refusing to implement the UN security council resolution 2202......

The conflict between the advocates of "a world based on rules" and those who advocate a return to "a world based on international law" continues. It began with the Russian military intervention in Ukraine and will last for years.

The military situation on the ground is blocked, as always in winter in this part of the world. The supporters of "a world based on rules" still refuse to implement the UN Security Council Resolution 2202, while those of "a world based on international law" are conducting a special military operation to implement it. In the end, they gradually moved away from it and stabilized the situation of the people of Novarussia.

by Thierry Meyssan

The transition from a war of movement to a war of position allowed each protagonist to reflect on the reasons that pushed him into the battle. From now on, it is no longer two visions of international relations that face each other, but two conceptions of Man.

Among the troops of Kiev, we must distinguish the "integral nationalists", always ardent in the fight, from the professional soldiers and the citizens mobilized for the occasion. The former are ideologically trained men who consider that killing Russians is a sacred immemorial duty. They refer to the writings of Dmytro Dontsov and to the example of Stepan Bandera. The former was the administrator of the Reinhard Heydrich Institute in Prague and, as such, was one of the designers of the "final solution of the Jewish and Gypsy questions", the latter was the leader of the Ukrainian collaborators of Nazism against the Soviets. The other group of Kiev soldiers, which made up two-thirds of them at the beginning of the Russian intervention, is in no mood. They see that Western weapons are being delivered to the "integral nationalists," but not to them. They are considered as cannon fodder and suffer very heavy losses. Social networks abound with video messages of units protesting against their officers. There was a first wave of discontent in the fall. This is the second. If they thought they were defending their homeland against an invader, they now know that their country is in the hands of a clique that has purged the libraries, taken control of all the country’s media, banned 13 political parties and the Orthodox Church, and is ultimately establishing an authoritarian regime. Last week, President Zelensky’s former communications adviser, Colonel Oleksiy Arestovich, told them that Ukraine was fighting the wrong battle and wrongly considered six million of its citizens as "Russian agents". They know that most of the journalists have been arrested and most of the lawyers have fled abroad. They therefore feel threatened by both the Russian military and their own government. The multiple corruption scandals, which broke out last week, confirm to them that they are only pawns between the United States and Russia.

On the Russian side, the opposite is true: the professional troops who were deployed at the beginning of the special operation obeyed without understanding why the Kremlin sent them to Ukraine, the region that gave birth to their homeland. The Russian population feared a return to the massacres of the past. Little by little, things calmed down. The bobos went into exile. I was very surprised when a Russian friend commented to me: "Good riddance! He didn’t seem worried about their departure, but relieved not to have to face them anymore. The population, which was very shocked by the Western measures against its artists and against its past glories, became aware that Ukraine is only a pretext for something else. It was also surprised to see the alignment of the populations of the European Union with Washington. It is, in its eyes, a war against its civilization, a war against the heritage of Tolstoy and Pushkin, not against the policy of President Putin. This proud people, always eager to evaluate its ability to defend its own and its honor, observes with sadness the arrogance of the West, their feeling not to serve the Good, but to embody the Good.

The political arguments that President Putin set out in December 2021, when he published his draft bilateral US-Russia Treaty on Security Guarantees [1] are outdated. This is no longer a war to defend interests. If the Russian protagonists understand that they are not fighting for something, but for survival, the West does not interpret the conflict in this way. For them, the Russians are blinded by the propaganda of their regime. They are unknowingly fighting to restore the greatness of the Tsarist Empire or the Soviet Union.

This type of conflict is extremely rare. One thinks of the conflict between Rome and Carthage, which ended with the destruction of all vestiges of Carthaginian civilization. To the point that we ignore today almost everything of it. At most we know that it was built by people from Tyre (now Lebanon, the stronghold of Hezbollah) and that its leader, Hannibal, sought refuge in Damascus and other Syrian cities when his city was destroyed. We also know that it had developed in good understanding with its neighbors and partners, while Rome had conquered its empire by force. I had already made this connection with the war against Syria when Russia intervened. The parallel is becoming more and more obvious. The two blocs have nothing in common anymore.

In the West, the events in Ukraine are seen as a war between the United States and Russia, through Ukrainians. The "integral nationalists" are certain, not to resist the one they consider the invader, but to defeat him, today or in the "final battle". This is their destiny, they think. But leaving aside the mystical delusions of Dmytro Dontsov, how can one imagine that 40 million Ukrainians could defeat 140 million Russians, knowing that the latter have weapons that are twenty years more modern than those of the West?

The members of the Ramstein Group, i.e. in practice the United States and the European Union, have already spent more than 250 billion dollars on this war, i.e. as much in one year as for the ten years of war against Syria. If we are to compare the two conflicts, we should note that in international law, Russia is right in both cases, while the United States has assembled a larger coalition against Syria, but has considerably more involved its allies in Ukraine.

Unlike Hannibal, President Putin has no intention of taking the capital of his adversaries, Washington. He is aware of his military superiority and will not alienate the people of the West by bringing the war home, except perhaps against their "elites" at the Foreign Office and the Pentagon.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation

Roger Lagassé

https://www.voltairenet.org/article218751.html

this time is different.....

BY Douglas Macgregor

Until it decided to confront Moscow with an existential military threat in Ukraine, Washington confined the use of American military power to conflicts that Americans could afford to lose, wars with weak opponents in the developing world from Saigon to Baghdad that did not present an existential threat to U.S. forces or American territory. This time—a proxy war with Russia—is different.

Contrary to early Beltway hopes and expectations, Russia neither collapsed internally nor capitulated to the collective West’s demands for regime change in Moscow. Washington underestimated Russia’s societal cohesion, its latent military potential, and its relative immunity to Western economic sanctions.

As a result, Washington’s proxy war against Russia is failing. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was unusually candidabout the situation in Ukraine when he told the allies in Germany at Ramstein Air Base on January 20, “We have a window of opportunity here, between now and the spring,” admitting, “That’s not a long time.”

Alexei Arestovich, President Zelensky’s recently fired advisor and unofficial “Spinmeister,” was more direct. He expressed his own doubts that Ukraine can win its war with Russia and he now questions whether Ukraine will even survive the war. Ukrainian losses—at least 150,000 dead including 35,000 missing in action and presumed dead—have fatally weakened Ukrainian forces resulting in a fragile Ukrainian defensive posture that will likely shatter under the crushing weight of attacking Russian forces in the next few weeks.

Ukraine’s materiel losses are equally severe. These include thousands of tanks and armored infantry fighting vehicles, artillery systems, air defense platforms, and weapons of all calibers. These totals include the equivalent of seven years of Javelin missile production. In a setting where Russian artillery systems can fire nearly 60,000 rounds of all types—rockets, missiles, drones, and hard-shell ammunition—a day, Ukrainian forces are hard-pressed to answer these Russian salvos with 6,000 rounds daily. New platform and ammunition packages for Ukraine may enrich the Washington community, but they cannot change these conditions.

Predictably, Washington’s frustration with the collective West’s failure to stem the tide of Ukrainian defeat is growing. In fact, the frustration is rapidly giving way to desperation.

Michael Rubin, a former Bush appointee and avid supporter of America’s permanent conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan, vented his frustration in a 1945 article asserting that, “if the world allows Russia to remain a unitary state, and if it allows Putinism to survive Putin, then, Ukraine should be allowed to maintain its own nuclear deterrence, whether it joins NATO or not.” On its face, the suggestion is reckless, but the statement does accurately reflect the anxiety in Washington circles that Ukrainian defeat is inevitable.

NATO’s members were never strongly united behind Washington’s crusade to fatally weaken Russia. The governments of Hungary and Croatia are simply acknowledging the wider European public’s opposition to war with Russia and lack of support for Washington’s desire to postpone Ukraine’s foreseeable defeat.

Though sympathetic to the Ukrainian people, Berlin did not support all-out war with Russia on Ukraine’s behalf. Now, Germans are also uneasy with the catastrophic condition of the German armed forces.

Retired German Air Force General (four-star equivalent) Harald Kujat, former chairman of the NATO Military Committee, severely criticized Berlin for allowing Washington to railroad Germany into conflict with Russia, noting that several decades of German political leaders actively disarmed Germany and thus deprived Berlin of authority or credibility in Europe. Though actively suppressed by the German government and media, his comments are resonating strongly with the German electorate.

The blunt fact is that in its efforts to secure victory in its proxy war with Russia, Washington ignores historical reality. From the 13th century onward, Ukraine was a region dominated by larger, more powerful national powers, whether Lithuanian, Polish, Swedish, Austrian, or Russian.

In the aftermath of the First World War, abortive Polish designs for an independent Ukrainian State were conceived to weaken Bolshevik Russia. Today, Russia is not communist, nor does Moscow seek the destruction of the Polish State as Trotsky, Lenin, Stalin, and their followers did in 1920.

So where is Washington headed with its proxy war against Russia? The question deserves an answer.

On Sunday December 7, 1941, U.S. Ambassador Averell Harriman was with Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill having dinner at Churchill’s home when the BBC broadcast the news that the Japanese had attacked the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. Harriman was visibly shocked. He simply repeated the words, “The Japanese have raided Pearl Harbor.”

Harriman need not have been surprised. The Roosevelt administration had practically done everything in its power to goad Tokyo into attacking U.S. forces in the Pacific with a series of hostile policy decisions culminating in Washington’s oil embargo during the summer of 1941.

In the Second World War, Washington was lucky with timing and allies. This time it’s different. Washington and its NATO allies are advocating a full-blown war against Russia, the devastation and breakup of the Russian Federation, as well as the destruction of millions of lives in Russia and Ukraine.

Washington emotes. Washington does not think, and it is also overtly hostile to empiricism and truth. Neither we nor our allies are prepared to fight all-out war with Russia, regionally or globally. The point is, if war breaks out between Russia and the United States, Americans should not be surprised. The Biden administration and its bipartisan supporters in Washington are doing all they possibly can to make it happen.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/this-time-its-different/

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By Gus Leonisky at 4 Feb 2023 - 5:14pm
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falling apart.....

GUSNOTE: AS THE AMERICAN EMPIRE IS FALLING APART, IT IS A TIME WHEN IT COULD BE AT ITS MOST DANGEROUS — LIKE A CORNERED WOUNDED BEAST. AUSTRALIA SHOULD REMINDS ITSELF THAT EVERYTIME THE EMPIRE INVOLVED AUSTRALIA, THINGS WENT CROOKED... THIS PATTERN ISN'T GOING TO IMPROVE AS THE AMERICAN EMPIRE PLANS TO HAVE A RIDICULOUS "WAR" WITH CHINA...

Written by Eric Zuesse

In order to understand why, the nature of imperialism, and thus of all empires, needs first to be explained (especially because almost no one knows about this):

Whereas a merely domestic dictatorship is no danger to other nations, an international dictatorship — or “empire” — is a danger to other nations, because every empire (i.e., each of the individuals who actually control it) craves to increase or expand its (their) control, and because this imperialistic craving is or ought to be part of the very definition of “empire” because every empire is built in that way (insatiable desire for growth), and also because any empire is heading for extinction to the extent that it quits this aspiration and abandons any area that it formerly did control. The difference between the regime of Franco in Spain, and the regime of Hitler in Germany, that necessitated a World War (specifically WW II) in order for other nations to protect themselves from Hitler’s fascism but not from Franco’s fascism, was precisely that Hitler’s was imperialistic and Franco’s was not. If Hitler and Hirohito and Mussolini had not been imperialistic, then there would have been no WW II. (The public in every nation were opposed to entering war against the imperialistic fascists but ultimately only the most rigid fools could any longer deny that the only alternative to war against the imperialistic fascists would be surrender to them — and so there was WW II. Isolationism and preaching ‘peace’ in the face of imperialists is short-sighted foolishness. That foolishness ends by being invaded: by means of subversion, sanctions, coup, and/or military action.) There can be no peace with an empire, unless it’s an expired one. Empires are the very engines of war, and of nearly constant war.

Starting from 25 July 1945, America became imperialistic — adopted, in fact, the goal of taking control over the entire world — when its new President, Harry S. Truman, decided to accept the advice from his hero, General Dwight Eisenhower (supported by the British imperialist Winston Churchill) for the United States to become not only an empire but the ONLY empire (which Churchill’s nation UK, would, Churchill hoped, secretly control behind-the-scenes) and take over the entire world, but especially win the Soviet Union — and so the “Cold War” that was to be (so the fool Truman was led to believe) ‘between communism=dictatorship versus capitalism=democracy’ started and then became permanently installed by Truman’s immediate successor, President Eisenhower. Those two Presidents actually created the military-industrial complex (MIC) or the U.S. Government that would become controlled by the largest corporations (such as Lockheed) whose main or entire market would be the U.S. Government and its vassal-nations or ‘allies’ (such as Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the entirety of the former British Empire), which would be the customer-Governments for those U.S.-and-allied, or imperial, weapons-manufacturers. And, when the biggest weapons-manufacturers control the Government, rather than the Government controlling the biggest weapons-manufacturers, that isn’t merely capitalism, but it is dictatorial capitalism: it is “fascism.” In fact: it is imperialistic fascism — the most dangerous type of Government that exists in the modern era.

What Churchill in 1946 dubbed “the Special Relationship” (the umbilical cord connecting the U.S. to the UK) had actually been invented by the British magnate Cecil Rhodes, privately, in 1877, before it was institutionalized by Rhodes in his will upon his death in 1902. One of his friends and followers was the then-young Winston Churchill.

The 1911 book Cecil Rhodes: His Private Life, says of Rhodes (p. 256), “He was very much entertained by Mr. Churchill’s ready wit and clever conversation, and he listened intently to his views on the political questions of the day. He admired his intellectual powers, which, in conjunction with his dash and ‘go,’ he said must inevitably bring him to front.”

Whatever else might be said of Rhodes, he was both extraordinarily prophetic and extraordinarily effective. (Likewise so, is Rhodes’s follower in the present day, George Soros, who cites the philosopher Karl Popper but acts like, and channels, instead, Cecil Rhodes.) However, now, after Rhodes’s operation’s enormous success, starting on 25 July 1945, it is taking desperate gambles to continue in control, which gambles are effective only in a short-term sense, because the sheer corruption within it is rotting it out so much as to be bringing it down. And that is what is happening. The UK/U.S. operation is now in its decline-phase and is responding the more desperately and destructively as that decline becomes evermore clear. Its arrogance is placing such pressure upon their vassal-nations as to be increasingly forcing a breaking-up of “The Western Alliance” — the (UK)/U.S.-and-allied countries. Yet, at the same time, the UK/U.S. alliance is doing all it can to bring some of its vassal-nations, such as Japan, South Korea, Finland, and Sweden, even more tightly into the fold. However, any success in that regard will come at a higher cost to the UK/U.S. empire than has been the case in the past. To most observers, the decline and fall of “The West” is now at least as apparent as what had been the case during the Roman embodiment; and if the UK/U.S. will persist now, the result will be even more catastrophic than what happened to the empires of Germany, Italy, and Japan from WW II. It will be even uglier than WW II.

On February 3rd, I headlined “RT: NATO Nations Start to Go Public About U.S. Government’s International Dictatorship” and remarked upon how amazing it was that on that date, both Turkiye and Hungary were publicly insulting the U.S. Government. Such boldness and independence from two of the current era’s lone remaining empire’s vassal-nations (or at least they had been, up till that point in time) is historically unprecedented. How the U.S. dictatorship will be able to continue to call itself a “democracy” after having been declared simultaneously by two of its vassal-nations to be instead an arrogantly bullying dictatorship, seems hard to fathom. Maybe it will even cause some other of the dictatorship’s vassal-nations, such as Japan, South Korea, Finland, and Sweden, to have second thoughts about drawing themselves even closer than they already are.

America’s Government is on the war-path and has been since 1945, in the name of ‘freedom, democracy, and human rights’ but lying all the way and now getting too close to the precipice of WW III. How many of its ‘allies’ will stay with it to that end?

There is sound reason why global polls show that America is the #1 country that is cited as posing the world’s biggest threat to peace. Global polls didn’t exist during World War II, but if they had, then America certainly wouldn’t have been viewed that way then; probably Nazi Germany would have been. And America has risen to take its place.

The U.S. Congressional Research Service’s list of U.S. invasions (including increases in existing invasions) lists and briefly describes 297 such invasions after WW II (i.e., during 1945-2022, a 77-year period), and is titled “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2022”. That 297 U.S. invasions in the past 77 years is more than all of the instances put together during 1798-1945 — a 147-year period. And none of those 297 invasions was defensive. All were unConstitutional. Most of them were purely aggressions (some in order to help a foreign tyrant suppress his own population). America’s Founders had insisted there be no “standing army” in this nation. Until Truman established the ‘Defense’ Department and CIA in 1947, there wasn’t any. That created America’s military-industrial complex.

Anyway, Ukraine’s & Russia’s Defense Ministers agree (but NATO disagrees) that the war in Ukraine is between NATO & Russia, not between Ukraine & Russia; this is already WW III, and the only significant question about it now is whether it’s going to reach a final nuclear stage. This will depend upon how far Washington is willing to go in order to persist in the objective that Hitler had, to control ultimately the entire world. And the likelihood of its going all the way to global annihilation will considerably reduce if the U.S. empire soon starts to break up. Which could happen, starting soon.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

https://southfront.org/the-u-s-empire-is-starting-to-fall-apart/

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