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LOL. Many universities and hospital research centers have estudied cancer rates in Fukushima and neighbouring prefectures and noone detected any significant increase in cancer rates. And of course nobody developed radiation syndrome. And of course the main pollutant from the accident was not tritium but cessium.

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Mar 12, 2023·edited Mar 12, 2023

Huh? Some communist politician died in China? So what?

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" By far the most important objectives of this entire situation are the following:

1. Destroy Russia-German relations

2. Unplug Europe from Russian energy

3. Make Europe, conversely, dependent on US energy

4. Bankrupt and de-industrialize Europe to keep it submissive to US hegemonic power

And guess what? On pretty much all of these points the US has succeeded with flying colors. A grand, unparalleled victory. "

This - and I have believed for abut 3 years now.

Ergo - chaos and mayhem left in Ukraine, weapons spilling over into crime and terrorism across Europe, huge losses of life, all of these are Goals of the US, not side effects, let alone regretted collateral damage.

Friedman's comments were 2015. This has been a very long term plan, and the success of the Kiev Coup was never an end goal, nor was the capture of Crimea. It was always about creating a massive pit of chaos between Europe and both Russia and the end of OBOR.

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Mar 11, 2023·edited Mar 12, 2023

Simplicius - I'm sorry for the trivial nature of this comment, but I had to stop reading at your 6th paragraph under the news clip with the 12-year old, to write this before going back to finish.

You poked one of my long-standing hot buttons.

There is no such word as "irregardless". Regardless is the correct usage.

Nevertheless. I think you are one of the most perceptive commentators on the current situation and I thoroughly enjoy your long-form treatment of these issues. Critical thinking at its best.

Stay safe out there.

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You’re so silly

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I don't disagree.

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Mar 11, 2023·edited Mar 11, 2023

I do the same when I read the word 'neocon'. That's why I skipped the 3rd question entirely. It's so utterly stupid to call the woke government conservative that I lose interest in what people writing it has to say. Unfortunately, almost all prorussian bloggers use it. Simplicius seems to be the only exception.

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Mar 11, 2023·edited Mar 11, 2023

I hate that word too. There is no economic doctrine called neoliberalism. No economist has ever proposed a variant or current of liberalism called neoliberalism. It's only a term lefties use to despise anything that is (or they think is) right-wing, economically. It has no real meaning. It's like the term 'fascist' or 'nazi' nowadays, that is mostly used today as an insult against anybody that the speaker doesn't like, even though his ideology has nothing to do with Mussolini et al.

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deletedMar 12, 2023·edited Mar 12, 2023
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Again, that quote is from somebody opposing neoliberalism, not from any supposed neoliberal economist.

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Actually, Antonio, there is an economic (and political) doctrine called neoliberalism.

It goes back to at least 1938 and a meeting of economists, including Frederick Hayek, where they "defined the concept of neoliberalism as involving 'the priority of the price mechanism, free enterprise, the system of competition, and a strong and impartial state'".

This system of competition would "would establish an elite structure of successful individuals that would assume power in society, with these elites replacing the existing representative democracy acting on the behalf of the majority". --Wikipedia

Seems to me this is exactly what's been happening the US and elsewhere at least since Reagan.

I agree that "fascist" and "nazi" are vastly overused as epithets whose purpose is to end discussion rather than engaging in honest debate.

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Mar 12, 2023·edited Mar 12, 2023

If you refer to this article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism , it is clear from there that it has only been used informally by its supposed proponents, in debates, etc. and no serious definition or treatment exists. The books written about It are written by their opponents. The same article says that the term is used today simply as a derogative term for any right-wing economic measure.

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I read that link yesterday and quoted from it.

I can't do anything about those who misuse the term, but that doesn't mean that there is no formal definition. Again, check the dictionary; we don't know what biases the Wikipedia authors have.

When properly used neoliberalism describes quite well the political economy we have right now.

I have to wonder if your dislike of the term comes from your support of the defining concepts of neoliberalism and that you don't like its negative connotations.

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The elusiveness of neoliberalism, however, ultimately stems from denials that neoliberals themselves have made about their efforts. While we can fairly well identify the roster of who should be acknowledged as a part of the movement, at least from its beginnings in the 1930s until the recent past, we are confronted with the fact that, in public, they themselves - like Antonio - roundly deny the existence of any such well-defined thought collective, and stridently resist the label of neoliberalism. Not only do they wash their hands of most of the documented activities of what the author of the link to the American Affairs Joyrnal - calls the Neoliberal Thought Collective (as when Hayek and Friedman abjured the Pinochet interlude in Chile) but they complain that their opponents, the socialists, have always gotten the better of them.

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/02/neoliberalism-movement-dare-not-speak-name/

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My brother's economics professor referred to it as "neoclassical economics." Whether they admit it or not, the neoliberal project as described by its opponents is absolutely pushed by the elites. Neoliberalism is just laissez faire capitalism.

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He's a capitalist fanboy. These types are beyond all hope of any reasonable argumentation.

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Neoliberalism = neo-classical economics as per Adam Smith, Ricardo, etc. Neoliberalism is simply laissez faire capitalism. And yes there is a branch of economics called neoliberal economics.

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As a general rule, rightwing authoritarianism tends to be a synonym for fascism. The Republican Party is absolutely a fascist political party in that sense. Their model is the Latin American Right. Fascism goes far beyond 30's Mussolinism. A good definition of fascism is "a popular dictatorship against the Left." Poland, Hungary, Turkey, India, Israel and Ukraine are fascist states. Israel, Turkey, India and Ukraine are racist fascists or ethnic ultranationalists. Racist fascism is Nazism, so all of those countries are Nazi or National Socialist countries in that sense. National socialism or racist fascism can unfold in any society.

The Cultural Left throws around the Nazi and fascist terms promiscuously. To them those words mean "anti-woke."

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LOL capitalist fanboy. Boo! Hiss!

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May I respectfully suggest that you look up the definition of neoconservative.

According to Merriam-Webster neoconservatism is "a conservative who advocates the assertive promotion of democracy and U.S. national interest in international affairs including through military means".

Woke or not, I think the term is very suitable in describing US foreign policy for the past 60 years or more.

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Huh?? Do you really think that wokes are conservatives??

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deletedMar 12, 2023·edited Mar 12, 2023
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Of course, wokepedia says so. That doesn't mean that the term doesn't have a meaning. It denotes a far-left ideology, economically leaning to communism, and obssessed with creating an ever expanding classification of oppressors an oppressed ones: whites against other races, men against women, straights against lgtbfrstq+-#, christians against atheists and muslims, nationals against (ilegal) aliens, etc. and advocating for legal discrimination against anybody in the 'wrong' category (according to them, of course) and massive censorship and violence against any dissenting voices.

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Wow, that's a pretty detailed definition that covers a lot of territory.

Did you find that in a dictionary or encyclopedia? Or did you make it up?

Maybe you can add it to the Wikipedia entry for others to enjoy.

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Woke, SJWism, Cultural Left, etc. are absolutely things. It doesn't matter that those who promote them deny that they are doing so. It is the cultural agenda of liberal and left culture in the West. Its genesis was in Third Wave feminism. That woketards deny that they are woketards is not important.

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Mar 12, 2023·edited Mar 12, 2023

No, you misunderstood what I meant.

Like Brevet private, I think it's a term without real meaning and has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.

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I perfectly understood it and it a real meaning, that I wrote. It's the most recent evolution of socialism/communism. It's not my problem that non-woke lefties don't want to be associated with that. That doesn't mean that wokeism doesn't exist. Things don't cease to exist simply because you don't like them.

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You don't get to tell me that you understood me when I'm the one who wrote it and explained why you didn't understand it. You do not have access to my mind and my thinking.

Wokeism may exist in your mind. I'm not privy to your thinking just like you aren't privy to mine. But, as you complain about neoliberalism, it has no accepted, well-defined meaning, in spite of your attempt to give it one.

Perhaps it's time for you to go troll someone else.

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Actually existing communist and socialist parties all over the world, including those that rule whole countries, completely reject the Woketard agenda. It's simply the cultural agenda of Western liberalism and Leftism. It's not popular outside of the West.

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Perhaps you would be interested to know that almost all of the existing Communist parties on Earth want little or nothing to do with those woke crap, and there has long been a strong socialist and Left AGAINST this divide the working class bullshit?

This is simply the latest joke out of the fake Western Left. There's a real Western Left too, but they're utterly irrelevant, and they're extremely crazy to the point where Lefties in the rest of the world want nothing whatsoever to do with them. Even the French Left is telling the wokies to take a hike!

The Western Left has never been successful at anything. They've never completed a revolution anywhere. They haven't even created progressive countries now that all Western social democratic parties are neoliberal, Left-hating, Fake Left woketards.

You want to see the REAL LEFT? Chinese Communist Party. Chavistas. Sandinistas. Cuban Communist Party. Vietnamese and Laotian Communist Parties. Eritrea. Bolivia. PT or Workers Party in Brazil. Ghaddafi. Nasser. PFLP. DFLP. Houthis. Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian Communist Parties. Polisario Front. ELN, FARC, etc. in Colombia. The Basque, Irish, and Catalan Left. The Turkish Left. The Indian Maoists.

Etc. etc.

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There is indeed now a woke neoconservatism. The entire US Democratic Party follows the foreign policy of neoconservatism. They're all neocons.

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Neoconservatism is a type of foreign policy alignment. It's left corollary is liberal interventionism. That said, many Democrats are indeed neoconservative in philosophy. And quite a few are also neoliberals on economics, which has nothing to do with liberalism. Almost all conservatives are neoliberals, for instance. Neither neoconservatism nor neoliberalism have much to do with either conservatism or liberalism per se.

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Wow, you stopped reading due to grammar (perceived or real) misuse.

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Only to write the comment. I went back and finished it. A great post.

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Mar 12, 2023·edited Mar 12, 2023

Im glad you didnt get too flustrated despite S-76's misunderestimation of his grammatical abilities. :)

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ROFLMAO. Thanks, I've gotten over my flustration now.

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TBF, gramer is very impotent, and not to be taken so litely.

A German college-friend pointed out that "correct" grammer and spelling are much more vital for non-native speakers to understand; and I guess for translatobots too.

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Thanks for the laugh.

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Stewie Griffin agrees!

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The q&a is fine as often as you feel will satisfy your paid subscribers. More often if you like.

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A brilliant piece btw, just getting to read your things recently.

"The Chinese Yuan has reportedly been steadily climbing up the charts recently of most circulated global currencies, at #5 now. If China can truly woo Saudi Arabia and Iran into joining BRICs and then slowly bring them toward more trade turnover in Yuan, then it will be the true final nail in the coffin of the US dollar supremacy, petrodollar, ‘privilege exorbitanté’, etc.

But, like I mentioned, I do think there are still many pitfalls and detours ahead, as the US / banking cabal will go down fighting."

Good - you seem to be avoiding the obvious error here where people interpret pricing in non-dollar currencies as making the slightest difference. The issue is entirely about where can one place a hot $billion worth or two in single trades. To facilitate that kind of transaction a currency one needs a huge money market, and a huge money market needs some enormous and reasonably credit worthy borrowers. To find those borrowers you need to find countries with huge twin Budget and Trade deficits. The Yuan is not going to compete with the Dollar as a reserve currency in the next 30 years. Mind the dollar could self-explode leaving a vacuum.

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With the exception of Germany the west especially the US and UK are financial parasitic Rentier extraction economies, leaching off the world. The western world is north of 800M people and are unable to supply armaments to the Cannon fodder in Ukraine. Russia is south of 150M and is able to produce more than enough. Russia is graduating more Engineers than the USA with more than double the population. China which builds destroyers for a seventh of the US cost want's their belt and road to run to Europe through the Ukraine and of course the US is as horrified by that as by Germany and Russia combining. You know, "keep the Americans in the Russians out and the Germans down"! I'm Canadian so I understand the methods the US uses to keep us as a vassal state. WHY the larger European states prostrate themselves obsiquously before the Empire always baffles me. The French were the last to resist US "culture?" and national treatment of foreign capital and they once ran their president out of the country and now the president is a Rothschild bankster and they prostrate themselves. The Germans have been taught self flagellation and self hate since WWII so I understand them better and of course they were/are an occupied country. You would think they like the Japanese would hate the people who fire bombed the defenceless women and children to horrific deaths but such is the power of indoctrination. Ultimately the "golden billion" led by the US of BS will be forced to join the world of production and give up the parasitic rent extraction but apparently millions have to die first. So sad, So sick!

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This insightful summary as answers to questions we all have is the best thing evah! Thanks so much.

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"You can’t get more credentialed than these US Army generals"

Actually, as Andrei Martyanov has been pointing out ad nauseum for years, you can. You can get a Russian general. For that matter, you can get any Russian officer who's been through the Russian military academic process, such as Andrei himself.

As he likes to say, these American generals "never won shit in their lives" and their opinions on modern war are shaped by using overwhelming air and naval power and Tomahawk missiles on Third World countries with next to zero air defenses plus modern main battle tanks against the 1950's and 1960's equivalents in countries like Iraq.against poorly trained and poorly led forces. And after they proclaim "mission accomplished", they proceed to lose the peace against insurgents with AK-47's and RPGs and IEDs.

Speaking of where we come from, my own progression started, not with 9/11 exactly, but with the ensuing Iraq war. I predicted at a site called iraqwar.com - a site which allegedly was fed information during the war from the Russian GRU - in April, 2003, that Saddam had ordered his forces to stand down and go on an insurgency. That proved to be correct.

I followed that up by learning about US neocons and Israel and their history of antipathy to Iran. I started predicting a war with Iran in 2006, and while that hasn't happened - yet - I'm still convinced it is inevitable as historically two countries with such enmity usually end up in a war.

I didn't follow the Georgian war much, but then came Ukraine, 2014. I followed that closely on sites like SouthFront and Colonel Cassad. Eventually I discovered <a href="https://www.moonofalabama.org/">Moon of Alabama</a>, the premier site for foreign policy analysis.

What helped me the most in avoiding being brainwashed by the mainstream media is my history as an anarchist. When you know the state is always wrong, it's not hard to see through the daily lies.

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Richard; it's important to realise a couple of things about Afghanistan, Iraq and onwards: They were not intended to be "won". Cheney had privatised many US Army functions to KBR, Halliburton, and they made a KILLING (pun intended) on maintaining the Occupations. In normal time, even the US military would baulk at spending $50m dollars on a convoy of empty trucks to "Confuse the enemy as to serious movements". That's just free money. Multiply that to 'every week', and often several times a week, and that's a LOT of free money. Then there was KP, importing KFC and McD's at ludicrous mark-up rates, instead of semi-decent slop with actual nutrients cooked by the Army itself at a tiny fraction of the cost.

Haven't even mentioned any combat profits of the MIC.

The very LAST thing these grifters wanted was to actually bloody WIN. Which actually would have been very easy in both theatres. Spend 10% of the Military costs investing in local domestic cooperatives production, find and support the local ACTUAL democrats (The ones who can't be bought - the ones the US usually eventually assassinates), and genuinely behave like a LIBERATING force, rather than an occupying force (See Mao's otherwise silly red Book for details), and the troops would have been "Home for Xmas". It's not rocket science, however rocket science is very profitable. Unlike schools, free healthcare, or decent public pensions.

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Far Left and far right bring all kinds of baggage, but they also bring enough scepticism of the media that they can see the unsaid. They are sometimes the only places to go for insights.

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Excellent work my friend.

My own awakening occurred as a “Door Kicker” in the employ of a major (once) European Nation during the forever wars ... Afghanistan & Iraq ... by then I was not a young man ... I had seen the Balkans & Kosovo & already had my doubts.

What happened after 9/11 & how we were deployed & utilised confirmed my fears.

Your assessments are on point & I have read much of the same material as you did as I followed the events unfolding in Libya & Syria.

Keep up the good work all the best wishes from me quartered safe out here.

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I agree with your comments about the US / UK strategy to keep Germany and Russia apart. It’s a classic imperial divide and rule strategy.

The complication, of course, is that China is now newly powerful and effectively allied with Russia. In previous wars of the last century, China did not matter so much. The China Russia friendship feels a more problematic alliance in today’s world than Germany and Russia. It has also intensified as a result of American behaviour towards both countries. Without the Ukraine conflict it is hard to see that it would have developed so quickly. Especially given that Russia’s elite instincts since Peter The Great have been to westernize.

I guess though that if one were to run the scenarios, the people who control US foreign policy see a conflict of some form with China as inevitable. In their minds, it was worth a shot at destabilizing Russia and hoping to put her back into her 90s vassal status under Yeltsin first. That seems to have failed but the US still achieves continued hegemony over Europe, which is not a bad second best outcome. In their minds. But I think they are wrong. They have unleashed forces that will be very hard to control. Europe will eventually also wake up.

As someone who studied history I was used to the open essay type of traditional exam question. I can imagine that a classic exam question of the future about this conflict might be: “Destroying the Nordstream pipeline was the principal objective of America’s policy in Ukraine from 2014 to 2022, not the sideshow that it was often presented as at the time.” Discuss.

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I wonder who pays Wagner. The DPR? The Russian MoD? After all, it's a private company. Where comes the salary of the mercenaries from? Also, does Wagner buy the iskanders, etc.? Or are they 'gifts' from the MoD?

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Great stuff. Look at my profile to see who I am. Can't afford to contribute at the moment (unon dues, strikes etc) Based in Bristol in England (NOT the United Kingdom! ) Down with Ukania!

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One question I have about force composition that you may be able to answer, or may at least have light to shed, is the number, role, and legal, political, and cultural position of mercenary corps in Russia. (I chose the term mercenary corps to try to be as agnostic as possible about what those organizations actually are. If I've chosen poorly, I apologize. I'm aware PMC is more commonly used, but I'm under a possibly false impression that calling an organization a PMC is to make a specific legal claim about its status and purpose.)

One relatively common refrain I've heard from various pro-Western sources is that the existence and extensive use of mercenary corps in the SMO, Wagner being only the most obvious example, is proof of corruption, or militarily disadvantageous due to organizational duplication, or driven by political infighting with PMCs being to Russian politicians what NGOs are to American ones - a source of both cultural clout and money laundering. Some of this doesn't pass the sniff test: integrated mercenary corps are long-standing parts of various militaries (Légion étrangère anyone?) and nobody's arguing that the US military is secretly just about to fall apart because USG employs PMCs to guard CIA assets.

However, it's also clear that, despite their apparent illegality under Russian law (and I stress apparent! I'm no Russian legal scholar, and the sources I've heard that from aren't exactly sympathetic), PMCs proliferate pretty heavily in Russia, with clear lines of patronage from various political personalities. Shoigu has his very own, for instance.

As someone much more informed than I am regarding Russian politics, culture, and possibly legal structure, maybe you can explain it in a way that isn't the infantile "Russia has PMCs, therefore Russia is politically fragmented and corrupt, therefore Russia is losing," as if every military that ever won a war didn't have problems and internal contradictions.

(I mean, come on, Admiral King absolutely hated the Washington bureau circle and the entire idea of ABDA, and if you've heard of BUSHIPS' handling of the Mk14 torpedo, you have a story of bureaucratic intransigence, incompetence, and corruption much worse than anything that's come out of Russia since Putin was first elected, yet the Allies still prevailed over the Japanese.)

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I fully understand your position on credentials and background. Anonymity and privacy is a right.

BUT: Consider being presented by a YouTube panel of SMO experts with just pictures of:

Larry Johnson

Andrei Martyanov

The Saiker (Andrei Revsky)

Brian Berlitic

Col. McGregor

Gilbert Doctorow

Ray McGovern

Scott Ritter

It is their professional background and life experience that draws us to their analysis. That is what initially elevated the credibility of them all.

We don’t need or want your picture. I wish we didn’t have theirs! ;)

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How do you write all this?! That’s amazing!

I’m not sure if you’re Russian but I’ve noticed that Russians (and Serbians) tend to really understand what is going on and ready to speak out of it while the large majority of people in the west are ignoramuses (except for a select few and when they do they’re great)

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I somewhat disagree on the balance of weapons usage. It does seem negotiated. In trench warfare, I would expect napalm and cluster bombs, especially downward bursting cluster bombs. to be most effective. I understand not using napalm (illegal), but Turkey was the first to offer Ukraine cluster munitions, which I expect is because Russia wants to use them. And now glide bomb to glide bomb seems planned, as does Armadas vs. Leopards. There was Z visiting Bakmut at the same time as a Russian official. (forget name). Many prisoner swaps, and what happened with the entire internal ministry of Ukraine going down in a helicopter crash? The next escalation is who sets off the false flag and when do the Russians shut or shoot down military satellites, then the new mini-nukes and mini-neutron bombs the US has used previously (G. Duff/ VT).

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deletedMar 12, 2023·edited Mar 12, 2023
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I had this disagreement with the Saker back in 2014. In the very early 60s I took a book out from the library featuring US weapons including "the atomic canon" that was shown with a mushroom cloud in the distance. Gordon Duff (Veteran's Today) confirmed tactical nukes were developed then in his nuclear educational series, and noted that tactical weapons have evolved enormously over the past 60 years so they do not necessarily leave radiation traces. I believe him. If you follow neutron bombs, the US military considers them quite useful because everyone is dead in the zone, but there is little collateral damage outside, and I don't think they leave the same kind of radiation fission does. I have heard neutron bombs were used by the US in Iraq at the airport. Small tactical nukes don't necessarily set off seismographs. You are thinking big nukes and enhanced radiation bombs (cobalt). You are talking 1979 as an example? You are right about the double light pulse though. That is one of the ways Gordon Duff and Jeff Smith identified nukes also.

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