Neocon godfather Robert Kagan has written a new column for the Atlantic—and his decrees on the Ukraine war usually presage a critical time, for which he is summoned to rustle up urgent support.
The Thai banks/govt. are citing AML reasons. Re bank books, they were mostly phased out years ago. And a bankbook doesn't stop them freezing their accounts.
I live in the super-rich in gold Abitibi Greenstone belt country, Grr.
KL Gold, recently bought by Agnico Eagle, owns all mineralization under my house and land, which would theoretically make anything I bury their property. lol I dug up part of my yard once and found several quartz veins, but the high-grade gold here is very deep, not suitable for panhandling. 😂
So I asset diversify and I'm ready to cash out faster than the government can get their greedy hands on it in case of a bail-in or whatever.
Along with bail-in laws (which the sheeple mass don't even know exist) is the insidious unrealised capital gains taxes that are being introduced in many countries.
Crypto holders need to be aware of this as with the new financial system allowing staking and borrowing against crypto giving little tax in the former, and no tax in the latter, the greedy parasites will tax crypto profits before we sell, which will cause a partial sell off to pay the tax.
Cvnts. We take the financial risk, make a profit, and they send the goons to take their vig.
Or get on a plane and get the crypto in to a friendly jurisdiction.
One evening in my Mexican village, a group of revolutionists in pickup trucks showed up, then the village chief with a sack over his head got in a truck and they all drove off. I wondered why, and it was so the son could dig up the family treasure for ransom. He did so and all returned to normal. Buried treasure is no safer than the society that buried it.
I'd suggest you actually look at how it came about; there's an analysis from an American lawyer based out of Bangkok who suggests that it's a result of US inspired meddling. https://youtu.be/P9GexMLDv1g?si=2fal2rVpFyHmFUQT
I found it interesting because he's made several videos on the issue and he's concluded that there's foreign influence behind the move. This is another vector being used to destabilise the situation.
This is true but like driving defensively it is best to begin with the assumption that the various governments seek to shackle the people to their great stones to build their modern ziggurats. Let us be happily surprised to discover a government that doesn't do so and remember; such a situation may not last.
The USA republic only lasted until 1865 when Lincoln (our Julius Caesar) met his fate at the hands of a committed slaver who was deluded into thinking he was fighting for freedom. John Wilkes Booth's freedom to own his fellow man in bitter bondage. Because of this assassination when the Confederacy returned to the Halls of Power they had a Democratic president and the crooked republicans (Rats or Rhinos) to welcome them back into a coalition that rules America to this day.
I refuse to believe that MAGA will succeed in defeating this coalition of evil, the Demonrats, which will use assassination even when everyone knows but cannot prove it is them. Remember Ashli Babbitt as well as Charlie Kirk. I'm not getting my hopes up. Not about MAGA and not really about BRICS. I vote for the Republicans and pray but I don't hope, I drive defensively and thank God when someone makes up for my own mistakes.
The Jeffersonian Republic didn't survive Jefferson: Where in the Constitution does it say the Federal Government can buy a few million acres of swampland and it's inbred retard inhabitants just because the French are having a fire sale?
Agreed -- I was in the middle of writing a similar comment. We can just hope that people look back aghast at what the government pulled off with a 'never again' attitude. Sadly, I'm not that hopeful. It will just come in a different guise.
I tell my kids with panic voice "get away from her, she has a disease", and in mock fear my kids scurry to the other side of me away from the masked idiot. Nothing makes me laugh in the car afterwards more than recounting my kids saying dad look out she has a disease!
If they say something these are my favourite responses:
Did you get last weeks booster?
Please dont so close to me
I am sorry I cant understand you with the mask on while saying it slowly and louder
Mock them. Laugh at them. Never let them forget the stupid that did not work.
2. If you aced that course in Civics that said, always, without question, trust your Government.
Then, hell, yes, lets overlook the mass poisoning of the Western World.
The check's in the mail, I luv you, I promise not ....in your_____ And Netanyahoo and dual citizen gang members, definitely did not shoehorn the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Absolutely. No more talking 'bout that planned, engineered and executed Covid Scam.
Covid scam? If that’s what you believe, it means that you are choosing to ignore the millions of people who died from Covid worldwide. Or do you actually believe that it was all faked? Well, I’m a critical care doctor, and I can assure you that the hospitals and ICUs bursting beyond capacity, the mobile morgues set up to receive the flood of fatalities, the patients taking their last breaths in overcrowded ER waiting rooms were all very real. But I realize that I am wasting my time trying to educate people who are ignorant and proud of it. You guys don’t want to know the facts, because it would upset your fixed beliefs. Can’t let that happen, can you?
It was a designer flu with a targeted audience of the normal demographics of any animal group (or plants, for the matter) which needs, or is seen to need, thinning: The elderly and the unhealthy. When a protocol and ONLY that protocol is mandated for treatment and people are dying more from the treatment than the disease, that should have been an eye-opener for everyone. When licenses of doctors who do not follow the protocol are being pulled, that should have been an eye-opener for everyone. When people who do not believe or want the shot are being fired or canceled, that should have been an eye-opener for everyone. When stupidity reins (BLM marches but deaths by oneself and no funerals), that should have been an eye-opener for everyone.
Surely you jest? You are a prime example of why I keep my distance from anyone who uses the address "Dr" in front of the name.
All the opposite in France. All official figures showed that hospitals worked less during covid but three of them (2 in Paris and one in Marseilles. The idea behind that was to overcrowd 3 hospitals in order to get under pressure medical staff on cam for TV reports). The total deaths of 2020 was a notch below the average (while all type of flues were categorized under Covid symptoms) and so on… Covid just dismissed France 🤓
I don't remember my civics classes ever saying to trust the government. I went to school in the 50s/early 60s and everything was opinionless...dates and events...
I'd rather have my children in China because they would not be poor, participate in a society from the people for the people. Their Confucian social model beats any Individual based society in the current West since Individualism is opposite to humans nature of collaboration and compromise instead of everyone for themself and some God for all of us.
I've never been to Casa Grande so I don't have a frame of reference for your comment. I wasn't particularly trying to kick in your direction. Just that it seems to me that among the "thinking" part of western society, there's two "camps" regarding China, and both stand apart from the dominant thought of China as an aspiring evil empire or something.
One of those camps is idealistic and see China in the rosiest of terms, overlooking the problems and failures. The other I usually see from financial reporters and predicts the eminent demise of the entire Chinese project, due to over-leveraged housing markets, an over-built manufacturing base, etc.
I took you to be in the idealistic camp based on your comment that kids born there won't grow up to be poor.
China has a lot of social and economic problems. One I haven't seen talked about is physical abuse of children. Everyone in the country grows up with a stick to their back. Beating the hell out of one's children is endemic and pervasive - the "spare the rod, spoil the child" ethos of the west a century ago, but without the religious backing.
Every society has social and economic problems. Society is a process, no static construction. Beating children is the newest in line of troublesome news, doesn't happen in the west anymore, right? We kill people around the globe and cheer for genocide or if not, we just shut up , but never mind.
I'm not idealistic, I am rather optimistic that China's model and success over decades now will encourage the western populations to see that there is a working alternative to individualism and soon wide spread misery for the majority of us.
Hmm. I'm somehow indifferent about how china works.They pulled a billion or so out of poverty, avoided war, help other countires to develope. They have also a system how to educate their citizens to behave and not to start riots and revolutions. And most of the Chinese agree to it. If my children are not interested in revolutions, they could there live in prosperty. An if you want to avoid the control, there ar always niches to hide in. If you compare to the West: The freedom of speach is gone, and often you cannot even critizise the Government for leading the country into the abyss. Is there a fine spot between total freedom and control for the good of the people?
You mean the western powers? - yes, the bankers’ wars on Asia, Africa, Europe, and the south & Latin America have destroyed at least 80 millions of human lives
No, not just Delano as the shipping captain, FDR, the grandson named after him, directly protected Chang Kai-shek's Chinese National Air Company and its cargoes of opium to buy off provincial warlords. Government currency was worthless, as there was no national government.
When the Japanese started to interdict those flights, a private mercenary corps called the Flying Tigers firebombed Japanese cities.
FDR was also called "the Butcher of Haiti" as its governor, that's how he came to Wilson's attention. (Palm oil was the prize in Haiti.)
So, what you are saying is that someone finally made good use of Western capitalist greed? But then the difference with the Chinese, instead of allowing a few 'elites' to become billionaires, they funnelled the money from the 'investors', back into their country to the benefit of all their citizens. Who could have imagined THAT working?
China has been a world super power with 3000+ years of history long before there was even a 'WEST'. It's just claiming back it's natural place in the world order and does so by building and not bombing.
It is naive to put the merit for China's achievements on western investors - no need to capitalize. There have been tens of countries with more per capita FDI over the decades, and still with millions in misery, often worse off due to western incursion. If western FDI would spell progress and reduction of misery, poverty rates minus China would not have gone up.
I think there are such "fine spots" in the interregnums between empires- that period of post-imperialism where authority becomes more local, pragmatic and cooperative by necessity. I am not a utopian by any means- there is no ideal political or economic system, only what works and doesn't work at particular times and places.
It's power cycles-rise of power, abuse of power, reaction to power, collapse of power, then a period of volatile instability where success and stability require cooperation if, for no other reason, because forceful control is just not possible. Then power builds up again, then abuse, then reaction... and so on.
'In 1986, then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden said, “[Supporting Israel] is the best $3 billion investment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.” '?
They willingly 'sacrificed' and are 'sacrificing' young Israelis { and other 'Semites'} to protect US interests and prevent Netanyahu facing 'corruption charges'?
Biden family is 'largest crime syndicate in US politics' - Rep. Greene
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said bank records and over 2,000 pages of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARS) reviewed by the House Oversight Committee show evidence of money laundering and human sex trafficking involving Hunter Biden.
“The investigation is going to show that the Biden family is the largest crime syndicate that America has ever seen in politics,” Greene stated, alleging wire transfers from China, Ukraine, the UAE, and Africa into shell LLCs that later paid multiple Biden family members.
“If an elected official is abusing their position of power for influence peddling and getting rich off of it, that is corruption the American people should never allow,” she added.
“If an elected official is abusing their position of power for influence peddling and getting rich off of it, that is corruption the American people should never allow,”
Inside US.
Not applicable outside US. CIA is allowed to use all kinds of criminal activities, including money laundering and human sex trafficking, outside of US.
Theoretically, could work.
In real life however, the boundary is difficult to define, and impossible to keep.
And for a time, one can choose exceptionally insensitive, cruel individuals, to keep the line, the boundary, but laws of human nature, inevitably lead to these positions being filled with more and more stupid (McFaul), ideological (Snider), or just individuals having a more or less unAmerican agenda (Kagan, Nuland, Blinken).
I don't think that's the case. The Biden family remains vivid in the public's memory because of ongoing allegations surrounding Hunter Biden, including his reported ties to Burisma highlighting the corruption in Ukraine and the disputed laptop story, and the conflicting claims that followed. That also raises questions about the 50 intelligence officials whose security passes were revoked after signing a document stating the laptop was Russian disinformation ( a blatant lie), have any of them faced criminal charges or been prosecuted? The whole episode showed the world how politically corrupt the hegemon was, & undoubtedly remains.
I think there's a difference between building lux resorts with mob money and not only trafficking millions of children, but organ harvesting them too. While alive, in many cases, just to put a point on it.
Where is the humanity in having hundreds of thousands of your own people be senselessly slaughtered because you faced the choice of preventing that from happening through implementing decisive military-technical measures and having oligarch business interests be hurt or allowing the slaughter but not touching the oligarchs, and you chose the latter?
Oh brother. A Dem Party slogan, used to stop anything the Party thinks will upset their Donors, whether its peace or Universal single payer. What next--"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good?"
Think, dude: I never said the Dems coined the slogan. Who originally said it is irrelevant. It's used by them to bat down any real change that is certainly possible. Who's ignorant?
It was actually likely possible to do a lot more than that.
Say, SSGN-launched hypersonic missiles start striking billionaire mansions in the US, as part of a concerted non-nuclear counter-value campaign to force the US to stop the war. While a clear back-channel message is sent to the Pentagon that the US military will not be touched if it stands down.
I think that from Russian perspective they should choose wisely now. What can be seen in the horizon should make Russia conclude that we have reached the end of the rope. Questions:
*Why should Russia wait for NATO re-armament instead of using their weakness now?
*Why should Russia negotiate on the terms of SMO-objectives and let Ukraine and NATO go unpunished/undefeated just to let them instigate a War 2030?
*Why give NATO time to digest the experiences of real modern War and change their tactics&strategy accordingly? If thousands of Ukrainians officers is let loose to train and educate NATO on the real modern war tactics, Russia would have lost their upper hand.
*Why miss the opportunity to crack NATO when almost all European states are in chaos and economic disarray?
The only thing that should Kreml think twice is Donald Trumps index finger. He is crazy enough to push the button.
From NATO:s perspective we can expect the following:
*”We poaked the Bear, we triggered it to attack, we hurt the Bear badly - we just have to kill it also”
*If not for Ukraine and the modern way they can defend themselves we are at risk to loose all of Baltics. We better support them indefinetely (because they are dumb enough to continue the fight). An economi backlash will eventually hit Russia after 4-6 years of War.
* We need to bring out and enforce the narrative that Russia is the aggressor and need to be handled - no matter what. False flag, extreme provocations, seizure of their assets and reserve should do the thing.
* Buying time to re-arm and re-educate new armies and drone pilots through more border
Well said. Not a single NATO government genuinely believe Russia presents a threat. We know this simply by deduction from the fact that not one NATO government has acted as if they believed it: i.e. they'd be planning reindustrialization and rearmament.
I loved Starmer's response to his supposed military advice a couple of months ago that the UK could expect a land war with Russia within the next five years. His solution was to announce a submarine-building program. How brilliant is that? ;)
Indeed! But even if they had money and industry, it'd make little difference as they're still planning to fight WW2 / Korea, with doctrine and weapons not designed or manufactured for modern conventional war and the logistics thereof. NATO's AirLand Battle became theoretically overtaken in 1984, as the US Army's Soviet Army Studies Office realized in 1990 (see LTC Lester Grau's declassified doc https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA231789.pdf); and operationally obsolete in 2014 when a shocked US colonel witnessed the annihilation of a NATO-trained Ukraine mechanized brigade without it firing a shot - in just three minutes. He blew the whistle when he publicly stated Russia had a new artillery doctrine to which NATO had no counter. (that's when I began idly researching it)
Many (perhaps most?) US armored field grade officers (broadly O3-O6, Captain through Colonel, anyone above that is a general and therefore a politician) understand this perfectly well. See for example CPT Nicolas Fiore's 2017 appreciation at https://www.benning.army.mil/armor/eARMOR/content/issues/2017/Spring/2Fiore17.pdf): he argues that a US armored *brigade* combat team might be able to defeat a Russian *battalion* tactical group if the ABCT is careful - despite outnumbering the BTG only five- or ten-fold in most personnel and equipment categories. The trouble is the USA has only a handful of ABCTs, whereas as of 2022 Russia had ~200 BTGs, a quarter of which went into Ukraine.
In undeniable response, the British Army stood up 1st Deep Reconnaissance Strike Brigade Combat Team in July 2022, comprised of 2 cav, 2 light cav, and ten assorted arty regiments - an obviously non-combat experimental unit designed to reverse-engineer Soviet doctrines, as US armored officers have noted somewhat enviously. Unfortunately the UK subsequently has been rumored to have given away all its SPGs to Ukraine, which if true would cripple 1DRSBCT's efforts as it will be left only with towed arty plus missile units. The Russian BTGs don't even use towed arty...
Essentially I think you're right. But then again, that's been true since Eisenhower's very deliberate policy against maintaining a conventional army capable of fighting Russia, on the basis that the USA was neither willing nor financially able to sustain that. (which also is why Eisenhower always tried to *reduce* rather than *expand* NATO - less to defend - so that when Stalin offered withdrawal from and neutrality for Austria at the price of continued denazification, Eisenhower practically bit his arm off) . Circumstances have changed, but the overall policy has remained the same ever since. Which means that the last resort and the first resort is always going to be the same. For a wonderful satirical take on this, I've always loved s1-ep1 of the BBC's "Yes, Prime Minister" - https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03bx1vh/yes-prime-minister-series-1-1-the-grand-design (episode 6 "A Victory for Democracy" is also a wonderful take on the UK version of the US deep state)
In fairness, I expect the NATO air forces could hold their own and maybe even defeat Russia's if they came out to play in a full air superiority battle. Which IMV is precisely why the Russians are unlikely to continue playing that game should they start losing in the air! Hence the battalion tactical group's *organic* air defense battery/company. Thus, given that since Dien Bien Phu Russia traditionally has had the best AD in the world, and the BTG is designed to fight and win in the face of enemy air, air supremacy might not do NATO much good even if well-supplied with munitions.
A note on your last sentence: Russia's expected ground nuclear warfighting doctrine may be found within the 2024 update of US Army TRADOC ATP 7-100.1, see https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ATP%206-0_5%20(final).pdf. From the nuclear war section, it's clear that Russia trains to target units as small as platoons in nuclear strikes. From that it follows inferentially that nuclear launch authorization likely is delegated as low as O4/O5 (i.e. MAJ/LTC). This shows that things haven't improved since the late Daniel Ellsberg's final book "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner", in which he discloses not only that in 1963 *both* sides lost control over their armed forces; but also that nuclear launch authorization was delegated as low as individual USAF pilots and Russian submarine XOs. The evidence for the former was Ellsberg's own official debriefs of USAF pilots. For the latter, see the only public statement ever made by Vasily Arkhipov: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/29078-document-1-vice-admiral-vasili-arkhipov [noting that he leaves out his own role as "the man who saved the world" in which he persuaded both the captain and political officer to surface, rather than to launch a nuclear torpedo as they were entitled to do and had decided to do]. That's how close we came then; I'm unsure how much better off we are now.
All of which suggests Vladimir Putin is playing it both smart and cool by trying not to let an "official" war break out.
Mind that the BTG in Russia was a makeshift solution to make the army fit into the budget. Serdyukov had practically dismantled traditional Red Army structures, and Shoigu rebuilt to some extent, both under the conditions and restrictions of drastic reduction of defense spendings.
A BTG is in some way a brigade skeleton, with armour, artillery, AD, even some tactical air force (helicopters and SU-25). One of the main problems at the start of the SMO was lack of infantry due to this structure. While it is neither possible nor advisable to shrink or divide an ABCT into one or some BTG, it is well possible to turn BTGs into brigades.
Thanks for the info, I wan't aware of the Serdyukov/Shoigu material - very interesting. I understand the basic unreinforced BTG has just 200 infantry, which means it's way too fragile to fight in any kind of urban or other infantry / static battle. So it can take ground in a war of maneuver, just not hold it - a bit like traditional shock cavalry?
I confess I haven't yet read Douglas Macgregor's "Breaking the Phalanx", but my understanding of it is that in 1995 he independently came up with with a broadly similar solution for the USA: that of highly mobile combined arms units that are far smaller than the traditional combined arms structures (brigades). Perhaps the difference from Russia is that the US Army was still "fat and happy" after the Gulf War, whereas an army under drastic constraints is more open to pursuing change that already had been launched - a "makeshift solution" that conveniently fit into Grau's 1990 summary of BTGs and recon-fire / recon-strike doctrines?
I concur with your evocative characterization of the BTG as equivalent to a brigade skeleton: it'll be interesting to see if anyone tries to turn them back into brigades; or whether they're found to be more valuable as they are. I guess time will tell!
With respect John, something the West, particularly the US/UK can afford and is well within their professional capabilities is an endless campaign of cowardly terrorist attacks. A slow grind against Russia's urban populace. The soulless belligerents have no shortage of patsies to undertake these Devilish deeds. This will incur an abrasive friction on Russia's public as internal security has to increase incurring things like queues, bag & body searches etc. A well remembered quote the IRA used to make to the Westminster government was "we only need to get lucky once, you need to be lucky every time". Then Bishopsgate in the City of London went boom as did Manchester city centre on a Saturday morning. The rest is history.
Simon. You don't need to "with respect" me mate. 😀 . I don't make any claims for authority. I just offer layman's opinions. And I am happy to change my mind if I'm proven wrong.
You make a good point. That's exactly the kind of stupid pointless nonsense that our "intelligence services" love.
It's not going to bring down the Russian state though, in my opinion. And it's very much a game that two can play.
No I asked whom has Russia enslaved. Not who the EU has tried to enslave. Russia stands sovereign. Because the Irish were dedicated to their freedom so does most of Ireland now stand free of the UK but as you say, it is enslaved to the EU. When Ireland awakens the IRA will arise again but at least they don't have to fight the UK since it will be busy fighting its own Big Brother. The Labor or Socialist Party of the new Republic of Britain. Pray that Reform manages a victory and returns Britain to its culture and traditions, away from the militantly atheist Socialists.
Thank you, there are so many Americans still living under illusions of grander. Nothing is going to change .The ruling class is set, the business model for Defense industry, therefore NATO. Everything being tossed around is just money laundering.
No Western country is structurally able to fight an industrial war of attrition like the one going on in the Ukraine. They won’t be for at least the next twenty years. Beyond that prognoses become meaningless.
The money allocated by the EU will be spent on hugely expensive and profitable boutique weapons of questionable military use like the F35. Russia is outproducing the combined West on missiles and grenades, and as for drones, the West is in the stone age.
Could North Korea afford it? Well, it armed itself massively, so clearly it could.
But what was North Korea's starting position versus that of e.g. Germany in terms of wealth and industrial potential?
You don't need all that much in terms of physical resources to re-arm compared to the size of the civilian economy. It is all a question of how much you are willing to squeeze the general population.
If the Germans were as willing to accept hardship as the North Koreans, if the Germans felt as under threat as the North Koreans, then you might have to a point.
They don't, so you don't.
Western Europeans don't really believe in the threat from Russia, except in a really abstract way that doesn't require us to actually do anything.
And being called "delusional" by someone who thinks there have been repeated nuclear attacks on Russia, is the pot calling the fucking kettle mate!
Which was that Germany can rearm to a point where it becomes an enormous problem for Russia by moving only a little in the direction of North Korea, not anywhere close to going all the way.
sorry John, but I live in western europe, and the people around me CLAIM to actually believe that russia is a military threat to europe
these people are dumber than rocks and heavily brainwashed...they get their info from the mainstream
those who have actually thrown out their TVs are better off, but so many people around me are inordinately PROUD of their TVs... the bigger, the prouder.
Me too mate. Basically a war that happens miles away and is fought by the poor or professional soldiers that we can watch on the news, we are cool with.
One that involves mass conscription and oreshniks in your capital every night, not so much.
They say it without thinking about it. They also believe, at the same time that "threatening" Russia is very corrupt, backward and inefficient. Russophrenia, Schrodinger's Russia. It not important enough to think about it properly, because it's all bollocks.
Germany has a real problem. Their electrical supply now depends on French nuclear reactors since they've shut down their own. Will the West Germans and their maniacal devotion to carbon-free power bend enough to do what must be done? The new modular nuclear reactors offer a solution to Germany's dilemma which is not enough land or sun to power an industrial renaissance in the military field. Nuclear power is evil right? At least the environmental fanatics say it is so. Fanaticism is one of the German people's characteristics if you convince them they are correct. How long will it take to re-socialize them into believing electrical power must be generated, no matter how?
Germany is divided again but not by outside powers. The West German rulers have convinced themselves that the AfD is evil and must be wiped out, even though it represents the majority of East Germany, the heartland of Germany's military traditions: Prussia. West Germany has even resorted to assassination as the suspicious deaths of so many AfD candidates has proven. This will put much resolution into the hearts of the Prussians and win even more supporters for the AfD.
Divided Germany is not the country of Nazism anymore, that is Ukraine. Ukraine is the reflowering of Hitler's dream. It is not the Fourth Reich, it is the Third reborn from the seed left there by the Banderites. Let Western Europe beware as the Ukrainian Armies are pushed back ever farther, let them beware the most powerful Army in Western Europe: The Ukrainian Army.
The Fourth Reich was born in 1865 when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated but the term national socialist had not yet been invented. Nevertheless the Washington Empire is the Fourth Reich as I have revealed for quite a few years now. As a youth fresh out of the Army I knew the USA was a totalitarian dictatorship since the Presidency is simply a permanent dictatorship as Old Rome would have know it. It has seemingly endless laws, the hallmark of a successful politician in the USA is how many laws they author or support. Each law is like a whip on the backs of the people, more taxes, new wars, work, work, work. Isn't freedom great?
If the laws of this dictatorship were all printed out and stacked into a pyramid it would probably exceed the size of the great pyramid in Giza. Atop it on the back of the one dollar bill is the Great Eye. That eye was supposed to be the Eye of God but the leftist majority of the Democratic Party's government is committed to militant atheism now. Whose eye is atop that pyramid now? Sauron? Does Germany truly believe it can escape the occupation by the Washington Empire so easily simply by pledging to remilitarize? Not likely. Where is the natural gas German needs coming from and how much does it cost?
It gets better... the french electrical system was making bank off FREE Uranium from Niger... now that has dried up and they actually have to pay for it...
France is looking at contracts that will be breaking even, probably, at best
or losing money.
Legal contracts with other countries, that will all now be lacking energy even worse
Europe can't afford to squeeze the population much, as the existence of the EU depends on a large welfare state to survive and provide a form of legitimacy. Cut that out, rearm and you look no different from the Americans or the Russians. And plus all the Syrians and Somalians in the EU would revolt
our western weapons are out of date, essentially obsolete
The russians, a formidable "peer" opponent, have been fighting on the bleeding edge of MODERN WAR = they know what the fuck is going on... we are WAY BEHIND
I think Putin is WISHING NATO would put boots on the ground so he can drop missiles on their heads and end this damn thing.
If Putin wished for that, he would not be engaging in escalation management and acted like a coward, careful not to escalate when his red lines where crossed.
Russia has no intention of taking Kiev. The goal is to liberate the four eastern oblasts while bleeding the Ukrainian military and establishing buffer zones where necessary. Odesa remains a wild card.
Your assumption of what you need in a War (key is 10 million artillery shells) is somewhat based…
You are right in that Western Europe will have problem putting out millions of shells.
Those building are these: (havent gone through former Eastern Europe)
GermanyUnterlüß, Lower Saxony: Rheinmetall's main ammunition plant, Europe's largest for 155mm artillery shells, opened in 2025 with a €500 million investment. It focuses on full production of 155mm rounds to meet NATO and European demands.
FranceLa Chapelle-Saint-Ursin: KNDS France (formerly Nexter) plant where production of 155mm shells has doubled, aiming for 100,000 units annually by late 2025. This site handles complete round assembly.
Bourges: KNDS facility producing cannon barrels for 155mm systems like the Caesar howitzer, supporting overall ammunition output (though focused more on components than full shells).
SpainMultiple sites operated by Rheinmetall Expal Munitions: Including Trubia, Burgos, Navalmoral, El Gordo, Albacete, and Murcia. These facilities produce various artillery munitions, including 155mm shells (e.g., extended-range variants), with integrated production lines across the network.
SwedenKarlskoga: Nammo's key facility for 155mm shell production, including steel bodies and components. It has received EU and Swedish funding to triple output under the ASAP initiative.
NorwayRaufoss: Nammo's primary site for large-caliber ammunition, including explosive fillings and assembly for 155mm shells. It operates 24/7 and contributes to European supply chains.
DenmarkElling (northern Denmark): Nammo is restarting a former military ammunition plant for 155mm and other calibers, with production expected to ramp up for Danish and allied forces.
United KingdomGlascoed, Wales: BAE Systems' munitions facility, involved in filling and assembly of artillery ammunition, including 155mm shells as part of UK production increases (with investments exceeding £200 million since 2022).
Washington, Tyne and Wear: BAE Systems site for forging and components, supporting 155mm ammunition production.
The Europeans aim it to draw the US into war with Russia. Failing that they are toast. History gives us good examples. The US gained dominance by waiting out the belligerents, this time it looks like the Chinese waiting it out.
No war in 2030! This is it, neither side can back down. The West is hopelessly broke; for Russia, it is a matter of survival. "Alea Jacta Est." The die has been cast.
We have been going over this strategic calculus every week here.
Russia can nuke all the non-nuclear countries in NATO, except perhaps Canada (because missiles would be flying towards the US when doing it; but it would also not be in Russia's own interest to do it, then the territory will be directly annexed by the US without even having to deal with the PR unpleasantries of doing it if it was populated), and there would be no reply to that. Even the UK can be cleanly taken out without too much effort, because it only has SSBNs, they are decrepit with very low readiness rates, and solving that problem permanently amounts to sinking one sub on patrol and nuking the base of the others while they are in repairs.
There will be no reply to that either, because nobody will sacrifice the US mainland for any country in Europe, much less when that country no longer exists.
NATO is in effect a suicide pact for all the non-nuclear members -- your country becomes a target, worse than that, it becomes a target that has to be eliminated entirely, not just hit in key locations (so that you don't whine to high heaven about retaliation after that), in exchange your elites get a membership in The Club (or so they think) and various opportunities for graft that would not exist otherwise. Good deal for the elites as long as there is no war, neutral at best, usually a serious net negative for the general population even without war.
The question is why Putin has not called that bluff yet and has chosen to sacrifice so many of his own people and Russia's deterrence in the process.
And I see almost no possible justifiable reasons for that, it all goes in very dark Gorbachev-Yakovlev directions when you sit down to analyze it.
"And I see almost no possible justifiable reasons for that..."
Maybe Putin is just a kind-hearted person? Maybe he realizes that if he nukes Europe, he would not only kill the evil warmongers there, but a lot of decent, peaceful people as well? And maybe that is something he is not prepared to do?
>would not only kill the evil warmongers there, but a lot of decent, peaceful people as well
Of course you don't straight up nuke them, you give them an ultimatum. Putin, from behind **that desk**, comes out and says something like:
1) We demand that Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania shut their borders with Ukraine and allow Russian military observers to police the border. Those countries have 48 hours to agree to it.
2) If within 48 hours they agree to it, they then have another five days to implement it, we have our people ready to move in.
3) If within 48 hours they refuse to do it, we give the populations of those countries another 72 hours to overthrow their governments and implement what is demanded.
4) If that does not happen, we proceed with strategic strikes that will wipe those countries out completely, after which we move in and occupy the land, forever.
5) And, of course, if there is any movement of strategic strike assets by the US, UK and France, or any cruise missiles fly our way from their direction, there will be a launch-on-warning strategic strike on the US mainland.
If those current comprador governments are not overthrown by their populations after they refuse the initial ultimatum, well, the "decent, peaceful people" were given a chance and there is to be no remorse about what follows.
>maybe that is something he is not prepared to do?
What is Putin's job? To protect the Poles and Romanians or his own people?
How many non-Russian lives is a Russian life worth to Putin? So far it seems like he values non-Russian lives infinitely more than Russian lives, doesn't it?
Simple example:
1) Czech MLRS did the terror bombing with cluster munitions of Belgorod's center on December 30th 2023. Dozens dead and a triple digit wounded, many of them children.
2) There were no strikes on the Czech Republic as punishment for it
3) Worse, the Czech foreign minister laughed in the Russians face at the UNSC when confronted about it. Still no strikes on the Czech
4) Naturally, more bombings followed, including a particularly gruesome case where a mother pushing a stroller with her baby in it was hit and both died.
Now would that mother and baby have died if Putin did bomb the Czech and they got the message and pulled their MLRS systems from Ukraine? Or if there were no Czech at all to send them in the first place? Because they should have been wiped out long before that given what they had already done, as well as for being the ungrateful bastards that they are (they would not exist today if it wasn't for Russia saving them from the Germans).
If you are the husband of that woman who lost his wife and little kid, how would you feel about Putin being so "humane"? And what would you prefer? All Czechs dead but your family is well and alive or the reverse?
Totally over the top my friend. Russia can control those borders themselves with their troops and they don't need to commit that many. The US Border Patrol is relatively small for the large southern border which has been principally closed off with modern surveillance techniques and mobile forces.
All this article proves is you were right, GM. I think we can link this article any time anyone says anything abt Putler not attacking those supplying Ukraine
The critical mass for that decision by Russia is a few years away. But, yes, Russia would have to take out the key issues before it came to a boil on Russia's borders.
The current group of European Talking Heads are bankrupting their nations - not likely their citizens want to become fertilizer, and the Diversity in Europe is probably not a strength.
The best way to attack NATO is economic and societal. Strike back at energy targets like gas fields, LNG transport ships and hit the large underground storage caverns with an Oreshnic. The social could start as easily as informing local militant dissidents where the conex box full of weapons is located. All the way up to regime change operations as shown by Vicky Neuland.
The pressure points are obvious. The failing economy, outsiders treated better than heritage citizens, the anarcho-terrorism of letting migrants rape local women but putting the victim in jail for resisting . . .
Best case scenario for Russia is to take Europe down quick enough that the bank and bond entanglements drag American under with Europe.
One point I'd like to raise is, why aren't the other BRICS members speaking out in support of Russia about US-led NATO's aggressions, like Nordstream, freezing Russian assets, disregard for treaties, etc? My point is, why should Russia even be concerned about being the aggressor when it's so clear that it isn't? Why are friendly nations to Russia not openly backing it up? How can any sane leader consider Russia the aggressor? It shouldn't even be an issue. And yet it's preventing Russia from retaliating as it should. https://youtu.be/3AoXL_xQRXI?t=384
BRICS is a cooperative association more than anything. Countries don't have to abide by a charter. They aren't the rules based international opposition. They work in consensus and develop outcomes that are beneficial for their members. I wouldn't expect them to rally around cries of war, war, war.
I wasnt expecting them crying out War. They wisely dont.
But they could have supported Russia in the moral issues over the precurwors to the War and the escalation.
Precursor was the outlawing of Russia in Ukraine and the persecution of Russian speaking people. The unnessecary expansion of NATO. The escalation was for example the Bucha hoax.
But I guess all rulers in the workd play foul - so nothing to complain about. Kill or be killed is the new Orange.
I think the answer to all your questions is the same. The NATO-Russia conflict isn't the main game. Russia isn't committing to the conflict 100%. They are juggling a lot and thus far are doing pretty well. The battle for the new global order goes on. I think it was the last Simplicius post I mentioned that we are in totally uncharted territory. There has never been a change in the global order where nuclear weapons were part of the mix.
Kagan, sufficiently an expert on this matter to be married to the person most responsible for starting the war, wrote this, then it went through multiple editors at such a highly reputable outlet such as The Atlantic, and it was published as is...
I am reluctant to criticise Kagan for fear of the label he would apply to any criticism that might would his amour propre. It is clear we are in the midst of a Death Cult which is hell-bent on Death and Destruction in several geographic zones all of which require USA to self-immolate.
Quite remarkable how far along this road Western nations have travelled. Perhaps the Miracle of the Gaderene Swine will be repeated ?
I was going to comment more on PNAC, but share your sentiments.
Otherwise, the late Zbigniew Brzeziński, whose 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard, called for "A New Pearl Harbor" to happen to mobilise the US population for the forever wars to take over the world is worth noting. 'Zbig' also told a Canadian audience before he died that it would soon be easier to kill a million people than control a million people.
And if you weren't called a Domestic Violent Extremist before that for refusing Clot Shots, and missed out on being called Dangerous Domestic Extremist for refusing lockdowns and . . .
Welcome aboard. Buckle up, it gets humpy from here!
"Those who saw it told them how it befell him who had been possessed with the demons and also concerning the swine. 17 Then they began to plead with Him to depart out of their region."
If you lost them their swine, you better not let the sun set on you in Gadara, stranger.
The proxy war against Russia is the culmination of a century long campaign to destroy an Orthodox Christian superpower. The Biden administration was filled to the brim with the usual tribesmen. If the war against Russia is to be stopped once and for all, isolating and removing the interlopers is an inescapable necessity.
It's not about Protestants attacking Russian Orthodox, no one cares about that. They also attack Protestants, Catholics, Shia Iran, very secular Sunnis like Hussein's Iraq, secular Syria, fundamentalist Sunnis like Afghanistan. This is all about Russia helping the pro-Palestinian Iran and Syria, and all of these three have different religious outlooks.
“Protestants attacking Orthodox Christians” are you seriously that dense. It’s cucked Evangelicals doing the bidding of their tiny-hat-wearing masters.
Not sure a genocidal fat bastard married to another genocidal fat bastard ranting in a rant rag about the usual crap they rant about requires any detailed analysis really.
The only thing either of them ever read was a menu. That and neocon tea leaves.
Zionism was a centuries long movement which died when it won. Now there is just the Israeli, the Jewish State. Embattled and standing strong, just like Russia.
Standing strong? 🤣 Guess you haven't noticed the IDF suicide rates, the precipitous decline in tourism revenues, the brain drain fleeing the "nation" and the global shunning of an apartheid, genocidal entity whose leaders are charged with war crimes. Iran won't keep the gloves on next time.
Yes, I did notice those things. Similar to much of what Russia is bearing. As for Iran it should remember it has threatened and attacked a nuclear state with another larger one at its back. Iran will be destroyed totally, or at least its Jihadi government unless it makes peace with its neighbors instead of telling them how they will destroy and kill all those they don't like due to reasons of religious bigotry.
You think Russian population and economic figures are comparable to "israel", huh. Where did you go to school?
2nd, it was "israel" that threatened Iran, assassinated it's dignitaries in a sovereign nation, and then attacked Iran directly, not the other way around. Do you get your "news" from comic books?
Finally, as regards religious bigotry...do you know what a "goyim" is?
Are you sure you're reading all of my comments? It seems you are trying to add your own words into my mouth. I spoke of their situation and how the world is treating them. I was speaking to people like yourself who don't seem to understand that both nations face hostile enemies with bravery and determination. This is laudable and praiseworthy to my mind.
Have you forgotten that Hamas got their weaponry from somewhere? Have you forgotten that Iran conquered Lebanon and placed a minority dictatorship called Hezbollah in charge, a Shi dictatorship in what was once a Christian majority nation before the Jihadists of Iran struck?
Hezbollah attacked Israel's forces protecting the Christians in Southern Lebanon many times. Our marines, there as a hoped for peacekeeping force, were attacked in garrison in Beirut. Also don't forget that Iran dangled our Tehran embassy in front of us for over a year and laughed when Carter attempted a minimal intrusion to rescue them and failed. All while the Jihadi of Iran were screaming "Death to the Great Satan." Carter was the finest Christian and holy man ever to sit in the oval office in my opinion. He gave up rather than risk the lives our our embassy personnel any further. That's why I didn't vote for him a second time. Weakness is the greatest of sins in the oval office.
I would have sent a half-million troops, and like a Sioux warrior I would then count our people dead and taken vengeance, bloody and foul. I would have destroyed every member of the coup I could find, destroyed all opposition and if they begged us to take back our embassy personnel if we failed to find them I would have left. There would not be a jeep or Revolutionary Guard in the open holding a weapon as I was leaving town. The next offense would have resulted in a nuke in downtown Tehran. But then that's the kind of goy I am. The fool Ayatollah was lucky Carter was in the oval office. Allah must have been watching out for the innocent Iranians amongst the guilty. Allahu Akbar.
All this I would have done while actually sympathizing with Iran for what the US did to them in the fifties. Did you know we overthrew a functioning republic because it wanted to be friends with the Soviet? Opps! Aren't we Americans just the most awful people in the world? I sort of thought we were making it up to them by installing a secular but Shia-majority founded government in Baghdad. Apparently Iran didn't accept the apology even after we helped Iraq fend off the Sunni Baathists who reconstituted as ISIS.
I know one thing for certain if Iran develops its nuclear capability, Washington and Tel Aviv will disappear in nuclear fire. I wonder what would happen then. Do you suppose Israel and the United States would get on their knees and surrender to the mighty Iranians who smuggled in their nukes? Not if strength resides in our White House or the Knesset.
Half the Sunnis of the Middle East hate Iran and the other half fears them. This stack is loaded with racism against the Jews just like Europe is loaded with racism against the Slavs and Rus. I like to provoke bigots it's nice for a morning's entertainment. Selah and do svidaniya.
Newsflash...Iran is a huge and mountainous nation, of some 80 Million people, well able to withstand a nuclear attack..tiny "israel" can be wiped off the map for centuries with a handful of Iranian hypersonic missiles armed with "dirty bomb" warheads.
Zionism is, as anyone with even rudimentary awareness knows , is stronger today than it has ever been.
There is no parallel between Russia and the Zionists apart from the fact they are at war. The causes and the way the wars are fought have nothing in common. Indeed the Zionist war is a genocide, to call it a war is to whitewash it.
>The only thing either of them ever read was a menu. That and neocon tea leaves.
Yeah, they are so incompetent that they maneuvered Putin into the quagmire of a war that has lasted four years with no end in sight, which has resulted in >120,000 Russian soldiers dead, at least that many maimed, and in Russia having become a giant Syria, i.e. a place anyone can bomb whenever and wherever they feel like it.
Which state of affairs also has Putin mortally afraid to send even a single missile in the direction of those responsible.
That sure looks like the work of incompetent idiots to me. Sure...
Don't you know, Russia is smart and the west is dumb. Russia is winning and NATO is losing. No one on earth has a counter to Russia's slow attritional grind forward. Russia can fight for 100 years, they are not worried and Putin will live forever. Ukraine will collapse any day now and when Russia fills the vacuum it will be a lasting peace with happy people all around.
Putin croaking is the best thing that could happen to Russia now. Although there is no guarantee things will change if it happens -- there are deep systemtic factors at play here. But they sure won't as long as he is there.
Looks to me like Russia’s redigesting Ukraine that the world started understanding again the Jew is the epicenter of death and the (((oligarchs))) keep falling out of Windows at a rate that Russia will be
shed of them completely in the not too distant future
"Yeah, they are so incompetent that they maneuvered Putin into the quagmire of a war that has lasted four years with no end in sight, which has resulted in >120,000 Russian soldiers dead, at least that many maimed, and in Russia having become a giant Syria, i.e. a place anyone can bomb whenever and wherever they feel like it."
"maneuvered Putin" by expanding up to his borders over a 30 year period and then putting an 800,000 man army ON HIS BORDER
while he warned them repeatedly
you really should post a picture of yourself, I am curious to see what a true moron looks like
In 2022, at the start of the war in Ukraine, the American economist Neil Ferguson was a textbook Russophobe. But as a professor at Stanford University and a member of the Hoover Institution, he needs to update his rhetoric periodically to avoid looking foolish. Admitting mistakes is a sign of wisdom.
Recently, he was invited to give a lecture at the foundation of Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk in Washington, titled: “Is Russia winning or collapsing?” He didn't say anything we hadn't already heard since 2022, but the interesting thing isn't what he said, but who said it. Some intellectuals are starting to publicly and openly acknowledge their mistakes.
Russia is slowly moving towards victory, he said. Its economy has become a model worthy of the highest academic praise. The war has boosted the Russian economy “to the point of becoming a classic example.” Its arms industry is operating at full capacity, at a level that Europe currently has no way of matching.
More than useless, the sanctions have proven counterproductive. In early 2022, the West expected Russia to collapse economically under the weight of the sanctions, but these hopes have faded. At the beginning of the war, “we believed that economic sanctions would put the Russian economy on its knees.”
The Wall Street Journal predicted “an earthquake of eight on the Richter scale.” But it didn't work. Their estimates turned out to be completely wrong. Today, the United States is no longer helping Ukraine at all. It seems to me that the participants in this conference haven't grasped this reality, because financial aid is nonexistent; it has stopped, and everything that comes from the United States today has to be financed.”
In a booming economy, the defense industry has grown at a dizzying pace and has seized control of most of the market. Its productivity and power are an unattainable example for European industry, Ferguson said. “Russia’s defense spending has almost doubled, reaching 7 percent of GDP. The budget deficit is at 2.4 percent of GDP, the sovereign debt-to-GDP ratio is at 14 percent, and government revenue from oil and gas has increased by a third. Inflation is at 8.7 percent, but real wages have risen by 22 percent since the start of the war, and unemployment is virtually zero. Incomes have increased by 48 percent, retail sales by 38 percent, and consumer goods sales have also risen. In other words, the sanctions regime has not worked,” explains the British expert.
Very interesting, if a welded on western supremacist fanboy like Ferguson is acknowledging reality, others will follow , which will make it very hard for euro “leaders” to maintain the charade.
It is as much about the collapse of the narrative as the collapse of the front line in political terms, I think.
The "economy" matters very little here. And it never really mattered on its own beyond its relevance to military power.
Which is all that really matters.
And given the a lot to zero exchange ratio in this war between the West and Russia, Russia is doomed, no matter how good "the economy" is doing.
Which, BTW, it is not even true. Because Russia has Nabiulina and Silunaov in charge of the economy, and they are crushing it with 20% interest rates, despite the widespread dissatisfaction with that policiy. Why are they doing it?
Well, it would be good to spend some time pondering that question. Who are Nabiulina and Silunaov and what kind of interests do they represent. And why is Putin sticking with them.
Then go back and read some of my comments on that general issue.
Victoria Nuland actually worked on a Russian trawler in the Arctic in the 1980s. She was not yet married at the time and was sent to spy by the CIA. Rumor has it that after some of the crew members drank too much vodka, they raped her, hence her hatred of the Russians.
Victoria also worked (as a 22 YO exchange student after graduating from college) at a Young Pioneers Summer camp near Odessa.
She was disrespectful towards and laughed at the Ukrainian children under her charge and another (Russian, female, same age) camp counselor got mad (and had a fist fight with her), beating Vicky down. The other counselor was sent home in disgrace, I don't know where Vicky went after the cat fight.
He may be a fat bastard, but she is merely a bit zaftig, and nonetheless sort of yummy. Stand her next to Samantha Power and they make a perfect ten! I don't blame Kagan for lusting after her.
Oh, youre very wrong, "Hussein". Humanity must know and intimately understand it's Zionazi enemy. This fat fuck is a near perfect specimen! The article should have been twice as long!
But you were the one talking about what he reads. You have no idea what or how much he reads, and accuse him of being unread. That's a slur. A gratuitous one, which weakens your argument.
I do agree he's an evil warmonger. Unlike what he reads, THAT is something we know about. All you have to do is read his books and articles - it's all laid out there.
In 2022, at the start of the war in Ukraine, the American economist Neil Ferguson was a textbook Russophobe. But as a professor at Stanford University and a member of the Hoover Institution, he needs to update his rhetoric periodically to avoid looking foolish. Admitting mistakes is a sign of wisdom.
Recently, he was invited to give a lecture at the foundation of Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk in Washington, titled: “Is Russia winning or collapsing?” He didn't say anything we hadn't already heard since 2022, but the interesting thing isn't what he said, but who said it. Some intellectuals are starting to publicly and openly acknowledge their mistakes.
Russia is slowly moving towards victory, he said. Its economy has become a model worthy of the highest academic praise. The war has boosted the Russian economy “to the point of becoming a classic example.” Its arms industry is operating at full capacity, at a level that Europe currently has no way of matching.
More than useless, the sanctions have proven counterproductive. In early 2022, the West expected Russia to collapse economically under the weight of the sanctions, but these hopes have faded. At the beginning of the war, “we believed that economic sanctions would put the Russian economy on its knees.”
The Wall Street Journal predicted “an earthquake of eight on the Richter scale.” But it didn't work. Their estimates turned out to be completely wrong. Today, the United States is no longer helping Ukraine at all. It seems to me that the participants in this conference haven't grasped this reality, because financial aid is nonexistent; it has stopped, and everything that comes from the United States today has to be financed.”
In a booming economy, the defense industry has grown at a dizzying pace and has seized control of most of the market. Its productivity and power are an unattainable example for European industry, Ferguson said. “Russia’s defense spending has almost doubled, reaching 7 percent of GDP. The budget deficit is at 2.4 percent of GDP, the sovereign debt-to-GDP ratio is at 14 percent, and government revenue from oil and gas has increased by a third. Inflation is at 8.7 percent, but real wages have risen by 22 percent since the start of the war, and unemployment is virtually zero. Incomes have increased by 48 percent, retail sales by 38 percent, and consumer goods sales have also risen. In other words, the sanctions regime has not worked,” explains the British expert.
He probably had not Crimean bridge, but Kerch bridge in mind - Kerch being the name of the town and fortress on the Crimean side, as well as the Kerch strait. Nevertheless, this shows lack of real knowledge by the author and the redaction of the gazette
nice. I haven't been very close, the closest probably being Alushta (nice landscape there) quite some time ago. The strait of Kerch came to my knowledge very early, may be via Jules Verne's "Keraban the Inflexible"
I've driven it a few times. I've also driven the land route to Crimea, through Mariupol.
The Kerch bridge (which is how everybody in Russia refers to it, since it crosses the Kerch strait) is a purely tourist and civilian transportation artery. It is literally hundreds of miles from where the special military op is going on.
For that matter, it's not a particularly convenient way of getting to most parts of Crimea from Russia. If you're going to Yevpatoria, Sevastopol, Simferopol, Yalta, Alushta, etc., and you're driving down from Moscow it's quicker to take the land route, not the bridge. The highways from Rostov on the Don to the isthmus and Djankoi are really super and they have a less traffic than the M4 from Rostov down to Krasnodar.
That's because if you take the M4 you're also tangled up with the huge amount of traffic headed for all the Black Sea resorts and towns like Anapa, Novorossisk, Krasnodar, Gelendzhik and so on all the way down to Sochi. Given all the new highway construction on the M4 and such you can end up in epic traffic jams. Heck, just getting around Krasnodar during rush hour can take a couple of hours, and then you've got traffic all the way to the Taman peninsula and the approaches to the bridge. On weekends you'll be stuck for hours in the traffic jams approaching the bridge.
It's true that if you're a tourist (or local) and you're going from Kerch in Crimea or Fedosia or Sudak and you want to get to Krasnodar or Anapa or Novorossisk then the Kerch bridge is the way to go. Pick your time right (mid-week) and you'll beat the traffic and enjoy the superhighway up and over the bridge and through Taman.
The Bridge was built for access to Russia before the SMO started. Until that time (SMO) there was no land bridge between Crimea and Russia. The SMO opened the land bridge, thus diminishing the use of the Kerch Bridge (at least for military and trade purposes).
Considering the last record of the area most people in the US have is from old WWII accounts (of dirt roads) and maybe 1980s magazine articles about those old peace trips that Intourist used to run, this is genuinely interesting. Being a fan of progress and liking the idea of Russia getting a modern road network...
"liking the idea of Russia getting a modern road network" - Definitely.
They've made a *lot* of progress on that in the last ten or fifteen years, enough that in the last five years or so you can see them getting enough critical mass of modern superhighways in some areas to make a dramatic difference. But it's still a huge country with absolutely immense distances so they've got a long way to go to get to something like the US interstate highway system.
The latest generation of superhighways, in the last five years or so, are definitely a game changer. You can now drive from pretty much any of the bigger cities in the European part of Russia to other big cities on four and six lane superhighways without ever getting onto surface streets. That's just mind-boggling for anybody that did long distance car driving here in the 90's or earlier.
The tempo of construction has dramatically increased as well, and it's not just superhighways but resurfacing and improvements of secondary roads, as well as improvements of first and second generation superhighways, like adding lanes, improved overpasses, etc.
What's interesting is that all the road work now is indigenous. In the 90's they'd bring in European companies as contractors to, say, build a highway near Moscow but now it's all local companies. Drive over the truly intense Kerch bridge and it's amazing that every bit of it was made by local companies, and made to absolutely first rate world standards. It's powering a big industry that seriously contributes to the economy, both in terms of direct employment and also given the knock-on effect of how a very good transportation network helps the economy thrive and grow.
Drive over something like the M12 that runs from Moscow to Kazan and is being extended to Yekaterinburg and it's amazing how totally smooth the surface is. If you've ever driven the Autobahn in Germany that's genuinely impressive, but if you're a connoisseur of high speed Euro highways you know the Swiss autobahns have even smoother, more even surfaces than the German Autobahn (which, to my tastes, is showing its age). Well, the M12 is like that, like the Swiss. But it has better rest areas / fuel stops that have really super and sophisticated cafes, like the Lukoil Cafe super rest areas. They're actually wonderful places, something you look forward to, as a place to get a meal during a long trip. They also have elaborate play areas for kids and all that jazz.
For those of us who remember what road travel was like here in Russia back in the day that's just astonishing.
The much improved road network is powering a revolution in internal tourism as well. I guess it's how the interstate highway network in the US helped power a rise in family vacations like north easterners driving down to Florida or whatever.
What's missing in that in Russia is that to date Russia has not evolved massive networks of road trip hotel chains, like Holiday Inn or whatever. Instead, it seems to have jumped directly to a very well developed infrastructure of AirBnB style online rentals. It's a big thing for people to invest into one or two bedroom apartments in new construction buildings that are placed near big highway interchanges or on the outskirts of population centers and then renting them out online.
You can book an apartment, get a code that gets you digital access to the building and then a digital key code for an electronic lock to use the apartment, so you don't even have to arrange a meet with the owner. It's not unusual for owners to have five or ten apartments in a new construction building that they rent out to travelers.
To be a neocon is to have a difficulty reading maps. Their Ideology relies on a refusal to acknowledge facts on the ground. As we can see from all their misadventures.
On the other hand, back in 2022, when the Russian Army was camping outside Kiev, the destruction of infrastructure (=bridges) in the Kursk Region would have had a devastating effect. But the Kerch bridge is a nice building, showing the capacity of the Russian engineers, but the main supply artery is from Rostov along the Sea of Azov. Strange! I do not understand the obsession for this Kerch Bridge.
The destruction of the Crimean / Kertch Bridge is a fetish even for many Ukraine supporters here in Germany. They talk constantly about it in forums and have wet dreams about this at night.
"The destruction of the Crimean / Kertch Bridge is a fetish even for many Ukraine supporters here in Germany."
That's because they're complete imbeciles. You have to be truly stupid and extremely ignorant to not notice that the Kerch bridge is hundreds of miles away from where all the supply lines and military movements are happening.
You also have to be a complete moron not to question why your media isn't reporting from the spot.
Western media outlets, including the German TV channels, Bild and so on, have plenty of accredited journalists sitting in Moscow who are perfectly free to hop in their cars and drive south on the fabulous M4 superhighway that runs between Moscow and the Black Sea resorts.
It's a mere 470 or so km (about 300 miles), less than six hours of driving at superhighway speeds to get to Voronezh, and then for another six hours or so you're driving on the M4 just east of the hotter parts of the war zone.
I've done that drive many times on my way to the Black Sea resorts for some beach time with friends. What you notice is the very large number of military trucks and vehicles on the M4, which are there as part of the logistics of supporting the 700,000+ man force involved in the special military op in Ukraine.
If you want to get to Crimea, from Rostov on the Don you make a choice: you either turn West and drive on the mainland through the New Territories of Donetsk, Zaporozhiye and Kherson to the isthmus that joins Crimea to the mainland, or you continue south to Krasnodar before turning West to take the highway to the Kerch bridge. I've taken both routes.
When you drive on the mainland you're driving on the northern border of the Sea of Azov through the new territories that joined Russia after they were liberated from the Nazi regime in Kiev that occupied them. You'll see lots of military equipment on the roads and will drive through regular military checkpoints (no big deal if you have your passport handy and haven't overstayed your visa). That's because all of the military logistics for supporting the special military op go through the direct land connections between Russia and the front.
In contrast, if you drive south to Krasnodar as you get south of Rostov you see fewer and fewer military vehicles, and basically see none at all on the drive from Krasnodar west to the Kerch bridge. That's because the Kerch bridge is hundreds of miles away from where the war is going on, and it plays no role whatsoever in the special military operation. It's exclusively a tourist and civilian transportation link, not a military link.
Anybody who isn't an extreme cretin can take a look at the map and see that the way to get men and military supplies to the war zone in Kherson and Zaporozhiye provinces that are on the mainland north of Crimea is to simply drive there on the superhighway direct from Rostov. You don't drive hundreds of miles out of the way to take the Kerch bridge. Doh.
But people in Germany, like the US and the rest of the West, have become such criminally stupid imbeciles that they believe obvious lies like the bridge has some sort of military significance. It doesn't, and hasn't since the New Territories joined Russia.
By the way, there's very little military traffic on the roads in Crimea. There are plenty of defensive installations, like anti-aircraft facilities around cities, beaches, infrastructure, etc., but it's not like the heavy military traffic you see on the mainland in support of the special military operation.
Optics ? Something to show the Natzostan public on the 6 o-clock News to enforce to idea they've got some vfm for the billions uselessly spent. After all, what else do they have that visually demonstrates their success.
If you view the Ukrainian side of this war as a sort of long running "performance art" installation, acted out with live ammo to provide propaganda photo opps for their patrons? It all makes more sense.
No, he meant the Kerch bridge. He inaccurately referred to the "Kursk bridge" twice, both times in the singular and both times clearly in the context of the Western lies about the Kerch bridge.
By the way the Seym river bridges would have zero effect on either logistics or advance/retreat on the initial invasion, which what Kagan was lying about. The initial invasion used launch points in Belarus, hundreds of miles from the Seym river bridges, as well as many launch points on the what, thousand mile? land border between Russia and Nazi-held Ukraine with an emphasis on Donbass, also far, far away from the Seym river bridges.
Ok, he is probably to ignorant to even learn geography.
A lot of troops came east from Mariupol btw.
But I dont know why you blabber about zero effect about the Seym river and the motorways towards Sumy and Charkov. Fact is Russia used these roads and your description as of invasion came from Belorussia solely is faalse. You had movements agaisnt Sumy and Charkov exactly as I described.
" Fact is Russia used these roads and your description as of invasion came from Belorussia solely is faalse. " Ah, no, I didn't write "solely" I wrote the opposite:
"The initial invasion used launch points in Belarus, hundreds of miles from the Seym river bridges, as well as many launch points on the what, thousand mile? land border between Russia and Nazi-held Ukraine with an emphasis on Donbass, also far, far away from the Seym river bridges."
Note the "as well as many launch points...". And, the emphasis was initially on the Donbass, not on Sumy or Kharkov.
I am honest, but your apparent unfamiliarity with English (I assume, perhaps wrongly, that's why you miss so many important words) gives the impression you're not honest.
The Seym river bridges indeed were irrelevant to the Russian invasion that launched the special military op. If you knew anything about the opening Russian maneuvers in the special military op you'd know that.
The primary thrust was in defense of Donbass (Donetsk and part of Lugansk), which is not remotely near those bridges. Russia's task was to stop the 130,000 man invasion force that the US and the Kiev regime had built up for their imminent ethnic-cleansing invasion of Donetsk.
In support of that defense (really, a desperate defense given the very thin forces Russia could apply), Russia's secondary thrust was a feint at Kiev with forces invading from Belarus and Russia in the North, not taking the long way around through Sumy and Kharkov.
As I wrote, it's true there were many other launch points on the very long land border between Russia and Nazi-held Ukraine, but those were for very small forces that played supporting roles in the big feint to draw some of Kiev's forces away from their planned big thrust at Donetsk. Those forces were often scout level formations, and some of them were near Sumy and Kharkov. But a few guys in the Russian equivalent of a jeep are not remotely daunted by needing to use secondary or tertiary roads and given the way they covered lots of ground very fast the presence or absence of a bridge or not (when they could drive 30 minutes to take an alternate) for that jeep full of guys didn't matter one whit.
So don't accuse others of dishonesty when you have ignorant bullshit coming out of your keyboard.
Don't insult armchair Generals, fat Kagan doesn't rise to that level. Warmongering for the sake of warmongering is his objective, the rest are meaningless rationalizations to sell to the goyim.
As simplicious said it probably just a mental trap he is setting. Kagan likely does not believe it. He is just leading the listener to the belief USA could have done something, because that means the listener will believe they still can do something. When in fact USA is impotent now. But that knowledge would not get USA politicians to invest yet further in the war factories.
What is interesting to me is that people still need explanation that being a strategic rear (to say the least) means that you are a co-belligerent.
People still live in looney toon world where this is somehow isolated conflict between Ukraine and Rus. After all those public statements about proxy war and even coalition war on Rus. Peeps do not register this and cannot even process if you give them proper ifno, cognitive dissonance is too strong.
I alwazs expected Trump to escalate. It is getting worse and worse in USA. No peace without dismantling of USD printing press and even then they will lash out.
Keep in mind that every dollar of debt that the US Treasury issues has a ready and willing buyer for that debt. Market participants want to lend to the US. You don't have to like it, but they do.
Anyway, it was obvious about two weeks into Trump's first term that he is weak, stupid and easily manipulated.
Maybe now, my time frame is by the end of the decade. In the mean time we will have another US election cycle and every new president is more unhinged.
No, not at all - that's why they're panicking bigtime now. They can't roll over the maturing Treasury bonds, no buyers, and nobody on the secondary market wants the junk at these prices either. Even the primary dealers aren't showing up to the auctions.
I thought foreign purchases of Treasuries had all but stopped and it was the Fed, domestic banks and pension funds that are holding them. Isn't that why they are trying the Treasury backed stablecoin fundraising?
"...such as blowing up the Kursk bridge and thereby trapping his army in Ukraine"
I assume that he is sloppy and means the Crimean Bridge. So, according to Kagan, the Crimean Bridge is the only connection between Russia and Ukraine... This is new for me.
This is the kind of man whom the American establishment relies upon to define its foreign policy. He cannot even remember the name of a famous bridge and his knowledge of geography is subpar.
A bit like DJT resolving the War between Aber Daijan and Albania as announced during his recent State visit to our ungodly shores instead of Azerbaijan & Armenia, still it was good for a laugh.
"Aber Daijan and Albania"... In a recent speech for the American Cornerstone Institute, DJT bragged: "We stopped the conflict between Cambodia and Armenia. It was just starting, and it was a bad conflict."
"If he [Trump] does nothing in response to a Russian attack on Poland, Europeans will have to stop fooling themselves and face the fact that the Americans really aren’t there for them."
Big surprise, the US will never go to war with Russia for the sake of any European nation. Remember Putin's advisor coming out with "Trump and Putin are going to prevent WW3"?
This decision has already been made: No US involvement if the EU provokes a war with Russia.
We can be rather sure that Russia won't attack EU as the demographics don't add up. 150 million Russians cannot "take" near 300 million Europeans. Russia would win the war, but could not hope to occupy Europe. Nor would there be anything to take, piss poor as Europe is in resources and an old and exhausted population.
I would sum up Kagan's article as one long whine: We could have taken Russia in 2022, but now its too late.
And he is wrong, because even in 2022 the west would have been unable to successfully take Russia on.
(I have done some research into this a few months ago, and was simply reusing the remembered numbers from back then. But somehow I must have made a mistake. My bad.)
That's just the last year, then theres the 50,000 Afghans from that dodgy email sent with their personal data on. In the year ending June 2025, 51,997 people were granted refugee protection Even though most of the current lot go back on a bloody holiday making their claim of asylum false. At the end of the day no young man is going to fight for the UK against Russia but they will against this traitorous anti-white government.
Britain is lurching towards civil war, and nobody knows how to stop it
>We can be rather sure that Russia won't attack EU as the demographics don't add up. 150 million Russians cannot "take" near 300 million Europeans. Russia would win the war, but could not hope to occupy Europe. Nor would there be anything to take, piss poor as Europe is in resources and an old and exhausted population.
Putin can be raising the flag in Brussels about a month from now if he decides to do it today.
Could be done even in a week, but it will require more complicated technical preparation.
Maybe, I don't know. As they say, in war, even the enemy has a vote.
War's are rarely linear and predictable. The only way to make some kind of prediction is to look at resources, and Russia has more of it and can produce more of it. Hence it is near certain that Europe would lose, but how when where why is uncertain.
In 2022, at the start of the war in Ukraine, the American economist Neil Ferguson was a textbook Russophobe. But as a professor at Stanford University and a member of the Hoover Institution, he needs to update his rhetoric periodically to avoid looking foolish. Admitting mistakes is a sign of wisdom.
Recently, he was invited to give a lecture at the foundation of Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk in Washington, titled: “Is Russia winning or collapsing?” He didn't say anything we hadn't already heard since 2022, but the interesting thing isn't what he said, but who said it. Some intellectuals are starting to publicly and openly acknowledge their mistakes.
Russia is slowly moving towards victory, he said. Its economy has become a model worthy of the highest academic praise. The war has boosted the Russian economy “to the point of becoming a classic example.” Its arms industry is operating at full capacity, at a level that Europe currently has no way of matching.
More than useless, the sanctions have proven counterproductive. In early 2022, the West expected Russia to collapse economically under the weight of the sanctions, but these hopes have faded. At the beginning of the war, “we believed that economic sanctions would put the Russian economy on its knees.”
The Wall Street Journal predicted “an earthquake of eight on the Richter scale.” But it didn't work. Their estimates turned out to be completely wrong. Today, the United States is no longer helping Ukraine at all. It seems to me that the participants in this conference haven't grasped this reality, because financial aid is nonexistent; it has stopped, and everything that comes from the United States today has to be financed.”
In a booming economy, the defense industry has grown at a dizzying pace and has seized control of most of the market. Its productivity and power are an unattainable example for European industry, Ferguson said. “Russia’s defense spending has almost doubled, reaching 7 percent of GDP. The budget deficit is at 2.4 percent of GDP, the sovereign debt-to-GDP ratio is at 14 percent, and government revenue from oil and gas has increased by a third. Inflation is at 8.7 percent, but real wages have risen by 22 percent since the start of the war, and unemployment is virtually zero. Incomes have increased by 48 percent, retail sales by 38 percent, and consumer goods sales have also risen. In other words, the sanctions regime has not worked,” explains the British expert.
The Project for the New American Century had nothing to do with America at all, except as the patsy providing the bodies and the war materiel.
Kagan is just another intellectual prostitute who sold his soul in the use of his intellect to provide plausible seeming stories to set the table for political crimes on a global scale. Exactly as your opening paragraph presages.
Yes, a few Americans have benefitted enormously from the US' mad paroxysm of jingoist imperialism in the Middle East, but *America* has suffered enormously. Her wealth and posterity have been exhausted for the benefit of others.-
The proposition, express or implied in his writing, that Kagan gives a damn for America or Poland or Latvia, etc., is risible on its face, and more you look beneath the surface the uglier and more ludicrous it gets.
Wolfowitz laid it out in 93. The plan rolls on and is still failing. Perhaps Netanyahu can actually pulls it off. Long odds though. Kagan and crew will never give up trying. How do they sleep at night?
The clan. The clan serves its own. I do think it is fair to question the degree to which the neocons are just Israel first or closer to Israel only, and the US is itself a disposable proxy like Ukraine.
Indeed, I see the US as a temporarily useful puppet, its value predominantly down to the population who can be milked for its wealth - and their children who can be sent off to fight and die whenever and wherever required - and of course, its currency.
The moment it loses its usefulness it will be discarded, just as they would discard Israel or any other patch of land.
The ones who pull the strings regard the entire world and all its nations and assets - those they haven't already seized - as theirs by divine right. Because they are religiously-inspired racial supremacists, who see themselves as the only "real" humans on the planet.
The rest of us are cattle to be milked and butchered as and when convenient. To them, the very idea that the dumb livestock own anything is laughable. But they let us have our convenient fiction if it keeps us subservient and docile.
Probably fair to say the likes of Kagan despise the US public as so many: red necks, hicks, schwartzers and spics, a pot pourri of untermensch disposables.
No. I made bizness all my life and I learned to translate apparent words
You see? When somebody tells you " ho it's probably too ( big, beautiful, ect...) for me" means actually : ,"too expensive".
Or " it's OK, we have a deal , I just have to speak with( my partners, wife, accountant, adviser, pope...)" that mean "fuck you".
You know, your ability to translate words and and read body language for 40 years make the difference between living in a nice home , raising your children in the best schools and eating in garbage tins.
Maybe we should see Kagan's views a little bit differently. Leave out geopolitics. This is a program to support the growing academic pseudo-elite; this brings the predictions of H. Schellsky to a global level. To have a good national living standard, you either have a lot of natural resources or a lot of human resources, meaning engineers and craftsmen. On the other hand, lawyers, gender and media experts, tax consultants, and bankers are only a strain on a society's wealth. But the Western universities generate ever-growing numbers of exactly this parasitic class, eliminating the working class by ever-new regulations, laws, fees, and taxes. Therefore the West can not rely on a huge working class for a good living standard but instead must claim natural resources around the world—and the mineral-richest country is Russia. Maybe if we close down the Ivy League schools, we can secure peace for the decades to come?
Professional academics increasingly grow isolated away from averaged working class people. Just like with our huge billionaire class, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Chinese or Asian exceptionalism is a huge fashion these years when the American variant has run its course. Better not bet on that as there is none. Once China has become a great power, the »Tragic of Great Power Politics« will set in, the ruling elite of that state will do everything to block any peer competitors, will see to defend its shipping lines militarily etc. Think of their mentality as that of the Tiger Mother concept which is a Chinese invention and practice. Also: China does not speak out against the Zionists’ genocide, they use euphemisms only, and their trade with that murderous state heads for a new record this year. Not to mention that Beijing does not support South Africa’s case at the ICJ. (All this is true for Russia as well, by the way, but hardly anybody in the alt-media points that out, not to mention: discusses it.)
With more than one million Russians living in Israel and with the popularity of Israel among russian people, it seems that you're living in the Wonderland.
And why the fuck do you want that Russia has the duty of save the world against itself? What Russia owes to Palestinians to do such war?
Arabs lay down like bitches and do nothing, Turkish and other Muslims are striking their chest in shouting to death but do nothing and even sell to Israël the oil to make its planes and tanks work. Iranians which swore to destroy Israël if it attack Gaza is hinding like a rat and betrayed Hezbollah and Syria.
And you want that in this shit Russia act like the archangel Gabriel?
If a “Russian” lives since the 90s in Israel, pays taxes in Israel, has an Israeli passport and has served in the IOF, is he/she/zhe still “a Russian”?
Yes, and if it's a franco-israelian or a spanish-israelian, it's exactly the same.
More than one million russian Jews in Israël. Soon, the best of them will be disgusted with this countries of lunatics blood thirsty. Where will go this scientifics, engeeners, doctors, highly educated technicians and workers.
A part will go in western countries but a lot will go back to Russia if they know that Russia will welcome them with greetings and open arms. And they often leaved Russia because it was very poor. It's no more true now. Russia have a demographic problem.
It need the come back of hundreds thousands high educated Russians.
u/Darras is, more or less, correct. the "clan" is widely distributed around the world and has considerable influence because they control the money.
Alex Krainer (and others) often point to the "City of London" but they merely hint at the Rothschilds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Court. I find it strange that they can still wield such power since "money isn't real".
China (and Russia) seem to have separated themselves from this cult.
Yanis Varoufakis often explains that money is nothing more than a call on the future. But at some point, it has to be paid off.
Michael Hudson though says, "Forgive them their debts" as he explains how debt was forgiven in ancient times.
We allow ourselves to be enslaved by a myth repeated by the Rothschilds and adhered to by our political leadership.
Honest question: why is Israel “popular” among the average Russians?
Israel has been firmly supporting Ukraine against Russia’s unprovoked genocidal invasion for the whole time. Also, from what I get from my limited interactions with Israeli Zionists, they freaking HATE Putin (something I honestly struggle to understand, bc Putin in the end served Assad in a silver platter to the Zio-Takfiris.)
Is that why the country with the highest number of Ukrainian refugees is Russia? And why many POWs apply for Rus citizenship? Because they just love being genocided?
Rumor has it that the Israelis have planted nukes all over the world to keep everyone in check. Especially in Russia.
Not sure how realistic that is -- thermonuclear devices need regular servicing and thus constant access, and you would need thermonuclear bombs to properly take out Russia, but you can certainly do a lot of damage to Moscow with half a dozen 50-100 kt fission devices planted in the right places.
On the other hand Russian bases in Syria were strategically located between Israel and Russia and sufficiently close to Israel to potentially allow for boost-phase interception of Jericho ICBMs. Which I always found interesting as a possibility and perhaps it was more than just a hypothetical...
The US and West in general appear to be ruled by inhumane being while the Eastern leaders show more humanity.
Don't be so sure. Vietnam Freezes 86 Million Bank Accounts - for lack of compliance with a biometrics mandate:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2025-09-19/vietnam-freezes-86-million-bank-accounts-overnight-us-next-under-genius-act-jim
All of them are planning to enslave all of us, worldwide.
Thailand has been on a bank account freezing frenzy lately too.
Really? At least not with the same pretext as in Vietnam. People usually have bankbooks as the ultimate proof of ownership.
The Thai banks/govt. are citing AML reasons. Re bank books, they were mostly phased out years ago. And a bankbook doesn't stop them freezing their accounts.
It is causing mayhem as one can imagine.
The "great taking" is underway. It only gets worse, Grr.
"They" can't take from me, I keep no money in a bank. Gold and other easily graded assets are buried.
I live in the super-rich in gold Abitibi Greenstone belt country, Grr.
KL Gold, recently bought by Agnico Eagle, owns all mineralization under my house and land, which would theoretically make anything I bury their property. lol I dug up part of my yard once and found several quartz veins, but the high-grade gold here is very deep, not suitable for panhandling. 😂
So I asset diversify and I'm ready to cash out faster than the government can get their greedy hands on it in case of a bail-in or whatever.
Along with bail-in laws (which the sheeple mass don't even know exist) is the insidious unrealised capital gains taxes that are being introduced in many countries.
Crypto holders need to be aware of this as with the new financial system allowing staking and borrowing against crypto giving little tax in the former, and no tax in the latter, the greedy parasites will tax crypto profits before we sell, which will cause a partial sell off to pay the tax.
Cvnts. We take the financial risk, make a profit, and they send the goons to take their vig.
Or get on a plane and get the crypto in to a friendly jurisdiction.
Yes. That is a modern trick to separate the mineral and water rights from a plot of land.
One evening in my Mexican village, a group of revolutionists in pickup trucks showed up, then the village chief with a sack over his head got in a truck and they all drove off. I wondered why, and it was so the son could dig up the family treasure for ransom. He did so and all returned to normal. Buried treasure is no safer than the society that buried it.
True dat. However where I live isn't as wild as Mexico. And no one knows what I have, except all reading this LOL
I'd suggest you actually look at how it came about; there's an analysis from an American lawyer based out of Bangkok who suggests that it's a result of US inspired meddling. https://youtu.be/P9GexMLDv1g?si=2fal2rVpFyHmFUQT
Yeah, I have watched some of his videos.
I found it interesting because he's made several videos on the issue and he's concluded that there's foreign influence behind the move. This is another vector being used to destabilise the situation.
He makes a good point. Brian Berletic thinks so too.
just because we in the glorious west are schmucks, doesn't mean there aren't a lot of other ones out there who are not in our club.
This is true but like driving defensively it is best to begin with the assumption that the various governments seek to shackle the people to their great stones to build their modern ziggurats. Let us be happily surprised to discover a government that doesn't do so and remember; such a situation may not last.
The USA republic only lasted until 1865 when Lincoln (our Julius Caesar) met his fate at the hands of a committed slaver who was deluded into thinking he was fighting for freedom. John Wilkes Booth's freedom to own his fellow man in bitter bondage. Because of this assassination when the Confederacy returned to the Halls of Power they had a Democratic president and the crooked republicans (Rats or Rhinos) to welcome them back into a coalition that rules America to this day.
I refuse to believe that MAGA will succeed in defeating this coalition of evil, the Demonrats, which will use assassination even when everyone knows but cannot prove it is them. Remember Ashli Babbitt as well as Charlie Kirk. I'm not getting my hopes up. Not about MAGA and not really about BRICS. I vote for the Republicans and pray but I don't hope, I drive defensively and thank God when someone makes up for my own mistakes.
God Bless Us All
well, my hopes aren't very high either, to say the least. rough waters ahead.
The Jeffersonian Republic didn't survive Jefferson: Where in the Constitution does it say the Federal Government can buy a few million acres of swampland and it's inbred retard inhabitants just because the French are having a fire sale?
At least learn how to spell RINO....and what it stands for....Republican in Name Only....it is not a horned, thick-skinned animal...
Yes, it is.
We were within a whisker of Covid ID cards, too.
24 hours a day we are sifted through, recorded in secret vaults.
1789 isn't as far away as some hope.
Oh, please don’t bring Covid into the discussion. Give it a rest for chrissake.
Covid was an important point in our history as a test case for power politics and subjugation. Dismissing it as an aberration is a mistake.
Agreed -- I was in the middle of writing a similar comment. We can just hope that people look back aghast at what the government pulled off with a 'never again' attitude. Sadly, I'm not that hopeful. It will just come in a different guise.
I tell my kids with panic voice "get away from her, she has a disease", and in mock fear my kids scurry to the other side of me away from the masked idiot. Nothing makes me laugh in the car afterwards more than recounting my kids saying dad look out she has a disease!
If they say something these are my favourite responses:
Did you get last weeks booster?
Please dont so close to me
I am sorry I cant understand you with the mask on while saying it slowly and louder
Mock them. Laugh at them. Never let them forget the stupid that did not work.
Yes. Sir, Robert.
1. If you failed elementary Biology classes.
2. If you aced that course in Civics that said, always, without question, trust your Government.
Then, hell, yes, lets overlook the mass poisoning of the Western World.
The check's in the mail, I luv you, I promise not ....in your_____ And Netanyahoo and dual citizen gang members, definitely did not shoehorn the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Absolutely. No more talking 'bout that planned, engineered and executed Covid Scam.
Covid scam? If that’s what you believe, it means that you are choosing to ignore the millions of people who died from Covid worldwide. Or do you actually believe that it was all faked? Well, I’m a critical care doctor, and I can assure you that the hospitals and ICUs bursting beyond capacity, the mobile morgues set up to receive the flood of fatalities, the patients taking their last breaths in overcrowded ER waiting rooms were all very real. But I realize that I am wasting my time trying to educate people who are ignorant and proud of it. You guys don’t want to know the facts, because it would upset your fixed beliefs. Can’t let that happen, can you?
It was a designer flu with a targeted audience of the normal demographics of any animal group (or plants, for the matter) which needs, or is seen to need, thinning: The elderly and the unhealthy. When a protocol and ONLY that protocol is mandated for treatment and people are dying more from the treatment than the disease, that should have been an eye-opener for everyone. When licenses of doctors who do not follow the protocol are being pulled, that should have been an eye-opener for everyone. When people who do not believe or want the shot are being fired or canceled, that should have been an eye-opener for everyone. When stupidity reins (BLM marches but deaths by oneself and no funerals), that should have been an eye-opener for everyone.
Surely you jest? You are a prime example of why I keep my distance from anyone who uses the address "Dr" in front of the name.
All the opposite in France. All official figures showed that hospitals worked less during covid but three of them (2 in Paris and one in Marseilles. The idea behind that was to overcrowd 3 hospitals in order to get under pressure medical staff on cam for TV reports). The total deaths of 2020 was a notch below the average (while all type of flues were categorized under Covid symptoms) and so on… Covid just dismissed France 🤓
I don't remember my civics classes ever saying to trust the government. I went to school in the 50s/early 60s and everything was opinionless...dates and events...
Coming to a country near you. If ever there was a good time to resist on a global scale, now would be a good time. Diversify your assets.
It's the usual attitude: cruel masters and human servants.
When servants become masters, they become inhumans too and often even more inhuman.
Read the little fable (hundred pages) of Orwell: Animals Farm. It explain it perfectly.
Look at the social model of China. Is it what you want for your children?
I would take china ruling the west over the jew any day...
seriously
thanks for sounding off, Mr. Xi
Why do you want to remain a shabbos goy ?
I have no idea WTF you are talking about, and neither do you
which word did you not understand.
You do know what they call chineses in SE Asia?
There are no words for people like you....SMFH
Dancing Israelis.
I'd rather have my children in China because they would not be poor, participate in a society from the people for the people. Their Confucian social model beats any Individual based society in the current West since Individualism is opposite to humans nature of collaboration and compromise instead of everyone for themself and some God for all of us.
another "hive" mentalist sounds off
so "individualism" is antithetic to social responsibility....
do not delude yourself as to your intellectual superiority
Individualism is indeed anti social-ethical. But what was the link wit intellectual superiority again?
China is a complex society. There are lots of poor people in the country. Not everything there is the glamour and glitz of Guangzhou.
Oh really? Like Casa Grande in Arizona is not like New York? Not even in every family is everything glamour and glitz.
I've never been to Casa Grande so I don't have a frame of reference for your comment. I wasn't particularly trying to kick in your direction. Just that it seems to me that among the "thinking" part of western society, there's two "camps" regarding China, and both stand apart from the dominant thought of China as an aspiring evil empire or something.
One of those camps is idealistic and see China in the rosiest of terms, overlooking the problems and failures. The other I usually see from financial reporters and predicts the eminent demise of the entire Chinese project, due to over-leveraged housing markets, an over-built manufacturing base, etc.
I took you to be in the idealistic camp based on your comment that kids born there won't grow up to be poor.
China has a lot of social and economic problems. One I haven't seen talked about is physical abuse of children. Everyone in the country grows up with a stick to their back. Beating the hell out of one's children is endemic and pervasive - the "spare the rod, spoil the child" ethos of the west a century ago, but without the religious backing.
Every society has social and economic problems. Society is a process, no static construction. Beating children is the newest in line of troublesome news, doesn't happen in the west anymore, right? We kill people around the globe and cheer for genocide or if not, we just shut up , but never mind.
I'm not idealistic, I am rather optimistic that China's model and success over decades now will encourage the western populations to see that there is a working alternative to individualism and soon wide spread misery for the majority of us.
Hmm. I'm somehow indifferent about how china works.They pulled a billion or so out of poverty, avoided war, help other countires to develope. They have also a system how to educate their citizens to behave and not to start riots and revolutions. And most of the Chinese agree to it. If my children are not interested in revolutions, they could there live in prosperty. An if you want to avoid the control, there ar always niches to hide in. If you compare to the West: The freedom of speach is gone, and often you cannot even critizise the Government for leading the country into the abyss. Is there a fine spot between total freedom and control for the good of the people?
china "pulled itself out of poverty" precisely because WESTERN INVESTORS moved in to take advantage of the low wages.
without those western investors, those chinese would still be grubbing about in the mud to harvest buffalo turds
get a grip, man
it's OK to be naive, but I wouldn't advertise it
and murdered about 80 million in the process.
You mean the western powers? - yes, the bankers’ wars on Asia, Africa, Europe, and the south & Latin America have destroyed at least 80 millions of human lives
Chairman Mao.
Like how frank the Jew tool Roosevelt (delanor) heroine traded in China
the name is DELANO, dumbass, and it wasn't FDR, it was several generations earlier
Stupid is as stupid posts.....
yes, that POS' family. why do I even care to get the name of an evil jew tool correct. you understand to whom I referred.
are you a jew 'tom dumb"?
No, not just Delano as the shipping captain, FDR, the grandson named after him, directly protected Chang Kai-shek's Chinese National Air Company and its cargoes of opium to buy off provincial warlords. Government currency was worthless, as there was no national government.
When the Japanese started to interdict those flights, a private mercenary corps called the Flying Tigers firebombed Japanese cities.
FDR was also called "the Butcher of Haiti" as its governor, that's how he came to Wilson's attention. (Palm oil was the prize in Haiti.)
I think you'll find there are two sides to every argument. Seeing only one is naive at best and disingenuous at worst.
So, what you are saying is that someone finally made good use of Western capitalist greed? But then the difference with the Chinese, instead of allowing a few 'elites' to become billionaires, they funnelled the money from the 'investors', back into their country to the benefit of all their citizens. Who could have imagined THAT working?
Not anybody in America, that's for sure.
China has been a world super power with 3000+ years of history long before there was even a 'WEST'. It's just claiming back it's natural place in the world order and does so by building and not bombing.
It is naive to put the merit for China's achievements on western investors - no need to capitalize. There have been tens of countries with more per capita FDI over the decades, and still with millions in misery, often worse off due to western incursion. If western FDI would spell progress and reduction of misery, poverty rates minus China would not have gone up.
I think there are such "fine spots" in the interregnums between empires- that period of post-imperialism where authority becomes more local, pragmatic and cooperative by necessity. I am not a utopian by any means- there is no ideal political or economic system, only what works and doesn't work at particular times and places.
It's power cycles-rise of power, abuse of power, reaction to power, collapse of power, then a period of volatile instability where success and stability require cooperation if, for no other reason, because forceful control is just not possible. Then power builds up again, then abuse, then reaction... and so on.
You read an article on Robert Kagan and start gaslighting China. Do you have children?
Understand the species....and therein lies a major problem...most people do not understand the species to which they belong.
yes, because the "west" is controlled by the jew.
'In 1986, then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden said, “[Supporting Israel] is the best $3 billion investment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.” '?
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/joe-biden-1986-israel/
The words out another AIPAC stooge.
If it weren't for terminal cancer, then we would have to invent it.
American bought and paid for, (from stolen US money), logic.
What is it that people don't understand by “less than 5 minutes”?
“October 7 Was An Inside Job - documentary (2024) by John Hankey #RealHistoryChannel”?
https://rumble.com/v4nn39k-october-7-was-an-inside-job-documentary-2024-by-john-hankey-realhistorychan.html?ysclid=m5y9zyld9m961523746
lol.
They told us it was Hamas ninjas on paragliders!
'They' are the 'antisemites'.
They willingly 'sacrificed' and are 'sacrificing' young Israelis { and other 'Semites'} to protect US interests and prevent Netanyahu facing 'corruption charges'?
Heh - and invent terminal cancer they did! The covid turbocancers.
Such idiocy. How does an illegal genocidal sin merchant HQ help the white people of America ?
Biden family is 'largest crime syndicate in US politics' - Rep. Greene
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said bank records and over 2,000 pages of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARS) reviewed by the House Oversight Committee show evidence of money laundering and human sex trafficking involving Hunter Biden.
“The investigation is going to show that the Biden family is the largest crime syndicate that America has ever seen in politics,” Greene stated, alleging wire transfers from China, Ukraine, the UAE, and Africa into shell LLCs that later paid multiple Biden family members.
“If an elected official is abusing their position of power for influence peddling and getting rich off of it, that is corruption the American people should never allow,” she added.
https://t.me/two_majors_chat/161246
“If an elected official is abusing their position of power for influence peddling and getting rich off of it, that is corruption the American people should never allow,”
Inside US.
Not applicable outside US. CIA is allowed to use all kinds of criminal activities, including money laundering and human sex trafficking, outside of US.
Theoretically, could work.
In real life however, the boundary is difficult to define, and impossible to keep.
And for a time, one can choose exceptionally insensitive, cruel individuals, to keep the line, the boundary, but laws of human nature, inevitably lead to these positions being filled with more and more stupid (McFaul), ideological (Snider), or just individuals having a more or less unAmerican agenda (Kagan, Nuland, Blinken).
A half a trillion dollar investment ...
MTG is obviously afraid to touch the third rail - the BUSH family
the Bidens are amateurs, that's why they get caught
the Bushes just walk
Yep. Bush Biden Zion don. All Jew puppets.
I don't think that's the case. The Biden family remains vivid in the public's memory because of ongoing allegations surrounding Hunter Biden, including his reported ties to Burisma highlighting the corruption in Ukraine and the disputed laptop story, and the conflicting claims that followed. That also raises questions about the 50 intelligence officials whose security passes were revoked after signing a document stating the laptop was Russian disinformation ( a blatant lie), have any of them faced criminal charges or been prosecuted? The whole episode showed the world how politically corrupt the hegemon was, & undoubtedly remains.
By the time the 'Trump' years are over, Biden's crime syndicate sins will pale in comparison.
I think there's a difference between building lux resorts with mob money and not only trafficking millions of children, but organ harvesting them too. While alive, in many cases, just to put a point on it.
Please do not cite SNOPES for anything if you want to be taken seriously
>Eastern leaders show more humanity
Yeah, sure.
Where is the humanity in having hundreds of thousands of your own people be senselessly slaughtered because you faced the choice of preventing that from happening through implementing decisive military-technical measures and having oligarch business interests be hurt or allowing the slaughter but not touching the oligarchs, and you chose the latter?
What an extremely humane thing to do...
Politic is art of possible.
Not a nice dream in the best world.
Oh brother. A Dem Party slogan, used to stop anything the Party thinks will upset their Donors, whether its peace or Universal single payer. What next--"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good?"
I didn't know that Otto von Bismarck was an american democrat. 😂😂😂
Typical ignorant USamerican
Think, dude: I never said the Dems coined the slogan. Who originally said it is irrelevant. It's used by them to bat down any real change that is certainly possible. Who's ignorant?
And it was possible to strike Poland. Yet Putler did not
It was actually likely possible to do a lot more than that.
Say, SSGN-launched hypersonic missiles start striking billionaire mansions in the US, as part of a concerted non-nuclear counter-value campaign to force the US to stop the war. While a clear back-channel message is sent to the Pentagon that the US military will not be touched if it stands down.
What does the military decide to do in response?
It's just cope, claiming moral victories because real world victories are not on offer.
Victim blaming
Why are you defending the genocidal chicken swinging sin merchant Jew ?
Bankers have no motherland — their only loyalty is to money, which means the non stop looting and wars
As ford said : arrest the top 50 richest Jew and all wars would stop.
ukro prop
Even if true, what matters is winning.
The Convid scam was a global event that all leaders are part of. If not, they get killed.
I think that from Russian perspective they should choose wisely now. What can be seen in the horizon should make Russia conclude that we have reached the end of the rope. Questions:
*Why should Russia wait for NATO re-armament instead of using their weakness now?
*Why should Russia negotiate on the terms of SMO-objectives and let Ukraine and NATO go unpunished/undefeated just to let them instigate a War 2030?
*Why give NATO time to digest the experiences of real modern War and change their tactics&strategy accordingly? If thousands of Ukrainians officers is let loose to train and educate NATO on the real modern war tactics, Russia would have lost their upper hand.
*Why miss the opportunity to crack NATO when almost all European states are in chaos and economic disarray?
The only thing that should Kreml think twice is Donald Trumps index finger. He is crazy enough to push the button.
From NATO:s perspective we can expect the following:
*”We poaked the Bear, we triggered it to attack, we hurt the Bear badly - we just have to kill it also”
*If not for Ukraine and the modern way they can defend themselves we are at risk to loose all of Baltics. We better support them indefinetely (because they are dumb enough to continue the fight). An economi backlash will eventually hit Russia after 4-6 years of War.
* We need to bring out and enforce the narrative that Russia is the aggressor and need to be handled - no matter what. False flag, extreme provocations, seizure of their assets and reserve should do the thing.
* Buying time to re-arm and re-educate new armies and drone pilots through more border
incidents in Caucasus and elsewhere.
Mikey. We aren't going to re-arm. We can't afford it.
We'll talk about it and there will be high profile projects, but nothing on the necessary scale will even be contemplated.
We have Kabuki Theatre politics.
Well said. Not a single NATO government genuinely believe Russia presents a threat. We know this simply by deduction from the fact that not one NATO government has acted as if they believed it: i.e. they'd be planning reindustrialization and rearmament.
I loved Starmer's response to his supposed military advice a couple of months ago that the UK could expect a land war with Russia within the next five years. His solution was to announce a submarine-building program. How brilliant is that? ;)
they ARE planning reindustrialization and rearmament
one small problem: they have NO MONEY and their governments are in disarray
I'm planning to win the lottery next week and date Taylor Swift.
you have better chances than NATO
good luck
Indeed! But even if they had money and industry, it'd make little difference as they're still planning to fight WW2 / Korea, with doctrine and weapons not designed or manufactured for modern conventional war and the logistics thereof. NATO's AirLand Battle became theoretically overtaken in 1984, as the US Army's Soviet Army Studies Office realized in 1990 (see LTC Lester Grau's declassified doc https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA231789.pdf); and operationally obsolete in 2014 when a shocked US colonel witnessed the annihilation of a NATO-trained Ukraine mechanized brigade without it firing a shot - in just three minutes. He blew the whistle when he publicly stated Russia had a new artillery doctrine to which NATO had no counter. (that's when I began idly researching it)
Many (perhaps most?) US armored field grade officers (broadly O3-O6, Captain through Colonel, anyone above that is a general and therefore a politician) understand this perfectly well. See for example CPT Nicolas Fiore's 2017 appreciation at https://www.benning.army.mil/armor/eARMOR/content/issues/2017/Spring/2Fiore17.pdf): he argues that a US armored *brigade* combat team might be able to defeat a Russian *battalion* tactical group if the ABCT is careful - despite outnumbering the BTG only five- or ten-fold in most personnel and equipment categories. The trouble is the USA has only a handful of ABCTs, whereas as of 2022 Russia had ~200 BTGs, a quarter of which went into Ukraine.
In undeniable response, the British Army stood up 1st Deep Reconnaissance Strike Brigade Combat Team in July 2022, comprised of 2 cav, 2 light cav, and ten assorted arty regiments - an obviously non-combat experimental unit designed to reverse-engineer Soviet doctrines, as US armored officers have noted somewhat enviously. Unfortunately the UK subsequently has been rumored to have given away all its SPGs to Ukraine, which if true would cripple 1DRSBCT's efforts as it will be left only with towed arty plus missile units. The Russian BTGs don't even use towed arty...
Very interesting comment and links!
So you mean US has nothing to fight with besides Air force bombing low grade guerillas or speedboats?
Then we are nearer a nuclear exchange than we reaalize.
Essentially I think you're right. But then again, that's been true since Eisenhower's very deliberate policy against maintaining a conventional army capable of fighting Russia, on the basis that the USA was neither willing nor financially able to sustain that. (which also is why Eisenhower always tried to *reduce* rather than *expand* NATO - less to defend - so that when Stalin offered withdrawal from and neutrality for Austria at the price of continued denazification, Eisenhower practically bit his arm off) . Circumstances have changed, but the overall policy has remained the same ever since. Which means that the last resort and the first resort is always going to be the same. For a wonderful satirical take on this, I've always loved s1-ep1 of the BBC's "Yes, Prime Minister" - https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03bx1vh/yes-prime-minister-series-1-1-the-grand-design (episode 6 "A Victory for Democracy" is also a wonderful take on the UK version of the US deep state)
In fairness, I expect the NATO air forces could hold their own and maybe even defeat Russia's if they came out to play in a full air superiority battle. Which IMV is precisely why the Russians are unlikely to continue playing that game should they start losing in the air! Hence the battalion tactical group's *organic* air defense battery/company. Thus, given that since Dien Bien Phu Russia traditionally has had the best AD in the world, and the BTG is designed to fight and win in the face of enemy air, air supremacy might not do NATO much good even if well-supplied with munitions.
A note on your last sentence: Russia's expected ground nuclear warfighting doctrine may be found within the 2024 update of US Army TRADOC ATP 7-100.1, see https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/ATP%206-0_5%20(final).pdf. From the nuclear war section, it's clear that Russia trains to target units as small as platoons in nuclear strikes. From that it follows inferentially that nuclear launch authorization likely is delegated as low as O4/O5 (i.e. MAJ/LTC). This shows that things haven't improved since the late Daniel Ellsberg's final book "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner", in which he discloses not only that in 1963 *both* sides lost control over their armed forces; but also that nuclear launch authorization was delegated as low as individual USAF pilots and Russian submarine XOs. The evidence for the former was Ellsberg's own official debriefs of USAF pilots. For the latter, see the only public statement ever made by Vasily Arkhipov: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/29078-document-1-vice-admiral-vasili-arkhipov [noting that he leaves out his own role as "the man who saved the world" in which he persuaded both the captain and political officer to surface, rather than to launch a nuclear torpedo as they were entitled to do and had decided to do]. That's how close we came then; I'm unsure how much better off we are now.
All of which suggests Vladimir Putin is playing it both smart and cool by trying not to let an "official" war break out.
Mind that the BTG in Russia was a makeshift solution to make the army fit into the budget. Serdyukov had practically dismantled traditional Red Army structures, and Shoigu rebuilt to some extent, both under the conditions and restrictions of drastic reduction of defense spendings.
A BTG is in some way a brigade skeleton, with armour, artillery, AD, even some tactical air force (helicopters and SU-25). One of the main problems at the start of the SMO was lack of infantry due to this structure. While it is neither possible nor advisable to shrink or divide an ABCT into one or some BTG, it is well possible to turn BTGs into brigades.
(This is not to contradict you, just to mention)
Thanks for the info, I wan't aware of the Serdyukov/Shoigu material - very interesting. I understand the basic unreinforced BTG has just 200 infantry, which means it's way too fragile to fight in any kind of urban or other infantry / static battle. So it can take ground in a war of maneuver, just not hold it - a bit like traditional shock cavalry?
I confess I haven't yet read Douglas Macgregor's "Breaking the Phalanx", but my understanding of it is that in 1995 he independently came up with with a broadly similar solution for the USA: that of highly mobile combined arms units that are far smaller than the traditional combined arms structures (brigades). Perhaps the difference from Russia is that the US Army was still "fat and happy" after the Gulf War, whereas an army under drastic constraints is more open to pursuing change that already had been launched - a "makeshift solution" that conveniently fit into Grau's 1990 summary of BTGs and recon-fire / recon-strike doctrines?
I concur with your evocative characterization of the BTG as equivalent to a brigade skeleton: it'll be interesting to see if anyone tries to turn them back into brigades; or whether they're found to be more valuable as they are. I guess time will tell!
If money does get spent, it will disappear down a hole. Just like all those billions we sent to the Ukraine.
With respect John, something the West, particularly the US/UK can afford and is well within their professional capabilities is an endless campaign of cowardly terrorist attacks. A slow grind against Russia's urban populace. The soulless belligerents have no shortage of patsies to undertake these Devilish deeds. This will incur an abrasive friction on Russia's public as internal security has to increase incurring things like queues, bag & body searches etc. A well remembered quote the IRA used to make to the Westminster government was "we only need to get lucky once, you need to be lucky every time". Then Bishopsgate in the City of London went boom as did Manchester city centre on a Saturday morning. The rest is history.
Simon. You don't need to "with respect" me mate. 😀 . I don't make any claims for authority. I just offer layman's opinions. And I am happy to change my mind if I'm proven wrong.
You make a good point. That's exactly the kind of stupid pointless nonsense that our "intelligence services" love.
It's not going to bring down the Russian state though, in my opinion. And it's very much a game that two can play.
Putin can handle it
Ireland was enslaved to the British government, whom has Russia enslaved in order to fire up such passions?
God Bless Us All
Well, it is enslaved by the EU-rinal now.
No I asked whom has Russia enslaved. Not who the EU has tried to enslave. Russia stands sovereign. Because the Irish were dedicated to their freedom so does most of Ireland now stand free of the UK but as you say, it is enslaved to the EU. When Ireland awakens the IRA will arise again but at least they don't have to fight the UK since it will be busy fighting its own Big Brother. The Labor or Socialist Party of the new Republic of Britain. Pray that Reform manages a victory and returns Britain to its culture and traditions, away from the militantly atheist Socialists.
God Bless Us All
Britain has to live down a thousand years of its slavish serf "culture" in order to stand like responsible people on their own two legs
as long as the royal family inhabits fuckingham palace, the brits are screwed, and they DESERVE it
my advice: stay away from crowds and shopping malls
They will certainly try this kind of thing, but the Russians will respond in kind.
Thank you, there are so many Americans still living under illusions of grander. Nothing is going to change .The ruling class is set, the business model for Defense industry, therefore NATO. Everything being tossed around is just money laundering.
No Western country is structurally able to fight an industrial war of attrition like the one going on in the Ukraine. They won’t be for at least the next twenty years. Beyond that prognoses become meaningless.
The money allocated by the EU will be spent on hugely expensive and profitable boutique weapons of questionable military use like the F35. Russia is outproducing the combined West on missiles and grenades, and as for drones, the West is in the stone age.
The west already is fighting that war.
And losing.
>We aren't going to re-arm. We can't afford it.
Delusional.
Could North Korea afford it? Well, it armed itself massively, so clearly it could.
But what was North Korea's starting position versus that of e.g. Germany in terms of wealth and industrial potential?
You don't need all that much in terms of physical resources to re-arm compared to the size of the civilian economy. It is all a question of how much you are willing to squeeze the general population.
Meh, you want Berlin to look like Pyongyang?
Will the Germans stamp out millions of personal arms or hundreds of Taurus?
Wishes were ponies beggars would ride
NB: typo? "if" (above) got lost: If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
If the Germans were as willing to accept hardship as the North Koreans, if the Germans felt as under threat as the North Koreans, then you might have to a point.
They don't, so you don't.
Western Europeans don't really believe in the threat from Russia, except in a really abstract way that doesn't require us to actually do anything.
And being called "delusional" by someone who thinks there have been repeated nuclear attacks on Russia, is the pot calling the fucking kettle mate!
What a way to miss the point.
Which was that Germany can rearm to a point where it becomes an enormous problem for Russia by moving only a little in the direction of North Korea, not anywhere close to going all the way.
Using what energy? What trained manpower? What industrial capacity?
THERE IT IS
bravo
Germany can't
it is imploding as we speak
the industrial guys are predicting a 5% drop in production for the coming year.
sorry John, but I live in western europe, and the people around me CLAIM to actually believe that russia is a military threat to europe
these people are dumber than rocks and heavily brainwashed...they get their info from the mainstream
those who have actually thrown out their TVs are better off, but so many people around me are inordinately PROUD of their TVs... the bigger, the prouder.
Me too mate. Basically a war that happens miles away and is fought by the poor or professional soldiers that we can watch on the news, we are cool with.
One that involves mass conscription and oreshniks in your capital every night, not so much.
They say it without thinking about it. They also believe, at the same time that "threatening" Russia is very corrupt, backward and inefficient. Russophrenia, Schrodinger's Russia. It not important enough to think about it properly, because it's all bollocks.
Germany has a real problem. Their electrical supply now depends on French nuclear reactors since they've shut down their own. Will the West Germans and their maniacal devotion to carbon-free power bend enough to do what must be done? The new modular nuclear reactors offer a solution to Germany's dilemma which is not enough land or sun to power an industrial renaissance in the military field. Nuclear power is evil right? At least the environmental fanatics say it is so. Fanaticism is one of the German people's characteristics if you convince them they are correct. How long will it take to re-socialize them into believing electrical power must be generated, no matter how?
Germany is divided again but not by outside powers. The West German rulers have convinced themselves that the AfD is evil and must be wiped out, even though it represents the majority of East Germany, the heartland of Germany's military traditions: Prussia. West Germany has even resorted to assassination as the suspicious deaths of so many AfD candidates has proven. This will put much resolution into the hearts of the Prussians and win even more supporters for the AfD.
Divided Germany is not the country of Nazism anymore, that is Ukraine. Ukraine is the reflowering of Hitler's dream. It is not the Fourth Reich, it is the Third reborn from the seed left there by the Banderites. Let Western Europe beware as the Ukrainian Armies are pushed back ever farther, let them beware the most powerful Army in Western Europe: The Ukrainian Army.
The Fourth Reich was born in 1865 when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated but the term national socialist had not yet been invented. Nevertheless the Washington Empire is the Fourth Reich as I have revealed for quite a few years now. As a youth fresh out of the Army I knew the USA was a totalitarian dictatorship since the Presidency is simply a permanent dictatorship as Old Rome would have know it. It has seemingly endless laws, the hallmark of a successful politician in the USA is how many laws they author or support. Each law is like a whip on the backs of the people, more taxes, new wars, work, work, work. Isn't freedom great?
If the laws of this dictatorship were all printed out and stacked into a pyramid it would probably exceed the size of the great pyramid in Giza. Atop it on the back of the one dollar bill is the Great Eye. That eye was supposed to be the Eye of God but the leftist majority of the Democratic Party's government is committed to militant atheism now. Whose eye is atop that pyramid now? Sauron? Does Germany truly believe it can escape the occupation by the Washington Empire so easily simply by pledging to remilitarize? Not likely. Where is the natural gas German needs coming from and how much does it cost?
God Bless Us All
It gets better... the french electrical system was making bank off FREE Uranium from Niger... now that has dried up and they actually have to pay for it...
France is looking at contracts that will be breaking even, probably, at best
or losing money.
Legal contracts with other countries, that will all now be lacking energy even worse
Europe can't afford to squeeze the population much, as the existence of the EU depends on a large welfare state to survive and provide a form of legitimacy. Cut that out, rearm and you look no different from the Americans or the Russians. And plus all the Syrians and Somalians in the EU would revolt
y'all are all overlooking a key factor...
our western weapons are out of date, essentially obsolete
The russians, a formidable "peer" opponent, have been fighting on the bleeding edge of MODERN WAR = they know what the fuck is going on... we are WAY BEHIND
I think Putin is WISHING NATO would put boots on the ground so he can drop missiles on their heads and end this damn thing.
If Putin wished for that, he would not be engaging in escalation management and acted like a coward, careful not to escalate when his red lines where crossed.
you are comparing N. Korea with the West
that was a crap comparison
you have GOT to be joking
the plans are already being made for "rearmament"
it doesn't matter if the weapons are any good or have any practical value
what matters is SALE OF STOCK
caveat emptor
We've been hearing that one for years now, yet the arms keep flowing.
And the Ukrainians keep retreating.
At this rate, Russia will be in Kiev no later than 2337.
There you go again!
Slowly at first
then all at once
you know nothing about warfare
You are arguing by cliche.
Some things never change.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d6/0a/b8/d60ab83bf1508d1b34b04d3783c3bd29.jpg
If you insist on this analogy, it breaks down because nazi germany could not run screaming to NATO to step in.
Russia has no intention of taking Kiev. The goal is to liberate the four eastern oblasts while bleeding the Ukrainian military and establishing buffer zones where necessary. Odesa remains a wild card.
Even taking that as given, Russia is not any closer to Odessa.
Maybe. All I see in the West is re-armament in real life. Printing fiat money is easy..
Can you give some examples Mikey? Who is building the tens of millions of 155mm shells we'd need?
What is your point? That the questions asked is not worthy to discuss?
Is there no danger for an even more desteuctive War coming around the corner? Should we all keep quite and wait for the last breath of Europe?
Re-armament is not fiction - it is happening.
That is precisely my point.
It's being talked about, it's being threatened, but it's not happening and it's not even being seriously planned.
I'll ask you again. Who is building or even planning to build the tens of millions of 155mm shells we would need in a serious war?
No one is.
North Korea ;).
Your assumption of what you need in a War (key is 10 million artillery shells) is somewhat based…
You are right in that Western Europe will have problem putting out millions of shells.
Those building are these: (havent gone through former Eastern Europe)
GermanyUnterlüß, Lower Saxony: Rheinmetall's main ammunition plant, Europe's largest for 155mm artillery shells, opened in 2025 with a €500 million investment. It focuses on full production of 155mm rounds to meet NATO and European demands.
FranceLa Chapelle-Saint-Ursin: KNDS France (formerly Nexter) plant where production of 155mm shells has doubled, aiming for 100,000 units annually by late 2025. This site handles complete round assembly.
Bourges: KNDS facility producing cannon barrels for 155mm systems like the Caesar howitzer, supporting overall ammunition output (though focused more on components than full shells).
SpainMultiple sites operated by Rheinmetall Expal Munitions: Including Trubia, Burgos, Navalmoral, El Gordo, Albacete, and Murcia. These facilities produce various artillery munitions, including 155mm shells (e.g., extended-range variants), with integrated production lines across the network.
SwedenKarlskoga: Nammo's key facility for 155mm shell production, including steel bodies and components. It has received EU and Swedish funding to triple output under the ASAP initiative.
NorwayRaufoss: Nammo's primary site for large-caliber ammunition, including explosive fillings and assembly for 155mm shells. It operates 24/7 and contributes to European supply chains.
DenmarkElling (northern Denmark): Nammo is restarting a former military ammunition plant for 155mm and other calibers, with production expected to ramp up for Danish and allied forces.
United KingdomGlascoed, Wales: BAE Systems' munitions facility, involved in filling and assembly of artillery ammunition, including 155mm shells as part of UK production increases (with investments exceeding £200 million since 2022).
Washington, Tyne and Wear: BAE Systems site for forging and components, supporting 155mm ammunition production.
The Europeans aim it to draw the US into war with Russia. Failing that they are toast. History gives us good examples. The US gained dominance by waiting out the belligerents, this time it looks like the Chinese waiting it out.
Indeed.
"Let's get Mikey, he'll eat it. He eats EVERYTHING"
Mikey - you are living in fantasyland
Based on what?
I think you avoid to discus my questions.
Your answer is short: nothing to bother at, no worry, continue sleep-walking inot WW3?
No war in 2030! This is it, neither side can back down. The West is hopelessly broke; for Russia, it is a matter of survival. "Alea Jacta Est." The die has been cast.
We have been going over this strategic calculus every week here.
Russia can nuke all the non-nuclear countries in NATO, except perhaps Canada (because missiles would be flying towards the US when doing it; but it would also not be in Russia's own interest to do it, then the territory will be directly annexed by the US without even having to deal with the PR unpleasantries of doing it if it was populated), and there would be no reply to that. Even the UK can be cleanly taken out without too much effort, because it only has SSBNs, they are decrepit with very low readiness rates, and solving that problem permanently amounts to sinking one sub on patrol and nuking the base of the others while they are in repairs.
There will be no reply to that either, because nobody will sacrifice the US mainland for any country in Europe, much less when that country no longer exists.
NATO is in effect a suicide pact for all the non-nuclear members -- your country becomes a target, worse than that, it becomes a target that has to be eliminated entirely, not just hit in key locations (so that you don't whine to high heaven about retaliation after that), in exchange your elites get a membership in The Club (or so they think) and various opportunities for graft that would not exist otherwise. Good deal for the elites as long as there is no war, neutral at best, usually a serious net negative for the general population even without war.
The question is why Putin has not called that bluff yet and has chosen to sacrifice so many of his own people and Russia's deterrence in the process.
And I see almost no possible justifiable reasons for that, it all goes in very dark Gorbachev-Yakovlev directions when you sit down to analyze it.
"And I see almost no possible justifiable reasons for that..."
Maybe Putin is just a kind-hearted person? Maybe he realizes that if he nukes Europe, he would not only kill the evil warmongers there, but a lot of decent, peaceful people as well? And maybe that is something he is not prepared to do?
>would not only kill the evil warmongers there, but a lot of decent, peaceful people as well
Of course you don't straight up nuke them, you give them an ultimatum. Putin, from behind **that desk**, comes out and says something like:
1) We demand that Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania shut their borders with Ukraine and allow Russian military observers to police the border. Those countries have 48 hours to agree to it.
2) If within 48 hours they agree to it, they then have another five days to implement it, we have our people ready to move in.
3) If within 48 hours they refuse to do it, we give the populations of those countries another 72 hours to overthrow their governments and implement what is demanded.
4) If that does not happen, we proceed with strategic strikes that will wipe those countries out completely, after which we move in and occupy the land, forever.
5) And, of course, if there is any movement of strategic strike assets by the US, UK and France, or any cruise missiles fly our way from their direction, there will be a launch-on-warning strategic strike on the US mainland.
If those current comprador governments are not overthrown by their populations after they refuse the initial ultimatum, well, the "decent, peaceful people" were given a chance and there is to be no remorse about what follows.
>maybe that is something he is not prepared to do?
What is Putin's job? To protect the Poles and Romanians or his own people?
How many non-Russian lives is a Russian life worth to Putin? So far it seems like he values non-Russian lives infinitely more than Russian lives, doesn't it?
Simple example:
1) Czech MLRS did the terror bombing with cluster munitions of Belgorod's center on December 30th 2023. Dozens dead and a triple digit wounded, many of them children.
2) There were no strikes on the Czech Republic as punishment for it
3) Worse, the Czech foreign minister laughed in the Russians face at the UNSC when confronted about it. Still no strikes on the Czech
4) Naturally, more bombings followed, including a particularly gruesome case where a mother pushing a stroller with her baby in it was hit and both died.
Now would that mother and baby have died if Putin did bomb the Czech and they got the message and pulled their MLRS systems from Ukraine? Or if there were no Czech at all to send them in the first place? Because they should have been wiped out long before that given what they had already done, as well as for being the ungrateful bastards that they are (they would not exist today if it wasn't for Russia saving them from the Germans).
If you are the husband of that woman who lost his wife and little kid, how would you feel about Putin being so "humane"? And what would you prefer? All Czechs dead but your family is well and alive or the reverse?
I must admit: you have a point.
Well, my conclusion is that I'm glad that I'm not in Putin's shoes, the man who has to take all those tough decisions you are referring to.
I agree. How does he sleep at night, or even WHEN does he sleep?
I think he sleeps better than you.
he knows he is not going to press the button
he knows that if the other idiot presses the button, it's all over for everybody
we all gotta go sometime, but it won't be pootie who presses the button
Totally over the top my friend. Russia can control those borders themselves with their troops and they don't need to commit that many. The US Border Patrol is relatively small for the large southern border which has been principally closed off with modern surveillance techniques and mobile forces.
God Bless Us All
All this article proves is you were right, GM. I think we can link this article any time anyone says anything abt Putler not attacking those supplying Ukraine
your "thinking" is so lame I can't even get past the first couple lines
there is this fascination about "Nukleer" war among you halfwits
You can't win a nukleer war when your cities are burned to the ground
the rule is "tit for tat"
nuke a city, lose one of your own in the next round
RAND gamed it all out 60 years ago.
nobody wins when the nukes start flying
it is terrible to have to explain this shit to brainwashed idiots, but I guess it has to be done
you need to read up on MAD and I am not talking that magazine you whack off to
I can't believe people are still talking this nuke nonsense
how old are you, child?
The critical mass for that decision by Russia is a few years away. But, yes, Russia would have to take out the key issues before it came to a boil on Russia's borders.
The current group of European Talking Heads are bankrupting their nations - not likely their citizens want to become fertilizer, and the Diversity in Europe is probably not a strength.
Nice post, thanks for taking the time to pose those questions.
The best way to attack NATO is economic and societal. Strike back at energy targets like gas fields, LNG transport ships and hit the large underground storage caverns with an Oreshnic. The social could start as easily as informing local militant dissidents where the conex box full of weapons is located. All the way up to regime change operations as shown by Vicky Neuland.
The pressure points are obvious. The failing economy, outsiders treated better than heritage citizens, the anarcho-terrorism of letting migrants rape local women but putting the victim in jail for resisting . . .
Best case scenario for Russia is to take Europe down quick enough that the bank and bond entanglements drag American under with Europe.
never interrupt your enemy when he is busy destroying himself
Excellent summary, Mikey.
One point I'd like to raise is, why aren't the other BRICS members speaking out in support of Russia about US-led NATO's aggressions, like Nordstream, freezing Russian assets, disregard for treaties, etc? My point is, why should Russia even be concerned about being the aggressor when it's so clear that it isn't? Why are friendly nations to Russia not openly backing it up? How can any sane leader consider Russia the aggressor? It shouldn't even be an issue. And yet it's preventing Russia from retaliating as it should. https://youtu.be/3AoXL_xQRXI?t=384
"excellent summary, mikey"
ah.... denis has got his own substack and wants you to subscribe....
thanks, denis; not today
Whatever, Mr bot. lol
That question is hanging in the tree for everyone interested…
Beats me. And myc conclusion is that BRICS is as tight as an ”agreement with arabs”.
It depends. Everyway out. No commitments.
BRICS is a cooperative association more than anything. Countries don't have to abide by a charter. They aren't the rules based international opposition. They work in consensus and develop outcomes that are beneficial for their members. I wouldn't expect them to rally around cries of war, war, war.
I wasnt expecting them crying out War. They wisely dont.
But they could have supported Russia in the moral issues over the precurwors to the War and the escalation.
Precursor was the outlawing of Russia in Ukraine and the persecution of Russian speaking people. The unnessecary expansion of NATO. The escalation was for example the Bucha hoax.
But I guess all rulers in the workd play foul - so nothing to complain about. Kill or be killed is the new Orange.
I think the answer to all your questions is the same. The NATO-Russia conflict isn't the main game. Russia isn't committing to the conflict 100%. They are juggling a lot and thus far are doing pretty well. The battle for the new global order goes on. I think it was the last Simplicius post I mentioned that we are in totally uncharted territory. There has never been a change in the global order where nuclear weapons were part of the mix.
The "Kursk bridge" ...
exactly... see my post below..
wtf???
Kagan, sufficiently an expert on this matter to be married to the person most responsible for starting the war, wrote this, then it went through multiple editors at such a highly reputable outlet such as The Atlantic, and it was published as is...
WTF indeed...
I am reluctant to criticise Kagan for fear of the label he would apply to any criticism that might would his amour propre. It is clear we are in the midst of a Death Cult which is hell-bent on Death and Destruction in several geographic zones all of which require USA to self-immolate.
Quite remarkable how far along this road Western nations have travelled. Perhaps the Miracle of the Gaderene Swine will be repeated ?
I was going to comment more on PNAC, but share your sentiments.
Otherwise, the late Zbigniew Brzeziński, whose 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard, called for "A New Pearl Harbor" to happen to mobilise the US population for the forever wars to take over the world is worth noting. 'Zbig' also told a Canadian audience before he died that it would soon be easier to kill a million people than control a million people.
If you aren't beeing called anti-semite, you are not trying to save what is left of the West 😉
Palestinians are the real Semites anyway, not that anyone cares 🤬🤬😅
And if you weren't called a Domestic Violent Extremist before that for refusing Clot Shots, and missed out on being called Dangerous Domestic Extremist for refusing lockdowns and . . .
Welcome aboard. Buckle up, it gets humpy from here!
Bullseye 🎯🎯🎯
"Those who saw it told them how it befell him who had been possessed with the demons and also concerning the swine. 17 Then they began to plead with Him to depart out of their region."
If you lost them their swine, you better not let the sun set on you in Gadara, stranger.
Man said, "give you job, for to feed my swine."
~ Reverend Robert Wilkins, a 72-year-old former blues singer turned minister
The proxy war against Russia is the culmination of a century long campaign to destroy an Orthodox Christian superpower. The Biden administration was filled to the brim with the usual tribesmen. If the war against Russia is to be stopped once and for all, isolating and removing the interlopers is an inescapable necessity.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.timesofisrael.com/all-the-jews-biden-has-tapped-for-top-roles-in-his-new-administration/amp/
I like to think of the latter as radical surgery to destroy a life threatening malignancy.
It's not about Protestants attacking Russian Orthodox, no one cares about that. They also attack Protestants, Catholics, Shia Iran, very secular Sunnis like Hussein's Iraq, secular Syria, fundamentalist Sunnis like Afghanistan. This is all about Russia helping the pro-Palestinian Iran and Syria, and all of these three have different religious outlooks.
“Protestants attacking Orthodox Christians” are you seriously that dense. It’s cucked Evangelicals doing the bidding of their tiny-hat-wearing masters.
So what? It works.
Not sure a genocidal fat bastard married to another genocidal fat bastard ranting in a rant rag about the usual crap they rant about requires any detailed analysis really.
The only thing either of them ever read was a menu. That and neocon tea leaves.
Correction: genocidal zionist fast bastard although genocidal & zionist are interchangeable.
Please forgive my oversight
Zionism was a centuries long movement which died when it won. Now there is just the Israeli, the Jewish State. Embattled and standing strong, just like Russia.
God Bless Us All
Standing strong? 🤣 Guess you haven't noticed the IDF suicide rates, the precipitous decline in tourism revenues, the brain drain fleeing the "nation" and the global shunning of an apartheid, genocidal entity whose leaders are charged with war crimes. Iran won't keep the gloves on next time.
Yes, I did notice those things. Similar to much of what Russia is bearing. As for Iran it should remember it has threatened and attacked a nuclear state with another larger one at its back. Iran will be destroyed totally, or at least its Jihadi government unless it makes peace with its neighbors instead of telling them how they will destroy and kill all those they don't like due to reasons of religious bigotry.
God Bless Us All
You think Russian population and economic figures are comparable to "israel", huh. Where did you go to school?
2nd, it was "israel" that threatened Iran, assassinated it's dignitaries in a sovereign nation, and then attacked Iran directly, not the other way around. Do you get your "news" from comic books?
Finally, as regards religious bigotry...do you know what a "goyim" is?
Are you sure you're reading all of my comments? It seems you are trying to add your own words into my mouth. I spoke of their situation and how the world is treating them. I was speaking to people like yourself who don't seem to understand that both nations face hostile enemies with bravery and determination. This is laudable and praiseworthy to my mind.
Have you forgotten that Hamas got their weaponry from somewhere? Have you forgotten that Iran conquered Lebanon and placed a minority dictatorship called Hezbollah in charge, a Shi dictatorship in what was once a Christian majority nation before the Jihadists of Iran struck?
Hezbollah attacked Israel's forces protecting the Christians in Southern Lebanon many times. Our marines, there as a hoped for peacekeeping force, were attacked in garrison in Beirut. Also don't forget that Iran dangled our Tehran embassy in front of us for over a year and laughed when Carter attempted a minimal intrusion to rescue them and failed. All while the Jihadi of Iran were screaming "Death to the Great Satan." Carter was the finest Christian and holy man ever to sit in the oval office in my opinion. He gave up rather than risk the lives our our embassy personnel any further. That's why I didn't vote for him a second time. Weakness is the greatest of sins in the oval office.
I would have sent a half-million troops, and like a Sioux warrior I would then count our people dead and taken vengeance, bloody and foul. I would have destroyed every member of the coup I could find, destroyed all opposition and if they begged us to take back our embassy personnel if we failed to find them I would have left. There would not be a jeep or Revolutionary Guard in the open holding a weapon as I was leaving town. The next offense would have resulted in a nuke in downtown Tehran. But then that's the kind of goy I am. The fool Ayatollah was lucky Carter was in the oval office. Allah must have been watching out for the innocent Iranians amongst the guilty. Allahu Akbar.
All this I would have done while actually sympathizing with Iran for what the US did to them in the fifties. Did you know we overthrew a functioning republic because it wanted to be friends with the Soviet? Opps! Aren't we Americans just the most awful people in the world? I sort of thought we were making it up to them by installing a secular but Shia-majority founded government in Baghdad. Apparently Iran didn't accept the apology even after we helped Iraq fend off the Sunni Baathists who reconstituted as ISIS.
I know one thing for certain if Iran develops its nuclear capability, Washington and Tel Aviv will disappear in nuclear fire. I wonder what would happen then. Do you suppose Israel and the United States would get on their knees and surrender to the mighty Iranians who smuggled in their nukes? Not if strength resides in our White House or the Knesset.
Half the Sunnis of the Middle East hate Iran and the other half fears them. This stack is loaded with racism against the Jews just like Europe is loaded with racism against the Slavs and Rus. I like to provoke bigots it's nice for a morning's entertainment. Selah and do svidaniya.
God Bless Us All
You rushed to make peace with Iran, if the bombings continued, Israel would look like the Gaza Strip.
Newsflash...Iran is a huge and mountainous nation, of some 80 Million people, well able to withstand a nuclear attack..tiny "israel" can be wiped off the map for centuries with a handful of Iranian hypersonic missiles armed with "dirty bomb" warheads.
WTF does it all have to be about NUKES, ALL THE TIME?
the military knows better; nukes are the end stage of a world disaster
that's why everybody still makes convetional weapons.... FOOL
god it's like talking to the wall.... Simplicius doesn't deserve a bunch of morons posting that crap on his site
Ugh. A supporter of genocide. Just what we need.
You seem terminally confused.
Zionism is, as anyone with even rudimentary awareness knows , is stronger today than it has ever been.
There is no parallel between Russia and the Zionists apart from the fact they are at war. The causes and the way the wars are fought have nothing in common. Indeed the Zionist war is a genocide, to call it a war is to whitewash it.
" Burning Stump bless us all "
Keep your Burning Stump to yourself, Alien.
100%!!!
beautifully said... as swine, those two are second to none
I love the smell of bacon in the morning... 😉
Brilliant👏👏👏👏👏👏
>The only thing either of them ever read was a menu. That and neocon tea leaves.
Yeah, they are so incompetent that they maneuvered Putin into the quagmire of a war that has lasted four years with no end in sight, which has resulted in >120,000 Russian soldiers dead, at least that many maimed, and in Russia having become a giant Syria, i.e. a place anyone can bomb whenever and wherever they feel like it.
Which state of affairs also has Putin mortally afraid to send even a single missile in the direction of those responsible.
That sure looks like the work of incompetent idiots to me. Sure...
I figured you were related, that confirms , it whats on the menu fat boy.
Ah yes an old favourite- neo con tripe, washed down with a gallon of pigswill
Don't you know, Russia is smart and the west is dumb. Russia is winning and NATO is losing. No one on earth has a counter to Russia's slow attritional grind forward. Russia can fight for 100 years, they are not worried and Putin will live forever. Ukraine will collapse any day now and when Russia fills the vacuum it will be a lasting peace with happy people all around.
>Putin will live forever
Putin croaking is the best thing that could happen to Russia now. Although there is no guarantee things will change if it happens -- there are deep systemtic factors at play here. But they sure won't as long as he is there.
another "SOF" wannabe sounds off
I know what websites you are looking at when you lock yourself in the bathroom, and ufortunately for you it's not even porn......
Putin is a moderate. If something befalls him, the Ukropiggys and the Zionist toe-lickers in the West better be ready.
Ukro prop
Looks to me like Russia’s redigesting Ukraine that the world started understanding again the Jew is the epicenter of death and the (((oligarchs))) keep falling out of Windows at a rate that Russia will be
shed of them completely in the not too distant future
Putin is old, death is not a problem for him, especially since he is a great lover of Russia.
"Yeah, they are so incompetent that they maneuvered Putin into the quagmire of a war that has lasted four years with no end in sight, which has resulted in >120,000 Russian soldiers dead, at least that many maimed, and in Russia having become a giant Syria, i.e. a place anyone can bomb whenever and wherever they feel like it."
"maneuvered Putin" by expanding up to his borders over a 30 year period and then putting an 800,000 man army ON HIS BORDER
while he warned them repeatedly
you really should post a picture of yourself, I am curious to see what a true moron looks like
In 2022, at the start of the war in Ukraine, the American economist Neil Ferguson was a textbook Russophobe. But as a professor at Stanford University and a member of the Hoover Institution, he needs to update his rhetoric periodically to avoid looking foolish. Admitting mistakes is a sign of wisdom.
Recently, he was invited to give a lecture at the foundation of Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk in Washington, titled: “Is Russia winning or collapsing?” He didn't say anything we hadn't already heard since 2022, but the interesting thing isn't what he said, but who said it. Some intellectuals are starting to publicly and openly acknowledge their mistakes.
Russia is slowly moving towards victory, he said. Its economy has become a model worthy of the highest academic praise. The war has boosted the Russian economy “to the point of becoming a classic example.” Its arms industry is operating at full capacity, at a level that Europe currently has no way of matching.
More than useless, the sanctions have proven counterproductive. In early 2022, the West expected Russia to collapse economically under the weight of the sanctions, but these hopes have faded. At the beginning of the war, “we believed that economic sanctions would put the Russian economy on its knees.”
The Wall Street Journal predicted “an earthquake of eight on the Richter scale.” But it didn't work. Their estimates turned out to be completely wrong. Today, the United States is no longer helping Ukraine at all. It seems to me that the participants in this conference haven't grasped this reality, because financial aid is nonexistent; it has stopped, and everything that comes from the United States today has to be financed.”
In a booming economy, the defense industry has grown at a dizzying pace and has seized control of most of the market. Its productivity and power are an unattainable example for European industry, Ferguson said. “Russia’s defense spending has almost doubled, reaching 7 percent of GDP. The budget deficit is at 2.4 percent of GDP, the sovereign debt-to-GDP ratio is at 14 percent, and government revenue from oil and gas has increased by a third. Inflation is at 8.7 percent, but real wages have risen by 22 percent since the start of the war, and unemployment is virtually zero. Incomes have increased by 48 percent, retail sales by 38 percent, and consumer goods sales have also risen. In other words, the sanctions regime has not worked,” explains the British expert.
Very interesting, if a welded on western supremacist fanboy like Ferguson is acknowledging reality, others will follow , which will make it very hard for euro “leaders” to maintain the charade.
It is as much about the collapse of the narrative as the collapse of the front line in political terms, I think.
The "economy" matters very little here. And it never really mattered on its own beyond its relevance to military power.
Which is all that really matters.
And given the a lot to zero exchange ratio in this war between the West and Russia, Russia is doomed, no matter how good "the economy" is doing.
Which, BTW, it is not even true. Because Russia has Nabiulina and Silunaov in charge of the economy, and they are crushing it with 20% interest rates, despite the widespread dissatisfaction with that policiy. Why are they doing it?
Well, it would be good to spend some time pondering that question. Who are Nabiulina and Silunaov and what kind of interests do they represent. And why is Putin sticking with them.
Then go back and read some of my comments on that general issue.
The economy doesnt matter😄 Russia is doom... 🤩. Ukro prop.
Has it ever occurred to anyone that maybe the Kagans were working for the Russians from the start?
Victoria Nuland actually worked on a Russian trawler in the Arctic in the 1980s. She was not yet married at the time and was sent to spy by the CIA. Rumor has it that after some of the crew members drank too much vodka, they raped her, hence her hatred of the Russians.
Victoria also worked (as a 22 YO exchange student after graduating from college) at a Young Pioneers Summer camp near Odessa.
She was disrespectful towards and laughed at the Ukrainian children under her charge and another (Russian, female, same age) camp counselor got mad (and had a fist fight with her), beating Vicky down. The other counselor was sent home in disgrace, I don't know where Vicky went after the cat fight.
Her grandparents were Trotskyites....
Nobody can drink THAT much vodka!
He may be a fat bastard, but she is merely a bit zaftig, and nonetheless sort of yummy. Stand her next to Samantha Power and they make a perfect ten! I don't blame Kagan for lusting after her.
@michael
"About taste, never ask"?
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/former-us-diplomat-nuland-joins-law-firm-covington-2024-12-02/
https://imgur.com/a/ir7ZBnT
Oh, youre very wrong, "Hussein". Humanity must know and intimately understand it's Zionazi enemy. This fat fuck is a near perfect specimen! The article should have been twice as long!
Oh I see you are one of the all knowing conspiracy kooks which proliferate on Substack “”””Achookobarbus”””.
So, I take Zionazis seriously and you deduce that I am "an all knowing kook"?
I see your game "Hussein". Fuck yourself, crypto Zio.
That's a slur. He's extremely intelligent and no doubt read more than you and I combined.
Evil, though. Done a lot to destroy the U.S., and maybe the world with it.
You have no idea what he reads and what I read and how much.
In any event how much a person reads is not a measure of a man, rather it is his words and actions.
Based on these he is as I described him.
A slur is slur only if it is untrue
But you were the one talking about what he reads. You have no idea what or how much he reads, and accuse him of being unread. That's a slur. A gratuitous one, which weakens your argument.
I do agree he's an evil warmonger. Unlike what he reads, THAT is something we know about. All you have to do is read his books and articles - it's all laid out there.
Satire is not the same as an intellectual argument , which you clearly do not understand. In many instances it is far more effective.
Wrangling with pigs about the quality of oranges is nor something I spend much time on.
BRAVO, but somebody actually did analyze it, with the emphasis on the first two syllables.
Hear ya, two despicable "Parasites"
In 2022, at the start of the war in Ukraine, the American economist Neil Ferguson was a textbook Russophobe. But as a professor at Stanford University and a member of the Hoover Institution, he needs to update his rhetoric periodically to avoid looking foolish. Admitting mistakes is a sign of wisdom.
Recently, he was invited to give a lecture at the foundation of Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk in Washington, titled: “Is Russia winning or collapsing?” He didn't say anything we hadn't already heard since 2022, but the interesting thing isn't what he said, but who said it. Some intellectuals are starting to publicly and openly acknowledge their mistakes.
Russia is slowly moving towards victory, he said. Its economy has become a model worthy of the highest academic praise. The war has boosted the Russian economy “to the point of becoming a classic example.” Its arms industry is operating at full capacity, at a level that Europe currently has no way of matching.
More than useless, the sanctions have proven counterproductive. In early 2022, the West expected Russia to collapse economically under the weight of the sanctions, but these hopes have faded. At the beginning of the war, “we believed that economic sanctions would put the Russian economy on its knees.”
The Wall Street Journal predicted “an earthquake of eight on the Richter scale.” But it didn't work. Their estimates turned out to be completely wrong. Today, the United States is no longer helping Ukraine at all. It seems to me that the participants in this conference haven't grasped this reality, because financial aid is nonexistent; it has stopped, and everything that comes from the United States today has to be financed.”
In a booming economy, the defense industry has grown at a dizzying pace and has seized control of most of the market. Its productivity and power are an unattainable example for European industry, Ferguson said. “Russia’s defense spending has almost doubled, reaching 7 percent of GDP. The budget deficit is at 2.4 percent of GDP, the sovereign debt-to-GDP ratio is at 14 percent, and government revenue from oil and gas has increased by a third. Inflation is at 8.7 percent, but real wages have risen by 22 percent since the start of the war, and unemployment is virtually zero. Incomes have increased by 48 percent, retail sales by 38 percent, and consumer goods sales have also risen. In other words, the sanctions regime has not worked,” explains the British expert.
= kursk bridge
wtf is kursk bridge?? i saw it 2 times in text.
=======
either author just erred on copy-past, or Mr KAGAN IS UTTER MO11RON!!
======
if Mr KAGAN meant =Crimean bridge=
problem is it is not easy to take over Crimea from north (Ukraine side) .
bolsheviks had so much problem to attack last white army in Crimea around 1920.
just look at map, it has bottle neck, very narrow place. easy to protect.
===
and far as Russian army trapped ?? where??
there is 1000 km border between Russia and Ukraine
, so summing up
some kind of junk from mr kagan who obv. never opened geo map, or know anything war affairs!! arm chair general he is.
alx
ps
funny , author of post never commented on this = kursk bridge= slip. i wonder why.
He probably had not Crimean bridge, but Kerch bridge in mind - Kerch being the name of the town and fortress on the Crimean side, as well as the Kerch strait. Nevertheless, this shows lack of real knowledge by the author and the redaction of the gazette
well yes. some call it Kerchian, some Crimean bridge.
thanks for geo update, i live not far from ... :)))
nice. I haven't been very close, the closest probably being Alushta (nice landscape there) quite some time ago. The strait of Kerch came to my knowledge very early, may be via Jules Verne's "Keraban the Inflexible"
I've driven it a few times. I've also driven the land route to Crimea, through Mariupol.
The Kerch bridge (which is how everybody in Russia refers to it, since it crosses the Kerch strait) is a purely tourist and civilian transportation artery. It is literally hundreds of miles from where the special military op is going on.
For that matter, it's not a particularly convenient way of getting to most parts of Crimea from Russia. If you're going to Yevpatoria, Sevastopol, Simferopol, Yalta, Alushta, etc., and you're driving down from Moscow it's quicker to take the land route, not the bridge. The highways from Rostov on the Don to the isthmus and Djankoi are really super and they have a less traffic than the M4 from Rostov down to Krasnodar.
That's because if you take the M4 you're also tangled up with the huge amount of traffic headed for all the Black Sea resorts and towns like Anapa, Novorossisk, Krasnodar, Gelendzhik and so on all the way down to Sochi. Given all the new highway construction on the M4 and such you can end up in epic traffic jams. Heck, just getting around Krasnodar during rush hour can take a couple of hours, and then you've got traffic all the way to the Taman peninsula and the approaches to the bridge. On weekends you'll be stuck for hours in the traffic jams approaching the bridge.
It's true that if you're a tourist (or local) and you're going from Kerch in Crimea or Fedosia or Sudak and you want to get to Krasnodar or Anapa or Novorossisk then the Kerch bridge is the way to go. Pick your time right (mid-week) and you'll beat the traffic and enjoy the superhighway up and over the bridge and through Taman.
The Bridge was built for access to Russia before the SMO started. Until that time (SMO) there was no land bridge between Crimea and Russia. The SMO opened the land bridge, thus diminishing the use of the Kerch Bridge (at least for military and trade purposes).
Considering the last record of the area most people in the US have is from old WWII accounts (of dirt roads) and maybe 1980s magazine articles about those old peace trips that Intourist used to run, this is genuinely interesting. Being a fan of progress and liking the idea of Russia getting a modern road network...
"liking the idea of Russia getting a modern road network" - Definitely.
They've made a *lot* of progress on that in the last ten or fifteen years, enough that in the last five years or so you can see them getting enough critical mass of modern superhighways in some areas to make a dramatic difference. But it's still a huge country with absolutely immense distances so they've got a long way to go to get to something like the US interstate highway system.
The latest generation of superhighways, in the last five years or so, are definitely a game changer. You can now drive from pretty much any of the bigger cities in the European part of Russia to other big cities on four and six lane superhighways without ever getting onto surface streets. That's just mind-boggling for anybody that did long distance car driving here in the 90's or earlier.
The tempo of construction has dramatically increased as well, and it's not just superhighways but resurfacing and improvements of secondary roads, as well as improvements of first and second generation superhighways, like adding lanes, improved overpasses, etc.
What's interesting is that all the road work now is indigenous. In the 90's they'd bring in European companies as contractors to, say, build a highway near Moscow but now it's all local companies. Drive over the truly intense Kerch bridge and it's amazing that every bit of it was made by local companies, and made to absolutely first rate world standards. It's powering a big industry that seriously contributes to the economy, both in terms of direct employment and also given the knock-on effect of how a very good transportation network helps the economy thrive and grow.
Drive over something like the M12 that runs from Moscow to Kazan and is being extended to Yekaterinburg and it's amazing how totally smooth the surface is. If you've ever driven the Autobahn in Germany that's genuinely impressive, but if you're a connoisseur of high speed Euro highways you know the Swiss autobahns have even smoother, more even surfaces than the German Autobahn (which, to my tastes, is showing its age). Well, the M12 is like that, like the Swiss. But it has better rest areas / fuel stops that have really super and sophisticated cafes, like the Lukoil Cafe super rest areas. They're actually wonderful places, something you look forward to, as a place to get a meal during a long trip. They also have elaborate play areas for kids and all that jazz.
For those of us who remember what road travel was like here in Russia back in the day that's just astonishing.
The much improved road network is powering a revolution in internal tourism as well. I guess it's how the interstate highway network in the US helped power a rise in family vacations like north easterners driving down to Florida or whatever.
What's missing in that in Russia is that to date Russia has not evolved massive networks of road trip hotel chains, like Holiday Inn or whatever. Instead, it seems to have jumped directly to a very well developed infrastructure of AirBnB style online rentals. It's a big thing for people to invest into one or two bedroom apartments in new construction buildings that are placed near big highway interchanges or on the outskirts of population centers and then renting them out online.
You can book an apartment, get a code that gets you digital access to the building and then a digital key code for an electronic lock to use the apartment, so you don't even have to arrange a meet with the owner. It's not unusual for owners to have five or ten apartments in a new construction building that they rent out to travelers.
To be a neocon is to have a difficulty reading maps. Their Ideology relies on a refusal to acknowledge facts on the ground. As we can see from all their misadventures.
Their ideology relies heavily on ignorance and stupidity, the abundance of which they discovered long ago.
On the other hand, back in 2022, when the Russian Army was camping outside Kiev, the destruction of infrastructure (=bridges) in the Kursk Region would have had a devastating effect. But the Kerch bridge is a nice building, showing the capacity of the Russian engineers, but the main supply artery is from Rostov along the Sea of Azov. Strange! I do not understand the obsession for this Kerch Bridge.
The destruction of the Crimean / Kertch Bridge is a fetish even for many Ukraine supporters here in Germany. They talk constantly about it in forums and have wet dreams about this at night.
"The destruction of the Crimean / Kertch Bridge is a fetish even for many Ukraine supporters here in Germany."
That's because they're complete imbeciles. You have to be truly stupid and extremely ignorant to not notice that the Kerch bridge is hundreds of miles away from where all the supply lines and military movements are happening.
You also have to be a complete moron not to question why your media isn't reporting from the spot.
Western media outlets, including the German TV channels, Bild and so on, have plenty of accredited journalists sitting in Moscow who are perfectly free to hop in their cars and drive south on the fabulous M4 superhighway that runs between Moscow and the Black Sea resorts.
It's a mere 470 or so km (about 300 miles), less than six hours of driving at superhighway speeds to get to Voronezh, and then for another six hours or so you're driving on the M4 just east of the hotter parts of the war zone.
I've done that drive many times on my way to the Black Sea resorts for some beach time with friends. What you notice is the very large number of military trucks and vehicles on the M4, which are there as part of the logistics of supporting the 700,000+ man force involved in the special military op in Ukraine.
If you want to get to Crimea, from Rostov on the Don you make a choice: you either turn West and drive on the mainland through the New Territories of Donetsk, Zaporozhiye and Kherson to the isthmus that joins Crimea to the mainland, or you continue south to Krasnodar before turning West to take the highway to the Kerch bridge. I've taken both routes.
When you drive on the mainland you're driving on the northern border of the Sea of Azov through the new territories that joined Russia after they were liberated from the Nazi regime in Kiev that occupied them. You'll see lots of military equipment on the roads and will drive through regular military checkpoints (no big deal if you have your passport handy and haven't overstayed your visa). That's because all of the military logistics for supporting the special military op go through the direct land connections between Russia and the front.
In contrast, if you drive south to Krasnodar as you get south of Rostov you see fewer and fewer military vehicles, and basically see none at all on the drive from Krasnodar west to the Kerch bridge. That's because the Kerch bridge is hundreds of miles away from where the war is going on, and it plays no role whatsoever in the special military operation. It's exclusively a tourist and civilian transportation link, not a military link.
Anybody who isn't an extreme cretin can take a look at the map and see that the way to get men and military supplies to the war zone in Kherson and Zaporozhiye provinces that are on the mainland north of Crimea is to simply drive there on the superhighway direct from Rostov. You don't drive hundreds of miles out of the way to take the Kerch bridge. Doh.
But people in Germany, like the US and the rest of the West, have become such criminally stupid imbeciles that they believe obvious lies like the bridge has some sort of military significance. It doesn't, and hasn't since the New Territories joined Russia.
By the way, there's very little military traffic on the roads in Crimea. There are plenty of defensive installations, like anti-aircraft facilities around cities, beaches, infrastructure, etc., but it's not like the heavy military traffic you see on the mainland in support of the special military operation.
Optics ? Something to show the Natzostan public on the 6 o-clock News to enforce to idea they've got some vfm for the billions uselessly spent. After all, what else do they have that visually demonstrates their success.
@werner hillinger
If you view the Ukrainian side of this war as a sort of long running "performance art" installation, acted out with live ammo to provide propaganda photo opps for their patrons? It all makes more sense.
He eventually meant the Seym river bridges in Kursk feeding the E38 and E105 motorways to the east of Ukraine (Sumy and Charkov).
It is a narrow corridor simple to destroy with ballistics.
No, he meant the Kerch bridge. He inaccurately referred to the "Kursk bridge" twice, both times in the singular and both times clearly in the context of the Western lies about the Kerch bridge.
By the way the Seym river bridges would have zero effect on either logistics or advance/retreat on the initial invasion, which what Kagan was lying about. The initial invasion used launch points in Belarus, hundreds of miles from the Seym river bridges, as well as many launch points on the what, thousand mile? land border between Russia and Nazi-held Ukraine with an emphasis on Donbass, also far, far away from the Seym river bridges.
Ok, he is probably to ignorant to even learn geography.
A lot of troops came east from Mariupol btw.
But I dont know why you blabber about zero effect about the Seym river and the motorways towards Sumy and Charkov. Fact is Russia used these roads and your description as of invasion came from Belorussia solely is faalse. You had movements agaisnt Sumy and Charkov exactly as I described.
" Fact is Russia used these roads and your description as of invasion came from Belorussia solely is faalse. " Ah, no, I didn't write "solely" I wrote the opposite:
"The initial invasion used launch points in Belarus, hundreds of miles from the Seym river bridges, as well as many launch points on the what, thousand mile? land border between Russia and Nazi-held Ukraine with an emphasis on Donbass, also far, far away from the Seym river bridges."
Note the "as well as many launch points...". And, the emphasis was initially on the Donbass, not on Sumy or Kharkov.
You wrote: ” By the way the Seym river bridges would have zero effect on either logistics or advance/retreat on the initial invasion”
I answered. Be honest.
I am honest, but your apparent unfamiliarity with English (I assume, perhaps wrongly, that's why you miss so many important words) gives the impression you're not honest.
The Seym river bridges indeed were irrelevant to the Russian invasion that launched the special military op. If you knew anything about the opening Russian maneuvers in the special military op you'd know that.
The primary thrust was in defense of Donbass (Donetsk and part of Lugansk), which is not remotely near those bridges. Russia's task was to stop the 130,000 man invasion force that the US and the Kiev regime had built up for their imminent ethnic-cleansing invasion of Donetsk.
In support of that defense (really, a desperate defense given the very thin forces Russia could apply), Russia's secondary thrust was a feint at Kiev with forces invading from Belarus and Russia in the North, not taking the long way around through Sumy and Kharkov.
As I wrote, it's true there were many other launch points on the very long land border between Russia and Nazi-held Ukraine, but those were for very small forces that played supporting roles in the big feint to draw some of Kiev's forces away from their planned big thrust at Donetsk. Those forces were often scout level formations, and some of them were near Sumy and Kharkov. But a few guys in the Russian equivalent of a jeep are not remotely daunted by needing to use secondary or tertiary roads and given the way they covered lots of ground very fast the presence or absence of a bridge or not (when they could drive 30 minutes to take an alternate) for that jeep full of guys didn't matter one whit.
So don't accuse others of dishonesty when you have ignorant bullshit coming out of your keyboard.
Don't insult armchair Generals, fat Kagan doesn't rise to that level. Warmongering for the sake of warmongering is his objective, the rest are meaningless rationalizations to sell to the goyim.
So this "pundit" thinks that blowing up some bridge (Kursk bridge?), on a 3k km frontline then and 1.5k now, would trap whole Rus army somewhere?
2 years after Ukie summer offensive was utterly trashed, exactly because Rus were supposed to panic and run, they still peddle this.
Life is too easy for Kagan clan.
As simplicious said it probably just a mental trap he is setting. Kagan likely does not believe it. He is just leading the listener to the belief USA could have done something, because that means the listener will believe they still can do something. When in fact USA is impotent now. But that knowledge would not get USA politicians to invest yet further in the war factories.
"Trump lost Ukraine!" That's what he's preparing.
Serves TACO right. He got in bed with the neocons and he has earned the stabs in the back.
Trump has not lost anything yet.
How many times over the past three years have the people here predicted imminent victory?
The Empire of Lies will Run out of Ukranians long before Russia runs out of artillery shells.
That is when NATO will step in.
With the might British army, all 10k deployable men of them? The US with an sir defense that couldn't deal with the Houthis?
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Dunno, the listener is semi literate in amriqa.
What is interesting to me is that people still need explanation that being a strategic rear (to say the least) means that you are a co-belligerent.
People still live in looney toon world where this is somehow isolated conflict between Ukraine and Rus. After all those public statements about proxy war and even coalition war on Rus. Peeps do not register this and cannot even process if you give them proper ifno, cognitive dissonance is too strong.
Kagan knows perfectly well that what he is saying is nonsense, just as the neocons knew full well in 2003 that Iraq was not laden with WMDs.
The point is to mousetrap Trump into further escalation.
He'll get his wish, spurred on by Russian indecision and waffling.
I alwazs expected Trump to escalate. It is getting worse and worse in USA. No peace without dismantling of USD printing press and even then they will lash out.
Keep in mind that every dollar of debt that the US Treasury issues has a ready and willing buyer for that debt. Market participants want to lend to the US. You don't have to like it, but they do.
Anyway, it was obvious about two weeks into Trump's first term that he is weak, stupid and easily manipulated.
Maybe now, my time frame is by the end of the decade. In the mean time we will have another US election cycle and every new president is more unhinged.
We've been hearing the predictions of imminent collapse since before I was a kitten.
Sure, time will tell.
No, not at all - that's why they're panicking bigtime now. They can't roll over the maturing Treasury bonds, no buyers, and nobody on the secondary market wants the junk at these prices either. Even the primary dealers aren't showing up to the auctions.
Not true. You can buy all the treasuries you want at non-panic rates.
I thought foreign purchases of Treasuries had all but stopped and it was the Fed, domestic banks and pension funds that are holding them. Isn't that why they are trying the Treasury backed stablecoin fundraising?
https://qz.com/us-treasuries-government-bonds-hedge-funds
"...such as blowing up the Kursk bridge and thereby trapping his army in Ukraine"
I assume that he is sloppy and means the Crimean Bridge. So, according to Kagan, the Crimean Bridge is the only connection between Russia and Ukraine... This is new for me.
This is the kind of man whom the American establishment relies upon to define its foreign policy. He cannot even remember the name of a famous bridge and his knowledge of geography is subpar.
total junk on mr kagan side..
he was supposed to be smart one ++ he is a je11w
jesus!!
A bit like DJT resolving the War between Aber Daijan and Albania as announced during his recent State visit to our ungodly shores instead of Azerbaijan & Armenia, still it was good for a laugh.
It always brings a smile to me. For that I'm grateful to Trump.
"Aber Daijan and Albania"... In a recent speech for the American Cornerstone Institute, DJT bragged: "We stopped the conflict between Cambodia and Armenia. It was just starting, and it was a bad conflict."
You read that well: Cambodia and Armenia.
Heard that tonight watching Alex Christopherou...wow.
A bit like Liz Truss, the temporary UK PM who confused the Baltic Sea with the Black Sea, 700 miles apart.
"If he [Trump] does nothing in response to a Russian attack on Poland, Europeans will have to stop fooling themselves and face the fact that the Americans really aren’t there for them."
Big surprise, the US will never go to war with Russia for the sake of any European nation. Remember Putin's advisor coming out with "Trump and Putin are going to prevent WW3"?
This decision has already been made: No US involvement if the EU provokes a war with Russia.
We can be rather sure that Russia won't attack EU as the demographics don't add up. 150 million Russians cannot "take" near 300 million Europeans. Russia would win the war, but could not hope to occupy Europe. Nor would there be anything to take, piss poor as Europe is in resources and an old and exhausted population.
I would sum up Kagan's article as one long whine: We could have taken Russia in 2022, but now its too late.
And he is wrong, because even in 2022 the west would have been unable to successfully take Russia on.
The causal observer, I think there are about 500 million of us mate. 😀
You have to subtract the Russians and Belarussians from the total european population ;-)
I have done, it's 748m if you include them.
Why, indeed! Thanks for correcting.
(I have done some research into this a few months ago, and was simply reusing the remembered numbers from back then. But somehow I must have made a mistake. My bad.)
Are you including all the invading 'refugee' males of military age John?
There are 38,000 Asylum seekers in the UK.
They get lost in most Premier League Gounds.
That's just the last year, then theres the 50,000 Afghans from that dodgy email sent with their personal data on. In the year ending June 2025, 51,997 people were granted refugee protection Even though most of the current lot go back on a bloody holiday making their claim of asylum false. At the end of the day no young man is going to fight for the UK against Russia but they will against this traitorous anti-white government.
Britain is lurching towards civil war, and nobody knows how to stop it
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/03/civil-war-is-coming-to-britain/?msockid=320945743f7a6409120350023eb8659a
When is this going to happen Martin?
Of which 200 million Africans and ME illegals.
>We can be rather sure that Russia won't attack EU as the demographics don't add up. 150 million Russians cannot "take" near 300 million Europeans. Russia would win the war, but could not hope to occupy Europe. Nor would there be anything to take, piss poor as Europe is in resources and an old and exhausted population.
Putin can be raising the flag in Brussels about a month from now if he decides to do it today.
Could be done even in a week, but it will require more complicated technical preparation.
Maybe, I don't know. As they say, in war, even the enemy has a vote.
War's are rarely linear and predictable. The only way to make some kind of prediction is to look at resources, and Russia has more of it and can produce more of it. Hence it is near certain that Europe would lose, but how when where why is uncertain.
>As they say, in war, even the enemy has a vote.
There would be no enemy left.
In 2022, at the start of the war in Ukraine, the American economist Neil Ferguson was a textbook Russophobe. But as a professor at Stanford University and a member of the Hoover Institution, he needs to update his rhetoric periodically to avoid looking foolish. Admitting mistakes is a sign of wisdom.
Recently, he was invited to give a lecture at the foundation of Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk in Washington, titled: “Is Russia winning or collapsing?” He didn't say anything we hadn't already heard since 2022, but the interesting thing isn't what he said, but who said it. Some intellectuals are starting to publicly and openly acknowledge their mistakes.
Russia is slowly moving towards victory, he said. Its economy has become a model worthy of the highest academic praise. The war has boosted the Russian economy “to the point of becoming a classic example.” Its arms industry is operating at full capacity, at a level that Europe currently has no way of matching.
More than useless, the sanctions have proven counterproductive. In early 2022, the West expected Russia to collapse economically under the weight of the sanctions, but these hopes have faded. At the beginning of the war, “we believed that economic sanctions would put the Russian economy on its knees.”
The Wall Street Journal predicted “an earthquake of eight on the Richter scale.” But it didn't work. Their estimates turned out to be completely wrong. Today, the United States is no longer helping Ukraine at all. It seems to me that the participants in this conference haven't grasped this reality, because financial aid is nonexistent; it has stopped, and everything that comes from the United States today has to be financed.”
In a booming economy, the defense industry has grown at a dizzying pace and has seized control of most of the market. Its productivity and power are an unattainable example for European industry, Ferguson said. “Russia’s defense spending has almost doubled, reaching 7 percent of GDP. The budget deficit is at 2.4 percent of GDP, the sovereign debt-to-GDP ratio is at 14 percent, and government revenue from oil and gas has increased by a third. Inflation is at 8.7 percent, but real wages have risen by 22 percent since the start of the war, and unemployment is virtually zero. Incomes have increased by 48 percent, retail sales by 38 percent, and consumer goods sales have also risen. In other words, the sanctions regime has not worked,” explains the British expert.
Why Russia would want to attack europe is always left unsaid.
This isn't "Risk" or "Axis and Allies".
The Project for the New American Century had nothing to do with America at all, except as the patsy providing the bodies and the war materiel.
Kagan is just another intellectual prostitute who sold his soul in the use of his intellect to provide plausible seeming stories to set the table for political crimes on a global scale. Exactly as your opening paragraph presages.
Yes, a few Americans have benefitted enormously from the US' mad paroxysm of jingoist imperialism in the Middle East, but *America* has suffered enormously. Her wealth and posterity have been exhausted for the benefit of others.-
The proposition, express or implied in his writing, that Kagan gives a damn for America or Poland or Latvia, etc., is risible on its face, and more you look beneath the surface the uglier and more ludicrous it gets.
The biggest proof of what you say in the last paragraph is the oft repeated phrase, "to the last Ukrainian".
When the trump blows
When will the last hurrah be shown?
The knaves and pundits know
Clearly to the last Ukrainian thrown
Wolfowitz laid it out in 93. The plan rolls on and is still failing. Perhaps Netanyahu can actually pulls it off. Long odds though. Kagan and crew will never give up trying. How do they sleep at night?
The clan. The clan serves its own. I do think it is fair to question the degree to which the neocons are just Israel first or closer to Israel only, and the US is itself a disposable proxy like Ukraine.
Indeed, I see the US as a temporarily useful puppet, its value predominantly down to the population who can be milked for its wealth - and their children who can be sent off to fight and die whenever and wherever required - and of course, its currency.
The moment it loses its usefulness it will be discarded, just as they would discard Israel or any other patch of land.
The ones who pull the strings regard the entire world and all its nations and assets - those they haven't already seized - as theirs by divine right. Because they are religiously-inspired racial supremacists, who see themselves as the only "real" humans on the planet.
The rest of us are cattle to be milked and butchered as and when convenient. To them, the very idea that the dumb livestock own anything is laughable. But they let us have our convenient fiction if it keeps us subservient and docile.
Last I checked, most neocons are not religious in any traditional sense, and those who are are usually some form of Catholic or Evangelical.
Probably fair to say the likes of Kagan despise the US public as so many: red necks, hicks, schwartzers and spics, a pot pourri of untermensch disposables.
About what Trump said, I always learned that two consecutive affirmations are equivalent to a négation
When one says "yes", it's mean "yes".
When one says "yes...yes", that mean: I say yes to please you but I think ",no".
Idem for "no", which is firm and "no, no".
Trump didn't say " I will do it", firm.
He says " I will do it ...I will do it".
That means: if you think that I will, I have a bridge to sell to you.
Spot on.
Added to the categories of "lip readers" and "code readers" we now must have "Trump readers"..
No. I made bizness all my life and I learned to translate apparent words
You see? When somebody tells you " ho it's probably too ( big, beautiful, ect...) for me" means actually : ,"too expensive".
Or " it's OK, we have a deal , I just have to speak with( my partners, wife, accountant, adviser, pope...)" that mean "fuck you".
You know, your ability to translate words and and read body language for 40 years make the difference between living in a nice home , raising your children in the best schools and eating in garbage tins.
Trump has nothing to do there.
A good place to start is a consideration of what his audience wants to hear.
the "Kursk" bridge...?
Maybe we should see Kagan's views a little bit differently. Leave out geopolitics. This is a program to support the growing academic pseudo-elite; this brings the predictions of H. Schellsky to a global level. To have a good national living standard, you either have a lot of natural resources or a lot of human resources, meaning engineers and craftsmen. On the other hand, lawyers, gender and media experts, tax consultants, and bankers are only a strain on a society's wealth. But the Western universities generate ever-growing numbers of exactly this parasitic class, eliminating the working class by ever-new regulations, laws, fees, and taxes. Therefore the West can not rely on a huge working class for a good living standard but instead must claim natural resources around the world—and the mineral-richest country is Russia. Maybe if we close down the Ivy League schools, we can secure peace for the decades to come?
Professional academics increasingly grow isolated away from averaged working class people. Just like with our huge billionaire class, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Good luck shutting them down. Ivy League schools are better seen as banks with classrooms. Try shutting down a bank😉
Great points. Thanks.
Chinese or Asian exceptionalism is a huge fashion these years when the American variant has run its course. Better not bet on that as there is none. Once China has become a great power, the »Tragic of Great Power Politics« will set in, the ruling elite of that state will do everything to block any peer competitors, will see to defend its shipping lines militarily etc. Think of their mentality as that of the Tiger Mother concept which is a Chinese invention and practice. Also: China does not speak out against the Zionists’ genocide, they use euphemisms only, and their trade with that murderous state heads for a new record this year. Not to mention that Beijing does not support South Africa’s case at the ICJ. (All this is true for Russia as well, by the way, but hardly anybody in the alt-media points that out, not to mention: discusses it.)
@Jörg-M. Rudolph
"It's a big club and you ain't in it" version 2.0?
https://youtu.be/i5dBZDSSky0?si=tv2qSn28xVQH08dc
Russia could have checkmated the US by threatening to nuke Israel, Kagan's heartland
I doubt that very much.
With more than one million Russians living in Israel and with the popularity of Israel among russian people, it seems that you're living in the Wonderland.
And why the fuck do you want that Russia has the duty of save the world against itself? What Russia owes to Palestinians to do such war?
Arabs lay down like bitches and do nothing, Turkish and other Muslims are striking their chest in shouting to death but do nothing and even sell to Israël the oil to make its planes and tanks work. Iranians which swore to destroy Israël if it attack Gaza is hinding like a rat and betrayed Hezbollah and Syria.
And you want that in this shit Russia act like the archangel Gabriel?
Seriously?
(((Russians)))
Putin would likely be glad they are gone; note how many of those who he had assassinated over the years were such (((Russians)))
If a “Russian” lives since the 90s in Israel, pays taxes in Israel, has an Israeli passport and has served in the IOF, is he/she/zhe still “a Russian”?
Yes, and if it's a franco-israelian or a spanish-israelian, it's exactly the same.
More than one million russian Jews in Israël. Soon, the best of them will be disgusted with this countries of lunatics blood thirsty. Where will go this scientifics, engeeners, doctors, highly educated technicians and workers.
A part will go in western countries but a lot will go back to Russia if they know that Russia will welcome them with greetings and open arms. And they often leaved Russia because it was very poor. It's no more true now. Russia have a demographic problem.
It need the come back of hundreds thousands high educated Russians.
u/Darras is, more or less, correct. the "clan" is widely distributed around the world and has considerable influence because they control the money.
Alex Krainer (and others) often point to the "City of London" but they merely hint at the Rothschilds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Court. I find it strange that they can still wield such power since "money isn't real".
China (and Russia) seem to have separated themselves from this cult.
Yanis Varoufakis often explains that money is nothing more than a call on the future. But at some point, it has to be paid off.
Michael Hudson though says, "Forgive them their debts" as he explains how debt was forgiven in ancient times.
We allow ourselves to be enslaved by a myth repeated by the Rothschilds and adhered to by our political leadership.
Putin is actually a huge Zionist. Look at the people he is surrounding himself with. Look at what he did to Syria. Etc.
And that is a huge unmentionable, especially in Russia but apparently also in the Western "alternative" media.
Even though it is likely one of the biggest factors behind Putin sabotaging the war the way he has.
If Putin were indeed a Zionist
wouldn't it mean he would be your boss, GM
Honest question: why is Israel “popular” among the average Russians?
Israel has been firmly supporting Ukraine against Russia’s unprovoked genocidal invasion for the whole time. Also, from what I get from my limited interactions with Israeli Zionists, they freaking HATE Putin (something I honestly struggle to understand, bc Putin in the end served Assad in a silver platter to the Zio-Takfiris.)
What leads you to believe Israel is popular amongst average Russians?
My question was directed to the other commenter, Darras. He’s the one claiming Israeli popularity in Russia.
Is that why the country with the highest number of Ukrainian refugees is Russia? And why many POWs apply for Rus citizenship? Because they just love being genocided?
Here, reported by BBC in 2022 already. ;)
https://static33.tgcnt.ru/posts/_0/c0/c04f7e0131af7c977d4bf0ccaadca09a.jpg
Now numbers are between 5-7 million. I know some personally who are very happy (and much safer) being Rus.
Excuse me for not being sarcastic enough. I thought that the idea of Israel condemning Russia of executing a genocide in Ukraine was /sarc enough.
Lost in comment translation then
>With more than one million Russians living in Israel
There are almost no Russians living in Israel.
A few liberal traitors and a few actual Russians who faked being Jewish to escape the motherland they hate with a passion.
But other than that those two million (it is not one million) are not Russian.
As of 2022, Russian-speakers number around 1,300,000 people, or 15% of the Israeli population.
Rumor has it that the Israelis have planted nukes all over the world to keep everyone in check. Especially in Russia.
Not sure how realistic that is -- thermonuclear devices need regular servicing and thus constant access, and you would need thermonuclear bombs to properly take out Russia, but you can certainly do a lot of damage to Moscow with half a dozen 50-100 kt fission devices planted in the right places.
On the other hand Russian bases in Syria were strategically located between Israel and Russia and sufficiently close to Israel to potentially allow for boost-phase interception of Jericho ICBMs. Which I always found interesting as a possibility and perhaps it was more than just a hypothetical...
Planting bombs in cities is definitely easier & would leave fewer traces than developing and executing an icbm first strike, for sure.
As for hiding those bombs, you could start by looking at the basements of Israeli embassies…