Saturday 23rd of November 2024
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US and its lackeys playing supreme being to the bitter end....

Every generation, or thereabouts, has its moment of unlearning or forgetting two salutary lessons that should be indelibly imprinted on the memory and the consciousness with the advent of war: first, idiosyncrasies or hubris, or both, can overpower political leaders; second allies are not necessarily friends no matter how much they may seem like us, nor are we like them. The appearances are an illusion. Worse, assuming the identity of the ally is an appropriation unworthy of a sovereign, ethical people; indeed, it is an indictment.

 

Allies playing gods     By Michael McKinley

 

Currently, people of an informed and critical disposition are provoked to find meaning in the extension of the Russia-Ukraine War into the indefinite future as it takes on a form whereby the relevant political leaders supporting Ukraine are acting as its executioners, not as its champions.

Surely, the statistics (cited here from an article by the eminent American commentator and former diplomat, Chas Freeman) from 2014 to the end of 2023, in terms of the dead, the maimed, and the destruction, were proof that it was all too much even then:

Specifically, then, the need is to understand the futility of what the leadership ordains as their behaviours exceed the bounds of legal and discretionary strategies and descend into the realm where arrogance and excessive pride reign. There, by talking “heroic war,” they disown those they claim to hold most dear – their kin, fellow citizens, and allies.

Of extraordinary importance in all of this is the imperative for Australia to refresh its strategic memory. At the heart of this is the disinterring of an odious habit of those that Menzies chose to call “our great and powerful friends:” history records them being, when it suits, remarkably generous with the blood of others.

Their collective decision to support Ukraine beyond any hope of success is but the most recent chapter.

Think Churchill, who, more than anything else, was judged by his wartime reputation as a leader, rather than the other way around a fact that almost disappears the blood sacrifice to be found in his defeats. Yet they are tawdry – as witness his hysterical February 1942 cable to General Wavell “about the unthinkable prospect of the loss of Singapore:”

There must at this stage be no thought of saving the troops or sparing the population. The battle must be fought to the bitter end at all costs . . . . Commanders and senior officers should die with their troops. The honour of the British Empire and of the British Army is at stake. I rely on you to show no mercy in any form. With the Russians fighting as they are and the Americans so stubborn at Luzon, the whole reputation of our country and our race is involved.

This, it should be noted, was in the context of Churchill’s belief that the soldiers he required to fight “to the bitter end” were insufficiently worthy for the great deeds and great sacrifices that were expected of them. Specifically, he was “hoping, in his own words, to impress the Americans by a great human sacrifice.”

That his order was countermanded by the Allied Supreme Commander in Southeast Asia, General Archibald Wavell was, overall, of little consolation: the General Officer Commanding Malaya, Lieutenant-General Percival, was a career officer who had never commanded an Army Corps, fought for a time (at the cost of 2,500 dead and 1,400 wounded amongst the Australians) then, with Wavell’s consent, surrendered, to become a Prisoner of War, and with him, 100,000, including 15,000 Australians.

It was also in the context of a Churchillian disposition of an entirely sinister character – namely, via appeasement of Hirohito, to close off the supply routes through Burma for the Nationalist Chinese resistance to Japan, and then to barter away the imperial periphery, in dealings with Roosevelt and Hitler, Northern Ireland, the Falkland Islands, the Channel Islands, Malta, Gibraltar, and British colonies in Africa and the Caribbean. 

The particular case of the Australia – Great Britain relationship of the late 1930s and early 1940s is to the point. In return for Australia’s commitment to Britain’s defence in 1939, the latter promised to defend Australia from any Japanese attack with little real thought or concern for the possibility of it ever being implemented.

When, however, such a guarantee was required to be implemented, Churchill not only tried to prevent substantial American forces being set to the Pacific, but even attempted to delay the repatriation of Australian troops to a country that was basically defenceless before the advancing Japanese forces.

Such perfidy, nevertheless, would seem to have been a matter of policy for Great Britain. According to papers captured from the British steamer Automedon by the Germans, after they had sunk it off the Nicobar Islands in November 1940, the British War Cabinet had by that date already abandoned any hope of saving Singapore and Malaya in the event of a Japanese attack, and were communicating this to their Commander-in-Chief, Far East, Air Chief Marshall Sir Robert Brooke-Popham.

Churchill was thus not only aware that this secret would soon be passed to Japan but decided that the loss of the documents was so sensitive that it, too, was a secret, and so allowed Australia to continue pouring reinforcements into Singapore.

For those in Australia who hoped that the future might be an improvement on the past, the Vietnam War was a reminder that, though alliance leaders might change, their behaviour remains constant.

The public rationale for the necessity of war was to be found in a politically defensible mélange which consisted of the racist mechanics of the “Domino Theory,” a fear of “wars of national liberation” in Southeast Asia, and the containment of China.

The principle concern of the United States was, according the Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara, that South Vietnam be “regarded as a test case” that “would demonstrate the will and the ability of the United States . . . . as the most powerful nation in the world . . . to have its way in world affairs.”

And this indeed was what the Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security Affairs, John T. McNaughton, outlined in a now infamous memorandum in 1964. 

The objective often attributed to the US – that South Vietnam should enjoy a “better freer, way of life” – was barely a priority at all, being accorded only 10 percent of the overall rationale.

But this was only part of a transformation by McNamara to thinking and behaving according to a script by Churchill: in his memoirs and other published works he locates his conclusion that the war was “militarily unwinnable” in 1965–1966, even as early as 1964. But there is no record of him ever communicating his pessimisms and misgivings to the President.

What is on record are his memoranda – such as the one jointly written with National Security Adviser, McGeorge Bundy, on 27 January 1965, before the full extent of the US troop build–up, and before the (Australian) National Service Act (1964) had been amended to require conscripts to serve overseas – recommending that the President pursue a military solution in Vietnam.

It should be noted that, when he left office in 1968 US casualties numbered some 25,000; in the period of his continuing silence through to the end of the War, they increased by another 23,000. In Australia the figures were 209 dead and over 1,500 wounded.

McNamara’s will to power coupled with the provocations overseen by Zbigniew Brzezinski leading up to the Soviet Union’s move in to Afghanistan still infuse the American strategic imaginary. Ukraine was where they found application.

In 2019 a Pentagon-commissioned RAND Corporation study was published with the title of Overextending and Unbalancing Russia – in effect it was blueprint for entrapping Russia in a war with Ukraine.

Its contents comprehensively examined nonviolent, cost-imposing options that the United States and its allies could pursue across economic, political, and military areas to stress—overextend and unbalance—Russia’s economy and armed forces and the regime’s political standing at home and abroad.

To be noted is the notion that such measures, especially after The U.S.-backed coup d’état in Kiev in February 2014, and the Western subterfuges and deceits that followed Minsk Accords later that year cannot credibly be covered under the rubric of “non-violent;” indeed, these developments were of a cloth with the commissioning of the above report.

Equally, events since 2014 have unfolded in ways consistent with the RAND’s recommendations:

  • Providing lethal military aid to Ukraine.
  • Mobilising European NATO members.
  • Imposing deeper trade and economic sanctions.
  • Increasing U.S. energy production for export to Europe.
  • Expanding Europe’s import infrastructure to receive U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies.

In brief display here is something more than strategic adventure and the interactions of power politics. The evidence is of profligate generosity with other people’s lives, and of an unbearable suffering inflicted on orders from the heights of command.

The objectives – proving racial superiority, imperial power, superior will, and sheer bastardry – are aggravated in the certain knowledge that, ultimately, it did not matter if the deaths of friends and allies were indistinguishable from those of the enemy and were reduced to the category “acceptable level of casualties.”

Some might see these as late examples of the Great War’s “chateau generalship” but it’s a vision that is lacking in its power to disgust. More compelling is the arrogation of divine power – of the mindset found on mythical Mount Olympus, abode of the gods.

What is to hand are great, exclusive meetings where the gods feast and debate, and reveal their divine powers to end life and dispose of habitats; where there is a strict division between the divine who ordain, and the mortal.

This is hubris, manic and incredible were it not for an insistent existence in our daily lives.

The question for Australia, a dutiful ally in the face of previous betrayals: is the national future free of an atavistic Churchill or McNamara; is there no RAND report which sees Australia as a Ukraine-in-waiting?

https://johnmenadue.com/allies-playing-gods/

 

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

 

 

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

THESE WILL ALSO INCLUDE ODESSA, KHERSON AND KHARKIV.....

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

TRANSNISTRIA WILL BE PART OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION.

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

 

EASY.

 

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

 

 SEE ALSO: https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/43171

risking catastrophe....

 

How the West Brought War to Ukraine

Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe

 

BY Benjamin Abelow

 Overview

For almost 200 years, starting with the framing of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, the United States has asserted security claims over virtually the whole Western hemisphere. Any foreign power that places military forces near U.S. territory knows it is crossing a red line. U.S. policy thus embodies a conviction that where a potential opponent places its forces is crucially important. In fact, this conviction is the cornerstone of American foreign and military policy, and its violation is considered reason for war.

Yet when it comes to Russia, the United States and its NATO allies have acted for decades in disregard of this same principle. They have progressively advanced the placement of their military forces toward Russia, even to its borders. They have done this with inadequate attention to, and sometimes blithe disregard for, how Russian leaders might perceive this advance. Had Russia taken equivalent actions with respect to U.S. territory — say, placing its military forces in Canada or Mexico — Washington would have gone to war and explained that war as a defensive response to the military encroachment of a foreign power.

When viewed through this lens, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is seen not as the unbridled expansionism of a malevolent Russian leader but as a violent and destructive reaction to misguided Western policies: an attempt to reestablish a zone around Russia’s western border that is free of offensive threats from the United States and its allies. Having misunderstood why Russia invaded Ukraine, the West is now basing existential decisions on false premises. In doing so, it is deepening the crisis and may be sleepwalking toward nuclear war.

This argument, which I now present in detail, is based on the analyses of a number of scholars, government officials, and military observers, all of whom I introduce and quote from in the course of the presentation. These include John Mearsheimer, Stephen F. Cohen, Richard Sakwa, Gilbert Doctorow, George F. Kennan, Chas Freeman, Douglas Macgregor, and Brennan Deveraux.

Introduction: How the Narrative Drives the War

Within months after Russia invaded Ukraine, the explanation offered for America’s involvement changed. What had been pitched as a limited, humanitarian effort to help Ukraine defend itself morphed to include an additional aim: to degrade Russia’s capacity to fight another war in the future.

In fact, this strategic objective may have been in place from the start. In March, 2022 — just weeks after the start of the war and more than a month before the new U.S. policy was announced — Chas Freeman, previously Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, observed,

Everything we are doing, rather than accelerating an end to the fighting and some compromise, seems to be aimed at prolonging the fighting, assisting the Ukrainian resistance — which is a noble cause, I suppose, but…will result in a lot of dead Ukrainians as well as dead Russians.¹

Freeman’s observation pointed to an uncomfortable truth: America’s two war aims are not really compatible with each other. Whereas a humanitarian effort would seek to limit the destruction and end the war quickly, the strategic goal of weakening Russia requires a prolonged war with maximum destruction, one that bleeds Russia dry of men and machine on battlefield Ukraine. Freeman captured the contradiction in a darkly ironic quip: “We will fight to the last Ukrainian for Ukrainian independence.”

America’s new military objective placed the United States into a posture of direct confrontation with Russia. Now the goal had become to cripple a part of the Russian state, its military. Since the start of the war, the Biden Administration and Congress have allocated over 100 billion dollars in aid for Ukraine, the majority of it military. U.S. officials revealed that American intelligence enabled the killing of a dozen Russian generals in Ukraine, as well as the sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, killing 40 sailors and wounding 100. America’s European allies fell into line, greatly increasing the number and lethality of the weapons being shipped. British leaders sought to expand the battlefield, openly encouraging the Ukrainian military to use Western weapons to attack supply lines inside Russia. Many other escalations occurred.

On February 27, 2022, three days after the Russian invasion began, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced that, in response to “aggressive statements” from Western leaders, he had raised the alert status of Russia’s nuclear forces. In May, 2022, a close media associate of Mr. Putin warned the British prime minister that his statements and actions risked subjecting England to a radioactive tsunami from one of Russia’s land-attack nuclear torpedoes. This and other Russian warnings about nuclear war were dismissed by most of the Western media as mere propaganda. Yet within 24 hours of Mr. Putin’s February 27 announcement, the U.S. military raised its alert status to Defcon 3 for the first time since the 2001 attack on the World Trade Towers.² The result is that both Russia and the U.S. moved closer to a hair-trigger launch policy, increasing the chance that an accident, political miscalculation, or computer error could lead to a nuclear exchange.

Further, one must consider what would happen if Russia started to lose, and its overall military capacity was degraded to the point where Moscow perceived itself as vulnerable to invasion. In that situation, Russian planners would surely contemplate using low-yield battlefield nuclear weapons to destroy enemy forces. Thus, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in May 2022, stated that Mr. Putin might use nuclear weapons if there was “an existential threat to his regime and to Russia, from his perspective.” This could occur if “he perceives he is losing the war.”³ If Russia did use nuclear weapons, the pressure for a Western nuclear response, followed by further escalation, might be irresistible. Yet that situation — Russian loss and depletion — is exactly what the new U.S. policy is seeking to achieve.

Finally, we must ask what would happen if the war dragged on to the point where opposition to Mr. Putin within Russian elites led to his removal from power. Here we are talking about the vaunted goal of “regime change,” which in the United States is sought by an informal alliance of Republican neoconservatives and Democratic liberal interventionists. The assumption seems to be that Mr. Putin would be replaced by a docile, effete puppet subservient to American interests. Gilbert Doctorow — an independent, Brussels-based political analyst whose Ph.D. and post-doctoral training are in Russian history — comments:

Be careful what you wish for. Russia has more nuclear weapons than the United States. Russia has more modern weapons than the United States. Russia can level to the ground the United States in 30 minutes. Is this a country in which you want to create turmoil? Moreover, if [Mr. Putin] were to be overturned, who would take his place? Some little namby-pamby? Some new drunkard like [first Russian president Boris] Yeltsin? Or somebody who is a Rambo and just ready to push the button? … I think it is extremely imprudent for a country like the United States to invoke regime change in a country like Russia. It’s almost suicidal.⁴

Whether or not eviscerating Russia’s military was the American plan from the outset, the policy is not surprising because it follows logically, even predictably, from an overarching Western narrative about Russia that has already been widely accepted. According to this narrative, Mr. Putin is an insatiable expansionist who lacks any plausible national security motivations for his decisions. This narrative portrays Mr. Putin as a new Hitler, and the Russian move into Ukraine as akin to the Nazi aggression of World War II. Likewise, the narrative portrays any Western desire to compromise and negotiate a quick end to the conflict as wishful thinking and appeasement. America’s new military objective thus emerges directly from Western perceptions about Moscow’s motivations and the causes of the war.

And so a crucial question comes into focus: Is the Western narrative about the Ukraine war correct? If it is, then Western policies might arguably make sense, even if they entail some risk of nuclear conflict. But if the narrative is wrong, then the West is basing existential decisions on false premises. If the narrative is wrong, a quickly negotiated compromise, one that would spare the lives of combatants and civilians alike, and simultaneously greatly reduce the risk of nuclear war, would not represent appeasement. Rather, it would be a practical necessity, even a moral obligation. Finally, if the Western narrative about Russia’s motivations is wrong, then the actions the West is taking now are likely to deepen the crisis and may lead to nuclear war.

In this essay, I argue that the Western narrative is incorrect. In crucial respects, it is the opposite of truth. The underlying cause of the war lies not in an unbridled expansionism of Mr. Putin, or in paranoid delusions of military planners in the Kremlin, but in a 30-year history of Western provocations, directed at Russia, that began during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and continued to the start of the war. These provocations placed Russia in an untenable situation, for which war seemed, to Mr. Putin and his military staff, the only workable solution. In arguing this case, I pay special attention to the United States — and subject it to particularly sharp criticism — because it has played the decisive role in shaping Western policy.

 

READ MORE: https://medium.com/@benjamin.abelow/western-policies-caused-the-ukraine-crisis-and-now-risk-nuclear-war-1e402a67f44e

 

READ FROM TOP.....

 

THERE ARE TOO MANY GOOD PEOPLE IN THE WEST, INCLUDING MY FRIENDS IN AUSTRALIA, WHO BLAME PUTIN FOR WHAT IS HAPPENING IN UKRAINE... THEY SUPPORT "UKRAINE" WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING THE REALITY OF A DIVIDED COUNTRY, NOR OF ITS NAZI HISTORY, NOR OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE'S ACTIONS THAT LED TO THE CONFLICT.

IN THE MIND OF THESE GOOD PEOPLE ONLY PUTIN IS TO BE BLAMED... BECAUSE OUR ROTTEN MEDIOCRE MASS MEEDIA DE MIERDA TELLS THEM SO.

IT IS ONE OF OUR DUTIES HERE TO EXPOSE THE DUPLICITY AND HYPOCRISY OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE. BUT IT'S A HARD SLOG — A BATTLE THAT WE HAVE TO WIN TO PREVENT ALL OF US BEING BLOWWN UP...

OUR AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT SHOULD COME TO TERMS WITH THIS, BUT THERE AGAIN, LABOR OR CONSERVATIVE, OUR AUSSIE GOVERNMENTS ARE IN THE POCKET OF A DESPICABLE ROMAN (AMERICAN) EMPIRE....

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

SEE ALSO: https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/43171

weapon systems....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NDxmIkBcpo

Lesson from Ukraine: Our fighting doctrine is fatally flawed because our [AMERICAN] "precision" weapons fail

 

"Precision beats mass" and "one shot, one kill" are the foundations of Western combat doctrine.  It supposes that our weapons, which are highly accurate, can through deliberate target selection and mission execution overcome large disadvantages in manpower.

 

But prior to the Ukraine War, that theory had not been tested against a "peer opponent".  Previous conflicts were against inferior forces, poorly equipped.

 

Russia and China, on the other hand, have world-class militaries, and Russia has shown a shocking degree of adaptability against our precision weapons platforms.  Their Electronic Warfare efforts include jamming of our radar systems and GPS satellite feeds, and it is proving so successful that our artillery and missile systems are obsolete within mere weeks of their deliveries to Ukrainian warfighters.

 

Senior military officers and defense experts are finally raising alarm, and admit that our assumptions about our capabilities have been greatly exaggerated.

 

Resources and links:

Wall Street Journal, High-Tech American Weapons Work Against Russia—Until They Don’t:  Moscow is learning how to defeat Western precision munitions in Ukraine

https://www.wsj.com/world/us-weapons-...

 

Houthis Shoot Down Third MQ-9; Five Now Lost to Hostile Fire in Just Over a Year

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/hou...

 

Inside China Business, US missile platforms rely on Chinese semiconductors

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2nqnM1C-mU&t=0s

 The US military needs Chinese semicon...  

 

 

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

 

 

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

THESE WILL ALSO INCLUDE ODESSA, KHERSON AND KHARKIV.....

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

TRANSNISTRIA WILL BE PART OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION.

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

 

EASY.

 

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

 

READ FROM TOP

 

SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvHAJ9wQfE8

 

MAKE A DEAL, PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!