of Amgen, a company that makes drugs to treat radiation sickness. Lovely.
If WWIII kicks off soon, I hope I’m standing right beneath the first missile so that Jesus takes me away to a place where I won’t have to worry about shit like this ever again.
While disconcerting, what that hopefully means is that the government just plans on throwing huge chunks of cash Amgen’s way, not that they will actually need any of the product. Like the millions of booster shots no one is taking.
Relax. It’s just business as usual. Graft and corruption. “Nuk-yu-ler war” is the fashionable topic right now b/c the President of the United States has made insane remarks about it, and all the networks have had Colonel This and General That on TeeVee to yamjer about “nuke-yu-ler capabilities.” And so on.
It’s on TeeVee all the time, so it’s fashionable to mention at the water cooler.
And since it’s fashionable and much-talked-about now, their share price has risen, and Nancy P is not one to miss etc., etc., etc. No point in going on about it.
But what has REALLY changed? The US and Russia maintain normal diplomatic relations. There are no American boots on the ground (officially). Football is still on TV. Etc.
The only thing that has changed is the publicity given by TV to loose talk about nuke war. That’s all. It doesn’t mean a thing. It just happens to be fashionable right now, so it looms large in the minds of TV watchers. That’s all.
Putin is the new Jew. He is being totally dehumanized, so that no complaints arise about the planned destruction of him.
Assume that as a formal KGB man he is in a possession of unappealing facts about some dangerous personalities.
You mean scapegoat. Right?
Oy very! They are dehumanizing him it’s a nuddah shioah! You people are so predictable that I marvel our collective memory seems to forget your pathological mind games every century so you get to play them over and over again with each new generation.
Putin has been called Hitler for –months– yet to you, the persecuted Chosen, you say he is being isolated as jew. Just as it happened in the past those doing most of the isolating, punishing, and dirty tricks are crying the loudest about being dehumanized.
Why don’t you take Kanye and go visit the Holocaust memorial instead of attempting to spread your subversive propaganda here?
You are only right in so far as yes, Putin is being setup as a non-human demon, but largely by the same tribe that did it to Hitler in living memory. The same ones, like you, that cry out the loudest about being a victim as they grind you into dust.
Anna visits us occasionally and always demonstrates her monomania with her J3wishness and lack of awareness of how she appears to others.
It’s really Stormy Daniels.
Betcha.
Blonde hair color on sale at Katz’s Kosher!
Recall that it is the Evil Empire that has used nuclear weapons before — and those too on civilian populations. So it’s entirely plausible it will use them again.
The poor Japanese!
Why did those dastardly Americans just randomly bomb two Japanese cities with noo-klear weapons?
I blame it on the cowboy hats they all wear; gives ’em ideas.
It’s “nu-que-lur”. Get it right, griller.
Slim Pickens was Japanese?
Slimiki Pikinama
Since America is the only country in the history of mankind to actually nuke fellow human beings, the idea that they’d do it again is not as far fetched as one would hope. However, threatening a country that can respond in kind vs one that couldn’t is just a tad bit more dangerous.
This (former) country is nothing but a force for evil in multiple ways on this planet. I suppose everyone else is coming to this conclusion. However, the $64,000 question is, will anything be done about it? It’s laughable to think how we’ve always been told to worry about nukes falling into the hands of an unhinged madman. The fact is there are hundreds, if not thousands in the hands of unhinged madmen/women on this very landmass.
On another note re the Taki article, you’d think Pitt has enough fame and fortune to not have to debase himself, but I guess he thought wearing a dress was real edgy. Like all carney folk, he craves attention, especially now as he grows ever longer in the tooth.
> Since America is the only country in the history of mankind to actually nuke fellow human beings, the idea that they’d do it again is not as far fetched as one would hope.
Nukes were the only way to get Japan to unconditionally surrender without wasting hundreds of thousands of troops in a land invasion. The issue is whether unconditional surrender was absolutely necessary for the war to reach a satisfactory conclusion.
The Korean war only ended in a stalemate because MacArthur’s insane requests for nuking China repulsed everyone at home so much. Do our elites still have that repulsion today?
AFAIK, Japan did not “unconditionally” surrender. There was one condition they would not waive and that was the emperor.
Frankly, it wasn’t the nuclear bomb that made them surrender. I don’t know if it really true, but I heard a Japanese military leader say something to the effect of “one plane, one bomb, one city or a 1000 planes and 10k bombs, one Japanese city, what’s the difference”
Tokyo was bombed to the ground. I’ve read that more people were killed in the Tokyo raid than in Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined.
They surrendered because they couldn’t win, nukes or no nukes and they knew it., They did not want to pointlessly throw away millions of Japanese lives and live in rubble whether caused by A-bombs or conventional bombs and firestorms.
Yes, Japan did surrender unconditionally. Yes, the main stumbling block was the emperor as everyone swore to die for him and the thought of war trials with the emperor as the main prize was worse than death.
However, the emperor overruled (after the bomb) the cabinet and really, the military junta running the government, and ordered surrender. McArthur saved the emperor’s ass as he saw (rightly) the emperor as a key individual in uniting and controlling post war Japan. This was not popular back home as most American people wanted to start hanging these clown as they were busy doing in Germany.
In order to save his ass, the emperor was “persuaded” to begin to ease off the title of “Living God” and become more human—yet retain his symbolism of a unified Japan. To this effect, the emperor began to visit the provinces and actually meet (expose himself) to the people. He was also good at persuading folk to go along with McArthur’s program for changing the Japanese warlike culture.
It worked. The emperor is now a beloved figure with little power other than symbolic. Somewhat like the recent QE II of GB.
I’ve seen no evidence indicating Japan was on the verge of surrendering before Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Little Boy and Fat Man dramatically hastened Japan’s surrender and saved many lives on both sides of the ledger.
Japan was utterly and completely defenseless against air attacks. The conventional attacks were just as bad. Though I cannot say I’ve ever been in a firestorm, can’t say it’s something I want to do either.
AFAIK, those were the only 2 bombs we had and were extremely expensive to make before the reactors generated what they needed.
Whether any Japanese military leadership ever said those words or not, they are absolutely true. The nukes could not have done to Tokyo what thousands of planes dropping conventional bombs and incendiary devices accomplished.
A few have pointed out that the largest Christian centers allowed in Japan were in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Religiously, then that would make an eastern Holy Altar Fire to complement western Holy Altar Fire in which the Germans were the actual sacrifice.
And, we know to Whom this sacrifice was made, that it might manifest in 1948.
Hint: it wasn’t Our Guy.
Still, that does not make using them any less a terrorist attack. Instilling terror by incineration of the civilian population was its stated purpose, regardless of the ends sought. Its more likely unstated purpose was to demonstrate US power to the Soviet Union.
War is a dirty business. Inherently immoral it could be argued. The Japanese were no saints themselves and the slaughter of the Japanese army upon civilians and POW’s when waging war on the enemy was less than strategic in intent. Laying waste to their cities as the US did *could* be argued as purposeful (strategic) in breaking the “will” of the Japanese people and at least aimed at ending the war. (Of course, this was misguided thinking—but that’s another story)
This includes the use of nukes—especially nukes as those were unique weapons heretofore unknown. We purposefully choose Hiroshima and Nagasaki as they were *civilian* and untouched by normal bombing. The point was to drive home the idea that we would simply eliminate the Japanese people as a race—genocide—rather than join them in dying for their god emperor.
Indeed, the announcement by the emperor of the Japanese surrender hints at this very real possibility and goes to the argument that the nukes we dropped had precisely the persuasive effect we wanted.
Precisely. This acknowledges it was a terrorist act. People can (and have) argued back and forth ad nauseum that it was somehow justified. Justified or not (and I fall into the “not justified” camp) it was a terrorist act. What I don’t get is people who argue that it was somehow not terrorist. Of course it was – you just admitted as much. Just accept it and learn to love the bomb.
Matt. Nope, that’s not my definition of terrorism. The bombing of civilians in this case directly led to the ending of hostilities. It was purposeful, and effective. Just as say, bombing a munitions factory and killing the civilian workers inside—but infinitely more effective. In war, the civilian population *can be* a legitimate target.
How can one expect that a civilian population that works within the home country to feed and arm an army which wages war on another country is in some way not “targetable”? Of course it is. What matters here is the necessity and intent of the targeting. But being a civilian is not the deciding factor.
Yeah, it sucks to be the one targeted. And it sets one back to think that you were targeted only because you were of no special import, but simply to be an example of a new weapon’s ability to wipe you and your people off the face of the earth.
One bomber, one bomb, one city gone. Imagine knowing that the bombings heretofore were of hundreds of bombers and thousands of bombs to incinerate a single city and then not completely effective.
You do not need to be a great mind to do some simple math and extrapolation to come to the conclusion that tomorrow or the next week those hundreds of bombers might again appear. This time to target every population center in Japan. The Japanese had no way of knowing we had only the makings of one bomb left in the arsenal.
@compsci – then your definition of “terrorism” is inherently flawed. “Terrorism” was terminology used during the war to ravage a hostile country’s civilian population as to induce actual terror in said population to depress/demoralize it to such an extent as to render it incapable of conducting war. Warplanners literally used the term “terrorism” in justifying fire bombing cities.
It’s not that nukes were the only way to force the Japanese to surrender. It was the only way for the Japanese to allow themselves to surrender.
Very insightful. That’s what I should have said first and then shut up.
it’s terror bombing, not terrorism. It also crippled their industry and ability to wage war. That was BIG part of city bombing. Before feeling too sorry for the Japs, read up on the rape of Nanjing. They were some evil bastards. They were also trying to perfect dropping biological weapons on cities. The biological experiments they did in China were just evil.
Furthermore, what is the moral difference between firebombing Dresden, Tokyo and Nagasaki and Hiroshima? The people are just as dead.
That’s a distinction without a difference sans the usual nominal claims of neutralizing enemy warmaking capacities. “Terror” is the root of “terrorism”; both of which were strategic terminology applied by American and British warplanners for their air bombing doctrines. The thought went that, essentially, if you bomb civilians enough they’ll get too depressed to keep fighting. It was a bombing doctrine distinguished as being separate from the more conventional bombing of military industrial targets.
“Furthermore, what is the moral difference between firebombing Dresden, Tokyo and Nagasaki and Hiroshima? The people are just as dead.”
This is just a dumb rhetorical question; especially so when it answers itself. And especially dumb coming from you. Moral issues during wartime usually center around to what extent of force a military deploys to accomplish its objectives, not the overall prosecution of the war. Sending a flight of bombers to knock out an enemy port with conventional weapons is perfectly justified. A squad of soldiers pinned down by sniper fire in a village and calling in a concentrated artillery barrage to kill the sniper? Eh…it gets the job done, but why not send another squad to kill the sniper and leave the village (mostly) intact.
Thank you for mentioning the bio weapons and those experiments- they are the stuff of nightmares.
The bodies and records exist, so yeah, this time it was real, unlike the western myths.
“Its more likely unstated purpose was to demonstrate US power to the Soviet Union.”
Profound. I agree, as Japan was nationalist, and an expendable sidebar.
…without wasting hundreds of thousands of troops in a land invasion.
—
That was never going to happen. The issue was that the war was quickly running out of steam as Americans were not really hip to the bodies that were being stacked up because someone in D.C. didn’t want the Japanese occupying French Indochina or whatever. At that point it was either use the nukes or get the best deal that could be had out of the Japs.
(It’s really hard to Monday Morning Quarterback this, but in hindsight it seems like a peace deal should have been struck after Midway as revenge had been dealt but the situation hadn’t turned monstrous yet.)
I have never heard that the American people were tired of the Pacific war and were urging peace and negotiation. Never heard such, never read such.
The Americans were elated at the end of Germany and Hitler and were chomping at the bit to do the same to Japan and Tojo. Millions of men from the European theater were being equipped for transfer to the Pacific.
Best I’ve heard was that the discussion dwelled on whether to starve the bastards out, or invade. Starving of course was a process of unknown duration and also would have been a attack *solely* on civilians.
There was also the point of unconditional surrender. One last effort was made at asking for surrender before the bomb was dropped. The final broadcast demanding surrender (IIRC) left the emperor’s fate vague and unaddressed in the hopes of persuading the Japanese leadership to accept. They did not.
Americans were 95% against entering the war.
The war was not like war today in America. There was a ton of inflation and shortages of everything. My father used to tell me how his first bicycle had solid tires because you couldn’t get rubber. Near the whole of US industry was dedicated to fighting the war. All of the Northern cities got huge influxes of blacks from the South to take the jobs the White men had to leave to go fight/die. The term “Victory Garden,” a word I grew hearing all the time in the 70s originated because of the food shortages of WW2. The government sponsored “Victory Gardens” to make sure there was enough food.
You got ration books in the mail every month. You needed “coupons” to buy something as basic as sugar (1/2 pound per person per week). You also needed them for gasoline which was heavily rationed and many people couldn’t get ANY. etc…
Americans didn’t want to enter the war and once we did, we wanted to end as quickly as possible.
I doubt most people supported the INSANE “unconditional surrender” condition that was made US policy long before we were anywhere close to winning. Hitler offered very generous conditions after all of the initial successes. Churchill simply refused any armistice and gave his terms as unconditional surrender. The Japs offered to surrender a long time before they actually did.
I just hope one day people realize that our side was evil and lead by psychos who should not be celebrated. The only reason I have FDR as only second worst President is he has such strong competition in Lincoln.
You are full of shit.
The nukes were unnecessary.
They were mass murders for the enlightenment of the Soviets. One more war crime.
Truman nuked the Japs mainly to show Uncle Joe that he had The Bomb.
Nowadays, the Russians already know that. And THEY have it, too.
So there’s no comparison between 1945 and now.
Brad Pitt was almost certainly tainted decades ago.
In Hollywood, you have to debase yourself just to get a job cleaning the casting couch.
The West has been baiting Putin hoping that he’ll overreact. The western “elites” are on the ropes and they desperately want/need a war. The real battle, however, is the reserve currency. BRICS+ vs the West. The Federal Reserve will burn the economy to the ground trying to preserve the $ as the world’s reserve currency.
I increasingly wonder if the West NEEDS Putin to overreact in order to maintain a stable government. The GAE’s insane “statecraft by selfie” behavior doesn’t work without a villain. If GAE needs a villain… and Putin refuses to provide one… is that why GAE is also trying to provoke China? Hoping that Xi will be the (alternate) villain they need, even if the rational consequence is an unwinnable global war?
By not retaliating or escalating, Russia is emotionally starving GAE leadership. All this one-sided talk about nuclear exchanges could be international diplomacy’s version of “pay attention to me!”
No doubt that’s part of it. Of course, for the ZUSA it will just designate Putin (or Xi or Trump or whomever) the villain overreaction or none. The NPCs will accept the programming.
The neocons are already leaking the breathlessly discovered Defcon 3 secret plans for the invasion of Taiwan.
Gods help us if some moishe is somewhere nearby shtupping a cherry girl
The US dollar will be the LAST currency to go down the tubes.
The LAST.
The plan is for a Forever War. The result may be a nuclear war.
Anyone looking from the outside at the GAE knows it has gone stark-raving mad. Transgenderism alone illustrates the insanity. Any power at war with the GAE directly or indirectly realizes it is perfectly capable of a nuclear exchange. It is stunningly dangerous and one false move easily could provoke a first strike.
The rapid and reckless exit from Afghanistan, in hindsight, indicated the MIC had been told fresh meat was about to become available. The twenty-year revenue stream from fighting goat herders, and losing to them, was to be replaced with a more lucrative gig that would also go on for decades. Was the nuclear dimension even considered? Maybe it was seen as a feature rather than a bug.
If this doesn’t end in Armageddon, which grows more likely with each passing day, TPTB plan to be there until another cabal decides to make bank somewhere else. The evil at play here rivals anything that has come before it. I frankly don’t discount the maniacs who brought us to this point are capable of anything. A hostile power certainly wouldn’t doubt it.
I heard there was a sh*t-ton of gold on Mars. And diamonds! The Martians are too primitive to do anything with it, they just leave it laying around…
Plus, Martian chicks are some glass beads and a mat on the sand, know what i’m sayin’?
When Russia fell apart, the CIA probably grabbed some of its “loose nukes” at the time. Each nuke has a special “signature” to its radiation. The CIA could explode one of those on the Ukrainians, blame it on Russia, get the UN inspectors to verify, then retaliate with US nukes. And we’re off.
They could build a “Russian” nuke. One secret that many folk don’t know is what happened to the excessive stock piles of plutonium Russia left unsecured after the break up. Well, we bought it.
Boris Yeltsin sold it to the CIA. We were at that time worried about the ability to guard it and keep it off the Black Market. CIA flew gold in, plutonium out. Literally tons of it. 10,000 year life span. In hasn’t gone bad.
There you go. Thank you for the clarification.
Their motivation–and the benefit to them–being … .??
At a dinner party on Saturday, host is a decent fellow, but very reliable indicator of regime narratives. Shaking his head, “Putin is just so irrational, I’m very worried.”
I avoid regime media, so this acquaintance is quite valuable to me in this way. Makes me think Z’s analysis today is spot on.
Your acquaintance is very typical from a lot of the friends I know. If they think Putin is irrational, wait until they see who would replace him if he were removed. From what I hear, Putin is dove-ish compared to other Russian elites.
So I hear as well. Certainly Putin is admittedly self controlled as compared to just about every ruler we’ve come to know from the USSR and he appears to be free of vices. What comes next may be a return to the norm wrt Russian strong men.
And the most barking mad Russian Nationalist is sane compared to the Neocons in DC.
““Putin is just so irrational”
“Compared to who?”
Yep. Any American claiming extreme irrationality for another world leader hasn’t paid any attention to what’s been coming out of DC these last few years. Outside of Pyongyang, I doubt any world capitol is more deranged than Washington.
““Putin is just so irrational”
“Compared to who?”
Keith Olbermann.
Like so much coming out of the GAE these days, little has made any sense about this war. The things that NATO, the Brandon entity, other leaders, etc. are saying and doing makes zero sense. Most people don’t want this war, they don’t want to freeze/starve to death for a comedian, and they definitely don’t want to get nuked. This crosses political lines, even in the USA (see: AOC getting roasted in her town hall). Obviously the will of the people does not matter, but the fact remains that if the GAE had any sense of realpolitik at all, a deal to stave off war or end it quickly was easily achievable. Yet, this conflict has little to do with real circumstances and a lot to do with a primordial hatred of Russia and the Russian people. For that reason, I do agree that the West would not hesitate to start rolling out nukes on the battlefield. Remember only one country has unleashed this evil upon the world, and it isn’t Russia. Yet somehow that country convinced itself it was the good guy for doing so.
The media convinced the country via films and TV. Endless repetition and moral positioning for decades pretending to be entertainment.
They built a dreamworld to hide their actions from those slipping into the unreality.
The building back better scenario seems to make sense though the climate changers might object to the dangers of nuclear fallout. (The weather channel has been calling attention to the precarious state of Antarctic’s “doomsday ice sheet,”) I’ve thought that WW III would be a cyber/satellite/grid crushing war but that presumes that war has conventional objectives.
Odd as it may sound, if our ruling class has in mind to be the resident managers of an American satrapy in the coming pan-Asian century, for the U.S. to deplete its resources under the supervision of a China-India-Iran axis (throw in Japan and much of Africa,) our seeming insanity may also make sense.
I can’t see our elites be willing to play second fiddle to anyone. Theyr’e always scheming to benefit themselves and being a subordinate doesn’t see to be on their wishlist. They seem to regard themselves as ubermensch so serving masters that they likely see as inferior to them isn’t likely. The other races aren’t nearly enlightened enough too.
Yes, all of this talk about the GAE working to become the junior partner to China or pan-Asia is just barmy, and ill accords with the megalomania that hallmarks the GAE’s elite. These maniacs aren’t ceding power to anybody. They’d rather burn down the world than do that, and they just might.
don’t be silly. our “elites” already debase themselves for any donor that comes along.
What dangers of fallout? I agree the Gaia people are nut cases, but in the best example we have of nuke fallout—Chernobyl—we have a rather robust Gaia reaction (if what I read is true). Hell, just getting rid of humans in the area seems to be the ticket. Animals and plants are flourishing.
Now imagine you are one of those self hating environmentalists. Nuke war might just be the answer. Chernobyl for everyone, everywhere. Now that the ticket.
The radiation from a power plant and that from weapons are not the same.
The interesting part of all this is all the fancy U.S. and allied “game-changers” have been of only minimally more effectiveness against standard Russian weapons. The only real force multiplier from the west has been Starlink, that wasn’t even explicitly designed for military purposes.
It’s really looking like the Lockheed Martins and Raytheons of the MIC have been selling massively overpriced toys to the government that could be done far cheaper. All this while the Russians are filling the skies with cheap Iranian Doritos and overwhelming Ukrainian defenses. If they don’t come up with a countermeasure soon we’re going to find the entire modern war paradigm moved from heavy, expensive, weaponry to swarms of cheap and replaceable UAV’s.
Such a shift is strongly in favor of smaller militaries, who will be able to easily punch way above their weight class and terrorize their enemy.
This is a point I have been making for years with regards to drone technology. The future is not cutting edge killer robots but swarms of smart enough killer drones. Imagine a carrier being attacked by a thousand drone torpedoes and a thousand flying Doritos. The defense will knock out most of them, but that still means hundreds get through.
This also calls into question basic military doctrine in the GAE. The reason Russia has the best air defense systems in the world is they have always operated from the assumption that they would be repelling massive waves of American aircraft. The reason the GAE has never invested in air defense systems is they assumed the fighter jet would not only provide air superiority, but provide the necessary air defense systems.
We are seeing cheap semiconductors revolutionize warfare.
Re cheap drones: As a Russian once said, “quantity has a quality all its own.”
More important, the Russians still have the capacity to build cheap stuff in quantity quickly. The American doctrine tossed that out decades ago. The assumption being that all future wars of import would be over in a few weeks at most, so one would be able to rebuild at leisure after the conflict was won and all we needed was a limited supply of current weapons.
Remember that line in Star Trek “The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.” this would apply here.
How would that apply? Z’s playing somewhat loose with the term “drone swarm” in literally meaning a massive sized group of drones engaging a target. In that context, the drones would be simple and single purposed. The general rule of militaries in the past was you deployed with the bare minimum needed for your infantry to survive or, in the modern context, the cheapest you can deploy a weapon system to, both, get a task done, and that you can afford to lose.
The analogy makes more sense in the opposite direction towards the carriers. They’re floating hulks of a bygone era the US *can’t* afford to lose.
And I say “somewhat lose” because Z’s understanding of what “drone swarm” means was perfectly relevant as little as five years ago, but the technology and theoretical applications have gotten a lot more sophisticated since then. Hell, the practical applications have gotten more sophisticated, too.
Time for a huge CME to set the whole planet back a couple of centuries.
Eh, if that happened you’re looking at a big trip backwards than a couple of centuries. The world is so dependent on technology and functioning electrical grids a Carrington Event could make 1822 seem like a nigh-unfathomable heaven in comparison.
The Pentagon’s last two QDRs were full of commentary on the “asymmetrical” implications of drones/UAVs/robots etc. Everyone understands the issue. The problem, of course, is re-architecting your forces to defend against hem and to deploy them properly. This just takes years and years the way the Pentagon does things.
Some-one, might be The Duran, pointed out that the Uke’s lost a $5 million aircraft shooting down 1 $20k drone.
That’s leverage Lockheed shareholders can get behind.
Chet, et al,
A fee years back I was following a fellow, John Robb, at his website, Global Guerillas. He had a military background, and was live to the disruptive possibilities of drone technology (along with other disruptive trends). Here is a link to one of his posts from back at the end of 2018. In it, after a prophetic preamble concerning what one might anticipate seeing politically, he highlights the daylong shutdown of London’s Gatwick Airport through the use of drones, specifically pointing to the massive ROI for the “attackers” through their tactics. (I would not be too surprised if this incident was a Proof of Concept perhaps even instigated by some Deep State faction rather than merely the actions of a group of anarchists.)
https://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/
Hope that this link works, seems pretty abbreviated…
Amyway, Robb was speaking at that time of the potential of drone swarms, and with the advances in AI in subsequent years, this offensive potential has only been exacerbated. Also, the possibilities for observational drones in target spotting and targetting information for drones, artillery, and air assets has been amply demonstrated in the Russians’ use in Ukraine.
A very good quality Armenian army was recently crushed by an Azerbaijan drone based attack . they too used Iranian drones. clearly 50 years of sanctions on iran have not left them helpless.
Chet-
After 20 years in the MIC I’d say 80 to 90% of every USD spent is consumed by various inefficiencies like red tape, make work, office politics, turnbacks, fraud, and simple waste.
The underperformance and failures of all the systems dumped into Ukraine are no surprise to me. Heck, I’m no mechanical engineer, but after reading about the M777 howitzer I was able to accurately predict the failures that have been reported.
I can’t help but think of a bit in the book Band of Brothers where the author remarked that with all the graft in the supply chain that it was amazing any supplies reached the frontline troops at all. That was in a fairly high-trust society fighting what was nominally a fight for survival (although, one or both of those wasn’t true).
I am friends with a Marine F-35 pilot who joined the Reserves after 17 or so years. When he got out defense contractors were lining up to hire him at inflated salaries so he could schmooze the people still in. He isn’t an engineer, in fact his degree I think is in drafting CAD/CAM stuff. He is presentable, friendly and totally useless to a contractor. But in spite of this, he’s making somewhere around 200k a year.
His work week consists of Zoom calls, travel to meetings and work from home. I like the guy so I don’t ask what he actually does to benefit our defense. I’d rather, I guess, give him my tax dollars rather than Shanequa but it still gripes me when I think about it.
Multiply his money by thousands and it’s pretty easy to see why we spend so much and get so little benefit from it. Benefit to the security of the nation that is. The folks on that gravy trail do benefit a lot.
Yep, that’s why I never get any warm and fuzzies when I hear our military budget is greater than the next 10 country’s budgets combined.
I saw something a while ago that 5 of the 6 richest Counties in the US are contiguous to DC.
The other was Greenwich in CT.- Hedgies.
The US magic weapons aren’t working.
The sanctions are killing our allies and making Russia stronger.
Mass propaganda hasn’t convinced China, India, or even Israel that Russia is a pariah state.
Nukes are all the US has left. It’s insane; the US loses wars all the time…why does this one have to be the end of the world?
From the sounds of it, the regime seems to think that giving an inch on the Ukraine war is the end of NATO and maybe the end of the EU and the Global American Empire. Why they think this is hard to know, other than it is not based in hard facts. The GAE, EU and NATO could have made a good deal with Russia over the Ukraine. Luhansk and Donetsk are autonomous, Ukraine is trued into a neutral buffer zone and the Russians give up all future territorial claims. In retrospect, that would have been a great deal for all involved.
And one the Russians would have agreed to. It is not much less than they have for asked since 2014.
There is something at play here beyond the normal greed. It may be so irrational we can’t grok it. I suspect ethnic grievance is driving much of it but that probably is more rational than the actual motive.
“Independent (from Russia) Ukraine” became an axiom in politics. If you convince yourself that Ukraine is the key to defeat Russia (Brzezinski), temptation becomes very strong. This understanding of geopolitics has been ruling over Vistula for decades now, hence the unconditional support, even at a cost of Polish minority interests.
Any compromise means Russia secures its foothold for expansion in Eastern Europe, reflected in current propaganda which is the same as during the Georgian crisis.
One could hypothesize that the West dreamt new Barbarossa operation, because chasing Mohammed around the world was no longer a primary concern and taking out Russia is a prerequisite for squeezing China.
Complete conjecture on my part, but Potomac overlords must’ve concluded that Putin is going to rebuild Russian power no matter what and would never settle for junior position to GAE.
Is anyone in Poland talking about the fact that there are now millions of Ukrainians in Poland that will never return home and will soon become a political bloc in Poland? This strikes me as something Poles should fear more than the Russians.
Polish equivalent of dissident Right. In Parliament, mostly few MEPs from Konfederacja who are routinely slandered as Putin agents.
In the infosphere we’re grossly outmatched. Media prefer to trumpet how our economy and pension system will benefit from new workers.
Real estate is already under assault as Ukrainians are buying apartments left and right. Wage depression isn’t severe because of still high demand for workers.
Political implications of Ukrainian diaspora are completely absent from the mainstream.
I am surprised that the political dimension has not landed on the minds of the Right. This was a problem in the past when Poland acquired a chunk of Galicia. I believe there is a Ruthenian separatist movement, so any questions over the border between Ukraine and Poland will raise all sort of problems with long histories.
I can see the liberals thinking all of this can be papered over with platitudes and iPhones, but the conservatives should know better.
This is one of the cases where vague understanding of Polish politics causes foreigners to have wrong assumptions about our discourse. I could write in detail in other comment, but for now I will say that most of the conservative realists are outside of the mainstream. I formed in that tradition when going through the dissident web. That’s where thinkers like Joseph de Maistre are being taught.
Is someone like Ryszard Legutko still allowed in public or would he be the dissident fringe now?
Prof. Legutko is in the mainstream when it comes to Ukraine. His opinions aren’t hugely different from establishment although I think he gives more thought to the danger of neo-banderism.
You probably know him from his critique of liberalism in “Demon in Democracy”. Legutko is more invested in criticizing western liberals and the EU, but has no interesting concepts for Eastern policy that would break with prevailing consensus. All that is on the fringes, because even postcommunists are on the EU/NATO train.
Interesting. I read his book and I am surprised that he is not making the connection between liberalism and the current crisis, but history does funny things to people. Of course, in the US we have a similar problem, so maybe it is to be expected. Many dissidents here are trapped in the 20th century liberal framework, even as they criticize aspects of it.
Anyway, I can explain more in separate thread or by email. Presenting historical context and identity issues are a must to even begin explaining this conundrum of political thinking in my nation especially post 89′.
Poles are moving out of Poland in droves.
They are thick on the ground in Phoenix and Portland. Generally surfing the IT trades.
Looked into Madame Swaritzki’s crystal ball this am, and she predicted that Israel will repatriate half it’s citizens to Ukraine within 5 years.
Well, that’d have porential to put paid to the Intermarium movement, having millions of irredentist Neozionists athwart their project for a block of peoples with different interests than those of western Europe/Atlanticists.
This could certainly serve as an explanation for the fanaticism over the Ukraine conflict. It was all going so nicely until that Eevul Russian, Putin shoved a stick into their spokes. And he got their attention when he came to the aid of the Syrians, and beyond that there was a budding rapprochment with the Iranians, too.
You’re there so maybe you’ll have an answer for me. Why does Poland care if the Ukraine and Ukrainians exist? With the history of the two peoples, why wouldn’t they be quietly rooting for Russia?
Granted, Russia has been no friend of Poland but the Banderites have done a lot more than Russia ever has when you take into account the numbers. Plus Bandera’s disciples seem to enjoy their work.. With the Soviet Union it seemed to be more of a job, nothing personal just business.
Will give more detailed response tomorrow.
Keywords for now: Partitions, Prometheism, Romanticism, anti-communism vs. russophobia, Polish Intelligentsia, Eastern Borderlands.
Anti-Russian sentiment emerged strongly ever since Poland disappeared from the map in late XVIII century. Revolutionary movements hated Russia in particular for its highly reactionary political regime and often saw France as their inspiration.
Romanticism was a formative period for early Polish nationalism when writers like Adam Mickiewicz and thinkers like Andrzej Towiański infected Polish political thinking with mysticism and quasi-religious thinking.Those ideas influenced insurrectonists who conducted 2 major failed uprisings in XIX century. Hatred between Poles and Russians was often a desired goal of main ideologues behind the uprisings (“even if we lose, reconcilliation won’t be possible!”). Additionally, great powers like France and England stoked fires under insurrection to weaken Russian Empire.
Various Polish nobles became involved in creating Belorussian and early-Ukrainian identity after repressions as those people used to be a part of our Eastern Borderlands.
In the XXth century those traditions (insurrectionism, political messianism) became a ground for Prometheist movement that was an important part of Federational Idea. Favored by marshall Józef Piłsudski the idea promoted independece of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania as federated states between Poland and the Soviet Russia. Nationalists under Roman Dmowski however promoted annexation of majority-Polish areas and assimilation of minorities. After Polish-Bolshevik war and conflicts with Lithuania, Federation idea pretty much died and was only brought up during WWII on emigration.
During socialist era any crtitique of our dearest brotherly allies was forbidden so anti-communism was often equated with anti-russian stance which helped marxist revisionists to become first dissidents beloved by the West. The idea was considered as corrupted by communist parties.
While Katyn massacre was a recognized taboo, memory about genocide in Volhynia was less acknowledeged in common discourse and mostly among Borderlanders whom it affected directly.
During the twillight of socialist era, independist movements in Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine was very welcomed by huge part of Polish intelligentsia that carried all those aforementioned traditions and hoped to restore Promethean ideas. For that they overlooked nationalist and ofetn anti-Polish messaging of those movements becasue as Dmowski once said: “Some hate Russia more than they love Poland”.
The axiom that “without independent Ukraine there is no independent Poland” was coined by the same intellectuals that continue to rule our discourse. For that they’re willing to overlook the cult of Bandera as long as Ukraine is set against Russia. Most common Poles never really cared about Ukraine and often treated it as no-better-than-Russia, but the current hysteria brought waves of sympathy toward the invaded. Fatigue is already setting in though and we may see the pendulum swinigning back in society while idiots in Warsaw behave like all is fine and rainbows. You can already find people on the Internet expressing satisfaction that 2 of our enemies are bleeding each other out. And that we get to have dalliances with their women in the meantime.
Suffice to say, GAE and UK are happy to aid in stoking fires again.
The Western elites think it’s the end of NATO and the GAE if Ukraine doesn’t win because it is impossible for them to comprehend conceding any power. They believe their place is at the top of a unipolar world and any concession and loss of power to Russia is defeat and it is unthinkable. They think it is better to kill yourself then suffer any loss which is why this suicide cult is growing all around us. It is always seemed to me that they would be the first to use nukes, that their pride and desperation would demand it. They’re becoming unhinged and radical and Putin is opposite. His progress is slow and methodical, he has actually annexed territory from another country without losing support of major allies, now the rest of the world is taking notice. The Western elites myopia makes them think they are the entire world, but they are not and many are looking around thinking it would be better not to be under their thumb any longer and are well aware that there are many within the GAE that feel the same.
Well, Biden is a Scorpio so that makes sense..
I was reading an interesting article the other day about October 1962’s 16-hour Berlin Standoff at Checkpoint Charlie. US and Soviet heavy armor faced each other down at 75 meters near the Brandenburg Gate. What wasn’t known at the time is that the US had deployed PLATOON-LEVEL tactical nukes called “Davy Crocketts” to be used in a first strike! That means a Staff Sergeant could have started WWIII…and it all came about because a US State Department wonk had wanted to go to the opera in East Berlin but the East German police wouldn’t let him in without presenting his passport. So insanity isn’t new, we just have even stupider leaders who fall below the minimum competency threshold. Look at the UK…
You see the same thing domestically, no capitulation on even the smallest matters. One solid suspicion is that our rulers think that if there is a “snap back” that it won’t stop, that it wouldn’t be a slight mellowing of ideology but a purge of everything (and everyone) that forced the current ideology in to the world.
It’s not an unreasonable suspicion on their part.
I share the same suspicion. Is it possible that the media and other outlets have been full of shit for the last 50 years and we just assumed what they told us was popular that we didn’t care for wasn’t really that popular to begin with? The last few years would suggest yes.
Robert Mueller, the Colombia School of Journo’s and ‘National Healthcare’ will all be “defenestrated.”
The entire media facade RE Global Warming, ‘The War On Women,” and Affirmative Action must be crumpled like cheap cellophane and trashed. There are BILLIONS of dollars mal-invested in these, campaigns, and they all need yo fail.
This is horrifying to the peddlars of these scams, because the Piper must be paid. Furthermore, the elites who generate these grafittis made promises to very unscrupulous people fro Asia, Turkey and Iran, who don’t play soft-ball just because you’re a ‘Pelosi,’ or a ‘Kerry,’ or a ‘Clinton.’
Payback is coming, and it’s gonna be a bitch!
None of this would have happened if they just enforced the Minsk agreement that France and Germany guaranteed.
Instead they stood by while 14,000 Russians were murdered.
it won’t . but the CCP has bought our politicians and both parties. they want the west bankrupted , neutered , and demilitarized . look at who benefits from all this craziness. Defend Tiawan? hell , our trans and LBGT military couldn’t defend long island .