646 Comments
deletedJun 2
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

Well, when you put it like that

Expand full comment
deletedJun 2
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

Lt. General Jing Jien-feng is quoted in "Global Times" as saying something to that effect in Singapore after he met w/ Lloyd Austin

Smoked Austin's eyebrows

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202406/1313443.shtml

Expand full comment

China clearly and concisely - our army will stand side by side with Russia

Source: | Official representative of the Ministry of Defense of the People's Republic of China Wu Qian..

"The Chinese army is ready, together with the Russian army, to defend justice in the world" - the Chinese Ministry of Defense declared very clearly at the moment. Wu Qian, the official representative of the Ministry of Defense of the People's Republic of China, said this with an emphasis on a clear message to the increasingly furious representatives of the NATO alliance. It is no coincidence that the statement comes at a time when the West is increasingly considering attacking the territory of the Russian Federation.

According to http://eadaily.com, "The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) is ready to strengthen strategic ties with the Russian armed forces and cooperate with them in the defense of international justice. Wu Qian, the official representative of the Ministry of Defense of the People's Republic of China, said this at a briefing, RIA Novosti reports.

No one will pick Moscow's nose!

"The Chinese armed forces are ready to cooperate with the Russian military to fully implement the important consensus reached by the heads of the two states in order to further strengthen strategic communication and coordination, deepen mutual trust in the military sphere, and jointly implement the Global Security Initiative. Wu Qian said.

According to a Chinese military department official, PLA military personnel are ready to "advocate international justice and impartiality" together with their Russian counterparts, as well as make every effort to ensure international and regional security.

Expand full comment
founding

It appears Ukraine's ability to produce electricity is just about gone, most everything will need to be imported from the EU moving forward?

Expand full comment

Remember, it was not that long ago that Ursula the lyin' queen was boasting about how much electricity the EU was going to import from Ukraine.

Expand full comment
deletedJun 2
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

That might not be a lie. They said "GDP", not "GDP PPP". GDP is a fake metric, a Ponzi scheme measurement where printing money or increasing debt increases your GDP. Given the billions shoveled into the Kiev regime by the US and its vassals it could well be that the GDP in 2024 really has grown by 3.8%.

Expand full comment

Pump in enough Yankee dollars and they might reach that, without any economic activity whatsoever.

Expand full comment
deletedJun 5
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

We've been hearing about the imminent collapse of the dollar since before I was a kitten.

Expand full comment
deletedJun 5
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

Russia hit a massive underground LNG storage facility in western Ukraine, too, a repository from which Poland & Germany drew a percentage of its LNG allotment. Europe losing its juice.

Expand full comment

ooooooh - that must have been one heck of a fireball!!!!! :-)

Expand full comment

Including electricity. Now is the perfect time for the IMF and the Little Dictator Zelinsky to mandate the use of bitcoin in Ukraine.

Expand full comment

LOL! great idea-- yup 🤣🤣

Expand full comment

Absolutely nobody who actually matters cares.

Ukraine is just a platform from which to launch PGMs at Russia.

Whether it has electricity is irrelevant.

And thanks to the geniuses in the Kremlin, who basically refuses to seriously lift a finger for two years to move the front line as far West as possible, the real war is now starting at their border.

Precisely what the SMO was supposed to prevent...

Expand full comment

I guess you dont get the move. Let them hit russia in order to hit back real bad. What matters is the long term plan where Nato will remained as the aggressor and flipflop the whole narrative.

Expand full comment

I have in fact considered that.

The Kharkov "offensive" may have been such a bait. What happened:

1) Limited incursion with very small forces, capture some villages

2) Ukraine sends 50K there with lots of equipment

3) The equipment is systematically destroyed while Russia suffers essentially no losses because all its artillery is on the other side of the border

4) Thus Ukraine faces a choice -- be very quickly attrited to nothing in this trap, or allow Kharkov to be sieged.

5) NATO starts open strikes on Russia in order to prevent that

6) Russia can hit back.

The problem is that this is giving way too much to the Kremlin for planning more than two moves ahead, something that there is absolutely no evidence they are capable of based on their performance all these years.

And, most importantly, I am not seeing Russia hitting back once it was openly attacked, which is already ongoing for 36 hours.

Expand full comment

" And, most importantly, I am not seeing Russia hitting back once it was openly attacked, which is already ongoing for 36 hours."

Here is the BIG FALLACY .... you - like everyone else participating in this sort of game - are guessing based on what you "see" - made visible on purpose or surfacing through the cracks - which is but a minuscule part of THE BIG PICTURE.

It's all guessing, no matter what amount of information/ computer systems/ reconnaissance capabilities you have. Operating based on visibility and TRUTH is the ONLY option available and "visibility" has never been higher on any level, SO those operating closest to THE TRUTH wil EVENTUALLY be "victorious" no matter how long it takes and how much it "costs' but one thing is sure ....

THE WAY THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE ONLY - THE ONE AND ONLY INCARNATION OF GOD ALMIGHTY AND SHEPHERD AND SAVIOUR THE LORD JESUS CHRIST AND THE HOLY SPIRIT FOREVER AND EVER - AMEN HALLELU-YAH - SOLI DEO GLORIA!

Expand full comment

I almost gave your comment a 'like', until I got to the last paragraph when the psycho babble started.

Expand full comment
Jun 2·edited Jun 2

Actually you DID - I have notification prove - before you changed your mind ....

THE TRUTH doesn't care about "likes" as THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN "likes" always the latest FAD - read LIE - in "town" ... since THE SERPENT, EVE AND ADAM IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN ... and here we are thousands of years later and man's mind is more blinded than ever ... exactly as PROPHESIED .... and THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN - ALL disciples letting their mind being locked up in PLATO'S MENTAL PRISON/LIE CAVE - is going to continue to LIE till the very END and EVE is going to encourage the promotion of THE LIE pretending to "know to discern between `good and evil`" ... HELL IS WAITING FOR ALL THOSE REFUSING THE OFFER OF SALVATION!

Expand full comment

The great moron has absolutely no interest in the truth. He merely types the talking points delivered to his cubicle.

Expand full comment

You are harming yourself considering others "morons", we are all "morons" in the eyes of GOD ALMIGHTY and admitting it is the ONLY way out of the madness. It's hard I know but there is NO ALTERNATIVE!

1 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Matt 7, 1-5

7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

Matt 7, 7-8

15 “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

Matt 7, 15-20

SOLI DEO GLORIA!

Expand full comment

Check back in a couple of days. Russia does not ignore assaults on the motherland. "no evidence they are capable of based on their performance all these years." Where is that coming from. or is it just a coping vent ?

Expand full comment
Jun 3·edited Jun 3

1) It has definitely ignored them for the last 60+ hours. Including the first ATACMS on Belgorod today

2) Should we understand it that Crimea is not pat of the "motherland" given that it has been under ever escalating attacks for nearly a year now?

3) Regardind the past performance of the Kremlin -- do you realize that when Putin took power on the last day of 1999, Ukraine was not a security issue for Russia, Banderites were a fringe minority, everyone spoke Russian, etc.? Under whose watch was it transformed into what it is inow?

Expand full comment

You are either a troll or incapable of seeing that Russia is decisively winning this proxy war following their own successful strategy.

Emotional escalation does not serve Russia.

Drawing AmeriNATO into close proximity to near the Russian border & existing line of contact benefits Russia and is problematic for AmeriNATO.

Russia is going to occupy all or most of Ukraine by the time this is over.

Why fight & destroy right across Ukraine? Then have to rebuild all of it.

Russia does not want or plan to fight in Kharkov, Dnipro, Odessa, Kiev or Zaporizhia- but does plan to absorb these cities & regions into the Russian Federation.

To do this with minimum damage Russia needs to destroy the AmeriNATO/Ukro military where they are now.

Which they are very successfully doing.

But of course your emotions & exceptionalism know better than the Russians!

Expand full comment

Please. If Russia wants to hit, it will do so, with justification to be manufactured as convenient at the moment.

Expand full comment

Something that really should have been done 2 years ago.

Expand full comment

Nobody in Kiev or Brussels cares.

Expand full comment

The reason we are never alone is due to the fact governments are controlled by Schizophrenics. It's really that simple!

Expand full comment

Nope, not Schizophrenics, Psychopaths.

Although once they gain political power they are more correctly known as Pathocrats.

You should check out Harrison Koehli's Substack "Political Ponerology"

https://ponerology.substack.com/

His jumping off point is the book of the same name by the Polish psychologist Andrew M. Lobaczewski. It describes the descent into evil and incompetence that happens when psychopaths and other people of abnormal psychology are allowed to obtain power.

Expand full comment

Nope. Power mad Schizophrenics, Psychopaths, Sociopaths, Lions, Tigers, and Bears. Oh, my!

Expand full comment

I asked my local representative to publish their psychopath test after they'd 'diagnosed' Putin as a psychopathic mass murder in a private letter to me, as reason to not sign a Stop The War petition at that time signed by a dozen or so Labour MPs.

I based my request on the insights given to us in Lobaczewski's "Political Ponerology" and many other similar resources, as campaigning tool to compare themselves to other candidates who would refuse.

Still waiting for a reply.

Expand full comment

Have you heard of "The Goldwater Rule"? Basically, it states that psychiatrists and psychologists may not offer a diagnosis of someone they have never met. It came about after a magazine surveyed a bunch of psychiatrists about the psychological state of Barry Goldwater who ran for president in 1964.

It's a solid rule and I don't see why it shouldn't apply to Putin as well.

Expand full comment

ANYONE who takes advice from the gospel of THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN/ MAKE BELIEVE/ MONEY/ HALF-TRUTHS/ LIES no matter how clever it sounds _ and it will always sound very clever (in order to deceive, most of the time "inadvertently") ... is operating out of PLATO'S MENTAL PRISON CAVE created by the same gospel of DECEPTION!

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Matt 7, 1-4

*****************************

16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. Matt 7, 16-20

THE WAY THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE ONLY - THE ONE AND ONLY INCARNATION OF GOD ALMIGHTY AND SHEPHERD AND SAVIOUR THE LORD JESUS CHRIST AND THE HOLY SPIRIT FOREVER AND EVER - AMEN HALLELU-YAH - SOLI DEO GLORIA!

Expand full comment

Buh-but-but the rules-based-international-order--!!

It accords the hegemon the right to diagnose from afar, not to mention the redoubtable insight

Expand full comment

I'd class them more as Sociopaths than Psychopaths.

Expand full comment

You can’t print more people. Ukraine suspended elections. Biden regime trying to throw Trump in jail. EU censoring as much as possible and attacking citizens for being against rapefugees. Such sacred beautiful democracy!

Expand full comment

"You can’t print more people."

Sure you can. Doesn't necessarily change the war's outcome. But that could change, too.

During the Viet Nam war all of North Viet Nam ceased to exist with each casualty report. That many North Vietnamese died.

The Pentagon is doing pulling the same crap with Ukraine. For every Ukrainian soldier killed ten mercenaries (US and the boots of its vassal state) show up inside Ukraine.

The last video I saw showed a French Legionnaire lying dead on the ground, wearing a Velcro Ukrainian flag, along with a French flag on their uniform. His head rather neatly blown off.

Expand full comment
Jun 2·edited Jun 2

So it's just the drip drip drip of the final collapse of Ukraine. Waiting for the mass surrenders to begin. That's the bellwether of the end. Morale has to be terrible on the Ukrainian side at this point. What good news have they heard lately?

All the brinkmanship by the West can't be interpreted in any other way but the collapse is near. Otherwise, why bother? They're hoping to negotiate their way out of this.

Expand full comment

They need an off-ramp for sure. Admitting humiliating defeat is not something they are capable off.

And so they have put themselves in this situation where the brain knows it’s over but the body wants to keep going.

Expand full comment
Jun 2·edited Jun 2

"They need an off-ramp for sure. Admitting humiliating defeat is not something they are capable off."

I didn't see any humiliation as Afghans were falling to their deaths from the wheel wells of C-5 Galaxies fleeing the country.

Expand full comment

True, but the level of political investment in Ukraine is unprecedented. EU and NATO have made it their number one objective to prevent Russian victory.

Expand full comment

"EU and NATO have made it their number one objective to prevent Russian victory."

Seems so. Yes, but at what cost?

Expand full comment

The cost associated with their "investment" is commonly referred to as "until the last Ukrainian". It's colossal. I'm not just talking about manpower losses, but split families, widows. None of that is concerning our EU leaders.

In addition to that we have irrepairable, in the short term at least, damage to power generators and infrastructure. The damage is in hundreds of billions.

One has to wonder, at what point will the cost of repairing Ukraine outweight the potential benefits. I think eventually EU will conclude, that they are better off letting Russia deal with the consequences of the damage as it will further require massive investments from Russia.

I'm particularly curious what would happen to Ukraine's external debt if Russia absorbed entire Ukraine (unlikely I think)? Would EU transfer the debt onto new landlord (Russia) and use it as an excuse never to return frozen Russian assets? Just a food for thought.

Expand full comment

Russia is going to take all of Ukraine. They have to.

Russia has no choice in the matter. The United States lies (see Minsk II). Zelinsky is now an illegitimate leader. Neither can be trusted. So, with whom is Russia supposed to negotiate a meaningful peace with -- a liar or a liar, a professional grifter and moocher, and a despot? Not much of a choice.

If Russia does not take all of the Ukraine the United States will declare victory, having moved NATO borders that much closer to Russia. Russia will never hear the end of it. The proxy war will never end.

If Russia takes all of Ukraine, then all that aid, all those loans, all that "investment" will be lost. Who is the United States, its vassal states, and companies like Blackrock, supposed to see about getting their money back? Who are they supposed to collect from? Not Russia. Russia will demand the immediate return of their seized assets, $350-billion dollars, plus interest. And even then, Russia would be completely justified with telling the West to "Buzz off."

The human cost is irrelevant.

Over 6 million refugees are reported as having fled Ukraine, and are recorded in places all across Europe. An estimated 8 million others had been displaced within the country by late May 2022. " Thousands of these refugees are Ukrainian men, of military age.

Over 1-million Ukrainian refugees have emigrated to Russia.

Some estimates of all those who have fled Ukraine since the start of the SMO amount to 40-percent of the population of Ukraine. Imagine if the United States lost 40-percent of its population. Ukraine is a failed state. Always was.

Expand full comment
Jun 2·edited Jun 2

"One has to wonder, at what point will the cost of repairing Ukraine outweight the potential benefits. " (BearInMind)

This IS NEVER the calculus of war. It is always HUBRIS instigated/propagated on different levels .... eventually leading to this. VVP "knows" this and SEEMS to have no intention of crossing THE RED LINE of THE LIE getting the better of him. It is always "some elite" that insinuates that war is better than peace in order to ....... VVP SEEMS to have a sense of "peace is better than war, but if you want to fight over it I put all my chips in".

THE WAY THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE ONLY - THE ONE AND ONLY INCARNATION OF GOD ALMIGHTY AND SHEPHERD AND SAVIOUR THE LORD JESUS CHRIST AND THE HOLY SPIRIT FOREVER AND EVER - AMEN HALLELU-YAH - SOLI DEO GLORIA!

Expand full comment

Sunk-Cost knows neither shame nor humiliation

Expand full comment

What we really need are the nukes to start flying just before the election. Maybe even on the same day as the election. I am not hastening the end. I'm just asking the devil to catch up.

Expand full comment
Jun 2Liked by Simplicius

curious - how real are the rumors (?) of attack on US carrier ship by Ansarullah? some RU bloggers write of them 'suddenly finding' some tech in desert lands as asymmetric responses to latest NATO escalations..

Expand full comment
author

One thing's for sure is that is definitely one of the asymmetric escalatory measures Russia could take if it really wants to show the West its red lines. Providing Houthis with an ability to hit U.S. ships would be game over for the U.S. empire and is likely one of the reasons Biden's admin is terrified.

As for the rumors, I've been following them also and so far it's claimed that the Eisenhower commander showed videos of the ship being fine afterwards, while other rumors claim a plane on the deck was hit/destroyed and they're trying to cover it up.

There's no telling for now though.

Expand full comment

The Eisenhower is as lumberingly large a non-nimble target as Swedish Blimps--er, AWACS--will be over Ukraine's skies

Expand full comment

True enough, but carriers don't generally travel alone, they have a defensive shield composed of missile cruisers and frigates. You'd have to launch a pretty big swarm for anything significant to get through.

Expand full comment

Unless you didn't see what's coming in time to (try) stop it.

Expand full comment

So, you sink the shield.

Doesn't really matter. With the arrival of Kinzhal missiles "Time to target" has decreased significantly.

Expand full comment

True, but if you do it is devastating.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

The red team (Iran) sunk the blue fleet, including the aircraft carrier, in this US war game. That was before the advent of cheap drones too. And Iran has since demonstrated against Israel that a bunch of cheap drones makes a very effective screen for the more powerful missiles.

Expand full comment

.... and NO computer game plan is going to resemble REALITY!

Expand full comment

You obviously never played Harpoon.

Expand full comment

Dang this guy is right. Pack up the war games, training exercises and simulations guess they're all obsolete now.

Expand full comment

The poseidon changes all that. No swarm needed.

Expand full comment

To paraphrase Stalin, how many Poseidons does Ansar Allah have?

Expand full comment

It seems logical but would the Russians risk their relationship with RSA and UAE? It would certainly be a bold move.

Expand full comment

I could be wrong but I don't believe the Houthis are currently in conflict with either KSA or UAE.

Expand full comment

No they aren't, but the country is split 3 ways. Also the peace agreement with KSA is still languishing. Things could easily blow up with a little help from our friends (USUK).

Expand full comment

Saudi scum are still attacking Yemeni locations.

Expand full comment
Jun 2·edited Jun 2

"Rebel scum!" Saw a line, too close to a Star Wars script, to avoid. Sorry.

Expand full comment

That’s a great point about Russia providing aid to the Houthis. Was just mentioning in another comment how badly this news about the EWS Radar & Permission to attack has rattled me. I suppose another event that could rattle NATO would be for a country like Turkey to walk away. Not saying that’s going to happen but perhaps if a nation like Turkey fears the worst (Nuke Armageddon) might motivate them to take unprecedented action.

The people you have written about scare me Simp. Like Russia, I fear this is every bit as existential to them too. It’s also quite clear the mega elites are so far gone (out of touch) they have become dangerous. That is confirmed by the system of government they lord over. I think it was in “Your Last Dance of Vampire Ball” that you explained how this happened. It makes a lot sense of sense. You read about Xi living his life in a cave. Contrast that to an elite in in the West. There’s no one near power even close to having that kind of adversity in their lives.

I think Russia needs to shock them somehow. I understand it’s easier said than done and extremely risky. But this war has been over long ago and yet they continue to fight it. Another sign just how existential it really happens to be.

Expand full comment

Turkey is building the new artillery shell factory in Mesquite, Texas. Turkey and Erdoğan work for their own narrow interests. They still service Israel, despite all their bluster and the genocide going on in Palestine. Erdoğan's son-in-law owns the shipping company that sends oil from Ceyhan Turkey to Haifa Israel. They sold a large number of drones to Ukraine until the Bayraktar drones no longer worked. The Erdoğan family owns the Bayraktar drone factory.,

Erdoğan is strictly bad news. Russia saved his butt in June 2016 when the US sponsored a coup attempt and Russia warned him just in time. A normal leader would have gratitude, but Erdoğan is some sort of psychopath. The strategic problem for Turkey is that the US has the Gulenist movement as the alternative to Erdoğan, but an optimist can hope that problem is going away. Aside from 100,000 Gulenists being arrested in 2016, the Ukraine serves as a wake-up call. Some Turks are saying they don't want to be the next Ukraine.

Expand full comment

Good-paying jobs for hardworking Americans--err, Turks--@ the shell factory in Mesquite, Texas--!

Expand full comment

And where, precisely, are the raw materials sourced for these "American made" metal shells packed with explosives?

Expand full comment

"Russia saved his butt in June 2016 when the US sponsored a coup attempt and Russia warned him just in time. A normal leader would have gratitude, but Erdoğan is some sort of psychopath"

Once you buy in to the my God is greater than your God answer to all questions, then you must accept that your God persuaded Putin to save you.

Religion is never tempered by rationality nor skepticism.

Expand full comment

See here for details...

https://x.com/alealamiah/status/1796952904705736946

Expand full comment

That video is not conclusive proof. Poor quality and no easy identification of what ship it is. But I hope it's genuine.

Expand full comment

That's the Bonhomme Richard that caught fire in port in 2020.

Doesn't even look like the Eisenhower.

Expand full comment

LOL. You might have nailed it.

Expand full comment

That's old footage from 7/13/2020... Chip

Expand full comment

Are there two Chips? I only saw one.

Expand full comment

Well Russia could supply Ansarillah with a few export version Oniks antiship missiles. Considering the ties being forged between Islamic nations in the Middle East region, logistics would not be difficult Russia to Iran through Saudi Arabia to Yemen. It must be considered, the Saudis were only involved in a civil war in Yemen, but Yemen is unified on its defiance of the west in support of the Palestinians.

If there is to be a major escalation against Yemen, air strikes alone will be useless against a nation that has endured the same for the past 10 years. So boots on the ground would be the only option against a country as mountainous as Afghanistan that would not be isolated in a region that is hypocritically "friendly" to the west. So it would probably make Afghanistan look like a cake walk. There are all bad options for the west, as is, they are living in a glass house throwing stones and displaying bluster when they should be more Macavalian.

Expand full comment

Recall 2006 when Hezbollah hit that zioscum Arleigh Burke destroyer. If memory serves me correctly, it was a Chinese manufactured Silkworm AS missile that made it to target. Pretty low tech those years. I'm sure there's far better gear itching for targets.

Expand full comment

I've seen two photos claiming to be the Eisenhower on fire. One was an obvious AI graphic with the superstructure smack in the middle of the ship...lol, the other was a photo of the Bonhomme Richard which caught fire in port back in 2020.

I suspect the Eisenhower was hit but sustained only minor damage. The fake news and photos are so ridiculous they seem like a psyop to discredit the idea that the ship was hit at all, which of course is super embarrassing if it did happen.

Whenever some sketchy website or the MSM offers up a photo of some alleged event I try to run it down, and about half the time it's fake. Best one so far was when Ansar Allah hit a tanker and they couldn't get a photo, so they ran one of a bulk carrier instead. That was MSM, but I forget who. I don't document any of this. What's the point? People will believe what they want to believe.

Expand full comment
Jun 2·edited Jun 2

There's a Biden Administration? I thought George Soros' son, Alexander, had taken over.

The only thing "Sleepy" Joe Biden is terrified of is the White House running out of ice cream.

Time to reactivate some World War II battleships. [sarcasm]

I recently saw pictures and video of the USS New Jersey in drydock at a Philadelphia shipyard. My God! The treasure this country has spent on war.

Expand full comment

"a video which I won’t post showing a Russian scuba diver being eliminated by Ukrainian drones"

Simplicius, we want you to be as neutral as possible. So when you post those ukrop losses, also post the Russian losses. Then we can clearly observe how Russians and ukrops perform in battlefield.

Expand full comment

Did you stop to think it might not be about that? It might be horribly gruesome? Think

Expand full comment

The West/NATO keeps making these tough guy moves under the apparent notion that the Russian can't counter. We can put weapons in Ukraine, nya nya nya nya nya watcha gonna do about it?

Hmmm. Maybe give anti-ship missiles to Iran, the Houthis, Hezbollah could use some shiny toys.

Hell of a brain trust in London/DC/Brussels. Totally fooked.

Expand full comment

Ukraine is a battle, U.S. Hegemony is the war. And Russia is winning both. Outside observers, with no skin in the game, can render whatever theory they can muster, but that is my 1913 U.S. Federal Reserve Note's worth.

Expand full comment

That is very well said, Kam.

Expand full comment

The USS Eisenhower is old, in service since 1977. In late 2023, when both the USS Gerald Ford (in service since 2017) and the USS Eisenhower were in the Mideast, someone noted that the USS Eisenhower could be sacrificed intentionally - but not the USS Ford, and that it would be a "tell" if the USS Eisenhower were to be put in harm's way as a "tripwire."

Expand full comment

Apparently this video was taken 2 months prior or something.

Expand full comment

A few more hits like that , and they start running just like from Afghanistan . They can only fight with other countries army .

Expand full comment

There are some things that just don't make sense to me, like why doesn't Iran, let alone Russia, provide air defense missiles--state of the art shoulder-fired and SAMs--to Hezbollah, Syria and the Houthis? It just baffles me. Their stuff is not far behind the Russian's and helicopters are sitting ducks for that stuff. Low flying fighter aircraft are vulnerable too.

Expand full comment

Of course they do. Where better to test your battle gear than in combat? You can bet that Hezbollah and Houti have an assortment of exotic systems to try out, donated by Russia, China, north Korea, Iran etc. It seems as though Houti and Hezbollah are clearint out their older stocks first.

Expand full comment

The Palestinians have SAMS, I watched a video y'day where they targetted and appeared to hit a ZioNAZI chopper.

As for Hezbollah, they have them for sure, but are holding back for the big event.

Expand full comment

Oh, they do give them some of that, but you never give your allies your best stuff, far too dangerous.

Do you remember that bit in David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia"? The British gave the anti-Turkish Arabs gold, small arms, ammunition and explosives but not artillery and certainly not aircraft. That would have made them independent.

Expand full comment

I'm not sure the explanations wash. I don't see manned aircraft--helicopters or low flying fighter planes--getting knocked out of the sky. The air strikes are devastating. Why, if they've got this stuff, aren't they using it effectively? Still don't understand it.

Expand full comment

Old footage from 2020...

Expand full comment

Plenty could be achieved by Russia simply by transferring data and software, no weapons or hardware upgrades needed.

Expand full comment

"Thus, to put pressure on Biden, Zelensky went a bit rogue"

Well know soon enough. If he is attacking OTH radar in spite of US demands he is a dead man walking

Expand full comment
Jun 2·edited Jun 2

The only problem I see with this scenario is that Z's forces do not have the expertise to operate the sophisticated equipment required to deliver the missiles - so it would be virtually impossible for them to go rogue in this area. However, the point that Simplicius makes about the covert assistance of the CIA in this matter bears some consideration. As these facilities are stationery, I would think that Z already has the capability to target them from existing ISR data. And if the missile launchers are operated by American mercs under orders of Z's forces, then I suppose it would be possible (though I question that said mercs would actually be under his orders, but rather operating more covertly). At any rate, the message delivered by these strikes is pretty clear - we see you and we can reach you.

Interesting times.

Expand full comment

I doubt Zelinsky even gets to choose his own pyjamas let alone call the shots with any actual military operations.

Expand full comment

Targeting can only be done by the US providing the coordinates. Then they playing a manipulating game , it is not us maybe the rouge CIA. The typical leapfrogging bs. and until the Russians put they foot down it will continue . Time to grow some balls and take out all the lurking targeting drones . Let the manipulators think about an escalation . How would that effect the moral of the Ukrainians , if they see that the big brother is forced to chicken out ? Strategic patience is important , but so is the demonstration of the bony hammer of the fist .

Expand full comment

One thing I am not clear on is the extent to which longer range weapons rely on integrated western systems and are operated by western military personnel. For example does the use of ATCMs require AWACs or satellite guidance. It is one thing to say a Ukrainian presses a button on a dashboard somewhere, but if that missile cannot be targetted or guided withot NATO [volunteer??] forces then really that is a NATO missile. If I have got this right then this is really behind the "ban". In fact Ukraine simply cannot use these weapons and so what we are really seeing is NATO publically stating its own red lines. Which begs the question of how an early warning radar came to be hit and with what. However I think Russia's strong response to the threat of such weapons was grounded in the reality that Russia was not going to allow NATO to pretend these were Ukrainian strikes and that if NATO wants war then this is the way to get it.

Expand full comment

I understand that ATACMS requires satellite guidance.

It should be obvious by now that Russia, not the West, is loathe to escalate and that all its red lines are so much bluster.

Expand full comment

I would underline Victor's point that an attack on the OTH radar site requires NATO experts from start to finish, except for this: A Russian commentator wrote that the recovered fragments are believed to have come from a particular model of short-range drone. If that's correct, then the radar was hit by a small team of infiltrators.

Expand full comment

Common tactic of the U.S.: the CIA collaborates on extracurricular escalatory /projects/ of which the Executive Branch knows nothing--spitballin' to see what the reaction will be. The better the /plausible deniability/ that way.

Expand full comment
Jun 2·edited Jun 2

It's not an OTH radar, it is a ballistic missile one. Although the OTH radar in Mordovia was attacked too, back in April.

And it isn't Zelensky attacking it, NATO is.

Here is the much more realistic interpretation:

1) The US tested Russian resolve by attacking the early warning radar.

2) The Russian resolve was found lacking once again

3) The US had its hands untied to being direct attacks into Russia.

Expand full comment

Again ... your comments reveal more about your heart than REALITY. ANYONE WANTING "something" beyond GOD ALMIGHTY will fall into this FALLACY. GOD ALMIGHTY'S CREATION is so vast and offers so many possibilities that for THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN/ MONEY/ HUBRIS/ POWER/ HALF-TRUTHS/ LIES .... it will always be easy to trap a mind into the gospel of DECEPTION.

Wanting revenge is one of those "angles" THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN is going to employ. Being drawn into the MADNESS OF TIT FOR TAT is the worst!

GOD ALMIGHTY IS MUCH BIGGER THAN ANY MIND CAN EVEN IMAGINE!

SOLI DEO GLORIA!

Expand full comment

There is a biblical quote to not over-saturated the name of God in a way that undermines His greatness. May He forgive your unintentional blasphemy. Maybe not.

Expand full comment

GOD ALMIGHTY CANNOT BE PRAISED AND GLORIFIED ENOUGH - as anyone in FAITH will be aware of - only anyone using GOD ALMIGHTY'S NAME in vanity is condemning himself - as GOD ALMIGHTY will never refuse any shattered and repenting HEART.

THE LORD JESUS CHRIST HAS TAKEN UPON HIMSELF ALL SINS OF THE WHOLE WORLD (the place where SATAN resides for his disobedience) FOR ETERNITY - but only those accepting HIS OFFER OF SALVATION - under the condition of taking up one's own cross and follow HIS FOOTSTEPS - will receive it.

THE WAY THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE ONLY - THE ONE AND ONLY INCARNATION OF GOD ALMIGHTY AND SHEPHERD AND SAVIOUR THE LORD JESUS CHRIST AND THE HOLY SPIRIT FOREVER AND EVER - AMEN HALLELU-YAH - SOLI DEO GLORIA!

Expand full comment

"Tatagllia is a pimp." I'm sure Zelensky did not know about OTH radars until they were attacked.

Expand full comment

If I was to guess, attack on radars is a mix of Budanov and British sauce.

Expand full comment

NATO-Stans all agree to chip in some attacks across the Russian border with their weapons, operated by their guys, in unison and officially, not just “covertly”. France openly sends some not-dead-yet French soldiers to replace the dead ones. This could lead to WW-3.

OK, got it. Rainbow NATO “stands” united against Russia.

Russia talks with Central Asian Stans, who also happen to have a CSTO thing that’s kinda’ like NATO, and Russia negotiates with Taliban to upgrade their status and see if any Afghans want to get PAID to fight NATO, and have the upper hand this time, and China says “We’re with Russia militarily”.

Details here:

Anti-Russian Coalition Expands | Russians Entered The Vovchansk Citadel. Military Summary 2024.05.31 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_6erm2iIo8

The Heat | CSTO Enters The Game | Afghan Recruiting Traffic. Military Summary And Analysis 2024.5.31 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RncKjp9UzRc

The Heat | Crazy Damage To Energy Infrastructure | Breakthrough To Sokil. Military Summary 2024.06.1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QPpxAmuGis

Expand full comment

Very weird statement quoted from Elena Panina:

"This is a protracted war of attrition against our country, waged exclusively with conventional weapons, for which NATO has the potential for quantitative and/or qualitative advantage."

Since the ONLY area in which NATO has "quantitative and/or qualitative advantage" is trannies in uniform, I will be really interested to see how this plays out.

NATO is inferior in total competent manpower (remembering that a significant amount of US military are committed elsewhere in the world (eg Korea) and cannot be redeployed, a huge part is tied up with carrier battle groups which are irrelevant and highly vulnerable if they come anywhere near Russia, and the big Turkish military is not going to join a war against Russia). It is deficient in effective weapons and in munitions, both in terms of quality and quantity (having already handed a huge volume to Ukraine to have them destroyed). Its military industrial capacity is a midget relative to that of Russia and certainly relative to Russia/China/North Korea/Iran.

Elena Panina is apparently a believer in DC's BS.

Expand full comment
author

I assumed she means that on paper the combined West has the ability to outproduce Russia, in terms of munitions productions, etc. But that's on paper of course, reality is much more nuanced.

Expand full comment

NATO has a vastly superior ability to convert "defense spending" into corrupt funding for the political and financial classes.

The evidence is clear to anyone with analytical abilities that the military industrial capacity of the West, even on paper, is vastly inferior. See Boeing's never-ending saga of faulty planes, the US stock of hanger-queen aircraft, its large stock of subs and other vessels laid up needing repair, the perpetually receding schedule for the US rolling out its next generation of subs -- not to mention the Monty Pythonesque pantomine with the UK aircraft carriers; and NATO's pathetic program of raiding sock-drawers around the world looking for 155mm shells.

Expand full comment

Simplicius really seems to be pushing the "West's narrative lately. I am left to wonder why? Whenever a "reporter" of news and information suddenly changes course I automatically think bad thoughts. Integrity seems to be forgotten everywhere. Not saying that is the case, saying it makes me wonder. In the last 2 Sitreps I have been exposed to the same propaganda as if I was a CNN watcher.

This new "spin" that actually on paper the West will out produce Russia is laughable, in my opinion. Not as an "expert" only as someone who operated as a sub sub contractor to the names we all love to hate (in the US) Lockheed, Gen. Dynamics, etc.

Someone here (last post) even posted a link to some very young woman writing on Substack who declared "Russia could never defeat NATO in a conventional war, and Russia knows this." I had to sit back and wonder why and how so many are suddenly pushing this obvious fiction. IF Russia knew this, they are serious people and would have never embarked on this mission. In my opinion, even if there are things to disagree about Russia is demilitarizing NATO, Ukraine is already defeated.

I think, maybe it is time for Russia to remove the Black Sea "gnats" (US drones) that have been causing much of the propaganda "strikes" and to finally end the power supply to Ukraine, it will cause panic and I guess they do not want that but it is something to think about.

Expand full comment
Jun 4·edited Jun 4

I guess that's the only sentence you remember from that long series of posts I reproduced here from pat marins

It appears you took no time to assess the quality and sense of the information 'she' provided, nor did you show evidence that you read the refutation to this particular point she also posted, and I included

The person posting the info is not the person pictured, a Brazilain model, - is someone likely in the Ukraine or Ukrainian side, and is releasing dribs and drabs of quite interesting information about the strengths of the RF side, but mainly info highly critical of that European lot

I guess you are new here and perhaps also to the slightly subterranean world of information analysis or tone

S does not maintain a single tone or emphasis, and while usually inclined to highlight RF advantages, is also capable of mildly changing course, as here, somewhat

You'll notice, if you follow these things, that a lot of people are speaking and writing with distinctly new tone and content , VVP to start with

You should familiarise yourself better with this content, S as well as VVP, with the comments posted here, before launching such a criticism

Meanwhile if you would care to write about how those US companies you mention function, or do not function, you will be welcome

Expand full comment

Really? I have been here for a good long time. I am terrible with dates and I am not sure exactly when I began commenting regularly. I must admit I am not sure exactly what the criticism you are pointing out. I am asking the same question that you seem to be pointing out. It seems that since Ukraine is being destroyed on the battlefield, suddenly we have a shift in the "reporting" and Yes, I wonder when people who do not seem to cover the same topics suddenly ALL seem to begin talking about the same thing which I see as a distraction. I am very familiar with S, and I stand by what I said, which is that I wonder why. I think you have made a bunch of judgements about me and all the things I must not know about, good for you

What is next? The woman who's link you posted was not interesting to me, except for that 1 sentence and that is why I commented on it. I feel like I am explaining myself to someone who's first language is not English. IF you are going to post endless paragraphs on S substack do not get offended if I comment on it. VVP ? So I am also not familiar with him, why we had a beer together last week.

I guess I will leave it like this, just who put you in charge of who can post and what type of post I am permitted? EDIT> IF I said something so awful S has the ability to delete my comments or whatever options the Author has, you on the other hand have 0 options

Expand full comment

It is better to read in context than to take one sentence out of context

I gave you a partial explanation of that one sentence - that is to say that the (author of the tweets under the name) pati marins is not the young woman (Brazilian model) you might think she is but probably an Ukraine side poster

No need to get agressive - you did not write anything 'awful', but simply foolish -& we have many options- perhaps even you do -

But ---why don't you write about a subject you say you know something about - you say you have worked as a sub sub for the US Lockheed and so on - if you write about something with knowledge you'll find it easier to be appreciated, or not, depending if you have something of interest to write or not

And no, S is not ‘pushing the west’s narrative’- that’s a cartoon expressed in US style language, and a gross misrepresentation of S and what he does

Neither is the change of tone I attribute to S, partially, and to others, happening because the Ukraine side is doing worse and worse on the battlefield

The change is because of the increasingly strident language coming out from some 'western' gvmts about attacking RF territory with US/EU armaments, which is coming up against a more aggressive response and tone from VVP and others

This may, in VVP’s case, partly result from the recent agreements with China, who in their own pronouncements have recently shown a more aggressive tone and content

Expand full comment

There are now 90 F-35's cluttering the parking lots around Lockheed Martin!

The USAF won't sign for them because they need a software upgrade, which Lockheed failed to design. That SW upgrade is needed to install "block 4" capabilities, which will correct a few of the troubles with F-35.

The jet needs a new bigger engine because it carries so much info tech that it needs more air conditioning!

It only overran cost by 100% and delays are unknown.

Expand full comment

Get your Fred Flintstone & Barney Rubble feet moving

Expand full comment

NATO could in theory out produce Russia. But they get in their own way. This is not just in arms production, the entire human, social and industrial capital of the west is squandered to an unimaginable degree

Expand full comment

It's structural--and grooved in by now over 3 decades. The operational & strategic chops, speaking in terms of productivity, aren't there any longer. Constructing a new factory can't backfill the gap in human ingenuity. Uncle Mo has left the building.

* Uncle Mo = mojo

Expand full comment

40 decades or more, surely.

Expand full comment

While I agree that generally the West could outproduce Russia if they really wanted to, perhaps if the threat was really existential to them and wasn't just a talking line.

Of course, Russia would then ramp up production as well with China potentially chipping in.

Expand full comment
RemovedJun 2
Comment removed
Expand full comment

and Iran

Expand full comment

The west can not outproduce no one, let alone RF and China

If you disagree please provide an outline of how the west, ok

let's say on the one hand the US and on the other the EU

could

1- reform & organise bureaucracies, divert scarce resources and capital

to plan out and operate general infrastructure upgrades with complete local supply chains from widgets to titanium

2-to train up skilled workforces (a generation's work)

3-to de financialising the economy and ruling class mindset

4-to retraining the middle class into practical middle managers and not identity slaves

5-to .... a sense of general coherence or cohesion along national and not class lines, as well as sloughing off generations of propoganda think of vacuous democracy talk

6-to arrive at a persuasive and generally accepted sense of national purpose, to eradicate 300 years of exploitative slave based divide and rule practices

7-To allow the complete overhaul you precognise

8-108- Impossible

Expand full comment

""2-to train up skilled workforces (a generation's work)"

The people the USA is producing now are qualitatively different compared to 55 years ago when I graduated HS. I worked in a cheese factory before going to school...as did many of my mates. Many working class kids paid for college with the decent money we were making at the time. Half my HS were farm kids who milked cows and did chores before getting on the bus. The halls of my HS smelled of cow shit because kids went straight from the barn to the bus. Most of my peers were raw boned and serious about school. No blue hair, no alphabet people and very few slackers. Some drew the short straw and ended up in Vietnam. Fist fights on Sat night behind the bowling alley a fairly common experience. Early longhairs got a beating sometimes for their hirsute presumption. Coon and deer hunting common recreations. Half the fathers toted guns in WW2. Serious, capable, trainable people. Now I walk into a coffeeshop and a majority of the young women are grossly overweight, having already "given up" on discipline and appearance.

Long story short...Most of the young I encounter would need some kind of rehab before even starting training in "defense" of the empire. The US is still fighting WW2 while drones are the "new" air force. I think the West needs to "own" the loss re the Ukraine Project and come to terms with the new multi-polar world. For the sake of the kids I hope rationality returns.

Expand full comment

Yes ....thanks for this memory - I have heard similar stories

Your's rings true from start to finish, and I'm sure you could write pages and pages

It is heart rending to measure the difference between then and today for the vast majority of the peoples of US and Europe

It is terrible to see the destruction of ways of life which, with all the problems and deficiences, allowed general freedom and independence

Expand full comment

Along w/ sundry disinformation which the legacy media promotes, articles keep popping up, insisting per the Surgeon General that we are in a Loneliness Epidemic: /journalists/ claim that loneliness is as deadly as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day

The bulljive doesn't end

Expand full comment

The idea of "IF they really wanted to" is pretty funny. I have heard this from guys who "luv my cuntry" come on, the defense big shots do not give a crap what you think, they certainly will gladly sacrifice your life and that of countless Americans as long as they get another fat contract. They will never really want to out produce anything because it means less profit for the "Beltway Bandits" I get so frustrated that my fellow Americans will never ever wake up to the facts. They made fools out of all of us, just stop defending them.

Expand full comment
RemovedJun 2
Comment removed
Expand full comment

Older armament production systems are labor intensive; many munitions are practically built by hand: skilled labor factors hugely in finishing shells. Component shortages complicate matters. For a very long time, the U.S. military industrial base has not been geared to the volume of usable weapons, the bread 'n butter of an army's arsenal [ shells/munitions. ] The military industrial base is structured in a manner that makes such a thing all but impossible: it's a mind-set flaw--a course correction will take a generation, if not longer. Or at all

Expand full comment

Until factory workers are valued much, much more than influencers and girl-bosses, the West can not be "the arsenal of Democracy " tm. To get young men into factories will require a lot of sexual pay-off for the trouble.

Expand full comment

"Until factory workers are valued much, much more than influencers and girl-bosses ..."

... it's LITERALLY impossible, the way the system is geared towards scale .... ergo financialisation is the only possible outcome - FIAT CURRENCY OUT OF DIGITS ON A SCREEN, as long as the facade can be kept and THE FALSE RELIGION of THE SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN can be kept on "life" support of smoke and mirrors.

Expand full comment

Factory workers, skilled workers, need a lot of training - those who can train them are very old or dead

They are also, en masse, a threat to the capitalist system

De industrial isation was also about getting rid of this blue collar base

The TMSC and other SK chips plants are finding it impossible to get workers, no skills no work ethic (like the Asian work ethic) and that's clean industry

To re create whole supply chains is impossible - there's be the occasional tokenism like this Turkish arms factory, propably wind up with Turkish workers operating it

Meanwhile have you read the latest ASCE scorecard? The infra report?

Expand full comment

This is pure fantasy. Even if factories could be quickly built, very unlikely, there is no skilled labor to operate them. It will take a couple of generations to get that back.

Expand full comment

The squandering took a generation, and will take a generation to rebuild if the will was there today. Western nations dominated a lot of industries, and have legit advantages in many fields.

Expand full comment

What will do you believe is left once 12 y/o kids and especially their mothers - incl. Brandon, Kamala, Nancy .... - promote cutting off dicks and tits - my apologies for the vulgar language.

Expand full comment

Impossible to re build this industrial base, once it's gone, it's gone

The west knows not how to build industrially on any level, financial, administrative, management, or working class

Boeing is the example

Expand full comment

Henry Kaiser produced ocean going cargo ships by the hundreds, mostly using workers who never had seen a ship before and who had to be trained from zero.

Expand full comment

With the new Russian defence minister I think that things will change.

And for the west capacity... they have become really good in boosting the prices and deliver less and less.

Expand full comment

Smack talk is in hyperdrive, too, in advance of the so-called Peace Summit in Lucerne & OTAN's July conference. The Powers That Be are driving the newscycle, giving the scaremongering Russophobic content a good goose early in the week, or on the Sunday shows, in order to create a cresting wave of anti-Putin drek by Thursday. They are pulsing the system.

Expand full comment

Everything is much simpler. Panina is 76 years old. She wrote it out of inertia, as she always did. She just copied this idea from her works of 30-40 years ago.

Expand full comment

Timeframes, timeframes. 2 years, 5 years, 10 years. If automobile, truck, and aircraft production are a fair proxy of industrial capacity, Russia certainly needs to game plan a scenario where the war is being fought in 2027 and the West is transferring many more armaments to Ukraine. Not saying it will happen, but it must be planned for.

Expand full comment

Don't be so dismissive. Recall that the USSR was 'defeated' largely because the West had control of vastly more global resources than the USS and allies had access to. And Russia is considerably smaller than the old USSR.

What does undermine her agument to some extent is two things: China is now the World's manufacturing colossus, and is very strongly aligned with Moscow; and the Global South countries have realised their planned future by the Western Powers is not radically dissimilar to the 'alternative' history in PKD's 'Man in the High Castle' if the German Nazis had won WW2 - eventual extermination after impoverishment.

Despite this, if the old Colonial countries go full in, those Global South countries have very little they can do to defend themselves, and even if with heavy local opposition the West may not be able to extract the resources for themselves, they can prevent the Eurasian Bloc from accessing them as well.

The West will continue to get weaker however - enormously accelerated by their stubborn refusal to admit they've lost in Ukraine - but it is best not to make the same mistake they are making, and underestimate the opponent. Westerrn powers are still powers, and ALWAYS REMEMBER that the rainbow flags are just an attempt to put lipstick on a fascist pig to pretend it's actually still liberal for the chump voters.

If the chips were really down, and all masks were off, the flags and 'diversity' will be ditched even quicker than the controlled demolitions brought down the 3 WTC buildings.

They are just social maskirovka, and a psyop.

If you think the amoral Western elites genuinely care about gay rights, or Transrights, or any other 'Identity politics' the neolibs hide their corporatist-facism behind, I have 3 - yes, THREE, Kerch bridges going cheap, and I give you very special offer. ;)

Expand full comment

Totally agree. Underestimating your opponent is the surest pathway to defeat.

Expand full comment

"the West had control of vastly more global resources"

The operative word there is "had".

The West trashed its industrial capacity which underpins military industrial capacity. It has trashed not just the factories but the scientific and technical education and experience which is even more important than physical factories and cannot be restored in less than decades.

Russia was able to rise again, in a few decades, to a high level economic and industrial output because it never dissed scientific and technical education -- unlike the West, which supplanted it with "gender and race studies", and supposed STEM disciplines like "climate studies" which are just unreal money-making frauds.

The de-industrialized West is now in a far, far worse position than Russia was to reindustrialize because it has liquidated the whole cadre of people with the personal knowledge required.

I remember decades ago, when the West was offshoring its industrial capacity hearing know-nothing morons in the West claiming their countries would be "knowledge economies". Supposedly, they would invent and design things which would then be produced for them by the "dirty economies" in Asia.

Except the reality is and was that sustainment and creation of knowledge is intimately connected with using that knowledge, ie with "doing".

At the time of those fatuous claims, the West had a short time window in which it could do what the theory trumpeted, solely because they had engineers and managers with detailed knowledge gained from personal, "hands on" experience, and who were yet to retire. And Western financiers reaped a huge profit, at the expense of their countries, by offshoring manufacturing.

The people who had the relevant knowledge at the time have now long ago retired and/or died and we are living in the inevitable result of that stupid fantasy promoted by ignorant people and politicians.

In terms of societal impact, it is entirely irrelevant whether "the amoral Western elites genuinely care about gay rights, or Transrights" -- promoting those views has destroyed morality and societal cohesion and economic capacity (by devoting resources to those destructive philosophies instead of to productive activities).

Expand full comment

Offshoring was intended to destroy the left anti-war unions, which it did. What we see now is blowback.

Expand full comment

It was far more than that.

It was to make immediate large profits for the globalists, AND

Allow the globalists, who already controlled the US and other Western countries, to gain control of China and the manufacturing capacity they were implanting there.

Unfortunately for the globalists, the CCP entirely understood the intent. They gladly took the support in industrializing but have been very active in preventing the rise of oligarchs (domestic or international) of the strength of those in the West and those that emerged in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. That is a permanent aspect of CCP policy.

To the great anguish of the globalists, this has left them in control of hollowed-out and failing economies in the West, while China (and now Russia) outstrip their power, and they can only see the situation getting worse (for them) -- all as a consequence of their own strategies.

This is why the globalists like Soros are so angry with China and want war (which the globalists will lose).

Expand full comment

It's a chicken and egg scenario. Does the power come from the profits or do the profits accrue due to one's power? I think they are 2 sides of a coin. Anyway the 70s and 80s were the heyday for progressive union activism.

Expand full comment

That is part of it, for sure. Mostly just capitalism

Expand full comment

You are correct, but the Jews want you dead. So they will kill Europeans and Americans like they killed Ukrainians.

Expand full comment

They have certainly drastically undermined the societies and economies of Europe and the US, flooding them with unassimilable imports.

Their problem is that this has also destroyed the power of Europe and the US and the existence of genocidal, apartheid Israel has depended on that power to subjugate its neighbors.

Now the "chickens are coming home to roost" and soon the balance of power in the ME will have totally and irretrievably turned against Israel and its Western vassals.

Within a decade, Zionist Israel will be history. That was not in their plans.

It's a replay of the story of the scorpion, mid stream, stinging to death the frog it had induced to carry the scorpion across the stream.

Expand full comment

The chickens coming home to roost are a Chicken Caesar Wrap-It-Up when Russia starts cooking

Expand full comment

That is the whole idea , kill them all off , and replace them with Africans . They are not trouble makers , they just want to play basketball .

Expand full comment

2hrs ago I literally finished watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxDTE2fjT-Q

And shared it on several places, although little was new to me. But to some it would be.

But the idea that the entire West is now "Just pronoun-confused ill-educated morons" is a rightwing victimhood trope that is simply not true. There is a higher % of that, yes, but it is not EVERYONE.

In a move to total, long-term war, you'd be surprised at what the West could achieve. Putin and the Russians know this, which is why they are not blase, and why she also added that to the possible calculations.

Underestimating your opponents doesn't just apply to the Russians & Chinese, it also applies to believing all the rightwing victimhood NONSENSE. And it IS nonsense.

What has actually happened is corporate bureaucratisation, turning Education as well as healthcare, and military production, and military logistics, into mere money-making scams for gluttonously-wealthy scumbags. https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/07/28/academentia-the-organization-insanity-of-the-modern-university/

Western 'elites' - or the more intelligent ones - are quite well aware of the cause of our true problems, and in a total-war scenario - assuming the WMDs don't fly - you would be surprised at how realism suddenly becomes important.

At the beginning of WW1 & 2, the UK & Soviet forces were like they are today - top heavy, corrupt, and incapable due to too many sinecures for elite-spawned losers.

But when the chips are down the Hunter Biden types are kicked out and replaced, "profit" becomes less important, and serious people get promoted.

We are 5-10 years behind Russia, at a MINIMUM (And that ignores the colossus China behind them), but in a frozen-conflict Korea style, a lot COULD happen.

Is it likely to? Fortunately not. To that extent I agree with your points.

But also UNFORTUNATELY not, as that is going to make the fuckwit pychos in charge of the West more likely to decide to just blow the planet up instead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQDaMxPAZ2c

Expand full comment

First, I don't assume that the West can do no harm to Russia or China. The US still has legacy systems and troops which have some lethality. They also have 6,000 or so nuclear weapons. I doubt they are all duds and some would almost certainly get through in the event of all-out war.

That is why I admire Putin's prudence, he is working for an outcome while trying to minimize the harm his country and his troops suffer in achieving it.

It is ironic you mention corrupt and top-heavy military institutions without citing the US which is without doubt the pinnacle in this regard. You are surely aware of Colonel Douglas Macgregor's observation that at the end of WWII, the US with 12 million men under arms had around 7 four star officers. Now, when about 10% of that size, it has 42 four star officers -- and each has headquarters staffs with a multitude of lesser generals and colonels, etc.

If the US removed all the corrupt members of its senior officer corps it might find itself with 7 four star officers and similarly downsized staffs.

I agree that "when the chips are down" countries SOMETIMES shape up and make serious appointments. Unfortunately that depends on having serious people in positions of authority to do the appointing. The US and most Western countries lack that. History shows many occasions when in difficult circumstances countries are either governed by fools (the West today) and/or, irrespective of the abilities of those in power, their countries is simply outmatched by its foes (the West today, where the number of engineers produced each year is minute compared to China and Russia (and many of the STEM graduates in the West are actually Chinese, who, in a conflict, won't be working for the West).

At the start of WWII, the US was industrially the China of the time. It is now the equivalent of Britain at the start of WWII, ie with some industrial strength but far behind the largest and incapable of catching up -- and over-extended with an empire which consumed more resources than it contributed to Britain's defense.

Expand full comment

Hypersonics are here now. If total war breaks out the west won't be able to build the factories, or train the staff, or transport the raw materials. They will be obliterated. The window of opportunity for the west is closed...for decades.

Expand full comment

Supply chain issues will throttle-back production, whether there's total war or not. It's not as if the material or the materiel is just lying around close at hand

Expand full comment
Jun 2·edited Jun 2

As you say, a lot COULD happen, but the will to do it is not there, and, absent actual, direct impacts on the majority of the population in the West, that will can never be there.

The nature of employment necessary to re-industrialise to a full on war machine has been carefully characterised by modern Western education as a DOWN-grade to the idealised "service industry" jobs (which, ironically, are the most at risk in the "AI" tsunami certain companies are trying to bring) so the manpower to make that war machine will be very reluctant to participate, at best.

This is why Tesla is pursuing "humanoid" robotics so hard, to create the "manpower" at a lower dollar cost than actual humans are willing to accept to participate in "dirty" manufacturing..

Note that China is charging harder and faster down the robotics route than any other country, and once you have that, your limits on production are raw resources input, of which Russia is the largest single country source.... After that you have Africa, which is steadily moving toward a Russian/Chinese political orbit.

The Western oligarchs have made their bed, now they're having a pre-bedtime tantrum...

Expand full comment

Cheezits & juice-boxes on the way--!

Permanent Washington has declared/insisted that China is an adversarial competitor: in order to out-compete China & maintain hegemony we have to create semiconductor fabs & go hyperdrive into chip production.

Millennials & Gen Zs are not motivated by Permanent Washington's mind-set, however. They're not making "out-competing" China a life-altering goal. Deloitte & McKinsey see the U.S. semiconductor industry facing a shortage of 70,000-90,000 workers by 2028. McKinsey projects a shortfall of 300,000 engineers & 90,000 skilled technicians by 2030

Expand full comment

Well, the DEI riders built into the CHiPs Act should help with those critical personnel shortages..🤣

Now, if you want FUNCTIONING chips, perhaps not so much....

After all, bunny suits are white, and that's some special sort of privilege right there! Never mind having to work a 12 hour shift in one (Sorry, snowflake, next toilet break is in 3 hours..) AND you can't take your phone inside to Insta your friends, or TikTok your latest bunny dance.

Expand full comment

I serious doubt that the Western elites could psy-op their populations into a war against Eurasia. The willpower is not there. The last 2 generations of hedonic individualism cannot be quickly flipped into stoic patriotism.

Expand full comment

Do you HAVE to sound like this is a Bad Thing(tm)?

One of the few things the Earth has got going for it is that the psycho Western elites like L Graham, Nuland, Clintons, Bolton, Haley etc, are facing that reality.

Expand full comment

Is there anything to be admired in "stoic patriotism"? ... considering LIFE!

Expand full comment

Right now, the entire West is completely crazy and under the control of special interests. But that entire "leadership:" is being discredited and the powers behind them will make an attempt to treat this "leadership[" like an ablative layer. Scrap them and try to get a new layer. Right now, that doesn't look possible, but magicians can pull rabbits of of a hat.

History might offer two example of empires which pulled back from the brink of decline. So it's possible, but rather unlikely. Right now, the people in opposition (that's us and fellow spirits) are pretty pure in our motivation. But we are vulnerable to a popular mass stampede towards "solutions" which look viable and offer the (((false))) promise of a way out of the wilderness. It would not be the first time. Take a look at what happened to the German Greens in the late 1970's. They were tired of losing, not getting voted into office. It only took one party convention for them to throw away their principles and to go with the "media star" Joschka Fischer who promised victories in the elections. The Greens were deceived, not bribed. Today, no German party is more aligned with Washington than the Greens. History does offer a great many examples where movements were turned into their opposite.

The moral of the story is that we need to plan for the time after the current politicians. We need to be the ones replacing them, and not waiting for the powers behind them to do that "for us". We can only ask "What is to be done?"

The generic answer dates back to Lenin in 1903. It's always, "We need a political party to seize state power." Anything else is unicorn poop.

Expand full comment
Jun 2·edited Jun 3

Thanks - for once it's said out loud

Expand full comment

Correct.

I'm old enough to remember when the Thatcher-Reagan types said that the West would retain "The Commanding Heights" of the global economy.

Basically, lawyers and bankers in New York and London could write the contract and raise the funds while the Chinese made sneakers and T-shirts and the Russians dug potatoes and coal. But they also never gave up making guns and ammo, did they?

Expand full comment
Jun 2·edited Jun 2

>"the West had control of vastly more global resources"

>The operative word there is "had".

Still does. Russia alone has 2/3 of the USSR territory and half the population.

Meanwhile the US empire grew since 1991.

And it was in fact already larger than the USSR even in the Cold War. The USSR had 22.4M km2, territory. The Anglo-Saxon empire spanned (and still does) 27.8M km2 just across the five countries, plus it controlled Western Europe and most of Latin America, plus Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Population-wise it was 2-3X larger than the USSR. It's why the USSR couldn't keep up.

Sure, Russia + China (plus Iran and NK and others) absolutely crushes them. And would have crushed them back in the Cold War too, but they were successfully divided back then, and the alliance isn't quite real now either.

Always remember that the frontlines are a stalemate because of drones and that those drones Ukraine uses to impose that stalemate are Chinese. Could China perhaps have shut down exports altogether and sent all those drones to Russia until Russia finishes the job (which would be less than a year in such a case)? They could have. But what did they actually do?

Western industrialization doesn't matter as long as the Chinese are willing to accept printed pieces of paper in exchange for their industrial goods. They still are.

Expand full comment

Russia could win this war easy just shut down remaining power plants. Or Disable all US ISR. They have the means but Putin terrified of West unlike IRAN or HOUTHIES who have zero issue downing USA's shit.

Expand full comment

If Russia Kesslerised the whole of Earth orbital space, which is what you are talking about, this would prevent any space activity for several generations.

While "Moon colonies", or "Mars colonies", or "Asteroid mining" are boondoogles, near Earth orbits are extraordinarily valuable, and barring existential danger, China is going to be REALLY REALLY PISSED if Russia does that over a war they are winning easily conventionally.

Expand full comment

Russia doesnt need to do that they could target each individual sat. It's not complicated for space powers and Russia has shot down it's own before.

Expand full comment

"They could have. But what did they actually do?"

Have you ever asked yourself why the didn't ... REALITY is much more complicated than Brandon makes you believe.

"They" are all - always were, but made you believe otherwise and spread their gospel - in uncharted territory. Only difference to previous times is that the interconnectedness has destabilised the structure and THE HOUSE OF LIES is about to crumble completely.

Remember Armageddon ... ANYONE?

Expand full comment

"Western industrialization doesn't matter as long as the Chinese are willing to accept printed pieces of paper in exchange for their industrial goods"

You apparently have not noted that China is rapidly shrinking its stock of US bonds (those worthless pieces of paper). And what do you and FJB imagine is going to happen when the US starts its war with China. All those ships ferrying goods from China to the US and Europe are suddenly going to stop. Huge amounts of goods that the West depends on will suddenly be lost to it and it has no capacity to replace them for years.

Your fuzzy maths about the "Anglo-Saxon empire" (a total misnomer in any case, it has always been the camouflaged Zio empire -- Anglo Saxon's haven't been in charge since 1066) supports fuzzy thinking.

Take Australia as an instance. Huge amount of natural resources and currently exporting massive amounts of iron ore, coal, and other minerals to China, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan -- but virtually no industrial capacity, threw it away decades ago. If a conflict starts with Russia and China, most of those exports will cease, since they all depend on maritime transport, and nor will they then end up in Europe or the US. And Australia has no industrial capacity to do anything with them itself. So, the resources become useless to the West.

China will make up some of the lost minerals imports from Russia (and from defensive stockpiles it has been building up). Japan, Taiwan and South Korea have no alternative defensible sources of supply. Any alternatives they have to Australia are equally dependent on maritime transport and thus will be disrupted.

Australia also exports large volumes of natural gas, including to Europe. Again, that critical energy supply will disappear for a Europe engaged in a war with Russia and China.

Finally. your bizarre notion that the "frontlines are a stalemate" is clear indication that you either don't actually read the extensive description of reality presented by Simplicius over many months or comprehension is not your strong suit.

Expand full comment

The 'Normans' were Zionazis? I thought they were an Imperialised branch of the Norsemen?

Expand full comment

As you say, the Normans themselves weren't Zionazis. They did, however, end the rule of Anglo-Saxons in England in 1066.

Again, as you note, they originated in Scandinavia, invaded and established themselves in what became Normandy (for North Men) in France, adopted the technology of continental warfare, ie horses, armor, castles and then invaded England, just across the channel and took control, subjugating the Anglo-Saxons.

The Zionazis came later, lending to English kings, and others, for wars, getting control of the currency and the City of London (a small physical area within London as a whole, but the heart of banking and financialization), from which they participated in the foundation of the US Fed (by Woodrow Wilson and US Congress) with most of the banks who actually own the Fed, from its foundation, being Zionazi British, European, and American banks.

Thus, Britain passed from control of the Anglo-Saxons to the Normans (who then subjugated Ireland and Scotland) and then to the Zionazis, who left the Norman aristocracy apparently in control as convenient sock puppets for the Zionazis who control finance.

Expand full comment
Jun 3·edited Jun 3

"...the camouflaged Zio empire -- Anglo Saxon's haven't been in charge since 1066"

William the Conqueror was an adopted orphan. No one knows who his real parents were.

All of the royal houses of Europe are descendents of William. The crowned heads were one extended family. For example, Queen Victoria was a blood relative of Tsar Alexander.

(Jacob married his first cousins, Leah and Rachel, daughters to Jacob's uncle Laban. They too were extended family. The word "nation" comes from Latin 'natio'-- translation, "family".)

Edit, for Gnuneo and Bazza: The Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and French Houses were also part of that family (along with German, Dutch, Austrian, Spanish, etc.) In other words, the Normans were brought into the fold through royal marriage alliances.

Expand full comment

https://www.defensenews.com/land/2024/02/06/us-army-hunts-for-explosives-to-meet-increased-munitions-output-goals/

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/general-dynamics-new-155-millimeter-shell-factory-opens-war-cycle-kicks-higher-gear

I would say Russia has a time window of industrial superiority, it is not closing fast and may even be expanding right now, but long term it will need China to be able to keep up. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say NATO needs 5 to 10 years. But Russia, like the USSR, is vulnerable to longer term military over spending.

Expand full comment

A big time window, and expanding

These US reports talk about 100,000 shells per month by end 2025- given US tendancy to lie about everything and to fail to meet industrial goals one may be sceptical

EU ditto

RF, according to S and others is already at 4.6M per year, 380,000 per month

And capable of accelerating production at already established factories, without considering new ones built - it is said current factories are not at 24/7

And can count on the NK stock of 10M, of which it is said only 3M so far delivered

Expand full comment

Krasnopol vs Excalibur just happened

We know the result

Expand full comment

Russia produced 20.5M in 2023. S using number given by Western media

Expand full comment

I do not think so- for the 155mm the figures given in the West press are lower than those given by S, and others

S gives around 4.5 4.6, the Western press is at 3.5 ish, The Estonians may be higher

But nobody is saying anything like 20M

Perhaps you have a link?

Expand full comment
Jun 3·edited Jun 3

I think the problem with numbers comes from the fact that West trying to compare 152 with 155 production which is inherently stupid. 20.5M comes directly from Russian MOD and it includes all artillery calibers (including bigger than 152) and MRLS. And that's correct way of reporting things, because damage comes from all categories.

In fact, I learned that biggest damage to Ukrainian side actually comes from MRLS, not cannons/howitzers/FABs/drones like somebody could imagine after looking at combat footage reels, because MRLS produce terrible footage - it covers huge area and inherently inaccurate. Yet it's incredibly effective, math at works. Big, many booms over large area.

Source: only real military related channel in whole Runet (run by real military guys, Martyanov is there, Trukhan is there); almost impossible to read unless you can read all Russian military abbreviation, can tolerate crude/clever jewish jokes, Warhammer 40k and not repulsed by gachi memes

https://t.me/pozivnoy_kazman/6917

It's a crime that S uses completely discredited sources like Rybar/FB or Fedorov and never covers channels where real military guys wags their chins

Expand full comment

lol we were squealing like stuck pigs when a mere 2000-4000 died in iraq and much more united in 2003 than today and DOD paper says that many would die a day vs Russia.

Not a chance in hell USA, or even worse, effete western europeans could fight Russia in conventional warfare for more than a week.

People way to divided, no clear purpose and no ones gonna die for elites and a country that calls you deplorables. I think Hillary and most of them actually hate us. The patriotism jig is up also importing people to replace us making citizenship worthless. Its also worthless seeing way veterans with disabilities are treated worse than illegal aliens who are setup in 5 star hotels and given phones and debit cards with thousands of dollars/mo on them.

We may win but it will be because Putin backs down being scared of crazy Western elites incinerating the planet not because we have a chance in hell conventionally. He actually likes his people unlike our leaders who wont give a two shits if everyone is incinerated while they hide out in thier luxury bunkers blaming Russia and China for planet going up in flames.

Expand full comment

I'm reading that statement by Elena Panina as "...for which NATO has the POTENTIAL for quantitative and/or qualitative advantage."

There is certainly the potential for that, but it would take a huge reordering of NATO, politically, economically and socially to reach that potential. I think it would take a literal revolution to reach it.

Expand full comment

>Since the ONLY area in which NATO has "quantitative and/or qualitative advantage" is trannies in uniform, I will be really interested to see how this plays out.

NATO is vastly superior in aviation and naval assets.

Also, never forget how asymmetric the damage done by the INF treaty was. It only covered land-based assets. So guess which side doesn't have ground-launched IRBMs and long-range CMs in vast numbers now, and which side can fire a huge salvo of ALCMs and ship-launched long-range CMs...

Expand full comment

The poseidon will quickly eliminate the naval aspect of nato.

Expand full comment

You have no idea what the Poseidon is about.

Expand full comment

> NATO is vastly superior in aviation and naval assets.

Please, stop commenting. It's embarrassing to read.

Expand full comment
Jun 3·edited Jun 3

Look at the fleet sizes. It's 5:1 in NATO's favor in aviation, with a much higher degree of modernization, and even worse in the open ocean.

Even submarines, in which the USSR used to have quantitative superiority, are firmly in NATO's favor now. It's 14+4+4 = 22 SSBNs versus 12 for Russia. Attacks subs are not in Russia's favor either.

This is why so many people reveal themselves to be utter morons when they talk about the wisdom of Russia's attrition warfare "strategy".

It isn't a strategy, it is kicking the can down the road in the hope that the problem will somehow resolve itself.

The reality is that tanks and artillery don't matter in a NATO vs. Russia war, what matters is aviation, navies and air defense. Russia is vastly superior in air defense, and that is why it is precisely air defense that NATO is targeting now. And the VKS and the Russian navy too. So Russia is being attrited where it matters, while NATO is taking zero losses because nobody has the balls to hit back.

Expand full comment
Jun 3·edited Jun 3

You missing the point.

You have submarines, and you have floating coffins.

Modern warfare is all about rock & paper & scissors.

You say planes, I say AD.

You say tanks, I say ATGMs.

Russia completely covers all bases.

There is not a single area where the West have an advantage. You lose it everywhere, sorry if it hurts

Expand full comment

>You say planes, I say AD.

Is that why Ukraine is still flying old Soviet planes 28 months into this?

And flying them 10 km away from the Russian border too.

If you think NATO's thousands of jets will all be shot down when they go up, you are delusional.

Saturation works. Mass matters. It has been repeatedly shown in this war.

The only way Russia can neutralize NATO's air force superiority is pre-emptive nuclear strikes on all the airbases. The cowards in the Kremlin won't do it, so that's a moot point.

Expand full comment

> Is that why Ukraine is still flying old Soviet planes 28 months into this?

No, because they recently got the bunch of Soviet planes from Slovakia (t55 tanks as well). You mixing leftovers from Warsaw Pact with real procurement. What will you write when there will be a reports of Ukraine losing their t55 batch? Russia still failing to destroy outdated Ukrainian tanks, they never destroyed anything in reality? Right?

Do you really believe that armaments happens right outta thin air? Are these armaments in the same room with you right now?

Expand full comment
Jun 4·edited Jun 4

The Great Masturbator flouts his ignorance again.

Naval numbers are irrelevant to a Land War in Asia.

As for superior aviation airframe numbers....

Where can you base them? Poland? You'd need one airbase solely dedicated to the tankers required to get the fighters from Poland to the front line from just two or three OTHER airbases. EVERY base a big fat target for Gerans and Kalibers.

The kind of build up *required* for NATO to bring its "aviation superiority" to bear has "Fat Juicy Target" written all over it...

Lose just *one* warehouse of maintenance spares for those Oh So Maintenance Intensive airframes and NATO air power goes from Hero to Zero in one oily puff of smoke...

Expand full comment

>Naval numbers are irrelevant to a Land War in Asia.

It's not a Land War in Asia though. That's what you dummies can't get in your thick heads.

Naval power very much matters with respect to who has who at gunpoint for missile launches and who doesn't.

Similarly with aviation.

Yeah, the bases in Europe can get destroyed in minutes. But that requires nukes and the ball to use them. Do you see that in the Kremlin? No. So then raw numbers matter a lot.

Expand full comment

I often read Russtrat and Elena Panina is not a believer in anyone's BS. She is certainly not an alarmist. I think what you are missing is the Russian view that WW4 (the one we are now in), could go on for 20 more years if the West doesn't outright collapse. So the Russians have to consider the possibility of some sort of NATO revival. Not next year, but the beast isn't gone until someone drives a stake through its heart. Americans have a saying, "Don't count your chickens until they hatch."

Expand full comment

The chickens, once they've hatched, will end up in a Chicken Caesar Wrap-It-Up when Russia starts cooking

Expand full comment

Whilst none of us can be 100% certain of our beliefs or analysis, I'd be surprised if many people in Russia believe WW3 can go on for 20 years. Undoubtedly a state of hostility can, but not a state of active war, as is occurring, because the war that exists between NATO and Russia, even in its current state, is destroying the last vestiges of real economic capacity in the West.

And, if the West starts a nuclear war, that will be brief and while causing massive global destruction, the greatest destruction will be in the West which, unlike Russia, has neither a semblance of effective AA and anti-missile defenses nor any significant civil defense investment to protect the civil population.

The West cannot restore its economic capacity in less than decades, if ever. Fundamentally, the West has eaten most of its seed corn, in the form of real, practical knowledge, widely spread throughout its population. Even if it could magically reconstitute the factories and power plants it spurned, it no longer has the trained workforce to operate them effectively (see the continuing saga of woke Boeing and its disastrous aircraft production).

Fifty years ago, the standards of western schools, including the US, were at the top of the world. Since then they have fallen massively (at the same time money spent on teachers and schools and "educational" bureaucracy has exploded) and the West is now way behind what it once had in education and the education standards of its rivals. Overall, its teachers are far less knowledgeable and competent than those it had a century ago. Likewise, most of the real knowledge once borne by its engineers, managers and labor force has withered away through lack of use and the deaths of those who once had that knowledge, and has been replaced by a huge expenditure of time and resources on wokism, an expenditure which immediately consumes resources for no tangible benefit or residual capacity to produce.

Over the last 2 decades, Putin and the Russian government and people have rebuilt Russia as a great economy and technological society. But they started from an infinitely stronger position than the West is now in, because even after dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia still valued and rewarded real knowledge and STEM education. And, it did not have a gap of decades between the manufacturing prowess of the Soviet era and the time of rebuilding Russia's industry.

It was like someone in their thirties getting fit again after a dissolute decade. The West is now like someone in their seventies who, after three or four dissolute decades, aspires to the fitness they had in their twenties. "Good luck with that."

Expand full comment

That quote got me, too. Our published #s admit we are way behind the curve on production & plans to increase bring us up in years to a larger fraction of what Russia produces today.

And our "quality" goes up in smoke every day in Ukr.

Expand full comment

Agreed. The West can't compete now in either quantity or quality. Russia's (and no doubt China's) weapons are built for effectiveness in a real war environment. The West's are built to maximize MIC profits and payoffs to government officials, and, to add insult to injury, are designed by legislative and government committees with zero personal knowledge of real war and war environments.

I happened to read recently of an attempt to take out of "mothballs" some of the magnificent WWII US battleships. I don't know whether the plan was good or not, but the salient point is that they needed some refurbishment and refitting and it turned out that no one in the US any longer knows how to make the special, superior steels used in those battleships.

Similarly, Russia has been able to devise and produce the advanced materials necessary for hypersonic missiles, while the US has not.

Expand full comment

"Similarly, Russia has been able to devise and produce the advanced materials necessary for hypersonic missiles, while the US has not."

Not only the materials, but the communications systems to enable precision targeting & maneuverability at hypersonic speeds.

Expand full comment

Oooh, the old "refurbish the Iowa's because we like BIG guns" idea rearing its ugly mug again. It's not just the metallurgy that confounds, you'd literally need to gut them open to the boiler rooms and rebuild from nearly the keel up to make anything of them.

And all to fire ammunition that's been in storage for over 50 years (guess what ELSE they don't make any more...)

As for MIC profits, they realised years ago, the real money to be made was in the maintenance contracts (after all, you only got profit for MAKING a tank or plane once, the profits for maintaining them are endless...)

Side note, There's a hugely profitable market in pre WW2 (or up to 1945 actually) manufactured steel... because it was made using oxygen not yet irradiated by atomic bombs. Whole WW2 warships have gone missing from their resting places near Indonesia in recent years...

Expand full comment

Maria Zakharova provided some fine words about the West's long-established aid and permission for Ukraine to attack Russia that's been ongoing since the start. More push from the North by Russia? I like what's happening on the Dnieper. Will anything special happen on 6 June? Expand the Black Sea air defense zone to get those pesky NATO spy planes?

Expand full comment

They should just do it already. I doubt they will be any serious repercussions and if they’re hard, they were gonna happen anyway.

Expand full comment

Good as always, thank you.

It's surreal watching how Europe is sleepwalking into a big war with Russia, a war that they can't win, but they push for it like if it is the Holy Grail. Dark times ahead. One of these days Putin is going to say enough is enough and nukes will fly........ and Europe will cry.

Expand full comment

It's like when we heard about people who took Ambien or Lunesta & then woke up in the morning to discover they'd eaten a loaf of bread in their sleep the night before but without realizing it. Europe is standing at the kitchen counter--chewing, chewing, chewing, swallowing. In the dark, Europe is reaching for another slice, rustling the bread wrapper--hand to mouth, hand to mouth, hand to mouth: benumbed, anesthetized, dead to the world.

Expand full comment

It's not EUROPE - it's the puppets the Yanks have placed in charge over Europe and the UK. Brian Berletic has a recent vid explaining how the "NGO Takeovers" work on his YT channel, worth a watch.

If you consider how difficult it must be for the Atlanticists to persuade a country like Georgia, literally filled with "deplorables" and completely reliant on Russia for its trade and commerce, to ATTACK Russia, and yet they achieved it, imagine how easy a lost country like the UK pining over the lost empire would be for the warmongers and PR specialists.

Expand full comment

Well, it's the cabal that controls Europe and the west, but too many Europeans happily go along with the agenda.

Expand full comment

It is Europe. There is no discontent among the population.

They hope US will crush Russia and they will get a peace...

Expand full comment

The Russian Playbook is as thick as KJP's binder when she answers media questions from the White House press podium. On p. 47, it reads, "Desert camouflage on OTAN tanks bound for Ukraine--like that won't stand out." Flipping through the Russian Playbook, we find on p. 118, "Swedish AWACS may as well be dirigibles. Get Comrade Iskandr ready." And then on p. 143, the page that describes quite serious-mindedly a Victor's Peace for Russia in the Special Military Operation, someone has scribbled: "When OTAN talks smack, Moscow keeps a cool booty."

Expand full comment
Jun 2Liked by Simplicius

The CATS, Meow. My bestie, once again, par excellent. I so wonder what my morning muse will bring? Hum. The Spiritual Revolution continues. GodSpeed, Mother Russia. Old lady with a virtual cat❤️🐈‍⬛❤️🇷🇺💙 Awe, thank you as well!

Expand full comment