Macron thinks he’s Napoleon, except he has no army. He likes Josephs, not Josephines. Just another catamite of Klaus Schwab and George Soros’ cabinet penetration parties.
Sounds about right, Yuri. However instead of Josephs, how about Macaron, a tasteless, delicate, whipped item loved by PMC yuppies? Or with all the rotten eggs and guano he's been laying and the ridiculous preening of a cluck, what do you think about Maricón?
I don't think Russia's primary threat comes from France. Look to expansion of terrorist activities in the North, St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad. Drones are the perfect terrorist weapon.
He will have an army. He’s gong to “pull it off” because it’s a racket. Read Anthony C. Sutton’s “wallstreet trilogy”. Besides Carroll Quigley this book it actually history (Princeton and Georgetown professors) who’s work is widely available but left out of the conversation because it’s to be taught to politicians but not spoken of “on stage”. Sutton also wrote the best work on the skull and bones society if you want to know what Kerry and Bush really believe.
Macron is a nutcase!!! The French People need to recall him and new elections should commence as soon as possible. War crazies like Macron have no sense of responsibility.
Good question - but necessary to specify worse than Macron from the point of view of the ruling class and EU élite?, or worse than Macron from the point of view of defending French workers and wages against the ruling class and the EU élites, and the country from foreign military adventures in Ukraine certainly, but also in Africa, the Red sea and so on
You can try. At this point I consider the whole of the political elite in the West to be a victim of mass psychosis. I cannot otherwise imagine why they want to kill Russians so much. Or is it normal every now and then to have a big one?
Interesting definition. maybe, things don't go as planned most often 😊 especially given Macron has no control over what happens. Look to his banker friends. How would your scenario help them?
Not if he makes good on his implied promise that France will act directly against Russia to prevent Russia from winning the war in Ukraine.
There are plenty of scenarios where sometime in 2024 Kiev's forces collapse so broadly that Russian forces can seize Odessa or Kiev, and in response the French military directly attacks and kills Russians, either in what used to be in Ukraine or in Russia itself. In that case Russia will strike France directly.
After that the situation can easily escalate, but whether it does or doesn't Macron cannot be considered "safe" from the moment France strikes Russia. It is not likely Russia would seek to kill him, as it helps Russia to have a physical coward in charge in France who is likely to capitulate when he feels pain, but once Russia starts striking France the situation will be so messy Macro could end up dead without Russia specifically targeting him.
Indeed. The question is whether he and his people have considered what happens and what they will do if Russia doesn’t avoid escalation. He can’t officially invoke Article 5 and if he assumes that the US will back him up he’s going to learn a hard lesson. Which could leave him with not enough force or supply to do anything except try to explain to the French people why he ordered their army to Ukraine and now soldiers are dead.
He’s bluffing on a poor hand, especially because his actual support in the military is clearly lower than he thinks. See the leaks and his approval rating with the assumption that serving military are almost certainly not his constituency.
Since the beginning of this war, we keep hearing that the West can't escalate, it would be unpopular, reckless and suicidal, but they keep escalating all the same.
I’ve read it, as well as Barbara Tuchman’s March of Folly. The parallels to today with countries technically at peace sending money and weapons across the borders to start conflicts with plausible deniability are remarkable.
I do think those fellows are behind all of this ultimately.
After all the Napoleonic Wars, WW1, WW2 went so well for them, surely a WW3 and the opportunity to pick over the bones of Russia would be especially attractive.
"The Guns Of August" is one of the most widely-sold history books in English. The title in the UK is "August 1914". Writing "between the lines", Barbara Tuchman explains how the British seduced the Germans into making the fatal mistake of starting WW1. The humiliating climb-down of the 1910 Agadir Crisis proved Germany would never intentionally attack Britain. So in 1914, London refused to say which side the UK would take, if any. One cheap telegram from the UK government to Berlin would have prevented the war, but that' not what London wanted. Tuchman laid out the fateful meeting the evening of Monday, Aug. 3, 1914. Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig told of the high cost. He ruled out the 6 week garden party given in the lying history books. Haig said it would be "a war of attrition" that would take 4 years and cost Britain 4 million casualties. Exactly prescient, we now know, and the government didn't reveal the casualty numbers until 1925, at which point the royal family made a new tradition to wear a poppy on Nov. 11, to commemorate the horrific losses which they had concealed from the public. Britain had far cheaper options for managing industrial rivalry with Germany, but ... the real goal was to seize Palestine as a new Jewish homeland. The Balfour Declaration in 1917 was proof of London's actual motive. Tuchman explains how Britain laid out the trap for the Ottoman Empire, although she is not blunt and you must read between the lines. Any Declaration of War always starts the war immediately - except for England's Declaration Of War in 1914. London declared on the morning of Aug. 4 that war would take effect at midnight. (Most histories obfuscate the timing and I even saw one which said 11pm Aug. 4th. Total BS.) That 14 or 16 hour delayed start gave the Germans time to bring the Ottoman Empire into the war on the side of Germany. The Ottoman Empire held the real prize: Palestine. Tuchman details the cat-and-mouse game in which the German Navy ordered the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau battleships to depart the vicinity of Sicily and head for the neutral waters of the Dardanelles. The Royal Navy spent a lot of energy monitoring these warships but did nothing to stop them. When the German warships entered Ottoman waters, the Sultan was faced with an unpleasant choice. Germany was extremely popular, having built the Orient Express railroad, trained the Ottoman Army and sold the Ottomans all their weapons. If the Sultan were to impound the warships, there was a real threat of popular revolt. So the Sultan chose the short-term benefit of retaining his waning power, and he joined Germany in a war he didn't want. "The Guns Of August" didn't cover the years to come, but we know it was "tab A into slot B", etc. until the British occupied Palestine and gave it to the Jews, acknowledged in the infamous letter to Lord Rothschild as head of the Jews in England. Right there is the real reason why WW1 was not prevented by one simple telegram.
Barbara Tuchman (1912-1989) was Jewish and wrote many popular history books. "Guns Of August" (1962) went into at least 26 reprints. My other big takeaway from her book was the senseless disaster of the Battle of Tannenberg, a costly and tragic stupidity which foreshadowed the fall of the Romanovs.
Interesting but you don’t prove your point. It’s basically mind reading to say “this happened and that was the goal” it’s not proof. Anyway big events usually have more than one motive.
To my mind, to see the end goal of the Balfour Agreement as the (re)establishment of Israel is to assume the Rothchilds cared a fig about Jews.
I do think the Rothchilds cared deeply about control of the oil rich middle east and wanted a forward beachhead to ensure they could capitalize on the region's resources.
The action forcing the Jews of Europe after WW2 into Palestine, Jews the majority of whom had little to no interest in living in a desert, was to populate this Rothchild beachhead.
The European nations were tickled pink to help with this "return" as that way they wouldn't have pesky incountry Jewish claimants wanting their assets back.
Excellent comment! I believe the ruling class of Britain would have considered the prospect of 4 million casualties a benefit, not a tragedy. With invention of farming machines such as motorized combines, tractors, and harvesters, there would have been a huge surplus of labor with no place to go. Farming in the nineteenth century was very labor intensive. Sending the unemployed off to the frontlines to be killed in large numbers would have been one way to solve the problem, in the minds of the British elite.
The Goeben and Breslau were the ships involved in the Med. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were part of the China squadron at this time and were destroyed in late 1914 at the Falklands.
Troubridge, the opposing commander in the Med, was court-martialed for not intercepting Goeben. So much for not pursuing Goeben and Breslau...
"Bought all their weapons from Germany" was not true; the Turks had two battleships on order from Great Britain, one of which that ultimately formed part of the Grand Fleet. These were seized by Churchill long before the Goeben showed up in the Dardanelles. Lots more in the following article demonstrating that it wasn't true that they bought arms exclusively from the Germans. Hell, a Brit admiral had lead their navy for years before the war.
That's a rather one-eyed view of the origin of the Great War. Another view , quite popular, is that Germany was ready to turn a regional scuffle into a great European War because of a crisis of falling expectations amongst the German boss class. All of the great powers changed from maintaining peacetime establishments to arming for war in 1911. That would be quite a long stumble.
So we have the “Sleepwalker” hypothesis, where they stumbled into war, and the “Mobilization” hypothesis where everything was wound up and waiting for an event to trigger the whole cascade into WWI.
There are more theories, one is that the constitution of the German empire put too much on the Kaiser who was the only integrating force in the state and had some rude shocks like when he wanted a mobilisation against Russia but not France. A bloke called [Sean McMeekin] thinks that it was the Austro-Hungarians wot done it, others go for a crisis of finance capitalisms and at least one writer says that it was the ceiling reached of the energy that could be gained from burning coal.
The conclusion of the 1871 war was the real event that triggered WWI. The French were dissatisfied at being humiliated, and the Germans were irritated that European pressure forced them to retreat from huge swathes of French territory that their military had won on the field of battle. They both wanted a rematch to settle the question of which country was going to be the premier land power in continental Europe.
I think this is the most logical explanation for why WWI ended up feeling so inevitable once the Serbians helped reduce the Austrian population by a few royals.
The Russians didn't seem to actually want the big war, and nor were they ready for it in the same way that the Germans and French were. Then again, the Austro-Hungarians weren't exactly ready for it either, judging by their pathetic battlefield performance.
Germany was annoyed it was unable to develop lucrative foreign colonies as its cousins had. And if you look at the history of Europe, war is mother's milk to them, often a first resort rather than a last.
Monarchs viewed war as a means to settle petty grievances, to justify raiding the budget, taking on massive debt and of course keeping the peasantry ranks slim and their asperations down.
Their populations were lured, as always, into thinking a war would be regional and short term; they were unaware of the interconnected alliance agreements their crony leadership has signed.
Colonies weren't often lucrative, see Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783-1939 (2011) by James Belich and The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (1989) by Avner Offer.
No-one was under any illusions that a war wouldn't be a long and bloody affair, the short-war illusion was a post-war cop out. There was lots of analysis of the Franco-Prussian War, particularly the second part when the republican armies stretched the Prussians very thin with irregular warfare.
After Clausewitz: German Military Thinkers Before the Great War (2001) By Antulio J, Echevarria II
and
German Strategy and the Path to Verdun: Erich von Falkenhayn and the Development of Attrition, 1870–1916 (2005) by Robert T. Foley
I do think the military may have been aware, but the man in the street certainly was not, and was not told otherwise by the govt or press.
Plus our man in the street initially saw the war as a one off intervention due to the Arch Duke and his wife's murder. He had no idea of the secret interlocking protection alliances among world govts. As the world's nation's dominos fell, they war grew like Toppsy or more accurately a cancer.
This is an excellent article on the war's evolution (link below):
From the article:
"The war started as a confrontation between Austria – Hungary and Serbia. The Russian Empire joined the conflict, considering itself protective of the Slavic countries and wishing to undermine the position of Austria-Hungary in the Balkans.
After the Austro – Hungarian declaration of war on Russia 1 of August of 1914 , the conflict was transformed into a military confrontation at European level.
Germany responded to Russia with war, bound by a secret pact with the Habsburg monarchy, and France mobilized to support its ally.
The hostilities as they evolved pulled in 32 countries, 28 of them called “Allies”: France, Great Britain, Russia, Serbia, Belgium, Canada, Portugal, Japan, the United States (since 1917 ), as well as Italy, which had abandoned the triple alliance.
This group faced the coalition of the “Central Powers”, made up of the Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire.
For the British the German invasion of Belgium was very important to mobilise public opinion, which is why Joffre was told not to toy with the idea until the Germans had made the first move.
The public had been presented with the examples of the Russo-Japanese and Boer wars.
This time it's different. They have "mobilized" the weapons and ammunition that they sent to Ukraine, but in order to maintain political power domestically, no one is mobilizing troops or recruiting civilians or jump-starting a war economy in the west. They are following the steps of escalating towards starting war but not fighting one, let alone winning one. They have truly drank their own Kool aid and believe that their wonder weapons alone that keep getting beaten in Ukraine are somehow going to beat the Russian armed forces. Laughable. I predict that NATO will try to waltz into Odessa without announcement, be very quickly disillusioned after their entire force is mangled by missile strikes, as all NATO mercenaries and "trainers" and AD crews have been since the start of the war. They'll leave and the fact that they tried to defend Odessa covertly will be "Russian disinformation" officially until a few decades later.
Yep. "The Guns of August" was a good book that illustrated the sort of inevitability of the subsequent events once the first nation began mobilization. That book also noted that it wasn't just pure German aggression. The French were itching for a rematch from the humiliation they suffered in the war of 1871. They wanted WWI just as much, if not more, than the Germans did. No one actually cared about the Austro-Hungarians and their Serbian problem. That was just the match being lit for the bomb built by the Germans and French.
At the beginning only non-military support was promised. Since then the weapons and ammo provided have increased in amount and potency by orders of magnitude, one step at a time, until now they are talking about nuclear-capable Taurus missiles. I call those those escalations.
- all arms and armour sent has depleted NATO supplies, and been destroyed in the battlefield - as each new batch is sent it is once again destroyed - and so far left unreplaced in the home country armories
There is now little left - if that too is sent then that too will be destroyed
The RF has as one of it's goals the defeat of NATO, what more efficient means could they have chosen but to destoy the armour while sparing the foot soldier
From the Russian perspective, absolutely correct. Though I have to wonder at times, are these countries, including the US actually sending their best equipment? Seems much of what they have sent is past its shelf life, and every day you see more suddenly appear from what we thought were depleted stocks. We thought the US was short of ammo, yet when Israel needed it, plane after plane after plane of US armour and weaponry was instantly on the move. Of course everyone keeps back a certain portion for its own protection, but still I wonder.
No need to wonder about the ammunition, or lack of it - either in the US or the EU
The so called best equipment these countries have is not useful in this war; besides they fear that it would be destroyed by the RF - and that it would then be more or less impossible to replace them in any length of time that would pass as acceptable to allow them to continue to play the hawk
For the US Read the about the Defense Budget and the Procurement Program Fiscal 2025
Any proposals useful for the Ukraine war have been shifted to The National Security Supplemental Bill, which has been lapping the pool since last October
The reason the US and presumably other nations are not sending their best is that it becomes the property of the RF before long and it's an intel bonanza for them, and presumably the Chinese and Iranians, at least in part. Save the best for when you have to fight the RF. This is simple logic and would be practiced by any nation - the Soviets always had export versions of everything for pretty much this reason.
There is a huge difference in the two wars' objectives The US doesn't want Ukraine to "win" it wants Ukraine to bleed Russia long term, to the last Ukrainian. True the plan is not working out as hoped.
But they still feel there is a win to be had in a stalemate allowing them to bring in Blackrock to "help" Ukraine rebuild aka, rob the EU blind. Then they can rearm Ukraine in a few years and attack Russia yet again at their leisure.
In Israel, the US goal is time sensitive and super top tier. First to kill or displace all Palestinians so that Israel can build a massive port, access the Gaza off shore gas fields, build a canal bypassing the Suez (WHY are you an ally with these people Egypt??) and run high speed rail with a gas pipe line component throughout the area and to the EU.
Israel can then take EU gas market share from Russia, pose an even greater threat to ME peace, decrease BRICS+ attractiveness to ME nations, decrease Iran gas sales and continue to be the world's least liked nation.
The US is not sending its best and it is trying to maintain a strategic reserve. But there is a point where it starts to pinch. If you track the numbers of things being sent to Ukraine over time you see a pretty steep decrease. The French, for example have already sent 40% of their artillery systems. That strongly indicates that most western arsenals are already at the pinch point or beyond.
What do mean by 'the best' that the US is not sending-
It's a stretch to designate, say, the F35 as the best when it can not fly most of the time, and as seen in the Red Sea in a slightly different context, the west can not long afford to oppose limited numbers of multi million dollar systems against huge amounts of well managed 20 thousand dollar systems
Besides whatever the best the US may have it is not the best for a war such as being fought in the Ukraine - they may not have sent the best models of the Abrams, but such would get bogged down in the mud, be as logistically impossible to run and repair, and be as exposed to drones just as the older models
Better? Patriots? no way
But this is the point - all the west has done has been to throw inefficient insufficient arms and cash - and all that the west might be able to throw as their best would also be, in all probability, as inefficient and insufficient
How in this case may western actions be described as escalation, when in reality they are de escalation, as you describe - that is so say partly because they can not afford to send anything at all and mostly because whatever they do have in any case are not fit for purpose
What GAO Found Maintenance challenges negatively affect F-35 aircraft readiness. The F-35 fleet mission capable rate—the percentage of time the aircraft can perform one of its tasked missions—was about 55 percent in March 2023, far below program goals
.[FullMission capable rate is about 30%]
This performance was due in part to challenges with depot and organizational maintenance (see fig.).
The program was behind schedule in establishing depot maintenance activities to conduct repairs. As a result, component repair times remained slow with over 10,000 waiting to be repaired—above desired levels.
At the same time, organizational-level maintenance has been affected by a number of issues, including a lack of technical data and training.
Accessible Text for F-35 Maintenance Challenges Negatively Affecting Aircraft Readiness
Heavy reliance on contractors U.S. government has limited decision-making ability and influence over depot maintenance
Inadequate training Maintenance-related training for the F-35 program is largely inadequate Lack of technical data
A lack of access to technical data for repairs delays the maintenance process at the organizational and depot levels
Funding prioritization Adjustments in funding priorities have prevented the construction of an adequate depot repair capacity
Lack of support equipment
F-35 support equipment is too frequently unavailable on flight lines
Lack of spare parts A lack of spare parts at installations and on deployments is causing maintenance delays Source: GAO analysis of Department of Defense information; U.S. Air Force/R. Nial Bradshaw. | GAO-23-105341 The Department of Defense (DOD) relies heavily on its contractor to lead and manage F-35 sustainment (see fig.). However, as DOD seeks expanded government control, it has neither (1) determined the desired mix of government and contractor roles, nor (2) identified and obtained the technical data needed to support its desired mix. The military services must take over management of F35 sustainment by October 2027 and have an opportunity to make adjustments— specifically to the contractor-managed elements. Reassessing its a
September 2023 F-35 AIRCRAFT
DOD and the Military Services Need to Reassess the Future Sustainment Strategy
What GAO Found Maintenance challenges negatively affect F-35 aircraft readiness. The F-35 fleet mission capable rate—the percentage of time the aircraft can perform one of its tasked missions—was about 55 percent in March 2023, far below program goals. This performance was due in part to challenges with depot and organizational maintenance (see fig.). The program was behind schedule in establishing depot maintenance activities to conduct repairs. As a result, component repair times remained slow with over 10,000 waiting to be repaired—above desired levels. At the same time, organizational-level maintenance has been affected by a number of issues, including a lack of technical data and training.
F-35 Maintenance Challenges Negatively Affecting Aircraft Readiness Accessible Text for F-35 Maintenance Challenges Negatively Affecting Aircraft Readiness Heavy reliance on contractors U.S. government has limited decision-making ability and influence over depot maintenance
Inadequate training Maintenance-related training for the F-35 program is largely inadequate Lack of technical data A lack of access to technical data for repairs delays the maintenance process at the organizational and depot levels Funding prioritization Adjustments in funding priorities have prevented the construction of an adequate depot repair capacity Lack of support equipment View GAO-23-105341.
For more information, contact Diana Maurer at (202) 512-9627 or maurerd@gao.gov.
Why GAO Did This Study
The F-35 aircraft, with its advanced capabilities, represents a growing portion of DOD’s tactical aviation fleet—with about 450 of the aircraft fielded. DOD plans to procure nearly 2,500 F-35s at an estimated life cycle cost of the program exceeding $1.7 trillion. Of this amount, $1.3 trillion are associated with operating and sustaining the aircraft.
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 included a provision for GAO to review F-35 sustainment efforts. This report, among other things, assesses the extent to which (1) challenges exist with F-35 depot and organizational-level maintenance, and (2) DOD has determined its desired mix of government and contractor sustainment support for the future. GAO reviewed F-35 program documentation, reviewed readiness and performance data, visited two F-35 depots and three operational installations, conducted a survey of all 15 F-35 installations, and interviewed officials.
What GAO Recommends GAO is making seven recommendations to DOD, including reassessing F-35 sustainment elements to determine government and contractor responsibility and any required technical data, and making final decisions on changes to F-35 sustainment to address performance and affordability.
They're not sending the more modern versions of the Abrams that have additional counter-measures for anti-tank missiles.
It's also clear that a few weeks of training isn't enough for a Ukrainian crew to get good with the Abrams. Normally it's a 22 week OSUT (one station unit training) that combines basic training with tanker school just to create a U.S. Army tanker (19K) who is still seen as very wet behind the ears. They'll then be sent to a permanent duty station where they'll be the least experienced guy on a crew where 1-2 of the four members have been driving tanks for years.
That's the thing with complicated weapon systems: they're complicated and require solid training and experience to operate correctly in the best of conditions.
We can send the Ukrainians tanks, but we can't turn them into good tankers with a couple of weeks of training.
They are failures only after they failed in battle, which in turned was after escalation, ie sending materiel to Ukraine that wasn't there before or to replace equipment destroyed.
If all their escalations are failures - this does mean they are not escalations, they are meaningless attempts to throw something at a problem then when that fails something else or more of the same, but all to no effect or result, this is like walking up a hill and sliding back down at the same time, the old Greeks had stories about this kind of uselessness
If escalation is to have any meaning it must designate a planned progression in strategy to improve/increase in quantity and quality the amounts of resources, soldiers or arms, applied to the battlefield in order successfuly to achieve specific and specified goals, if not victory
NATO not only does not know what goals it has, it has no idea of how not to achieve them, let alone..
Throwing random balls of cash for others to catch is not escalation, neither is sending over small substandard mishmashes of arms and armour for them to cash in
These are failures only if you look at the result from immediate perspective of the particular batch of escalations. Long term Russia may be weakened by the war more than the West - at least in theory we have higher industrial capacity.
I wonder what impact will it have on our standing with the world. Certainly this whole nonsense will not induce much love anywhere. It does not matter when we are strong but it will when we will be weak.
I can't even fault most of the NATO generals. They're told to prepare for the military missions that politicians state publicly.
They can't prepare for a war engineered by the foreign policy ghouls in the U.S. State Department, CIA, and their European equivalents. Those people really thought they could take control of Ukraine with no repercussions and that Russia was a wounded old dog barking through the fence but unable to bite.
2014 didn't teach them anything, even as they watched in surprise as Russia straight out took Crimea and set up the armed insurrections in the Donbas.
So they doubled down even harder...and then spent 8 years not preparing Ukraine for a real war.
Fucking idiots. I can't believe these ivy league morons are in charge of the U.S. when an enlisted intel analyst with 3 years of experience could have looked at the available information and told them they either needed to have Ukraine really tool up and build a whole lot of fortifications, or they needed to dial back the rhetoric and actually begin talking to Russia as a peer nation with real security concerns.
I don't know who told the EU NATO contingent that attacking Russia would be a cakewalk. But it does appear some group did. Or did they tell them something else?
From what I have read the game plan was strategized through US eyes; Russia was expected to run a "shock and awe" invasion, quickly conquer and set up a new Ukraine govt.
The Ukraine military was not set up to wage a WW2 redux, it was trained and armed to be an insurgency force, and a pretty spiffy one at that.
But Russia saw the trap, or may it didn't initially, perhaps it just felt if it took a measured approach it would awaken reason in the EU.
The idea Ukraine at roughly 1 to 16 odds in manpower could "win" against Russia should have been clearly apparent. The idea that Ukraine on the other hand could wage a lengthy insurgency causing the Putin govt to fall to the EU's benefit would probably have been a fairly easy sell. And here we are.
Need I remind you of Soviet aircraft, air defense, armored vehicles but not tanks, artillery, then Soviet tanks, then western tanks, then western aircraft, missiles, then long range missiles, now it's western troops.
Gerard please help me understand your position as opposing Feral Finster.
If you refuse to call western actual strategy escalation, how do you name it?
It is obviously unsuccessful, if success is defined as victory for the US/West, and since this is a proxy war, victory for the proxy, i.e. Ukraine.
Unsuccessful escalation is still escalation. There is a deeper problem, that US strategy has been mistaken, wrong from the very beginning and every move, decision is standing on a very shaky foundation, but even mistaken strategy is strategy.
Western troops have been in country since well before RF armed forces crossed the border. A reminder that the war started in 2014, although some would argue 1918.
My boss (at the time) was doing foreign military sales work in Ukraine from the mid-2000s on - at least by 2005. He was a retired light colonel from a C2 systems background and a former product manager. He wouldn't have been doing the work if not directed to do so from on high that this was 'desired'. He would flip between Ukraine and Uzbekistan on a fairly frequent basis in those days. Getting a hold of him then was hard, especially since I was in the ME a lot too.
I'd also make the point that in 07/08 there were a lot of Ukrainian planes at BIAP - Baghdad International.
aand the peak of UKR combat effectiveness was when they still had Soviet AD and gear. western gear has proven pretty much perfectly helpless, no matter if Leopard, Abrams, Bradley, Patriot, Krab, Caesar... whatever.
Western troops - apart from niche roles like aiming/shooting the Himars - have proven perfectly useless either. life expectation of a French brigade (and they can only really field one) in UKR is tbh just a week or two, maybe. and that's being generous.
as others said these are fairly stupid (as in inefficient) escalations
- if you want to fight, then fight
- going into a fight (say a boxing match) 'one finger at the time' is self-defeating and just makes you weaker as time goes on.
- sending your inventory at dripple pace is even worse; you never give yourself a chance as your equipment gets destroyed piecemeal
observing this whole break EU/NATO escalation from across the ocean just makes one shake his head, WTF boys? aren't you thinking at all?? You could not have picked a worse way of doing it.
West is not stupid. They just took some wrong decisions. Because they refused to accept the world as it is, now, refused to acknowledge the change in the world.
Listen to how Indian foreign minister ridicules the West in a very intelligent way, with great sense of humor and you will understand what it is that West refuses to see.
I listen to Hindustan times short news on Youtube, and then to longer peaces on conferences, like G 20 in India or Security meeting in Muenchen just a month ago. He has a way of puting his thoughts across, making fun, usually of British, bur also of EU. I will not try to write his name, i will make a mistake, and I am writing this on the cell phone. But i will look it up and send you a link
I see it as human failure to resist the ultimate temptation of everything for nothing . What do we call when you take something without paying for it? Theft.
When a nation (any nation) gets the temptation of unlimited spending due to unique and temporary situation , it is oh so easy to think 'it would last forever' while that temptation hollows out nation economy (and arguably nation soul)
Consider
- hard times lead to tough men, to work to create easy times. easy times lead to weak men who beget hard times. always.
- Spain in 15 century is a backwater of the world, petty little kingdoms who are barely there with Muslim presence on the land of Spain. Tough men unite the kingdoms, expel foreign invaders and spread out into the world (conquistadores) and 16 century 'Spain' is the most powerful nation in Europe and in the world. Anyone who is anybody knows that you need to speak Spanish to be considered educated, spanish armies and navies are unmatched. However, easy money destroy Spanish economy , why work for anything , why take risks, why produce anything, if next galleon fleet would bring unlimited treasures robbed from colonies and get redistributed by the court? Economy dies, Spain falls into a civil war (birth of Netherlands) and Spain is never heard of again.
- 19th century Britain. Between 1830-1850, a tiny island is a quarter of the world industrial production. tough times leading to tough men who really built the empire over which sun never sets. By 1900, finance and financiers producing pound sterling emission replace productive economy and British empire falls behind all of its competitors ultimately disintegrating half a century later.
- US is in easy/fat times. just vote for congress critter who will promise you whatever, easy money that come out of thin air simply willed into existence. who care that national debt went from 8 billion to 32 in less than 15 years? This would last forever, right? wrong! What if 'financial services' is now half of the economy , we would just wish money into reality and become 'consumer economy' ignoring the math, right? wrong! we are due for hard times, at least a decade of it that hopefully beget tough men who will eventually get us out of it.
- I have been in Soviet Union in the 80s , easy times and weak men and then 90s through very tough times that lead to men (and women) who put their countries (Russia in particular) back together through hard work, hard choices, drive and determination.
- it is now our turn in USA and the sooner we get through this, the easier it would be (for us and for the world).
The objective of the 'escalations that aren't' is to keep public opinion in the West under control, not to win a war. Bloodying up Russia seems to be the only point left in all this. Apparently someone wanted to restore the pre-1990 status quo in Europe, more or less. Probably not what they were aiming for at first, but that seems to be how it is shaping up.
Nothing but hot air makes the NATO or EU actions 'escalations' and those who believe that words speak louder than actions
To very carefully send in very small increments very small shipments of arms is to make sure that none of these make any real difference - and to make sure they are destroyed
It might have been possible, once, for NATO to plan and execute for massive shipments of arms, with training, and other support that once would or might have made a difference
Very very carefully NATO chose to not do this - now it is too late for the RF has taken positions of overwhelming advantage: besides NATOhave little left to defend themselves with, let alone to send to Ukraine
Yet the MAGA agenda via Trump is to immediately end the war in Ukraine. EU members saying they will jump in may be an attempt to sell escalation to the locals on the off chance Trump wins and a call for peace breaks out. The horror!
And yet the west is losing the war - if any european countries were stupid enough to send their own troops into Ukraine then those troops would be killed
To merely throw away arms or to send soldiers to certain destruction is the opposite of 'escalation', it is disarmement and defeat
Most of the wars have winners and losers. It is a bit lazy to call the strategy of the losing side as opposite of escalation...all they have tried was real, they have killed many thousands of soldiers...
West and Ukraine as well are serious in their wish, will to win the war, but they are just failing, they are not succeeding because Russians are stronger.
They do not have a strategy, neither the US nor the EU
All they have tried has been self defeating because they have not understood the situation and they do not understand what they can or can not do to in order to defeat Russia
Escalation means moving up the scale of responses/actions in terms of power and quantity, and does not mean moving down the scale
The US is no longer providing arms nor cash – this must be considered doing almost nothing, and so not an escalation, more like bankruptcy
The EU is talking about sending troops one day, and the next they are talking about not on any account sending troops, see Ramstein – they too are shipping less and less cash and arms
What they are all doing is talking more, and trying to talk up their game, but talking more may not be considered escalation
You missed something here. No, you missed a lot. Western munitions have been seriously drained, Russia has lots of new assistants - Mr. Sarmat, Mr. Kinzhal, Mr. Poseidon, etc. and lots of strategic friends in the Global South whom Russia could not count on when the SMO first started.
Universally, people come to unpleasant conclusions verrrry slowly. The West was slow to simply start stealing all Russian assets, and it was very unpleasant for the Global South to realize their assets would be seized down the road. For example, Washington supposedly told Saudi Arabia their assets would be seized if they stopped buying Western weapons. Everybody is still reeling in shock and awe to understand their Western-based investments are at risk.
In short, and contrary to what I too first thought, hindsight shows Team Putin has it all worked out. You don't understand ? It's probably because you learned your strategic thinking at the movies. You can change that thinking but you have to do the homework.
"This is the result of Russian dithering and indecision."
Respectfully disagree. Russia would like to achieve its objectives in Ukraine while continuing to grow its economy, while continuing to develop Russia and its people, and without suffering widespread destruction from war and mass killing of a million or more Russians.
To accomplish that Russia has to walk a narrow path in Ukraine, prosecuting the special military op with enough energy to defeat the nazi regime while avoiding a general war with the US and NATO. To do that it has to tolerate the many acts of war the US and NATO have committed against Russia.
Yes, the arrogant imbeciles in the West have seen weakness in Russia's patience. But if they overplay their hand Russia can always take actions directly against the west to teach them that Russia's choice to not engage in war directly against the West at this time is not the result of any lack of military ability to do so.
Had Russia used adequate force from the outset, the whole question of escalation would be moot.
And everything indicates that the western gamblers will overplay their hand, endangering us all.
That said, the Odessa strike was at least an indication that Russian patience may be coming to an end. Assuming that Russia follows up.
EDIT: I should have added. As to your other point - does Russia want to be nice, or do they want to win? Keeping in mind the West's stated goal for Russia, being nice is dangerous.
So far the war is going the way Russia wants: Russia is winning, steadily de-nazifying Ukraine at a tempo that's perfectly acceptable to Russia, while Russia is getting stronger and stronger socially, economically, and militarily and the West is getting weaker socially, economically, and militarily.
I agree that the West may overplay their hand, but then Russia can respond. Had Russia responded to prior Western acts of war in a harsh manner, for example, wiping out US LNG ports in response to the US destruction of Nordstream, I think it is more likely that the US would have responded with general war, not that it would have gone off thinking "yep, Russia means business, better not mess with them...".
Use of adequate force doesn’t mean expanding the war to outside of Ukraine. As it is, with every escalation, the West can ever always only respond with more aggression, more sunk costs. This abuse of The Sunk Cost Fallacy is entirely intentional, and it leads to one place.
that's if they actually had anything to escalate with.
as I've told you multiple times before - contrary to what micro-Napoleon seems to think - he's a chihuahua militarily. he has nothing to escalate with that wouldn't be destroyed in a completely one-sided manner by Russian AF.
the only hypothetical escalation - short of nuclear - that might really move the needle would be a large-scale US+NATO operation similar to (or exceeding) Desert Storm in size, with 1000+ planes, 1000+ tanks, and a million+ NATO personnel. that might actually be a challenge for Russia (though I still maintain NATO would lose even that in a very one-sided and devastating way, since they have absolutely nothing to defend with against high supersonic and hypersonic CMs that Russia has in abundance, and absolutely no answer to Russian long-range best-in-class AD).
but even such an operation would require multi-year preparation and resources on a scale that US/NATO have long lost. they can't even do anything against tiny and backwards Yemen which doesn't have any AF or AD to speak of. genuinely engaging Russia? are you serious?
Nope. The west wants to provoke a Russian counter escalation that could galvanize western populations into a serious war with Russia. They want the 9/11 effect, especially in the US. War is probably the only thing now capable of uniting western populations behind their governments. I’m that respect, Russian “dithering” is actually strategic denial. And every trickle of military supplies to Ukraine without the big war degrades NATO capability to actually fight that war should it come.
except that their "escalation" is in a weird side-diagonal direction, in piecemeal steps. if you aren't aware, the peak in terms of NATO military and financial help was in summer 2022 - early 2023, when they basically rebuilt the whole (semi-destroyed) UKR army from scratch with NATO gear and money. since then, it's been largely downhill. Western help now is a pittance compared to the thousands of tanks and many hundreds of artillery pieces etc that they provided early on. same for money - the $300m or $5B or so that they are giving now are a joke compared to the $200B they sent before. it's trivially obvious that most Western countries (except for a few crazy rabid chihuahuas like the Baltics, or the French attack poodle) are tired of Ukraine and just want to weasel their way out of it somehow.
a real "escalation" would be something that would actually change the balance of the war in Ukraine's/West's favor. but there's nothing they can do anymore that would achieve that, short of nuclear war (where they would all die). "NATO boots on the ground" are a joke. without very capable and comprehensive AA/AD (which NATO doesn't have) and air cover (pretty much impossible without immediately losing lots of NATO planes and pilots) - they'd be just helpless sitting ducks, killed just as easily by cruise/hypersonic missiles as all the other NATO mercenaries in Yavoriv, Kharkov, Odessa etc.
they've lost a lot more Patriots, IRIS-T, NASAMS etc than they've shot down Russian planes. and practically all of their "successes" against Russian planes (not Geran-2 drones or something) were ambush-style (e.g. the Belgorod shootdown). that's very dangerous for the AD system and crew, mildly speaking. more like suicidal, given that the time from launch detection to a Kinzhal or Iskander arriving on your head for those higher-end AD systems - is probably less than 10 minutes now.
There is on one side a strategy, that is being followed, and on the other side a propaganda cover, a narrative for western public that explains the war.
Strategy is/was to defeat Russia in a proxy war on Russian border, and perform a regime change operation, arrest or kill Putin, and install a puppet regime. Ukrainians have been prepared according to strategy, first to strike such blows to Russian population in Donbas, that Putin is humiliated, and if Russia decides to attack trying to help Donbas to be able to stop Russian forces.
Propaganda or cover is simple, repeating ad nauseam that Putin, Russia is aggressor and Ukraine is just defending itself.
Original plan, based on building a large force able to defeat local resistance in Donbas, has been redesigned several times, whenever Putin/Russia did something unexpected, still the goal remains the same, defeat Russia in a proxy war, and do a regime change. And that means several principles have to be observed; war remains confined to Ukraine, officially only Ukrainian uniformed soldiers are fighting, NATO is providing weapons, Ukrainians are providing soldiers.
The unwritten strategic rules of this proxy war from the beginning respect just one red line; one should not provoke Russia into nuclear war, that would endanger US/UK. All else is possible. Even an attack on Putin and Russian leadership, so called decapitating strike is acceptable to US/West if it can be done without causing nuclear war. It can not.
We will not really know the truth until many years later, I believe that even Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine would have been seen as a victory for the US/West, because that would have been presented as: Russia is weak, cannot defend itself from Ukraine, is frightened to use nuclear weapons on NATO members, and last but not least - is using nuclear force against brotherly nation...and give a chance for US/West to try a decapitating strike at Moscow.
Original strategy demanded defeat of Russia that had to be painful, loss of territory, previously designated as Russian (Donbas, Crimea), loss of men, and a large number of refugees, so large as being so destabilizing that regime change is possible.
A very aggressive, risky strategy but it almost succeeded- remember Prigozhin.
Unfortunately for the West Russia survived initial shock, and began to reveal why this strategy was failed, in practice, in real life terms. A proxy conventional war cannot be won against Russia on Russian border, on de facto Russian territory.
Escalation is normal procedure to try to make the original strategy work, add more weapons, more soldiers, more money to keep Ukrainian society afloat, pay salaries, pensions. It cannot stop. US/West will escalate until tactical defeats are recognized, as meaning whole strategy is wrong, mistaken. This thought has to be processed internally, politically and finally a goal formed: how do we get out? how do we stop the war?
Obvious answer will be: talk to Russia, talk to Putin. Negotiate.
I am afraid that women who felt offended, defeated by Putin, like Hilary Clinton or Nuland will make this process slower, than necessary
Macron's husband looks exactly like the boy and not the girl in that family picture with a time stamp more related to the boy's age of reference. They're a gay couple just like Barry and Big Mike. It's not like it's a real secret.
Being "outed" may be a factor in Macron's current reckless and bizarre behavior, with the latter being an attempt to divert attention from the claims and the evidence.
Since when has Macron recently been outed? It's long been known that Macron has had a very special set of sexual relationships the precise nature of which has never reliably been established - of course the press like to revive their shock and scandal talk quite regularly
Macron is gay like the new PM Attal, in France we call the new Govt '' la cage aux folles''. Brigitte is MR not MRS (even Trump has the proofs). Macron is probably blackmailed or by cia or MI6 or Mossad? Like Michele Obama is also MR.
Be aware that the real french MFA is neocon mossad cia asset BHL who spent his part of his life in Odessa ( a big jew community there),this is not the idiot official MFA who can not even speak French correctly, he is another gay khazar( former ex lover of Attal).
Real MFA Bhl prepared this sequences (since Sarkozy and attack on Ghadaffi) he has open entry at l'Elysée with a small gang of jewish neocons who control everything in France. He spent three nights to convince Macron the week before (step one meeting monday in Paris, step 2 tv interview, step 3 meeting with GER+POL friday). Macron is going to Kiev for step 4, maybe VP should prepare a double header strike " à la Odessa'' (my source talking about 550 kia + 70 wia high level generals, nazis, nato, brits officers..), double header though on micron + ze, to close this sequence? After the attack of nato on Russia mainland the last 4 days + Stoltenberg saying openly 'nato sink the BSF', VP has more than plausible deniability and even more a good excuse (finaly) to retaliate.
You know, I always thought that the whole "Brigitte is a man" thing was a joke until I learned that literally no photos of "her" exist before the age of 30. Very fucking weird!
Thanks for summarizing the nonsense spewed by these European satraps because frankly I can't stand the sight of them, much less the torment of having to listen to their lies. Macron's a clown who's going to get a lot of Frenchmen killed if he has his way, which seems doubtful at this point. The guy's just another WEF stooge who, like Trudeau, is too stupid to realize there's a bus with his name on it just round the corner, engine already running.
Uh yeah if you call what we have in Canada "elections". Also if it weren't for the NDP party joining (literally) with Trudeau Libs he wouldn't be in power. Remember we are the most heavily controlled WEF country -- how do I know-- Klaus cant shut up about it. Many Canadians understand that the WEF controls us-- why? We have a pedophilic black mailed PM and many in the "liberal" cabinet have too many secrets to hide. Add to that Herr Freeland who moves much money (since 2013) to her Right Sector friends in Ukraine and who sits on the WEF board., Get it? What elections--it's fixed.
POLITICAL DEMOCRACY IS AN OLIGARCH DESIGNED & ORCHESTRATED FAKE Carol, My mind likes to crunch numbers. A friend calls me the "Count'. The whole Oligarch commanded & controlled fake colonial democracy system in its various iterations is very expensive to participate in. Organization, networking, advertising, Meetings, Offices, Staff, Travel, Equipment, Supplies etc. As a former Green Party Shadow Cabinet Member, Candidate in the 2004 's'election, NDP riding Executive Member, having interviewed all Leadership Candidates about their support for Canada's 23% role in the bombing of Libya back into the stone-age., as well as having engaged in the Parti-Quebecois, Liberals & Conservatives over six decades, I'm familiar with the exorbitant expenses behind the scenes. Few in Politics talk about or acknowledge the hidden typically unreported 'exogenous' (Latin 'other-generated') Oligarch finance contributions & effective party capture. The Zionist capture of the NDP to bomb Libya & murder Gaddafi is an atrocious sick example All political parties are playing this expensive game & pretending they differ only in policy. The best humanity can do is organize livelihood locally in order to recapture our sovereignty. All all our 'indigenous' (L. 'self-generating') ancestors before us, we best attend to ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY in all our Multihome-Dwelling-Complexes (eg. Apartment, Townhouses & Village-clusters), where 70% of people live along with investing in & gaining multistakeholder 'participatory' (L. 'part' = 'share') progressive ownership in all our work-places. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/c-relational-economy/8-economic-democracy
And from what I can tell your elections are easier to fix as you have majority rule. Which is why apparently every single person living or dead in Ottawa, your most populated province works for the govt.
He cheated by holding the election during CV-19 hysteria and allowed mail-in ballots big-time... 250K of which were not counted (more than his margin of victory). In truth, less than 20% of the voting public elected his minority government. The Socialists have been propping him up ever since to get what they want (more "free" stuff).
They actually believe this nonsense – send over the Taurus, there are said to exist 150 functional, of a stock of 600, the factory would take approx two years to produce any more
« Happily, we can change course. Russia has a poorly trained army and a Canada-sized economy. “This should be feasible, easily,” says Steven Everts of the EU Institute for Security Studies. Victory would require western countries to send non-combat troops such as de-miners, trainers and vehicle engineers. Countries would need to follow Denmark in giving every shell in their cupboards to Ukraine. Germany would have to send Taurus missiles. Replacing American support for Ukraine would cost the other Nato states about €65 per citizen per year. We could choose to let Ukraine win. »
They will eventually force Germany into sending them. Though F16s have been delayed till June. They're probably hoping Ukraine would be done before that.
I would not be so sure - the US in particular is very unhawky right now - see the new Pentagon Procurement for Fiscal 2025 - if anything is handing over to Germany, reliably the major source of EU cash
"Unhawky" only in the sense that it wants to divert effort from a losing situation in Ukraine to support for Israel and against China. The US hawks are encouraging Europeans to take on the Ukrainian burden.
The Russian economy is doing very well, and its GDP isn't loaded with useless government salaries and benefits like the West, so Everts is spewing nonsense...which is what he's paid to do....
I really find it hard to believe that the US has convinced the world to use the GDP numbers instead of Purchasing power. Take a look at our (US) GDP , almost 20% is health care which should be criminal, and something like 40% is Govt. workers and contractors. The US is truly a paper tiger
Canada sized economy lol Russia is now no 5 economy with 96 trillions in proven oil, gaz, minerals, metals, wheat etc....poorly trained army like the UK one?
The FT author uses the conventional World Bank GDP figures - whereas most other calculations are made by using the much more accurate and useful PPP figures
Beyond these figures lies the importance of the precise nature of the economy - the US economy is useless for the purposes of war, de industrialised de skilled and disorganised - and heavily dependent on those countries it has chosen for enemies, Russia and China
On the contrary both the Russian and the Chinese economies (and politics and societies) are well established for the conduct of modernised industrial war
So odd, this burning need to deplete the EU of all weapons, right down to the very bullets. Who benefits? Sure the US to sell them more stuff, but who else?
Do they need to borrow money to buy these weapons, meaning there is a banker angle? Or is something more sinister happening here. The talk of sending non-combat troops, are we looking at an EU draft, another way to deplete the ranks of those pesky white people?
I sense something else is moving in the shadows, would those soon to be gone weapons be needed to subdue a army of illegials attempted take-over? Is this a way to get the armies of the EU out of the country when such a take-over happens?
I think it can be explained by lack of competence at the highest levels of western power. And that includes the generals who are where they are because they’re politicians in uniform. They’re all trapped in the media-political narrative machine they built for themselves.
Maybe, but it is universal, and these people do what they are told, who at the top is telling them to strip their nation of any and all defenses is the question.
All of the politicians save very, very few and the military leadership are yes men. My question remains, who are they saying "yes" to and towards what end. Consider this:
"Russia has a poorly trained army". Where's been this guy hiding the past two years? Russia has, currently, the most experienced and battle hardened army in the world.
How shameless of Macron to talk about Minsk without mentioning that it was Ukraine, France Germany who didn't respect commitments repeatedly. Of course the journalists don't ask important questions. If Macron is so brave, he should let a Russian interview him.
Putin clearly answered all his questions in advance in his latest interview. So he can only send so-called warnings to Putin.
The Vlad Markov comment about tu et vous is to misunderstand the use of such - in this case Putin as the senior would easily use the tu and Macron the junior be limited to the vous
This would make the power relationship crystal clear - without any gangstery overtones
Putin speaks German completely fluently and English at a high level. He speaks about intermediate level French, which isn't good enough for high-level talks. So you're right, he would be using a translator. That being said, both Russian and French have the t/v forms, so it's possible the translator was faithfully adhering to how Putin spoke (assuming this whole thing isn't faked).
Russian has a formal and familiar like French. Putin was using the familiar. He also was looking a liar in the face. Not thuggery. Just an honest expression of the nature of the relationship.
"The Vlad Markov comment about tu et vous is to misunderstand the use of such - in this case Putin as the senior would easily use the tu and Macron the junior be limited to the vous"
The Vlad Markov comment is simply nonsense, talking about "alpha male" positioning where clearly there is none. The use of "tu" and "vous" in French is similar to the Russian use of "ты" and "вы" (apologies for the Cyrillic but those words don't render well into Latin alphabet) but it is not the same, nor do French conventions about formal and familiar map exactly the same way into Russian conventions.
What I heard in the conversation in the original languages (ignoring the English text translations) was both men talking to each other on a familiar and respectful basis, with neither trying to play any verbal games for dominance. Both were making an effort it seemed to me to emphasize personal friendship and mutual respect, on a "first name basis" as they say in English.
Macron's use of Putin's first name together with "vous" is expected, but still sounds a bit weird to Russians, because normally if you're not on a very familiar "ты" basis ("tu" in French) you'd refer to the other person using their first name and patronymic, as in "Vladimir Vladimirovich" and not just "Vladimir". That makes for quite a mouthful when a bunch of Russians are talking to each other using first name and patronymic, but it's not really a formal way of talking, it's just normal speech between people who are not close friends and so don't use the very familiar "ты" form of address. In more traditional offices, for example, people can work with each other for 20 years and still be using first name and patronymic and be using "вы". It's not stilted but just normal, polite talk.
But in the case of a foreigner like Macron, it's perfectly OK to mix just first name plus the more formal "vous". Russians know that foreigners don't use patronymics so they expect they'll be on a "first name basis" if they want to show friendship. Macron's use of "vous" in that case just comes off sounding respectful.
Putin's use of "ты" together with "Emmanuel" sounds perfectly friendly, that he's on a first name basis with him and is signaling that they know each other well. It is not in any way a hostile or disrespectful, or positioning higher/lower or junior/senior status move. It is a straight talk between friends move.
Leaking this tape was sheer idiocy on the part of the French. They are too stupid to realize doing such things eliminates a very important tool from their diplomatic toolkit, the ability to have candid discussions with other world leaders.
I'll agree that the French use of tu and vous is possibly as subtle as the Russian, only perhaps in slightly different ways, but probably only in any use among the older generation
People can vous voyez office colleagues for many years, husbands and wives can, or it can reflect and mark conditions or relationships of authority and age - it used to be normal for a younger person to vv an older who would tt
I have not lived in France for some many years, here in francophone Africa everything is different, while still being old fashioned, and there's no point in going over more subtleties, like when to speak in French and when not to
While I have your attention please consider my last comment concerning the ruling class - to personalise or pathologise them is to do oneself a disservice, and to handicap understanding and action
Odessa must not fall into NATO hands. Odessa is too strategic for Russia to give up and the entire reputation of the SMO rests on it. Failure to take Odessa would be a bridge way too short for Russia. Russia could win the war while losing the terms of surrender by giving up Odessa.
Actually, for reasons dating back to the Russian Empire, it's a LOT Jewish. There are millions of pilgrims who used to go there every year before the war because a lot of the Hasidic rabbis and historical VIPs have their graves in Odessa (oblast).
I believe that Russia, more than anyone else, understands the "Jewish Question" and knows how to deal with this thorny and difficult issue effectively, and in the context of their stated objectives of demilitarization and denazification.
I believe Putin meant ethnic Jews people living in Odessa, when he said it( according to Jerusalem posts 30 thousand people). Regarding Israel and Palestinian conflict, Russia( USSR as well) always supported two states solution.
The Press is going all in on Macron – to the exclusion of recognising that many if not most of the EU ruling class think like him – pols and bureaucrats both – talk loudly but carry a small gun
« A taster was provided last year [March 2023] when the four Nordic air forces announced their intention to operate their fleet of about 230 fighter jets as one seamless operation, making it larger than the RAF in the UK or Germany’s air force. Already, Norwegian F-35 and Swedish Gripen fighter jets have practiced landing on Finnish roads. »
– Mission Accomplished !
Talks in this sense have been going on since the 1990’s – this ‘JDI’ was re announced March 2023
The Northern Europeans care to move quick – the pols talk while the mils pretend to play
Africans? Piss off you racist arsehole.
Bidens Regime just can't stop interfering in other countries.
Macron thinks he’s Napoleon, except he has no army. He likes Josephs, not Josephines. Just another catamite of Klaus Schwab and George Soros’ cabinet penetration parties.
Unlike Napoleon Macron isn't going to reach The Russian border.
Forgot to take pills today?
You left out 'According to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry'.
Sounds about right, Yuri. However instead of Josephs, how about Macaron, a tasteless, delicate, whipped item loved by PMC yuppies? Or with all the rotten eggs and guano he's been laying and the ridiculous preening of a cluck, what do you think about Maricón?
I don't think Russia's primary threat comes from France. Look to expansion of terrorist activities in the North, St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad. Drones are the perfect terrorist weapon.
He will have an army. He’s gong to “pull it off” because it’s a racket. Read Anthony C. Sutton’s “wallstreet trilogy”. Besides Carroll Quigley this book it actually history (Princeton and Georgetown professors) who’s work is widely available but left out of the conversation because it’s to be taught to politicians but not spoken of “on stage”. Sutton also wrote the best work on the skull and bones society if you want to know what Kerry and Bush really believe.
Macron is a nutcase!!! The French People need to recall him and new elections should commence as soon as possible. War crazies like Macron have no sense of responsibility.
"The French People need to recall him "
They voted TWICE for him ... WTF?
not WTF... WEF...
Top of the pyramid indeed.. Wef being only their puppets..
The reason he got elected twice is because of the Far right and Marine Le Pen. It is different now.
I believe the mustache guy, the Austrian painter whose name we can't say would be a lesser evil compared to Macron...
"I don't know if he was less bad than Macron"
For sure more competent.
Ernesto.
Macron got in because it was either him or Le Pen.
We do not have elections which last over a year and we do not have a circus.
We have many parties to vote for and it comes down to the most voted 2.
None of us wanted Le Pen.
Now, unless something changes VERY fast we will get Le Pen!
Good question - but necessary to specify worse than Macron from the point of view of the ruling class and EU élite?, or worse than Macron from the point of view of defending French workers and wages against the ruling class and the EU élites, and the country from foreign military adventures in Ukraine certainly, but also in Africa, the Red sea and so on
Right at this moment nothing makes her worse. That wasn't so when he got in.
I can only vote in Municipal elections and this time I will go Communist.
What will LePen do that scares you so frightfully?
Be a politician who might do some of the things the actual French people want? Oh terrible, we can't have that!
He got in with an absolute minority last election. He gets little support from the rest of parliament.And he gets his direction from Bridgette Macron.
... but he did, after the yellow gilets jaunes and after his tyrannical vax policies...
It is like saying "the bullet ALMOST missed his head - not good enough!
Yeah, once upon time if you paid your social charges you’d get by. Now you are scum that they want to impoverish.
Kind of; they want to kill most and enslave the "lucky"...
You can try. At this point I consider the whole of the political elite in the West to be a victim of mass psychosis. I cannot otherwise imagine why they want to kill Russians so much. Or is it normal every now and then to have a big one?
Macron is safe until 2027.
define safe
There will be no election and the police and army will shoot when ordered.
Interesting definition. maybe, things don't go as planned most often 😊 especially given Macron has no control over what happens. Look to his banker friends. How would your scenario help them?
If that is the price to retain power.
He can take some damage with the european elections. But nothing fatal.
Not if he makes good on his implied promise that France will act directly against Russia to prevent Russia from winning the war in Ukraine.
There are plenty of scenarios where sometime in 2024 Kiev's forces collapse so broadly that Russian forces can seize Odessa or Kiev, and in response the French military directly attacks and kills Russians, either in what used to be in Ukraine or in Russia itself. In that case Russia will strike France directly.
After that the situation can easily escalate, but whether it does or doesn't Macron cannot be considered "safe" from the moment France strikes Russia. It is not likely Russia would seek to kill him, as it helps Russia to have a physical coward in charge in France who is likely to capitulate when he feels pain, but once Russia starts striking France the situation will be so messy Macro could end up dead without Russia specifically targeting him.
Macron is betting that French forces will act as a tripwire and that Russia will continue to avoid escalation.
Indeed. The question is whether he and his people have considered what happens and what they will do if Russia doesn’t avoid escalation. He can’t officially invoke Article 5 and if he assumes that the US will back him up he’s going to learn a hard lesson. Which could leave him with not enough force or supply to do anything except try to explain to the French people why he ordered their army to Ukraine and now soldiers are dead.
He’s bluffing on a poor hand, especially because his actual support in the military is clearly lower than he thinks. See the leaks and his approval rating with the assumption that serving military are almost certainly not his constituency.
The US will support Macron, otherwise they'd tell him to shut up.
And if you think any western leader cares about public opinion....
Simplicius, I am one of your subscribers here on Substack. Will you enable audio for this article please? – Thank you.
I use a read aloud app.
Why? If you have audio there needs to be subtitles for the deaf!
Since the beginning of this war, we keep hearing that the West can't escalate, it would be unpopular, reckless and suicidal, but they keep escalating all the same.
1914. “Mobilization means war”. You just wind up the apparatus and let it go and events take their charted course.
Aye, Scott. See also: Christopher Clark's "The Sleepwalkers." One of the best books covering the Euros stumbling into WW1.
I’ve read it, as well as Barbara Tuchman’s March of Folly. The parallels to today with countries technically at peace sending money and weapons across the borders to start conflicts with plausible deniability are remarkable.
What fascinates me is how blind the masses are to the fact that all of this is orchestrated by the USA to the detriment of Europe.
True. US is worried about Taiwan and Israel and yet the US started this.
Another hypothesis has it that all this is engineered by European oligarchs with the Americans as their muscle.
I do think those fellows are behind all of this ultimately.
After all the Napoleonic Wars, WW1, WW2 went so well for them, surely a WW3 and the opportunity to pick over the bones of Russia would be especially attractive.
Mostly British I guess, they seem to have a sick mental mind that goes back a long time
Remember the NATO dictate: keep Germany down, Russia out and the US in.
I'll add her book to my library! Thank you for mentioning it. Be well.
"The Guns Of August" is one of the most widely-sold history books in English. The title in the UK is "August 1914". Writing "between the lines", Barbara Tuchman explains how the British seduced the Germans into making the fatal mistake of starting WW1. The humiliating climb-down of the 1910 Agadir Crisis proved Germany would never intentionally attack Britain. So in 1914, London refused to say which side the UK would take, if any. One cheap telegram from the UK government to Berlin would have prevented the war, but that' not what London wanted. Tuchman laid out the fateful meeting the evening of Monday, Aug. 3, 1914. Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig told of the high cost. He ruled out the 6 week garden party given in the lying history books. Haig said it would be "a war of attrition" that would take 4 years and cost Britain 4 million casualties. Exactly prescient, we now know, and the government didn't reveal the casualty numbers until 1925, at which point the royal family made a new tradition to wear a poppy on Nov. 11, to commemorate the horrific losses which they had concealed from the public. Britain had far cheaper options for managing industrial rivalry with Germany, but ... the real goal was to seize Palestine as a new Jewish homeland. The Balfour Declaration in 1917 was proof of London's actual motive. Tuchman explains how Britain laid out the trap for the Ottoman Empire, although she is not blunt and you must read between the lines. Any Declaration of War always starts the war immediately - except for England's Declaration Of War in 1914. London declared on the morning of Aug. 4 that war would take effect at midnight. (Most histories obfuscate the timing and I even saw one which said 11pm Aug. 4th. Total BS.) That 14 or 16 hour delayed start gave the Germans time to bring the Ottoman Empire into the war on the side of Germany. The Ottoman Empire held the real prize: Palestine. Tuchman details the cat-and-mouse game in which the German Navy ordered the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau battleships to depart the vicinity of Sicily and head for the neutral waters of the Dardanelles. The Royal Navy spent a lot of energy monitoring these warships but did nothing to stop them. When the German warships entered Ottoman waters, the Sultan was faced with an unpleasant choice. Germany was extremely popular, having built the Orient Express railroad, trained the Ottoman Army and sold the Ottomans all their weapons. If the Sultan were to impound the warships, there was a real threat of popular revolt. So the Sultan chose the short-term benefit of retaining his waning power, and he joined Germany in a war he didn't want. "The Guns Of August" didn't cover the years to come, but we know it was "tab A into slot B", etc. until the British occupied Palestine and gave it to the Jews, acknowledged in the infamous letter to Lord Rothschild as head of the Jews in England. Right there is the real reason why WW1 was not prevented by one simple telegram.
Barbara Tuchman (1912-1989) was Jewish and wrote many popular history books. "Guns Of August" (1962) went into at least 26 reprints. My other big takeaway from her book was the senseless disaster of the Battle of Tannenberg, a costly and tragic stupidity which foreshadowed the fall of the Romanovs.
Interesting but you don’t prove your point. It’s basically mind reading to say “this happened and that was the goal” it’s not proof. Anyway big events usually have more than one motive.
To my mind, to see the end goal of the Balfour Agreement as the (re)establishment of Israel is to assume the Rothchilds cared a fig about Jews.
I do think the Rothchilds cared deeply about control of the oil rich middle east and wanted a forward beachhead to ensure they could capitalize on the region's resources.
The action forcing the Jews of Europe after WW2 into Palestine, Jews the majority of whom had little to no interest in living in a desert, was to populate this Rothchild beachhead.
The European nations were tickled pink to help with this "return" as that way they wouldn't have pesky incountry Jewish claimants wanting their assets back.
As with any crime, follow the money.
Excellent comment! I believe the ruling class of Britain would have considered the prospect of 4 million casualties a benefit, not a tragedy. With invention of farming machines such as motorized combines, tractors, and harvesters, there would have been a huge surplus of labor with no place to go. Farming in the nineteenth century was very labor intensive. Sending the unemployed off to the frontlines to be killed in large numbers would have been one way to solve the problem, in the minds of the British elite.
"Haig said it would be "a war of attrition" that would take 4 years and cost Britain 4 million casualties. "
And then he went on to ensure that it did cost that many.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pursuit_of_Goeben_and_Breslau
The Goeben and Breslau were the ships involved in the Med. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were part of the China squadron at this time and were destroyed in late 1914 at the Falklands.
Troubridge, the opposing commander in the Med, was court-martialed for not intercepting Goeben. So much for not pursuing Goeben and Breslau...
"Bought all their weapons from Germany" was not true; the Turks had two battleships on order from Great Britain, one of which that ultimately formed part of the Grand Fleet. These were seized by Churchill long before the Goeben showed up in the Dardanelles. Lots more in the following article demonstrating that it wasn't true that they bought arms exclusively from the Germans. Hell, a Brit admiral had lead their navy for years before the war.
https://armingallsides.org.uk/case_studies/ottoman-navy-scandal/
Tuchman had a point of view, let's leave it at that. Also, she would not have made most of the assertions that you did.
That's a rather one-eyed view of the origin of the Great War. Another view , quite popular, is that Germany was ready to turn a regional scuffle into a great European War because of a crisis of falling expectations amongst the German boss class. All of the great powers changed from maintaining peacetime establishments to arming for war in 1911. That would be quite a long stumble.
So we have the “Sleepwalker” hypothesis, where they stumbled into war, and the “Mobilization” hypothesis where everything was wound up and waiting for an event to trigger the whole cascade into WWI.
The Sleepwalkers were the citizenry, the Mobilization group were the bankers IMO.
There are more theories, one is that the constitution of the German empire put too much on the Kaiser who was the only integrating force in the state and had some rude shocks like when he wanted a mobilisation against Russia but not France. A bloke called [Sean McMeekin] thinks that it was the Austro-Hungarians wot done it, others go for a crisis of finance capitalisms and at least one writer says that it was the ceiling reached of the energy that could be gained from burning coal.
The conclusion of the 1871 war was the real event that triggered WWI. The French were dissatisfied at being humiliated, and the Germans were irritated that European pressure forced them to retreat from huge swathes of French territory that their military had won on the field of battle. They both wanted a rematch to settle the question of which country was going to be the premier land power in continental Europe.
I think this is the most logical explanation for why WWI ended up feeling so inevitable once the Serbians helped reduce the Austrian population by a few royals.
The Russians didn't seem to actually want the big war, and nor were they ready for it in the same way that the Germans and French were. Then again, the Austro-Hungarians weren't exactly ready for it either, judging by their pathetic battlefield performance.
Certainly possible.
Germany was annoyed it was unable to develop lucrative foreign colonies as its cousins had. And if you look at the history of Europe, war is mother's milk to them, often a first resort rather than a last.
Monarchs viewed war as a means to settle petty grievances, to justify raiding the budget, taking on massive debt and of course keeping the peasantry ranks slim and their asperations down.
Their populations were lured, as always, into thinking a war would be regional and short term; they were unaware of the interconnected alliance agreements their crony leadership has signed.
Colonies weren't often lucrative, see Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World, 1783-1939 (2011) by James Belich and The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (1989) by Avner Offer.
Valid point, yes some were lemons.
But then you have highly profitable cases like England's rule of India, China, and who can forget the insane wealth realized by Belgium in the Congo. This Paper gets into it starting on page 54. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2641&context=honorstheses1990-2015
Compare those with the paltry loot from the colonies obtained by the Germans and the cost to Britain of the Dominions.
No-one was under any illusions that a war wouldn't be a long and bloody affair, the short-war illusion was a post-war cop out. There was lots of analysis of the Franco-Prussian War, particularly the second part when the republican armies stretched the Prussians very thin with irregular warfare.
After Clausewitz: German Military Thinkers Before the Great War (2001) By Antulio J, Echevarria II
and
German Strategy and the Path to Verdun: Erich von Falkenhayn and the Development of Attrition, 1870–1916 (2005) by Robert T. Foley
I do think the military may have been aware, but the man in the street certainly was not, and was not told otherwise by the govt or press.
Plus our man in the street initially saw the war as a one off intervention due to the Arch Duke and his wife's murder. He had no idea of the secret interlocking protection alliances among world govts. As the world's nation's dominos fell, they war grew like Toppsy or more accurately a cancer.
This is an excellent article on the war's evolution (link below):
From the article:
"The war started as a confrontation between Austria – Hungary and Serbia. The Russian Empire joined the conflict, considering itself protective of the Slavic countries and wishing to undermine the position of Austria-Hungary in the Balkans.
After the Austro – Hungarian declaration of war on Russia 1 of August of 1914 , the conflict was transformed into a military confrontation at European level.
Germany responded to Russia with war, bound by a secret pact with the Habsburg monarchy, and France mobilized to support its ally.
The hostilities as they evolved pulled in 32 countries, 28 of them called “Allies”: France, Great Britain, Russia, Serbia, Belgium, Canada, Portugal, Japan, the United States (since 1917 ), as well as Italy, which had abandoned the triple alliance.
This group faced the coalition of the “Central Powers”, made up of the Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire.
https://historicaleve.com/world-war-1-summary-timeline-facts-causes/
For the British the German invasion of Belgium was very important to mobilise public opinion, which is why Joffre was told not to toy with the idea until the Germans had made the first move.
The public had been presented with the examples of the Russo-Japanese and Boer wars.
This time it's different. They have "mobilized" the weapons and ammunition that they sent to Ukraine, but in order to maintain political power domestically, no one is mobilizing troops or recruiting civilians or jump-starting a war economy in the west. They are following the steps of escalating towards starting war but not fighting one, let alone winning one. They have truly drank their own Kool aid and believe that their wonder weapons alone that keep getting beaten in Ukraine are somehow going to beat the Russian armed forces. Laughable. I predict that NATO will try to waltz into Odessa without announcement, be very quickly disillusioned after their entire force is mangled by missile strikes, as all NATO mercenaries and "trainers" and AD crews have been since the start of the war. They'll leave and the fact that they tried to defend Odessa covertly will be "Russian disinformation" officially until a few decades later.
Yep. "The Guns of August" was a good book that illustrated the sort of inevitability of the subsequent events once the first nation began mobilization. That book also noted that it wasn't just pure German aggression. The French were itching for a rematch from the humiliation they suffered in the war of 1871. They wanted WWI just as much, if not more, than the Germans did. No one actually cared about the Austro-Hungarians and their Serbian problem. That was just the match being lit for the bomb built by the Germans and French.
nonsense - they are talking not doing - to you these are one and the same - but not to anyone else
At the beginning only non-military support was promised. Since then the weapons and ammo provided have increased in amount and potency by orders of magnitude, one step at a time, until now they are talking about nuclear-capable Taurus missiles. I call those those escalations.
I call those failures
- all arms and armour sent has depleted NATO supplies, and been destroyed in the battlefield - as each new batch is sent it is once again destroyed - and so far left unreplaced in the home country armories
There is now little left - if that too is sent then that too will be destroyed
The RF has as one of it's goals the defeat of NATO, what more efficient means could they have chosen but to destoy the armour while sparing the foot soldier
The so called 'escalation ' is merely disarmement
From the Russian perspective, absolutely correct. Though I have to wonder at times, are these countries, including the US actually sending their best equipment? Seems much of what they have sent is past its shelf life, and every day you see more suddenly appear from what we thought were depleted stocks. We thought the US was short of ammo, yet when Israel needed it, plane after plane after plane of US armour and weaponry was instantly on the move. Of course everyone keeps back a certain portion for its own protection, but still I wonder.
No need to wonder about the ammunition, or lack of it - either in the US or the EU
The so called best equipment these countries have is not useful in this war; besides they fear that it would be destroyed by the RF - and that it would then be more or less impossible to replace them in any length of time that would pass as acceptable to allow them to continue to play the hawk
For the US Read the about the Defense Budget and the Procurement Program Fiscal 2025
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3703751/dods-2025-budget-request-provides-45-raise-for-service-members/#:~:text=The%20Defense%20Department%20today%20laid,the%20fiscal%202025%20budget%20request.
Pentagon Procurement Programs Fiscal Year 2025
https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/FY2025/FY2025_p1.pdf
Any proposals useful for the Ukraine war have been shifted to The National Security Supplemental Bill, which has been lapping the pool since last October
The reason the US and presumably other nations are not sending their best is that it becomes the property of the RF before long and it's an intel bonanza for them, and presumably the Chinese and Iranians, at least in part. Save the best for when you have to fight the RF. This is simple logic and would be practiced by any nation - the Soviets always had export versions of everything for pretty much this reason.
There is a huge difference in the two wars' objectives The US doesn't want Ukraine to "win" it wants Ukraine to bleed Russia long term, to the last Ukrainian. True the plan is not working out as hoped.
But they still feel there is a win to be had in a stalemate allowing them to bring in Blackrock to "help" Ukraine rebuild aka, rob the EU blind. Then they can rearm Ukraine in a few years and attack Russia yet again at their leisure.
In Israel, the US goal is time sensitive and super top tier. First to kill or displace all Palestinians so that Israel can build a massive port, access the Gaza off shore gas fields, build a canal bypassing the Suez (WHY are you an ally with these people Egypt??) and run high speed rail with a gas pipe line component throughout the area and to the EU.
Israel can then take EU gas market share from Russia, pose an even greater threat to ME peace, decrease BRICS+ attractiveness to ME nations, decrease Iran gas sales and continue to be the world's least liked nation.
The US is not sending its best and it is trying to maintain a strategic reserve. But there is a point where it starts to pinch. If you track the numbers of things being sent to Ukraine over time you see a pretty steep decrease. The French, for example have already sent 40% of their artillery systems. That strongly indicates that most western arsenals are already at the pinch point or beyond.
What do mean by 'the best' that the US is not sending-
It's a stretch to designate, say, the F35 as the best when it can not fly most of the time, and as seen in the Red Sea in a slightly different context, the west can not long afford to oppose limited numbers of multi million dollar systems against huge amounts of well managed 20 thousand dollar systems
Besides whatever the best the US may have it is not the best for a war such as being fought in the Ukraine - they may not have sent the best models of the Abrams, but such would get bogged down in the mud, be as logistically impossible to run and repair, and be as exposed to drones just as the older models
Better? Patriots? no way
But this is the point - all the west has done has been to throw inefficient insufficient arms and cash - and all that the west might be able to throw as their best would also be, in all probability, as inefficient and insufficient
How in this case may western actions be described as escalation, when in reality they are de escalation, as you describe - that is so say partly because they can not afford to send anything at all and mostly because whatever they do have in any case are not fit for purpose
17 March 2024 GAO report on the F-35
Please read GAO report on the F35 - this is far from the best, so how come they did'nt send it to fight already
They plan to build 2,000 of these non flying turkeys at a cost of $1.7T
– the US could buy every Ukranian a villa in Miami, two in Orlando, and another somewhere else for the price
That would be successful escalation
https://www.gao.gov/assets/870/861566.pdf
What GAO Found Maintenance challenges negatively affect F-35 aircraft readiness. The F-35 fleet mission capable rate—the percentage of time the aircraft can perform one of its tasked missions—was about 55 percent in March 2023, far below program goals
.[FullMission capable rate is about 30%]
This performance was due in part to challenges with depot and organizational maintenance (see fig.).
The program was behind schedule in establishing depot maintenance activities to conduct repairs. As a result, component repair times remained slow with over 10,000 waiting to be repaired—above desired levels.
At the same time, organizational-level maintenance has been affected by a number of issues, including a lack of technical data and training.
Accessible Text for F-35 Maintenance Challenges Negatively Affecting Aircraft Readiness
Heavy reliance on contractors U.S. government has limited decision-making ability and influence over depot maintenance
Inadequate training Maintenance-related training for the F-35 program is largely inadequate Lack of technical data
A lack of access to technical data for repairs delays the maintenance process at the organizational and depot levels
Funding prioritization Adjustments in funding priorities have prevented the construction of an adequate depot repair capacity
Lack of support equipment
F-35 support equipment is too frequently unavailable on flight lines
Lack of spare parts A lack of spare parts at installations and on deployments is causing maintenance delays Source: GAO analysis of Department of Defense information; U.S. Air Force/R. Nial Bradshaw. | GAO-23-105341 The Department of Defense (DOD) relies heavily on its contractor to lead and manage F-35 sustainment (see fig.). However, as DOD seeks expanded government control, it has neither (1) determined the desired mix of government and contractor roles, nor (2) identified and obtained the technical data needed to support its desired mix. The military services must take over management of F35 sustainment by October 2027 and have an opportunity to make adjustments— specifically to the contractor-managed elements. Reassessing its a
September 2023 F-35 AIRCRAFT
DOD and the Military Services Need to Reassess the Future Sustainment Strategy
What GAO Found Maintenance challenges negatively affect F-35 aircraft readiness. The F-35 fleet mission capable rate—the percentage of time the aircraft can perform one of its tasked missions—was about 55 percent in March 2023, far below program goals. This performance was due in part to challenges with depot and organizational maintenance (see fig.). The program was behind schedule in establishing depot maintenance activities to conduct repairs. As a result, component repair times remained slow with over 10,000 waiting to be repaired—above desired levels. At the same time, organizational-level maintenance has been affected by a number of issues, including a lack of technical data and training.
F-35 Maintenance Challenges Negatively Affecting Aircraft Readiness Accessible Text for F-35 Maintenance Challenges Negatively Affecting Aircraft Readiness Heavy reliance on contractors U.S. government has limited decision-making ability and influence over depot maintenance
Inadequate training Maintenance-related training for the F-35 program is largely inadequate Lack of technical data A lack of access to technical data for repairs delays the maintenance process at the organizational and depot levels Funding prioritization Adjustments in funding priorities have prevented the construction of an adequate depot repair capacity Lack of support equipment View GAO-23-105341.
For more information, contact Diana Maurer at (202) 512-9627 or maurerd@gao.gov.
Why GAO Did This Study
The F-35 aircraft, with its advanced capabilities, represents a growing portion of DOD’s tactical aviation fleet—with about 450 of the aircraft fielded. DOD plans to procure nearly 2,500 F-35s at an estimated life cycle cost of the program exceeding $1.7 trillion. Of this amount, $1.3 trillion are associated with operating and sustaining the aircraft.
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 included a provision for GAO to review F-35 sustainment efforts. This report, among other things, assesses the extent to which (1) challenges exist with F-35 depot and organizational-level maintenance, and (2) DOD has determined its desired mix of government and contractor sustainment support for the future. GAO reviewed F-35 program documentation, reviewed readiness and performance data, visited two F-35 depots and three operational installations, conducted a survey of all 15 F-35 installations, and interviewed officials.
What GAO Recommends GAO is making seven recommendations to DOD, including reassessing F-35 sustainment elements to determine government and contractor responsibility and any required technical data, and making final decisions on changes to F-35 sustainment to address performance and affordability.
They're not sending the more modern versions of the Abrams that have additional counter-measures for anti-tank missiles.
It's also clear that a few weeks of training isn't enough for a Ukrainian crew to get good with the Abrams. Normally it's a 22 week OSUT (one station unit training) that combines basic training with tanker school just to create a U.S. Army tanker (19K) who is still seen as very wet behind the ears. They'll then be sent to a permanent duty station where they'll be the least experienced guy on a crew where 1-2 of the four members have been driving tanks for years.
That's the thing with complicated weapon systems: they're complicated and require solid training and experience to operate correctly in the best of conditions.
We can send the Ukrainians tanks, but we can't turn them into good tankers with a couple of weeks of training.
Additional measures will change little
The tank is not designed for this sort of war in this kind of place
If the Ukrainians can not be turned into good tankers, and that is what is required for success, why send them the tanks in the first place
If the US gets everything wrong that can only be the fault of the US
Or heck why not ...blame the Russians
They are failures only after they failed in battle, which in turned was after escalation, ie sending materiel to Ukraine that wasn't there before or to replace equipment destroyed.
If all their escalations are failures - this does mean they are not escalations, they are meaningless attempts to throw something at a problem then when that fails something else or more of the same, but all to no effect or result, this is like walking up a hill and sliding back down at the same time, the old Greeks had stories about this kind of uselessness
If escalation is to have any meaning it must designate a planned progression in strategy to improve/increase in quantity and quality the amounts of resources, soldiers or arms, applied to the battlefield in order successfuly to achieve specific and specified goals, if not victory
NATO not only does not know what goals it has, it has no idea of how not to achieve them, let alone..
Throwing random balls of cash for others to catch is not escalation, neither is sending over small substandard mishmashes of arms and armour for them to cash in
These are failures only if you look at the result from immediate perspective of the particular batch of escalations. Long term Russia may be weakened by the war more than the West - at least in theory we have higher industrial capacity.
I wonder what impact will it have on our standing with the world. Certainly this whole nonsense will not induce much love anywhere. It does not matter when we are strong but it will when we will be weak.
I can't even fault most of the NATO generals. They're told to prepare for the military missions that politicians state publicly.
They can't prepare for a war engineered by the foreign policy ghouls in the U.S. State Department, CIA, and their European equivalents. Those people really thought they could take control of Ukraine with no repercussions and that Russia was a wounded old dog barking through the fence but unable to bite.
2014 didn't teach them anything, even as they watched in surprise as Russia straight out took Crimea and set up the armed insurrections in the Donbas.
So they doubled down even harder...and then spent 8 years not preparing Ukraine for a real war.
Fucking idiots. I can't believe these ivy league morons are in charge of the U.S. when an enlisted intel analyst with 3 years of experience could have looked at the available information and told them they either needed to have Ukraine really tool up and build a whole lot of fortifications, or they needed to dial back the rhetoric and actually begin talking to Russia as a peer nation with real security concerns.
I don't know who told the EU NATO contingent that attacking Russia would be a cakewalk. But it does appear some group did. Or did they tell them something else?
From what I have read the game plan was strategized through US eyes; Russia was expected to run a "shock and awe" invasion, quickly conquer and set up a new Ukraine govt.
The Ukraine military was not set up to wage a WW2 redux, it was trained and armed to be an insurgency force, and a pretty spiffy one at that.
But Russia saw the trap, or may it didn't initially, perhaps it just felt if it took a measured approach it would awaken reason in the EU.
The idea Ukraine at roughly 1 to 16 odds in manpower could "win" against Russia should have been clearly apparent. The idea that Ukraine on the other hand could wage a lengthy insurgency causing the Putin govt to fall to the EU's benefit would probably have been a fairly easy sell. And here we are.
AGAIN, for the comprehension impaired..
WHAT makes you call them escalations?
(really, this question is for the Finster, he NEVER answers it)
FF is a troll - he has a collection of one liners he copied out of Trolling for Dummies - there's a quote from his mentor Goering he likes -
He goes round the internet repeating them
He grants talk of escalation as more significant than acts of escalation - which are merely the signs of not knowing what you are doing
-or in his case not knowing what he is saying
Need I remind you of Soviet aircraft, air defense, armored vehicles but not tanks, artillery, then Soviet tanks, then western tanks, then western aircraft, missiles, then long range missiles, now it's western troops.
all lost and destroyed a whole world thrown away - go write your sad song somewhere else
Gerard please help me understand your position as opposing Feral Finster.
If you refuse to call western actual strategy escalation, how do you name it?
It is obviously unsuccessful, if success is defined as victory for the US/West, and since this is a proxy war, victory for the proxy, i.e. Ukraine.
Unsuccessful escalation is still escalation. There is a deeper problem, that US strategy has been mistaken, wrong from the very beginning and every move, decision is standing on a very shaky foundation, but even mistaken strategy is strategy.
Western troops have been in country since well before RF armed forces crossed the border. A reminder that the war started in 2014, although some would argue 1918.
My boss (at the time) was doing foreign military sales work in Ukraine from the mid-2000s on - at least by 2005. He was a retired light colonel from a C2 systems background and a former product manager. He wouldn't have been doing the work if not directed to do so from on high that this was 'desired'. He would flip between Ukraine and Uzbekistan on a fairly frequent basis in those days. Getting a hold of him then was hard, especially since I was in the ME a lot too.
I'd also make the point that in 07/08 there were a lot of Ukrainian planes at BIAP - Baghdad International.
aand the peak of UKR combat effectiveness was when they still had Soviet AD and gear. western gear has proven pretty much perfectly helpless, no matter if Leopard, Abrams, Bradley, Patriot, Krab, Caesar... whatever.
Western troops - apart from niche roles like aiming/shooting the Himars - have proven perfectly useless either. life expectation of a French brigade (and they can only really field one) in UKR is tbh just a week or two, maybe. and that's being generous.
Hope you're right. NATO apparently thinks otherwise.
They will learn to fight just like everyone else, but the body bags will be aplenty in the process.
as others said these are fairly stupid (as in inefficient) escalations
- if you want to fight, then fight
- going into a fight (say a boxing match) 'one finger at the time' is self-defeating and just makes you weaker as time goes on.
- sending your inventory at dripple pace is even worse; you never give yourself a chance as your equipment gets destroyed piecemeal
observing this whole break EU/NATO escalation from across the ocean just makes one shake his head, WTF boys? aren't you thinking at all?? You could not have picked a worse way of doing it.
The west seems criminally stupid. But I assume there are hidden motives for this nonsense
West is not stupid. They just took some wrong decisions. Because they refused to accept the world as it is, now, refused to acknowledge the change in the world.
Listen to how Indian foreign minister ridicules the West in a very intelligent way, with great sense of humor and you will understand what it is that West refuses to see.
sounds good. got any links to some of that?
I listen to Hindustan times short news on Youtube, and then to longer peaces on conferences, like G 20 in India or Security meeting in Muenchen just a month ago. He has a way of puting his thoughts across, making fun, usually of British, bur also of EU. I will not try to write his name, i will make a mistake, and I am writing this on the cell phone. But i will look it up and send you a link
I see it as human failure to resist the ultimate temptation of everything for nothing . What do we call when you take something without paying for it? Theft.
When a nation (any nation) gets the temptation of unlimited spending due to unique and temporary situation , it is oh so easy to think 'it would last forever' while that temptation hollows out nation economy (and arguably nation soul)
Consider
- hard times lead to tough men, to work to create easy times. easy times lead to weak men who beget hard times. always.
- Spain in 15 century is a backwater of the world, petty little kingdoms who are barely there with Muslim presence on the land of Spain. Tough men unite the kingdoms, expel foreign invaders and spread out into the world (conquistadores) and 16 century 'Spain' is the most powerful nation in Europe and in the world. Anyone who is anybody knows that you need to speak Spanish to be considered educated, spanish armies and navies are unmatched. However, easy money destroy Spanish economy , why work for anything , why take risks, why produce anything, if next galleon fleet would bring unlimited treasures robbed from colonies and get redistributed by the court? Economy dies, Spain falls into a civil war (birth of Netherlands) and Spain is never heard of again.
- 19th century Britain. Between 1830-1850, a tiny island is a quarter of the world industrial production. tough times leading to tough men who really built the empire over which sun never sets. By 1900, finance and financiers producing pound sterling emission replace productive economy and British empire falls behind all of its competitors ultimately disintegrating half a century later.
- US is in easy/fat times. just vote for congress critter who will promise you whatever, easy money that come out of thin air simply willed into existence. who care that national debt went from 8 billion to 32 in less than 15 years? This would last forever, right? wrong! What if 'financial services' is now half of the economy , we would just wish money into reality and become 'consumer economy' ignoring the math, right? wrong! we are due for hard times, at least a decade of it that hopefully beget tough men who will eventually get us out of it.
- I have been in Soviet Union in the 80s , easy times and weak men and then 90s through very tough times that lead to men (and women) who put their countries (Russia in particular) back together through hard work, hard choices, drive and determination.
- it is now our turn in USA and the sooner we get through this, the easier it would be (for us and for the world).
The objective of the 'escalations that aren't' is to keep public opinion in the West under control, not to win a war. Bloodying up Russia seems to be the only point left in all this. Apparently someone wanted to restore the pre-1990 status quo in Europe, more or less. Probably not what they were aiming for at first, but that seems to be how it is shaping up.
Reasonable observation, yes they are escalations, yet hardly in their own interests.
As I asked previously, what makes any of these actions "escalations"?
See reply to Gerrard White.
See my question to your reply...
Nothing but hot air makes the NATO or EU actions 'escalations' and those who believe that words speak louder than actions
To very carefully send in very small increments very small shipments of arms is to make sure that none of these make any real difference - and to make sure they are destroyed
It might have been possible, once, for NATO to plan and execute for massive shipments of arms, with training, and other support that once would or might have made a difference
Very very carefully NATO chose to not do this - now it is too late for the RF has taken positions of overwhelming advantage: besides NATOhave little left to defend themselves with, let alone to send to Ukraine
Climbing on the cliff
The Scene:
A Bear is smashing Nazis, with a tree trunk, stage right.
Enter, stage left, a small boy, draped in all the flags of NATO.
"Stop!" yells the boy, "you are killing my friends!"
The Bear smashes more Nazis, pauses, and draws a line with the tree trunk.
"Cross this line, and I will smash you, too" says the Bear.
"Your line means nothing to me" says the boy.
He draws a line with his toe, far from the Bear, and jumps over it, throwing a stone at the Bear.
"See! Your line means nothing!!"
The Bear smashes more Nazis.
The boy draws another line, to his left, no closer to the Bear, jumps over it and throws another stone.
"Nothing Bear! Your line means nothing to me!" the boy cries.
The Bear smashes more Nazis.
The boy draws another line, to the right this time.
"You must not win Bear! I will stop you!"
He jumps over this line, no closer to the Bear than the first two, and throws a stone.
The Bear pauses, points at the line the Bear drew, and smashes more Nazis...
Unpopular............Oh yes. The streets will be once again churning with the people.
Even a year ago, such a move would have been unthinkable.
Now, France, Czech Republic, the Baltics, Poland and Finland are on board. Canada likely to follow suit.
This is the result of Russian dithering and indecision.
What Russia sees as reasonableness and humanitarianism, the sociopaths running the West see as contemptible weakness.
Its the result of MAGA and Mike Johnson.
Yet the MAGA agenda via Trump is to immediately end the war in Ukraine. EU members saying they will jump in may be an attempt to sell escalation to the locals on the off chance Trump wins and a call for peace breaks out. The horror!
And yet the west is losing the war - if any european countries were stupid enough to send their own troops into Ukraine then those troops would be killed
To merely throw away arms or to send soldiers to certain destruction is the opposite of 'escalation', it is disarmement and defeat
Gringo go home
Most of the wars have winners and losers. It is a bit lazy to call the strategy of the losing side as opposite of escalation...all they have tried was real, they have killed many thousands of soldiers...
West and Ukraine as well are serious in their wish, will to win the war, but they are just failing, they are not succeeding because Russians are stronger.
They do not have a strategy, neither the US nor the EU
All they have tried has been self defeating because they have not understood the situation and they do not understand what they can or can not do to in order to defeat Russia
Escalation means moving up the scale of responses/actions in terms of power and quantity, and does not mean moving down the scale
The US is no longer providing arms nor cash – this must be considered doing almost nothing, and so not an escalation, more like bankruptcy
The EU is talking about sending troops one day, and the next they are talking about not on any account sending troops, see Ramstein – they too are shipping less and less cash and arms
What they are all doing is talking more, and trying to talk up their game, but talking more may not be considered escalation
- except in the mouths of propagandists
You missed something here. No, you missed a lot. Western munitions have been seriously drained, Russia has lots of new assistants - Mr. Sarmat, Mr. Kinzhal, Mr. Poseidon, etc. and lots of strategic friends in the Global South whom Russia could not count on when the SMO first started.
Universally, people come to unpleasant conclusions verrrry slowly. The West was slow to simply start stealing all Russian assets, and it was very unpleasant for the Global South to realize their assets would be seized down the road. For example, Washington supposedly told Saudi Arabia their assets would be seized if they stopped buying Western weapons. Everybody is still reeling in shock and awe to understand their Western-based investments are at risk.
In short, and contrary to what I too first thought, hindsight shows Team Putin has it all worked out. You don't understand ? It's probably because you learned your strategic thinking at the movies. You can change that thinking but you have to do the homework.
You think nobody in NATO takes any of this into account?
"This is the result of Russian dithering and indecision."
Respectfully disagree. Russia would like to achieve its objectives in Ukraine while continuing to grow its economy, while continuing to develop Russia and its people, and without suffering widespread destruction from war and mass killing of a million or more Russians.
To accomplish that Russia has to walk a narrow path in Ukraine, prosecuting the special military op with enough energy to defeat the nazi regime while avoiding a general war with the US and NATO. To do that it has to tolerate the many acts of war the US and NATO have committed against Russia.
Yes, the arrogant imbeciles in the West have seen weakness in Russia's patience. But if they overplay their hand Russia can always take actions directly against the west to teach them that Russia's choice to not engage in war directly against the West at this time is not the result of any lack of military ability to do so.
Had Russia used adequate force from the outset, the whole question of escalation would be moot.
And everything indicates that the western gamblers will overplay their hand, endangering us all.
That said, the Odessa strike was at least an indication that Russian patience may be coming to an end. Assuming that Russia follows up.
EDIT: I should have added. As to your other point - does Russia want to be nice, or do they want to win? Keeping in mind the West's stated goal for Russia, being nice is dangerous.
So far the war is going the way Russia wants: Russia is winning, steadily de-nazifying Ukraine at a tempo that's perfectly acceptable to Russia, while Russia is getting stronger and stronger socially, economically, and militarily and the West is getting weaker socially, economically, and militarily.
I agree that the West may overplay their hand, but then Russia can respond. Had Russia responded to prior Western acts of war in a harsh manner, for example, wiping out US LNG ports in response to the US destruction of Nordstream, I think it is more likely that the US would have responded with general war, not that it would have gone off thinking "yep, Russia means business, better not mess with them...".
Use of adequate force doesn’t mean expanding the war to outside of Ukraine. As it is, with every escalation, the West can ever always only respond with more aggression, more sunk costs. This abuse of The Sunk Cost Fallacy is entirely intentional, and it leads to one place.
that's if they actually had anything to escalate with.
as I've told you multiple times before - contrary to what micro-Napoleon seems to think - he's a chihuahua militarily. he has nothing to escalate with that wouldn't be destroyed in a completely one-sided manner by Russian AF.
the only hypothetical escalation - short of nuclear - that might really move the needle would be a large-scale US+NATO operation similar to (or exceeding) Desert Storm in size, with 1000+ planes, 1000+ tanks, and a million+ NATO personnel. that might actually be a challenge for Russia (though I still maintain NATO would lose even that in a very one-sided and devastating way, since they have absolutely nothing to defend with against high supersonic and hypersonic CMs that Russia has in abundance, and absolutely no answer to Russian long-range best-in-class AD).
but even such an operation would require multi-year preparation and resources on a scale that US/NATO have long lost. they can't even do anything against tiny and backwards Yemen which doesn't have any AF or AD to speak of. genuinely engaging Russia? are you serious?
yeah, no.
Nope. The west wants to provoke a Russian counter escalation that could galvanize western populations into a serious war with Russia. They want the 9/11 effect, especially in the US. War is probably the only thing now capable of uniting western populations behind their governments. I’m that respect, Russian “dithering” is actually strategic denial. And every trickle of military supplies to Ukraine without the big war degrades NATO capability to actually fight that war should it come.
Public opinion is irrelevant. Surely you know that.
And today John.Kirby said that the White House is not opposed to other countries intervention into this war.
You don't need to be a Nostradamus or a Metternich to read between the lines here.
It's coming.
except that their "escalation" is in a weird side-diagonal direction, in piecemeal steps. if you aren't aware, the peak in terms of NATO military and financial help was in summer 2022 - early 2023, when they basically rebuilt the whole (semi-destroyed) UKR army from scratch with NATO gear and money. since then, it's been largely downhill. Western help now is a pittance compared to the thousands of tanks and many hundreds of artillery pieces etc that they provided early on. same for money - the $300m or $5B or so that they are giving now are a joke compared to the $200B they sent before. it's trivially obvious that most Western countries (except for a few crazy rabid chihuahuas like the Baltics, or the French attack poodle) are tired of Ukraine and just want to weasel their way out of it somehow.
a real "escalation" would be something that would actually change the balance of the war in Ukraine's/West's favor. but there's nothing they can do anymore that would achieve that, short of nuclear war (where they would all die). "NATO boots on the ground" are a joke. without very capable and comprehensive AA/AD (which NATO doesn't have) and air cover (pretty much impossible without immediately losing lots of NATO planes and pilots) - they'd be just helpless sitting ducks, killed just as easily by cruise/hypersonic missiles as all the other NATO mercenaries in Yavoriv, Kharkov, Odessa etc.
Well, NATO AA have shot down aircraft over pre-war Russian territory (e.g. Belgorod), so they must have some capability.
they've lost a lot more Patriots, IRIS-T, NASAMS etc than they've shot down Russian planes. and practically all of their "successes" against Russian planes (not Geran-2 drones or something) were ambush-style (e.g. the Belgorod shootdown). that's very dangerous for the AD system and crew, mildly speaking. more like suicidal, given that the time from launch detection to a Kinzhal or Iskander arriving on your head for those higher-end AD systems - is probably less than 10 minutes now.
Doesn't matter. It worked.
There is on one side a strategy, that is being followed, and on the other side a propaganda cover, a narrative for western public that explains the war.
Strategy is/was to defeat Russia in a proxy war on Russian border, and perform a regime change operation, arrest or kill Putin, and install a puppet regime. Ukrainians have been prepared according to strategy, first to strike such blows to Russian population in Donbas, that Putin is humiliated, and if Russia decides to attack trying to help Donbas to be able to stop Russian forces.
Propaganda or cover is simple, repeating ad nauseam that Putin, Russia is aggressor and Ukraine is just defending itself.
Original plan, based on building a large force able to defeat local resistance in Donbas, has been redesigned several times, whenever Putin/Russia did something unexpected, still the goal remains the same, defeat Russia in a proxy war, and do a regime change. And that means several principles have to be observed; war remains confined to Ukraine, officially only Ukrainian uniformed soldiers are fighting, NATO is providing weapons, Ukrainians are providing soldiers.
The unwritten strategic rules of this proxy war from the beginning respect just one red line; one should not provoke Russia into nuclear war, that would endanger US/UK. All else is possible. Even an attack on Putin and Russian leadership, so called decapitating strike is acceptable to US/West if it can be done without causing nuclear war. It can not.
We will not really know the truth until many years later, I believe that even Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine would have been seen as a victory for the US/West, because that would have been presented as: Russia is weak, cannot defend itself from Ukraine, is frightened to use nuclear weapons on NATO members, and last but not least - is using nuclear force against brotherly nation...and give a chance for US/West to try a decapitating strike at Moscow.
Original strategy demanded defeat of Russia that had to be painful, loss of territory, previously designated as Russian (Donbas, Crimea), loss of men, and a large number of refugees, so large as being so destabilizing that regime change is possible.
A very aggressive, risky strategy but it almost succeeded- remember Prigozhin.
Unfortunately for the West Russia survived initial shock, and began to reveal why this strategy was failed, in practice, in real life terms. A proxy conventional war cannot be won against Russia on Russian border, on de facto Russian territory.
Escalation is normal procedure to try to make the original strategy work, add more weapons, more soldiers, more money to keep Ukrainian society afloat, pay salaries, pensions. It cannot stop. US/West will escalate until tactical defeats are recognized, as meaning whole strategy is wrong, mistaken. This thought has to be processed internally, politically and finally a goal formed: how do we get out? how do we stop the war?
Obvious answer will be: talk to Russia, talk to Putin. Negotiate.
I am afraid that women who felt offended, defeated by Putin, like Hilary Clinton or Nuland will make this process slower, than necessary
Succinct and accurate.
Redacted did a story recently about how Macron's "wife" is actually a man or was.... my tense and pronouns need retooling apparently....
Macron's husband looks exactly like the boy and not the girl in that family picture with a time stamp more related to the boy's age of reference. They're a gay couple just like Barry and Big Mike. It's not like it's a real secret.
Being "outed" may be a factor in Macron's current reckless and bizarre behavior, with the latter being an attempt to divert attention from the claims and the evidence.
Since when has Macron recently been outed? It's long been known that Macron has had a very special set of sexual relationships the precise nature of which has never reliably been established - of course the press like to revive their shock and scandal talk quite regularly
Yes, I concur. I've known he is gay because MY prime Minister is also gay!!
Headline news at one point....
Macron is gay like the new PM Attal, in France we call the new Govt '' la cage aux folles''. Brigitte is MR not MRS (even Trump has the proofs). Macron is probably blackmailed or by cia or MI6 or Mossad? Like Michele Obama is also MR.
Be aware that the real french MFA is neocon mossad cia asset BHL who spent his part of his life in Odessa ( a big jew community there),this is not the idiot official MFA who can not even speak French correctly, he is another gay khazar( former ex lover of Attal).
Real MFA Bhl prepared this sequences (since Sarkozy and attack on Ghadaffi) he has open entry at l'Elysée with a small gang of jewish neocons who control everything in France. He spent three nights to convince Macron the week before (step one meeting monday in Paris, step 2 tv interview, step 3 meeting with GER+POL friday). Macron is going to Kiev for step 4, maybe VP should prepare a double header strike " à la Odessa'' (my source talking about 550 kia + 70 wia high level generals, nazis, nato, brits officers..), double header though on micron + ze, to close this sequence? After the attack of nato on Russia mainland the last 4 days + Stoltenberg saying openly 'nato sink the BSF', VP has more than plausible deniability and even more a good excuse (finaly) to retaliate.
You know, I always thought that the whole "Brigitte is a man" thing was a joke until I learned that literally no photos of "her" exist before the age of 30. Very fucking weird!
Thanks for summarizing the nonsense spewed by these European satraps because frankly I can't stand the sight of them, much less the torment of having to listen to their lies. Macron's a clown who's going to get a lot of Frenchmen killed if he has his way, which seems doubtful at this point. The guy's just another WEF stooge who, like Trudeau, is too stupid to realize there's a bus with his name on it just round the corner, engine already running.
Trudeau is truly despicable. That guy single handedly turned Canada into a shithole.
He was also voted in a second time.
Uh yeah if you call what we have in Canada "elections". Also if it weren't for the NDP party joining (literally) with Trudeau Libs he wouldn't be in power. Remember we are the most heavily controlled WEF country -- how do I know-- Klaus cant shut up about it. Many Canadians understand that the WEF controls us-- why? We have a pedophilic black mailed PM and many in the "liberal" cabinet have too many secrets to hide. Add to that Herr Freeland who moves much money (since 2013) to her Right Sector friends in Ukraine and who sits on the WEF board., Get it? What elections--it's fixed.
POLITICAL DEMOCRACY IS AN OLIGARCH DESIGNED & ORCHESTRATED FAKE Carol, My mind likes to crunch numbers. A friend calls me the "Count'. The whole Oligarch commanded & controlled fake colonial democracy system in its various iterations is very expensive to participate in. Organization, networking, advertising, Meetings, Offices, Staff, Travel, Equipment, Supplies etc. As a former Green Party Shadow Cabinet Member, Candidate in the 2004 's'election, NDP riding Executive Member, having interviewed all Leadership Candidates about their support for Canada's 23% role in the bombing of Libya back into the stone-age., as well as having engaged in the Parti-Quebecois, Liberals & Conservatives over six decades, I'm familiar with the exorbitant expenses behind the scenes. Few in Politics talk about or acknowledge the hidden typically unreported 'exogenous' (Latin 'other-generated') Oligarch finance contributions & effective party capture. The Zionist capture of the NDP to bomb Libya & murder Gaddafi is an atrocious sick example All political parties are playing this expensive game & pretending they differ only in policy. The best humanity can do is organize livelihood locally in order to recapture our sovereignty. All all our 'indigenous' (L. 'self-generating') ancestors before us, we best attend to ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY in all our Multihome-Dwelling-Complexes (eg. Apartment, Townhouses & Village-clusters), where 70% of people live along with investing in & gaining multistakeholder 'participatory' (L. 'part' = 'share') progressive ownership in all our work-places. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/c-relational-economy/8-economic-democracy
And from what I can tell your elections are easier to fix as you have majority rule. Which is why apparently every single person living or dead in Ottawa, your most populated province works for the govt.
He cheated by holding the election during CV-19 hysteria and allowed mail-in ballots big-time... 250K of which were not counted (more than his margin of victory). In truth, less than 20% of the voting public elected his minority government. The Socialists have been propping him up ever since to get what they want (more "free" stuff).
16 March 2024 FT Winning the War is easy
« Why Germany’s Taurus is Europe’s most-wanted long-range missile’
https://www.ft.com/content/09f2ec36-de20-4ea2-abf2-49f70275c521
https://archive.ph/BMYQh
‘The West can still save Ukraine’
https://archive.ph/a0NKt
They actually believe this nonsense – send over the Taurus, there are said to exist 150 functional, of a stock of 600, the factory would take approx two years to produce any more
« Happily, we can change course. Russia has a poorly trained army and a Canada-sized economy. “This should be feasible, easily,” says Steven Everts of the EU Institute for Security Studies. Victory would require western countries to send non-combat troops such as de-miners, trainers and vehicle engineers. Countries would need to follow Denmark in giving every shell in their cupboards to Ukraine. Germany would have to send Taurus missiles. Replacing American support for Ukraine would cost the other Nato states about €65 per citizen per year. We could choose to let Ukraine win. »
They will eventually force Germany into sending them. Though F16s have been delayed till June. They're probably hoping Ukraine would be done before that.
who is the 'they' in your comment?
NATO hawks, who else? UK, US, Poland and now probably France too.
I would not be so sure - the US in particular is very unhawky right now - see the new Pentagon Procurement for Fiscal 2025 - if anything is handing over to Germany, reliably the major source of EU cash
"Unhawky" only in the sense that it wants to divert effort from a losing situation in Ukraine to support for Israel and against China. The US hawks are encouraging Europeans to take on the Ukrainian burden.
That's precisely what I said - plus the US is all talk no action so far - they've yet to put their men in boots where their mouths are
It's more chicken than hawk to beg someone to fight for you
The Russian economy is doing very well, and its GDP isn't loaded with useless government salaries and benefits like the West, so Everts is spewing nonsense...which is what he's paid to do....
I really find it hard to believe that the US has convinced the world to use the GDP numbers instead of Purchasing power. Take a look at our (US) GDP , almost 20% is health care which should be criminal, and something like 40% is Govt. workers and contractors. The US is truly a paper tiger
Canada sized economy lol Russia is now no 5 economy with 96 trillions in proven oil, gaz, minerals, metals, wheat etc....poorly trained army like the UK one?
The FT author uses the conventional World Bank GDP figures - whereas most other calculations are made by using the much more accurate and useful PPP figures
Beyond these figures lies the importance of the precise nature of the economy - the US economy is useless for the purposes of war, de industrialised de skilled and disorganised - and heavily dependent on those countries it has chosen for enemies, Russia and China
On the contrary both the Russian and the Chinese economies (and politics and societies) are well established for the conduct of modernised industrial war
So odd, this burning need to deplete the EU of all weapons, right down to the very bullets. Who benefits? Sure the US to sell them more stuff, but who else?
Do they need to borrow money to buy these weapons, meaning there is a banker angle? Or is something more sinister happening here. The talk of sending non-combat troops, are we looking at an EU draft, another way to deplete the ranks of those pesky white people?
I sense something else is moving in the shadows, would those soon to be gone weapons be needed to subdue a army of illegials attempted take-over? Is this a way to get the armies of the EU out of the country when such a take-over happens?
I think it can be explained by lack of competence at the highest levels of western power. And that includes the generals who are where they are because they’re politicians in uniform. They’re all trapped in the media-political narrative machine they built for themselves.
Maybe, but it is universal, and these people do what they are told, who at the top is telling them to strip their nation of any and all defenses is the question.
All of the politicians save very, very few and the military leadership are yes men. My question remains, who are they saying "yes" to and towards what end. Consider this:
https://rumble.com/v25epjh-john-olooney-black-watch-troops-have-told-me-this-is-the-plan-....html
"Russia has a poorly trained army". Where's been this guy hiding the past two years? Russia has, currently, the most experienced and battle hardened army in the world.
How shameless of Macron to talk about Minsk without mentioning that it was Ukraine, France Germany who didn't respect commitments repeatedly. Of course the journalists don't ask important questions. If Macron is so brave, he should let a Russian interview him.
Putin clearly answered all his questions in advance in his latest interview. So he can only send so-called warnings to Putin.
Macron knows full well that he is a hypocrite and a liar.
He does not care.
It's what got him elected. I'd be shocked and wonder what happened to the electorate if he wasn't.
Makes one think
Yes he is in full panic mode
He doesn't seem at all panicked to me.
He is. Losing US support would be catastrophic for the Khazar mafia running the EU
I kind of think they are joined at the hip, sure the US MIC wants Germany down, but not out. And that goes for all of the EU/NATO contingent.
The Vlad Markov comment about tu et vous is to misunderstand the use of such - in this case Putin as the senior would easily use the tu and Macron the junior be limited to the vous
This would make the power relationship crystal clear - without any gangstery overtones
I don't believe Putin speaks French. His interpreter would choose the words, n'est-ce pas?
One may hope the interpreter has chosen Putin's words to translate
Who ever chose the interpreter had best well chosen
If not nobody can say nothing about what was or was not said
Bad translation as in English there is no 'tu' or 'vous' is you for everyone except maybe for a Royal or the Pope..
Putin speaks German completely fluently and English at a high level. He speaks about intermediate level French, which isn't good enough for high-level talks. So you're right, he would be using a translator. That being said, both Russian and French have the t/v forms, so it's possible the translator was faithfully adhering to how Putin spoke (assuming this whole thing isn't faked).
Russian has a formal and familiar like French. Putin was using the familiar. He also was looking a liar in the face. Not thuggery. Just an honest expression of the nature of the relationship.
"The Vlad Markov comment about tu et vous is to misunderstand the use of such - in this case Putin as the senior would easily use the tu and Macron the junior be limited to the vous"
The Vlad Markov comment is simply nonsense, talking about "alpha male" positioning where clearly there is none. The use of "tu" and "vous" in French is similar to the Russian use of "ты" and "вы" (apologies for the Cyrillic but those words don't render well into Latin alphabet) but it is not the same, nor do French conventions about formal and familiar map exactly the same way into Russian conventions.
What I heard in the conversation in the original languages (ignoring the English text translations) was both men talking to each other on a familiar and respectful basis, with neither trying to play any verbal games for dominance. Both were making an effort it seemed to me to emphasize personal friendship and mutual respect, on a "first name basis" as they say in English.
Macron's use of Putin's first name together with "vous" is expected, but still sounds a bit weird to Russians, because normally if you're not on a very familiar "ты" basis ("tu" in French) you'd refer to the other person using their first name and patronymic, as in "Vladimir Vladimirovich" and not just "Vladimir". That makes for quite a mouthful when a bunch of Russians are talking to each other using first name and patronymic, but it's not really a formal way of talking, it's just normal speech between people who are not close friends and so don't use the very familiar "ты" form of address. In more traditional offices, for example, people can work with each other for 20 years and still be using first name and patronymic and be using "вы". It's not stilted but just normal, polite talk.
But in the case of a foreigner like Macron, it's perfectly OK to mix just first name plus the more formal "vous". Russians know that foreigners don't use patronymics so they expect they'll be on a "first name basis" if they want to show friendship. Macron's use of "vous" in that case just comes off sounding respectful.
Putin's use of "ты" together with "Emmanuel" sounds perfectly friendly, that he's on a first name basis with him and is signaling that they know each other well. It is not in any way a hostile or disrespectful, or positioning higher/lower or junior/senior status move. It is a straight talk between friends move.
Leaking this tape was sheer idiocy on the part of the French. They are too stupid to realize doing such things eliminates a very important tool from their diplomatic toolkit, the ability to have candid discussions with other world leaders.
I'll agree that the French use of tu and vous is possibly as subtle as the Russian, only perhaps in slightly different ways, but probably only in any use among the older generation
People can vous voyez office colleagues for many years, husbands and wives can, or it can reflect and mark conditions or relationships of authority and age - it used to be normal for a younger person to vv an older who would tt
I have not lived in France for some many years, here in francophone Africa everything is different, while still being old fashioned, and there's no point in going over more subtleties, like when to speak in French and when not to
While I have your attention please consider my last comment concerning the ruling class - to personalise or pathologise them is to do oneself a disservice, and to handicap understanding and action
Odessa must not fall into NATO hands. Odessa is too strategic for Russia to give up and the entire reputation of the SMO rests on it. Failure to take Odessa would be a bridge way too short for Russia. Russia could win the war while losing the terms of surrender by giving up Odessa.
Putin said it: “ Odessa is a Russian city and little bit Jewish.”
Actually, for reasons dating back to the Russian Empire, it's a LOT Jewish. There are millions of pilgrims who used to go there every year before the war because a lot of the Hasidic rabbis and historical VIPs have their graves in Odessa (oblast).
Yes, it was Israel before Israel. Though was it Jewish or Zionist? 🤔
Something tells me It will become Israel again.
It will be their 110th country, inshallah
"it's a LOT Jewish." That was before the nazi occupation in WWII.
I believe that Russia, more than anyone else, understands the "Jewish Question" and knows how to deal with this thorny and difficult issue effectively, and in the context of their stated objectives of demilitarization and denazification.
I believe Putin meant ethnic Jews people living in Odessa, when he said it( according to Jerusalem posts 30 thousand people). Regarding Israel and Palestinian conflict, Russia( USSR as well) always supported two states solution.
Excellent point
Make Odessa Israel again.
Nah. The only country that understands the question is Iran.
It's in large part a Russian-Jewish city. Not that confusing. PS- for what I hope are obvious reasons, no love for team Bandera from there
Do you recall the Russian recruitment video where two fellows discuss where they will live after the war, their plans are "Kiev" and "Odessa."
Now was recruiter choosing to be droll, perhaps on Kiev, but certainly not on Odessa, not after that horrific slaughter at the Union Hall.
"Emmanuel Macron is bidding to lead Nato as a 'Napoleon'"
Headline of the year.
Not sure if this is unintentionally prophetic or a sly joke on the part of the Daily Mail.
Leading NATO like a Napoleon? A much worse Don Quichote I would say MPO.
He has got to get a job-- his current one is fading fast. These black mailed idiots dont go quietly they go up-- eg. Ursula von Der Crazy
Probably they forgot that Napoleon was defeated by Russia)
Macron is interviewing for his next job in Brussels, with lucrative side gigs on the board of a few MIC companies.
The Press is going all in on Macron – to the exclusion of recognising that many if not most of the EU ruling class think like him – pols and bureaucrats both – talk loudly but carry a small gun
Especially the BalNors
‘Sweden joins NATO lake on Moscow’s doorstep’
https://archive.ph/EOhRU#selection-2345.0-2345.326
« A taster was provided last year [March 2023] when the four Nordic air forces announced their intention to operate their fleet of about 230 fighter jets as one seamless operation, making it larger than the RAF in the UK or Germany’s air force. Already, Norwegian F-35 and Swedish Gripen fighter jets have practiced landing on Finnish roads. »
– Mission Accomplished !
Talks in this sense have been going on since the 1990’s – this ‘JDI’ was re announced March 2023
The Northern Europeans care to move quick – the pols talk while the mils pretend to play
https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2023/03/24/nordic-countries-move-toward-linking-their-air-forces-250-planes/
The French people are in big trouble with this 'Little King' want to be, banker in charge!
Big Thanks! too Simplicius The Thinker, for another Excellent elucidation.