There aren’t a whole lot of significant battlefield updates just yet, so I wanted to take this time to project what the medium-term future will look like based on Ukraine and the West’s signaled plans for the next 6 months and more.
I'm not certain that it is the 'eliteness' that separates these units, but the purposes for which each is trained for and the type of theatre they operate in. But I recognise I could be wrong about that.
My take is that neither side wants to publish an accurate OOB and simlarly even if you could do so, neither side either knows or even can publish a sensible and objective of the combat capablity of any particular unit etc. And it changes daily. And greater operational and strategic factors might have greater importance - ie the supply of ammunition, POL, food etc. I judge that you need to take a view from all the BS issued by both sides and take an educated guess.
"Lira has been doing this peekaboo game for quite a while, now I am here, now I'm gone. then, when he is back, he tries to engage his audience in conversation. Does he actually contribute anything?" - what would he contribute to the SBU then?
I watched Scott's video about Lira and he certainly did not present "irrefutable evidence".
In fact, he presented NO EVIDENCE AT ALL!
All he said is that it didn't pass his smell test and the FBI would have acted differently than the SBU. Wow, that's not evidence, that's Scott's personal opinion.
Lira is a peculiar enough character, it's very hard to judge him. And by the way, lots of people have leveled that accusation against Scott, that's he's working for the US govt this whole time.
All of this is easy to explain (I'm not saying it's true) and none of it would be evidence to suggest he is an SBU asset. It's all just pure speculation.
But:
"* he got the whites of his eye scratched with a toothpick but in the video his eye appears to be fine;" - if it was done one month ago, it would be invisible by now
"* he does his disappearance/faked death and then reappears like a resurrected Christ, excpet the latter did it once, Lira has done it 2 or 3 times;" - he never disappeared or faked death. He was in custody and this is the first time he got his phone number back and therefore was in no need to create new accounts.
"* his passport was taken away from, then given back - is it normal that a prisoner is released like that and kindly given back his travel document;" - yes, this is normal. He was charged, but not convicted. Therefore he should get everything back if released AND in the meantime his own assets should be protected (they should even protect him from unpaid electricity bills and all that stuff).
"* he has a wife and 2 kids, yet after his 1st incarceration and subsequent release he carries on doing what he was arrested for in the 1st place;" - this is a very good question, but the guy has been strongly on the crazy side with his personal life simply because he stayed in Ukraine even after he knew he should leave when he got stuck in Kiev. Perhaps there is a reason for this, but unrelated to his actual stay in Ukraine (perhaps he has some untold issues at home? that is possible). But it's more likely that he thought he can come up with some *gamble that would advance his life as he is a known speculator. Only it backfired spectacularly.
"* he loudly announces that he is going to make a dash for the Hungarian border, and hey presto, he gets intercepted at the Hungarian border." - he set up the YouTube video to be published with delay. By the time of its publishing, he expected to be in Hungary.
The entire "SBU asset" is an unfounded speculation, but it doesn't even mention the obvious possibility of him being a real SBU asset, without even knowing it:
Why did they release him and unlike the previous time, they gave him his passport back AND they DIDN'T legally prevent him from leaving the city (it was the reason why he stayed in Kharkov - the court ordered him not to leave)?
Because his activities strongly suggest someone is helping him (his landlord certainly was). And what better chance to find these people than to let him go and then follow him?
Note: the *gamble: For some reason, he wanted Russia to come to him rather than moving to Russia. There must be a reason for this. Perhaps Russians wouldn't give him proper visa, or extradite him somewhere (not the US, but some country with an extradition treaty) but it would be different if he just happened to live in a territory Russia annexed. The connection here is Hungary. Why run there and not to Turkey/Belarus/Bulgaria/Slovakia or somewhere else? There's also a reason for that.
"The goal of this would be obvious: to force Russia into somehow over-reacting with an uncharacteristically rash use of force which could highlight Russia’s “brutality” and wring sympathy and further support for Ukraine from Western nations."
If Russia doesn't respond to attacks, the narrative will be that Russia is weak and the West must escalate.
If Russia does respond, the narrative will be that Russia is brutal and the West must escalate.
It doesn't really matter what Russia does, since Russia has no real way to affect the decisionmakers in Washington, the US and its puppets will do what they want to do.
EDIT I should have added that Russia will be depicted as brutal, regardless what Russia does. If real atrocities cannot be found, fake ones will be manufactured.
I interpreted their "First" humor (I liked it and laughed a lot too) as a message to Simplicius of how much they can't wait for his new post to appear and how much they appreciate his writing. I don't think it was "look at me" and a show-off :).
Me too... but people who post first and don't comment meaningfully thereafter are questionable. That's been regular behaviour on comment sections for years of the internet's history. But everyone else can have their opinion. I sure didn't mean it to become a thread because that distracts too.
That is precisely why I posted it - as an indication of my impatient anticipation of Simplicius's posts and to provide just a little light-hearted humour to the seriousness of the discussions.
Apologies to any who took my comments any other way.
'It doesn't really matter what Russia does, since Russia has no real way to affect the decisionmakers in Washington, the US and its puppets will do what they want to do.'
This is incorrect - Russia does not play the westie propoganda game like you do, snakes and mirrors - you are trapped in.... whatever
The RF 'affects' by their success on the battlefield, and by the increasing strength of their economic and political alliances across the rest of the world to reduce the power of the USEU - the most recent results of which can be seen in Africa
In my view the information war is a key part of the conflict. The theory goes that you can't defeat a nuclear armed super power but you can create enough political, economic and civil dislocation to create unrest and strife that will lead to internal collapse and regime change. You use the war and your reporting of it as a catalyst to achieve that end. It is pretty clear that this NATO media operation was planned and set up before the first Russian tank rolled across the border. Well in my view the NATO information war has been decisively won with western publics but has been a complete failure within Russia itself and the ROW. I would argue that an unintended side effect of this "victory" is that western leaders and experts have come to believe their own propaganda and fallen victim to groupthink - and no longer recognise what the Soviets used to term "objective reality".
The fact of this war is summed up in this one eyed westie perspective - because Russia, as the rest of the world, has ways of thinking and acting which are different, radically so, from this westie point of view - which then as now the west dismissed or ignored
As if the westies were going to win the war amongst themselves, with no regard for the battlefield and for the political and economic alliances and structures the RF is building with China and ....Africa as well as the remainder of the rest of the world
This suits a culture and countries so inward looking and ignorant of reality that they say they prefer their own fantasies and propaganda, how they can and do is a mystery best left to them
What is the point of winning an 'information war' when for real war you can not recruit soldiers, for drug addiction ill health and obesity, industrial production ditto, and the only countries who can to your surprise turn out to be your enemies
Yet war is the only solution you are able to advance
There is an old African saying...with enemies like these who needs friends, or perhaps it is the other way round
Good point. We often forget that those who provide propaganda often end up believing it too. It's not just the sheepish masses who are fooled. As for information wars, you have a choice. You can win the information war or you can win the one on the ground. Russia has chosen the second option.
The information war is extremely important and obviously Russia is losing or has lost it in the West, and we have no idea when in the foreseeable future any nation in the West will be positive or even neutral about Russia.
Propaganda works! It works great! And Westerners seem to be uniquely susceptible.
Interesting but in the Global South people are more intelligent than Westerners. There are quite a few nations in the Global South where the vast majority hates the government and doesn't believe anything they say. Approval ratings below 10% for presidents are very common in the South. When will we ever see that here? NEVER.
In addition, there are countries down there where the entire media is saying one thing - for instance, rooting for the Nazis against Russia - but no one listens to them, and the public is with Russia and against the Nazis.
Can you imagine Americans ever going against their government and media on foreign policy? Never going to happen and even if it did, I'm afraid the media would keep carrying on with the imperial line anyway. Since when did the US imperialists ever care about our views?
The only people the westies care about, because they are afraid of them, is their own - hence the 'information war' (and the rest of the propaganda) to condition you all
The only people who can influence and change the course of the US EU history or society are the working class and the poor
Instead of lamenting your feebleness, you should take note of what you can do, as other countries and peoples have done - if not it will be done to you
As for Russia, they have formed alliances both political and economic with much of the remainder of the world , and by their successful resistance to all that the westies have thrown at them, sanctions weapons etc, have shown how frail the west is - not only the western military governance and politics, but the western people's in and of themselves
True , the western side is winning the info war up until this point, but you can’t lie in the face of reality forever. Upon the collapse of the U’ side it will be one more nail in the credibility of their info ops.
Very true, but you can see already the excuse machine going into over-drive. And changed narratives. Now it is sinking oil tankers, a month ago it was retaking Crimea. The average Joe is not interested enough to notice. But I think you are right. We need a Kabul 21 situation to drive this home.
Yes, and the brits are prepping for another bout of viruses and lockdowns, so maybe we can infer that the cratering finances need another bailout excuse. This may also be good cover for lack of supply as trade wars and sanctions on China ramp up. You know the mindset - it worked last time. Gaslighting is endless. No wonder populations in the west are perpetually stupefied.
This is one of the most admirable qualities I find in the Russian political/military structure and conduct of this war (SMO - apologies) - a total disregard for reacting to any Western propaganda and maintaining a consistent, deliberate posture to the effort, always keeping in sight their major objectives.
We've been hearing that for a long time now but it never seems to happen, just as Russia is always reported to be out of missiles/men/tires/aircraft/burrito coverings but that never happens either.
What's terrifying is that if, by a miracle, the West comes to its senses, I can't think of anyone at present whom the Russians would trust to negotiate with.
This is why i view this conflict as having only 2 possible outcomes: some kind of revolution or collapse in the West that sweeps away its current criminal Oligarchy, or nuclear war.
As you point out, we are quickly reaching the point where the Western Oligarchy have no conventional weapons left to send. Once Ukraine reaches that point of collapse, these Oligarchs will have an either/or choice to allow Russia a devastating and world altering victory, or play Samson and bring the entire temple down w nukes. These Oligarchs are utterly incapable of negotiating in good faith a just peace w Russia.
Russian's are showing cowardiness by talking about what nato or west will think despite the fact that england is daily attacking Russia through proxi. shameful excuse
How many Ukrainians are currently training in the EU and USA? That would be a factor in determining NATO's commitment to prolonging the war.
I'd then compare that with Medvedev, in that video about Russian conscription: "The results of these and other measures of the state are obvious. According to the Ministry of Defense, from Jan 1 to Aug 3, that is, today, more than 231,000 people have signed the contract."
The above time frame amplifies the achievement and commitment.
We don't read about this so much anymore whereas before we had a lot of articles in the western MSM about it. Doesn't mean it is not happening but makes you wonder. But I hazard a guess that the main training effort is going on in western Ukraine.
Since "no crisis can be allowed to go to waste", why do you think that more than that bare minimum required to ensure that as many Ukrainian men continue to die as possible ARE being trained just enough to slow down the OPFORs?
Depopulating Ukraine of military aged males who never reached their theoretical IQ due to chronic iodine deficiency since end of Soviet Union ended public health care/money for iodine supplements DOES seem to be a feature, not a bug at this point.
Depopulating Ukraine of tall-ish, pretty-ish girls who through poverty limited calories & eating largely less processed/home grown food missed exposure to all the synthetic estrogen analogues and other crap that along with overeating have turned most USA women of last 2+ generations into dumpy pear shaped midgets that reach mennarchy @ 9 YO to fill the whorehouses of the world too.
The arms shipments too are calibrated to a nicety, just enough to force the OPFORs to walk slowly not run, not enough to hold let alone counter meaningfully.
A sociopathic accountant with an unmentionable agenda sets the real world delivery of war material now.
When the same shit keeps happening for years, no matter what the rhetoric is, that's the actual policy.
Depopulation of the most valuable farm land in the world, soon to be bought up for less than 1/3 price by Blackrock/Cargill + sticking a thumb into Russia's metaphorical eye, all while maximizing returns on MIC profits/maintaining the USA forever war driven political status quo.
A large, complicated one that Russia is a past master at wielding.
But so is the West - especially the US.
I doubt if one could become as wealthy and powerful for as long as these two did without understanding that calculation intimately.
Unfortunately it seems to entail the use of proxies to do your fighting for you to save your own people and quickly dropping them if the tide turns against you.
Proxies who then die or have to quickly find their own way out before their foe crushes them.
It looks like this is happening now to Zelensky and his crew.
Zelensky and chief henchmen will be shot with a sub gun by a military officer in an APC during a pallace coup shortly. He can compare notes on the USA MIC/3 letter agency retirement policy for "assets" with president Diem in hell afterwards.
Blinken condemning Navalny’s persecution was clown world at its best this week. The Premier League is organizing a bunch of fundraising football games for Ukraine, Putin is literally shaking!
Tony Blinken is a blinking idiot of the 1st magnitude. It is absolutely amazing that Yankeeland is still running given the state of those supposedly in charge.
Might be a bit like most large companies at Christmas. They usually run better because all the management have gone on holiday.
Biden is 80 years old and visibly diminishing day by day. He is wrapping up his 365th vacation day since he took office in 2021. He is only allowed to work from 12:00-4:00 because of the sundowning issue. They have a new short ramp he can use to make it onto Air Force one without breaking a hip. The Democratic Party sees this, knows at some level that the most likely outcome is that by Election Day he is a vegetable, but plan to stay the course and cover up, as was done for Wilson and Roosevelt last century.
I’m American but I lived through the years of the fall of the Soviet Union and I remember the final sequence of temporary leaders. Andropov and Chernenko. It seems we Americans are now at that stage, where a whole generation of leaders that should be taking over just doesn’t exist.
Part of this was the long Her Turn tenure of Hillary Clinton. All of her contemporaries were kneecapped to clear the way for Hillary. Obama slipped through and she doubled down for the next time. She made a list of every elected democrat in congress and rated them by personal loyalty to her. Seven Stars got you a future cabinet position. Only Three stars and you’d better check behind you when you enter the parking garage to make sure you aren’t being followed. They are reaping the fruits of this still.
As the Russians joke, in 1990 they began to build capitalism in the USSR, and communism in the USA. The construction was carried out as the builders learned from newspapers and TV - corruption, lawlessness, bandits everywhere and a huge gap between the rich and the poor in Russia, in the USA - the Gulag, thoughtcrime and total control. As we say, in every joke there is only a part of a joke - the rest is true.
It was clear to me in his campaign and early on as POTUS that Biden was suffering from dementia. But like Rocky who became smarter the more he got hit on the head, Biden seems to be improving his cognitive abilities as he gets older. Makes me wonder if something is up?
As Russia improves it's combat technologies in the field so do the Americans their pharmaceuticals to keep their fine leaders pumping to maximum capacity.
Perhaps it appears so, but POTUS election campaign requires more work and travel than being a POTUS, thus after he became the president, it became easier for them to show him publicly only during his best hours.
Just comparing the way he struggles to get through reading a speech off of the teleprompter recently versus how he was reasonably coherent during the 2020 presidential debate, he is declining. He was never particularly intelligent or well spoken but he didn’t used to mutter and trail off and stammer the way he does now. Of course, they try to limit his speaking engagements and edit out the worst parts.
His work schedule is public knowledge, i interpolated the sundowning explanation. At the recent NATO summit, he skipped the state dinner to go back to the hotel and rest. His staff explained that he was tired because he’d had to work each of the last three days.
There were sundowning reports from staff as early as the 2020 campaign.
The problem here is that staff say that in meetings he is completely, even remarkably lucid and extremely knowledgeable about many things, understands everything that is said to him, has a good memory and vocabulary, and has excellent analytical skills. All of which rules out dementia last time I checked.
Want to know what dementia looks like? Diane Feinstein.
Though I admit I don't understand the concept well. Hell, I'm a "senior" myself now and my memory is definitely not what it used to be. I guess I must have dementia!
There was a recent article claiming he becomes enraged and swears profusely at his staff, which would be consistent with Alzheimer’s. Also a separate article that he has had multiple dogs while president (German Shepherds) and they have all had biting issues, serious enough to send secret service officers to the hospital. Dogs take cues from their owners, if Joe is swearing at the help, the dog would be likely to follow his lead.
Yankeeland has a lot of inertia, it will keep moving forward in same general direction even with those wheels falling off, until it actually goes over a cliff.
I think I can see signs for the scenic view overlook @ Grand Canyon coming up.
Simplicius, you might find this article interesting as it examines how woke communism is destroying the west, and how Russia is avoiding making the same mistake.
Thanks, believe it or not I have it open on my tab to be read when I get a minute--oddly enough, by way of Martyanov's site http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/ who recommended it from Larry who likewise passed it down from another new author. So I'll read it soon
I wonder whether this is related to the internationalisation of economic profession indicated here: A socioligist describes the Transnationalization of Economics:"The Construction of a Global Profession:The Transnationalization of Economics" by Marion Fourcade.
Abstract:
This article relies on an analysis of the institutionalization of economics worldwide during the 20th century to argue that the logic of professional development in this particular field has come to be increasingly defined in global terms. Connections to (mainly) U.S.-based standards of work and professional practice are routinely used in the local competition whereby different professional segments and groups seek to assert their authority on particular jurisdictions (scientific, corporate, or political). In this process of professional construction (or reconstruction), economies are being transformed through complex transnational mechanisms which, ultimately, feed back into the identity and jurisdictional claims of the economics
profession itself, both in the “core” and in the “periphery.”
Excerpt:
"The strength of Marx’s picture is that it brings to light the dual character of the capitalist developmental logic—the intensification of exploitation through both technological upheaval (the vertical or temporal dimension) and worldwide expansion (the horizontal or geographical dimension). Just like the capitalist production process, economic ideas and
technologies are never fixed—they work continuously at their own revolution. And just like capitalism, they strive for international diffusion. Professionals—private consultants, public technocrats, and scientific experts, many of whom are trained economists—constitute the main vehicles of these transformations."
Communists in the USSR also built up a kind of cancel culture. Also, in earlier times, they also wanted to rebuild the society and create these "Soviet people". It included a lot of separation of kids from their parents, hurting the family.
Thankfully, they saw early on that it can only damage these "Soviet people" and they changed their methods.
Putin himself mentions this while describing western cancel culture.
Of course, modern wokeism does bear this similarity, but otherwise it has nothing in common with communism.
The Bolsheviks weren't the ideologically heterogeneous group the Western low level propaganda made it out to be. I'm not overly interested in this topic myself, but I believe it was a guy named Trotsky and his followers who prominently advocated the ideas you mentioned. His influence only lasted for a few years after the revolution.
As a German, born in 1961, I have lived in the socialist Eastern part, with much impact from Western media, mostly through television. Their propaganda perpetuated the narrative of the "communistic" society trying to destroy the traditional family. I can attest to the fact that it mostly wasn't true. Many children were put into Kindergartens, simply due to the fact that the economy needed women to join the workforce. I was one of six children, our family therefore enjoyed some privileges. The tradional morals and values regarding marriage and family were under discussion, but in the end they have been sanctioned and upheld. Of cause this is a very superficial summary, hampered by the limitations of my grasp of the English language, but to draw parallels between the Socialistic societies of Europe and modern woke-ism is laughable, for many more reasons than the few I have scratched the surface of.
Communist party after the revolution became more and more heterogenous over time. That's why Stalin suggested to let the "Bolshevik" word out of its name, what finally happened in 1952. The party itself was evolving surprisingly fast. While before the war, it was ideologically relatively "pure", which was strengthened during the purges (to an extent Stalin was strongly unhappy about it), it quickly became patriotic-first (as opposed to international communist thinking), which was understandable. After the war, more and more internal factions rose up, but by that time the biggest part of its "cancel culture" was dissipated and it became more moderate ideologically.
It was mostly the first Bolsheviks who aimed to rebuild society into something different (those were the people Putin talked about), but later they sort of aimed at similar values than Orthodox Church preached - which was the reason why they wanted to cancel it. Religion wasn't the enemy, but a direct ideological competitor.
The only valid parallel to wokeism is the desire to create some kind of new class of people. But that isn't a commonality, it's just a similarity of methods. But then, many different ideologies and revolutions used very similar methods to each other. But unfortunately, some people equate them to each other, because of this.
In reality, none of these new "Marxists" as some people call them, have ever read Marx.
You are absolutely right about the desire to create a new kind of person. One of the reasons to strive this goal was to create some sort of situational awareness, in the sense that the citizen might develop an understanding for the less than ideal circumstances and how they eventually would evolve into something better. Also, for the intended communistic future to have a chance to be successful the citizenry would have to consist of people with a minimum of egoism. Greed and the ambition to have what your neighbour has, preferably bigger and better should be things of the past. I don't know if the political elite believed in the possibility to create such humans, scientists working in the fields of social psychology and ave been aware that no elite/leadership is able to fully implement the educational goals sanctioned by the state.
I agree with your assessment of the reasons to suppress the church as a competitor. I can only gauge the role religion played during the existence of the Soviet Union through the lens of art, specifically in the form of Soviet literature. It seems that while the clerical institutions have been supressed many people, even communists, privately held religious beliefs. Therefore I wasn't surprised by the rapid renaissance of the Orthodox Church, institutional Islam etcetera.
The traditionally overwhelmingly Lutheran parts of Germany that formed the German Democratic Republic are a different matter. We weren't taught that the church is the enemy, but while most people have been sceptical towards Marxism in some regards, it's inherent atheism has formatively influenced a majority. It is still true today.
The crucial difference between the woke mob of today and the average absolvent of the socialist educational system of Eastern Germany is blatant. The woke ideology and especially the trans cult are religious movements in denial while we were led to believe in the universal applicability of siences. So, for better or worse, we were able to sense that our society headed toward a cul de sac and put an end to the "socialist experiment". I'm not going to delve into the different political and ideological factions within the Eastern German population and into the reasons for opting to join the capitalist Federal Republic of Germany, that's a different topic. I was just trying to point out that we were able to think critically and to assess our situation based on reality, the followers of the woke religion on the other hand are fanatics.
"I was just trying to point out that we were able to think critically and to assess our situation based on reality, the followers of the woke religion on the other hand are fanatics." - this is something I am always perplexed by, as a person growing up and ending up living in an ex-commie country.
Back in the day (older generations - not all of them, plenty of exceptions) people instinctively knew they were being often fed BS so they thought about all that stuff, could read between the lines and form a real opinion about matters (even without the internet feeding them all kinds of alternative explanations from outsiders or insiders). These people still retain this ability (except the aforementioned exceptions) and they most often see what's happening now. It somehow explains the West vs East Germany difference these days.
But then, there are people who are now as old as they were in 1980s, but they absolutely can't recognize what is happening to them. They are worse than hardcore Communist apparatchiks because those apparatchiks at least knew what was a lie and what wasn't.
I would have never thought something like this was possible. Not even the most dystopian science fiction writers went this far.
"it quickly became patriotic-first (as opposed to international communist thinking), which was understandable."
This was during the war.
Speaking of Cancel Culture, how about the US reactionaries and their Red Scare bullshit?
"but later they sort of aimed at similar values than Orthodox Church preached - which was the reason why they wanted to cancel it. Religion wasn't the enemy, but a direct ideological competitor."
This makes no sense because they went after Judaism and Islam as much as Orthodoxy.
"The only valid parallel to wokeism is the desire to create some kind of new class of people."
I came out of the cultural revolutions of the 1960's and 1970's. Hell I was on the mailing list for the WEATHERMEN LOL.
Let me tell how exactly what we hippies were trying to do: create a whole new class of people. Later I was in the punk movement and the goal was the same. I guess we were all communists?
These goals are typical of any wide-ranging revolutionary processes, even purely cultural revolutions.
"In reality, none of these new "Marxists" as some people call them, have ever read Marx."
Some of them have. In fact, the Western Marxist Left are some of the most insufferable woketards of them all.
"Speaking of Cancel Culture, how about the US reactionaries and their Red Scare bullshit?" - that was more institutional delusion than cancel culture. It was a similar thing to internment camps for the Japanese living there during WW2.
I didn't claim there wasn't cancel culture in the US - your hippie thing is a good example (and it was not nearly as innocent of pacifist as it's portrayed now). I just pointed out that Russians know what they're talking about because they have experience with it.
"This makes no sense because they went after Judaism and Islam as much as Orthodoxy." - I didn't claim they were not against Judaism and Islam. They were, but Orthodoxy was one with the state in Russian empire, while for example Islam was simply accepted as one of the many religions present in Russia previously. It didn't need so much work to cancel it, unlike the Orthodox Church which needed to be purged from power structures.
"In fact, the Western Marxist Left are some of the most insufferable woketards of them all." - this is one of the things I am lamenting about in other comments - they are not Marxists or left. The left-right political axis is about the ownership of production means. Big corporate cultural shills are not left or Marxist. They're far right, mo matter how many times they're called "leftists".
You're right. These people are American rightwingers - reactionary dogs and Trumpian fascists. Reactionaries are always crazy and they never make sense as a general rule. If they made sense they wouldn't be pushing Reaction!
Woke COMMUNISM? Are you high? There is no communism anywhere in the West and certainly none here in the US. I'd know it when I saw it too, as a sort of-Marxist.
Simplicius, would be great if you provided a single analysis of the Black Sea situation, and its possible futures.
I can't imagine the war lasting 5-10 years. Either there's a 'Korean' line which last decades, or Ukraine collapses because America focuses on China whilst the EU comes to terms with its new conservative governments who will look to make peace with Russia.
What would be the benefit for Ukraine allowing Poland into territories it knows they want? Nobody gives up something without self-enriching motive.
Instead of "The weak level of English among Ukrainian pilots proved to be a stumbling block for the start of their training on F-16 fighters", how about "The weak level of Ukrainian among American pilot trainers proved to be a stumbling block..." :)
David Wu relegated Scott Ritter to second place on the confidence list. Hoping that video is on Bitchute or RT so that I can embed it one of my posts.
Lira posted videos at 2am Ukrainian time, and he recorded them in daylight. I still don't have a set opinion on him. A period in prison, in pain and with your family under threat, can make people turn. I just don't know.
Simplicius, your shorter post length allows me to spend some time in the sun today :)
Yes, I forget the name, but I think they pulled out of a treaty which made them sovereignless. I recall Putin speaking about that but never made a note.
I can easily imagine the war lasting a good 5-10 more years and it scares me. The way it happens is conflicts in Africa, Asia, and possibly the Americas all become part of the same war, and this is just the opening act.
Kike 0wned Yankeeland has done what it can for now to wreck Europe and it now has problems in Niger while it is planning to war on China in 2027 plus its entire infrastructure is falling to pieces and its 'NGO's'[read CIA fronts] are being kicked out of countries all over the globe and some countries are sanctioning Yankeeland which it cannot process. Add in that the only reason the Petrodollar still exists is that BRICS+ want countries to be able to recover their gold and cash in their US Securities before it pulls the plug on Yankee hegemony once and for all time and the future for all is a worry with Yankeeland in its death throes might just decide to start throwing nukes around.
A Russian ship was damaged not sunk. Thereafter an oil tanker was hit too. I assume this has something to do with the USA's plane that was flying around the middle of the Black Sea earlier this week. Ukraine lost the land war (ages ago) but the sea situation is problematic. I expect Russia will retaliate on ports as they did opposite Romania.
Ok, not the same guy :) There's a South African podcaster/cartoonist called Jerm. He hosts a mixture of conspiracy theorists and intellectuals. Last month, I listened to an old episode of his wherein Aleksandr Duginon gave an interersting lecture - https://jermwarfare.podbean.com/e/aleksandr-dugin-on-the-fourth-political-theory/
I remember clearly those MCRD billets with the pebble front "gardens" that had to be kept spotless at all times, and and all the fun that basic Marine training brings with it. But honestly, I don't remember recruits who looked like that....
Another great update. The Russian communication tech upgrades is very interesting. The one thing the west is clearly very good at is intelligence. Not just battlefield recon or planning specOps, but communication and logistics Intel. Things like the Iran drone deal, or Wagner supposedly getting weapons from the NORKs. I wonder if the FSB/Russian Intel is also seeing massive upgrades in its ability to counter CIA/MI6 Intel.
Right on I thought similar, intelligence agency seeing their own population as the domestic terrorist, we’re the one to destroy not those of the other side. Western intelligence fighting westerners, besides how many dams, nuclear plants and Nordic pipelines have they to destroy before westerners wake up from this war against themselves and their genes?
Don't confuse 'intelligence' with 'propaganda'. The West has excellent ISR - it's just that they don't know how to use it effectively against an opponent like Russia.
There was a long thread on MoA some time back about why western intelligence agencies keep getting this wrong. I don't recall their being a consensus but one theory that came out is that they have in effect been politicised and subject to institutional groupthink. It is a career limiting move to argue against the consensus and you can always find evidence to back that up. Not in anyway a real world thing but a pal and I use the term the 10th man in World War Z. He seems to be AWOL.
British and US Intel has been very vocal about things they know Russia is doing. Whether it's weapon trading, weapons manufacturing, supply chains within Russia, etc. Even the ability to know/track the location of major Russian military and political leaders. They get enough right to know they have human intelligence as well as electronic surveillance. We'll probably never know what Russia is doing to counter it.
Thank You, Simplicius. I was most curious about what move Wagner would make, since Prigozhin dropped the hint a few days ago It is early enough in Niger for a modest Wagner presence to be a strong deterrent to an invason. There seems to be limited local Afriican desire to invade Niger. The winds are shifting against French neo-colonialism.
Nobody really wats to be on the wrong side of history in Africa...
The ironic or prescient thing is that going on 1.5+ months ago now, Prigozhin said that "Wagner would be back from vacation on August 5", and it's exactly August 5.
As a former EME in my country's Army the words in that last video meant a lot. We still had to meet all the standard requirements of grunts, trained with special units and the various corps usually just to get abused when something didn't work which was often due to operator abuse.
The other guys I think need recognition are cooks. How those guys come up with some of the meals they do under sometimes shit conditions amazes me but a hot meal with a hot drink can make life worth while.
My USMC dad, Korea/Vietnam vet, often said, "life's never quite so bad if you can just get a good cup of coffee". Vietnam was not good for Dad. His mom said Korea had changed him, but I was not yet incarnate.
I grew up around young Marines training, running, doing obstacle courses on bases.
I had that same visceral reaction to the photo, of its wrongness
That was very constructive. You should apply for a job with the US State Department. Vicky Nuland is looking for skillfully subtle operators such as yourself.
Where are you getting the figure for 30-50k soldiers reduced on the front lines due to Wagner being removed from the battlefield? I didn't think all of Wagner went to Belarus, i thought a large number of them decided to sign up with the MOD with contracts?
No one seems to know the exact number but some have claimed that a small percentage of Wagner signed contracts with the MOD, but it's impossible to know for definite.
I think the 40,000 figure may be suspect. I could be wrong but whilst a lot of guys rotated through its ranks, many will have been lost at Bakhmut and more will by now be contract expired. I'm not sure there were ever more than 20,000 at any time but cannot confirm this view. Some will be a hard core (who might now be moving Africa direction, some are clearly in Belorussia and some will have joined the RF proper. My guess is that the Russian High Command planned for a permanent reduction in this and other private armies and the "loss" will have been covered off.
I agree with the 20k number, but only if you exclude all of the convicts who signed 6 month contracts with Wagner. That boosted their numbers considerably, but only for a short while. It's said (but unconfirmed) that about 32k former convicts finished their 6 month contract and went home when it was over.
That was probably part of the rush at the end of taking Bakhmut, and likely a big part of Prigozhin's mounting frustration at the time. The bulk of the 6 month contracts were coming to an end, and he hadn't been able to take the whole city yet.
I've always assumed Wagner's strength (in the SMO area) after the departure of the 6-monthers to be about 20k, plus or minus 5k.
What I wonder now isn't how this conflict in Ukraine will wrap up, but what the war after it will look like, and how soon will it happen?
Assume for a moment that this doesn't spiral into a world war on its own, which is an assumption I can't justify with the Nigerian, Syrian, Sudanese and Taiwanese situations all hovering about, but that I hope we can all agree is better than the alternative.
Poland takes some portion of Western Ukraine. Russia takes the rest of Ukraine, or leaves a strip completely defanged and 'protected' (as in, Protectorate) like the Rhineland in the Interwar period. How comfortable is Poland with Russia as a next-door neighbour and no buffer states to speak of in between? Conversely, how good a neighbour are they going to be to Russia? The long history of Polish-Russian relations doesn't look promising. Too, Poland will have spent whatever time they have buying and training a fully modern army. The Polish defense procurement business is booming, and with not a little money siphoned off so-called Ukrainian aid. (This is part of Ukraine's complaint, by the way. There are still tanks and artillery pieces and rounds in Europe. Poland has a lot of them, and she's keeping them. Maybe I'm wrong about the size of it, but that only pushes things out by a few years.)
Russia, for her part, will have gone through the fires of war and emerged on the other side with a large, cutting-edge, world-class professional army and the very recent proof she can take NATO and win, at least industrially.
So you have two states with historically extremely poor relations, newly large and well-funded and equipped armies, one of whom just won a conventional land-war against what it perceives as a much bigger enemy (NATO), and the other of whom probably feels like she didn't lose, it was those idiots next door who hardly count as people anyway, and she could show what a real war looks like, and it's about time to take her enemy down a peg or two.
Throw Belarus and the Baltics into that toxic brew, and the flashpoint that is Kaliningrad and its supply situation.
All this leads me to ask myself when the next war starts, and what does it look like?
As you probably know, many people have rightfully compared the current decade to the 1930s with the looming 'big war' potentially set for the 2030s as analog to the 1940s, or even the late 2020s as analog to late 1930s.
Some have compared the Spanish Civil War of the 30s to the current war as well, in how both sides used the conflict as a 'test bed' for technologies, weapons, in preparation for the much larger looming war just ahead.
It's definitely possible, particularly the comparisons to the economic situation, the post 'great depression' period can be compared to the post 2008 crash which still hasn't been resolved.
The only difference in my mind, and maybe it's an idealistic or overly optimistic view, is that back then the elites, secret societies, burgeoning intel agencies were all nascent and ascendant, but now much of that is on the decline with an opposite force currently ascendant all over the world. The next round of elections around the world, particularly the U.S. 2024 ones for obvious reasons, could change the direction of a lot of things.
What's interesting is the analogous position Russia seems to occupy in both comparisons. In the late 1930s they were about 25+ years out from a major epochal change, the post 1917 revolution and economic struggles through Lenin's NEP and everything else. Stalin's 5 year programs salvaged a lot of the situation. Similarly, Russia is now 30 years out from the collapse of the USSR and a terrible low, with Putin's equivalent economic rebirth period. There's a lot of parallels that can be studied.
Ultimately though, how would the potential next war look, probably not too different than WW2.
Particularly if/when the real fun begins as all satellites are taken out, kesslerization is achieved, and all nations are forced to pretty much fight an archaic WW1/2 style war without any guided weapons, ISR, intel, etc.
One way this might play out is for the U.S. to push Poland to fight Russia and push Taiwan and Australia to fight China.
Their calculation is they can supply weapons while building the military and just like WW2 they come in late and take the glory.
Except .. that won’t happen.
One, the proxies are much weaker than their adversaries. We’re talking about two great powers getting stronger by the minute. These wars will be won much quicker than anticipated.
Two, today’s U.S. is not the same of the 30s. Industrially, culturally, socially, economically it is much weaker. They can’t buy enough time to rebuild. You can’t print that.
So, either way U.S. hegemony is over. The only question for every country, especially for The EU, is do they want to go down with the losing side or regain their sovereignty and independence?
Forget Australia, total military is approx. 50,000. Actual fighting forces a fraction of that. Fat, lazy, and many women. An absolute joke of a military.
US hegemony is definitely over, whatever happens. The question now is how will they react. Will they at last kick out the crazy neocons and adjust to the new reality? Or will they double, treble, quadruple down and create hell on Earth? I think that the leadership of every Western nation will have to be changed for any good outcome to happen.
My hope is that the US will either reestablish something like the Articles of Confederation w little or no central government (ideal) or split into regional confederations free of this sick Empire addiction. The world will be a much better place without the Hegemon.
I can't really envision another war like the two previous ones. Everything is different now. But the greatest difference, I think, is the lack of industrial power of the West, including and especially, the United States. You can't fight for long without the industrial capability to support an extended effort. And you can't fight effectively in today's world with a 5000 mile logistical nightmare subject to hypersonic and electronic weaponry that is generations beyond your own. Western sea power was a major factor in those wars - no more, as all sea vessels are sitting ducks for modern weaponry. Western air power is also at risk as they placed great reliance on stealth and multi-purpose aircraft like the F-35, a complete catastrophe of the Western alliance. The multi-layered, fully networked AD power of Russia is truly formidable - I even question now if America's nukes can get through it. Lastly, there is the manpower (or LGBTQ++ inclusiveness power, if you will) issue - where will all the 'manpower' needed come from? Even if they conducted forced mobilisation, where will all the uniforms and equipment come from as most of their industrial capacity has been outsourced to other countries? Where will the needed needed NCO's and officer corps who are experienced and educated in modern combined arms warfare like Russia is conducting come from? And let's face it - the Western MIC is thoroughly corrupt and inadequate for the task of modern war. Also, I believe most of the populations of the Western countries have lived fat and easy for too long and thanks to the Internet, they are distrustful of their own governments and suspicious of the part those governments have played in bringing about war. People have to be motivated to go to war - in the past governments have relied heavily on propaganda to keep the people focused and motivated, but with the Internet it is hard to put a lid on truth for long.
The West will implode on its own in the coming decades - it is inevitable. If, however, they have the hubris and delusional perspective to think they can start a war and win it, I believe they will be defeated soundly and quickly - nukes or no.
I think you're largely correct, but I'll offer my thoughts on two points on which I disagree.
First, US naval power for truly military purposes is still formidable, though it would quickly decline from use. Yes, large surface groups are probably largely useless, though don't count them out entirely. As Russia has shown in the Black Sea, they're still important enough to take into consideration. However, the Silent Service is the one remaining area of the Navy where warfighting dominance takes precedence. Seawolf and Virginia are both hugely impressive platforms capable of taking down entire surface groups alone, and the US retains a huge edge in underwater capabilities.
Second, plenty of armies in history are turned by their host states into useless, contained, low-status pressure valves because the regime feels no need to win military contests against peers. The best example I've seen worked out in the Blogosphere is the Song dynasty, but there are plenty of others. Given both warning and cause, such armies quickly shed their useless, corpulent baggage to become fighting services again. You need look no further than Russia for a current, successful example of this. Assuming the real possibility of a broad-scale war manages to get through the self-congratulatory illusions of the US' power clique, LGBT and other social status signalling in the armed forces will be expunged ruthlessly, even if it means bodies hanging from the walls of the Pentagon.
The question in my mind is whether, once the situation truly breaks in on them, said power clique will decide - being old, decrepit, robbed of the hopes for immortality they had which were lies all along, and steeped in lies and perversion - that if they can't have the world, nobody can. I wish I could feel comfortable believing that either through cowardice or prudence they wouldn't press the button.
Right now my main hope is that through lack of maintenance and modernization the US' nuclear arsenal is significantly less capable than most believe it to be.
I agree with most of this, but the nuclear issue needs a little refinement.
Even if poorly maintained, which I don't think is the case, there would still be some viable nukes and missiles. The big problem from the western perspective is that Russia has much better missiles (hypersonics, and others) and Poseidon (the stealth nuclear drone torpedo) which the Pentagon knows will get through. The US has inferior air defenses and none of them can stop normal ICBMs, let alone hypersonics. Russia on the other hand has the S-500 which can take out ICBMs.
The Pentagon knows all this even if the president and the state department are idiots. I imagine, that if push came to shove, the Pentagon would tell the Whitehouse that it will not launch the missiles. They might even depose the president to cheers of joy from a greatful populace.
The US sub service is in pretty bad shape at present, with (according to Colonel McGregor) 40% of its craft out of action for major repairs. They will still be a threat, but a reduced one. Also the Russian sub service, like all its other arms, has come on leaps and bounds. And even if the US sub fleet was top notch, you can't really win wars today with subs. Naval power is all about force projection, which means aircraft carriers and troop transports. These would be taken out very quickly by Russian and Chinese hypersonics.
I have no beef with the good Colonel, but if you listen to the Army to tell you what the Navy's doing you deserve what you get. Anyway, there are definitely undeniable problems in the USN on all fronts, and I'm not here to mount a defense for them, but always remember how easy it is to conflate "there are problems in this military" with "this military in ineffective", unless you want to end up with as much egg on your face as Western analysts of Russian capability.
If the next war truly threatens to look like WW2 again it'll quickly start looking like a nuclear hellscape instead. Existential wars use existential solutions. That's part of the genius Russia (and NATO, let's be clear and give credit where it's due) has shown so far in the handling of the Ukraine war. Even just calling it a Special Military Operation and refusing to change the name has been vital to making sure existential responses remain beyond the pale. (Unless you're Ukraine, but they gave up their nukes because they didn't understand nuclear strategy.)
I can’t really see this as the prelude to a third WW, more like the final wrapping up of the last one. Culturally, socially, economically and ideologically the world is a very different place to what it was up to the 1940s. No, America is spent, it’ll kick and scream alright for a long time but there is not the appetite for the sacrifices of the past and rightly so. The next chapter will be the reckoning of Africa with its elites.
There either won't be a 2024 election in America, or if Trump is taken out, then any election would not represent the majority of Americans. If somehow there is an election and Trump is successful then I'm not sure if he can do much, if anything, when both parties are against him even though he has the support of the people.
I made a comment above that basically if the war expands beyond the current hotspots now in play I believe Lithuania would be jeopardy.
There will be an "election" alright. But it will be w preapproved candidates and rigged for the desired outcome. Elections in the US have been a charade for...well, since the emergence of the 2 party system.
I am aware that my vision of the Spanish Civil War (1938-1939) can be disconcerting. As a Spaniard and not very enthusiastic about the figure of General Franco (who should have retired from power in time) I am increasingly convinced that the Republican side kept international public opinion deceived and thus summoned an international force with the Brigades of volunteers (Polish, English, Irish, etc.) who thought to liberate the Spanish people (or their government, in favor of the extermination of believers) by ending "the fascists". With this simple narrative it seemed as if the republican Madrid was the blessed paradise of freedom. What happened when Franco, against all odds, won the war? The republican authorities fled abroad, Franco was in command in our country for almost forty years and the Second World War began in Europe. Now the anti-fascist heroes are in Kiev. I hope that the Ukrainian denouement improves the story of our civil war.
This is the start of that next war, WW-3, but it's form is still developing. The contest is between self-cannibalizing western neoliberal financial-capitalism, which claims 10X as many debts need to be paid to it, as can happen in reality, and production-based national mixed economies of markets, industry and central direction by governments, with some accountability for decisions.
This could go lot of ways, but global resources are half gone, and the flow is slowing, so industrial economy can't be rebuilt after nuclear holocaust.
The owners just need to get rid of most of us "useless eaters", gobbling up their jet fuel and their nature...
If we knew the answer to all that, we'd be called God. However, we can make some educated guesses. Concerning Ukraine, Putin now knows that no-one in the West can be trusted to negotiate honestly and stick to any peace deals. That means he could well take most of Ukraine up to the Dnieper, including Odessa, and ensure that Ukraine can never be used as a NATO proxy threat ever again. As for the post-war relationships in the area, let's hope that by then everyone has sobered up and calmed down enough to think rationally. That's my tuppence worth and I could be completely wrong.
'This includes a new design for an FPV drone zapper being tested on tanks, which is a small unit placed on the back of tanks and armored vehicles which disabled FPV drones in 4 channels and neutralizes them before they can make contact.'
I am amazed by all the new technology that Russia is quickly developing, but I wish that the minds being used to do this would instead be used to create things for the betterment of humanity. Just think if the trillions spent on killingree was used instead on livingree. Words made up by Buckminster Fuller. And I’m appalled by the numbers of deaths for both sides. And for what? In a hundred years none of this will matter except to the families that have lost loved ones.
Fred Kagan, BiL of Victoria Nuland who is married to the other Kagan brother thinks that Ukraine still has a chance of winning and making Russia scurry back home. It’s funny how he plans things out for Ukraine who has already been doing those things and thinking that they have a snowballs chance of winning. If you need a good laugh….
Yes I understand that and that helps save lives. But if the human race hadn’t been at war since they lived in caves I like to imagine what kind of world we could be living in today. I am still a big Star Trek fan and I wonder how close we could be to its message of peace. Yeah I’m a dreamer and I’m sure I’m not alone.
I consider the last season of Enterprise (the other 3 were just a big missed opportunity) to be the most cleverly written ST to date. They had the courage to finally write a real prequel and they maneuvered between previous series' inconsistencies surprisingly well. It ended up being cancelled at the worst possible moment.
I think the useful-function of the "owners" is to slaughter a lot of people from time to time, when people outgrow the resource base.
We will need another way to avoid that overgrowth.
I seek spiritual guidance and direction. I think that could work if everybody did, then we wouldn't "need" to periodically slaughter each other in massed attacks.
I don't know what "critical mass" would be, and I'm not an evangelist, but you might consider checking it out from time to time, and see if it seems helpful to you.
Oh, the Star Trek episode where they simulated a war by drawing names at random and people walked into a death chamber comes to mind, but I was never convinced.
War is the main driving force of progress. US and Soviet space programs started from developing of military ballistic missiles. Nuclear energy started from invention of a nuclear bomb.
I'm not certain that it is the 'eliteness' that separates these units, but the purposes for which each is trained for and the type of theatre they operate in. But I recognise I could be wrong about that.
My take is that neither side wants to publish an accurate OOB and simlarly even if you could do so, neither side either knows or even can publish a sensible and objective of the combat capablity of any particular unit etc. And it changes daily. And greater operational and strategic factors might have greater importance - ie the supply of ammunition, POL, food etc. I judge that you need to take a view from all the BS issued by both sides and take an educated guess.
"Lira has been doing this peekaboo game for quite a while, now I am here, now I'm gone. then, when he is back, he tries to engage his audience in conversation. Does he actually contribute anything?" - what would he contribute to the SBU then?
I watched Scott's video about Lira and he certainly did not present "irrefutable evidence".
In fact, he presented NO EVIDENCE AT ALL!
All he said is that it didn't pass his smell test and the FBI would have acted differently than the SBU. Wow, that's not evidence, that's Scott's personal opinion.
Lira is a peculiar enough character, it's very hard to judge him. And by the way, lots of people have leveled that accusation against Scott, that's he's working for the US govt this whole time.
All of this is easy to explain (I'm not saying it's true) and none of it would be evidence to suggest he is an SBU asset. It's all just pure speculation.
But:
"* he got the whites of his eye scratched with a toothpick but in the video his eye appears to be fine;" - if it was done one month ago, it would be invisible by now
"* he does his disappearance/faked death and then reappears like a resurrected Christ, excpet the latter did it once, Lira has done it 2 or 3 times;" - he never disappeared or faked death. He was in custody and this is the first time he got his phone number back and therefore was in no need to create new accounts.
"* his passport was taken away from, then given back - is it normal that a prisoner is released like that and kindly given back his travel document;" - yes, this is normal. He was charged, but not convicted. Therefore he should get everything back if released AND in the meantime his own assets should be protected (they should even protect him from unpaid electricity bills and all that stuff).
"* he has a wife and 2 kids, yet after his 1st incarceration and subsequent release he carries on doing what he was arrested for in the 1st place;" - this is a very good question, but the guy has been strongly on the crazy side with his personal life simply because he stayed in Ukraine even after he knew he should leave when he got stuck in Kiev. Perhaps there is a reason for this, but unrelated to his actual stay in Ukraine (perhaps he has some untold issues at home? that is possible). But it's more likely that he thought he can come up with some *gamble that would advance his life as he is a known speculator. Only it backfired spectacularly.
"* he loudly announces that he is going to make a dash for the Hungarian border, and hey presto, he gets intercepted at the Hungarian border." - he set up the YouTube video to be published with delay. By the time of its publishing, he expected to be in Hungary.
The entire "SBU asset" is an unfounded speculation, but it doesn't even mention the obvious possibility of him being a real SBU asset, without even knowing it:
Why did they release him and unlike the previous time, they gave him his passport back AND they DIDN'T legally prevent him from leaving the city (it was the reason why he stayed in Kharkov - the court ordered him not to leave)?
Because his activities strongly suggest someone is helping him (his landlord certainly was). And what better chance to find these people than to let him go and then follow him?
Note: the *gamble: For some reason, he wanted Russia to come to him rather than moving to Russia. There must be a reason for this. Perhaps Russians wouldn't give him proper visa, or extradite him somewhere (not the US, but some country with an extradition treaty) but it would be different if he just happened to live in a territory Russia annexed. The connection here is Hungary. Why run there and not to Turkey/Belarus/Bulgaria/Slovakia or somewhere else? There's also a reason for that.
"The goal of this would be obvious: to force Russia into somehow over-reacting with an uncharacteristically rash use of force which could highlight Russia’s “brutality” and wring sympathy and further support for Ukraine from Western nations."
If Russia doesn't respond to attacks, the narrative will be that Russia is weak and the West must escalate.
If Russia does respond, the narrative will be that Russia is brutal and the West must escalate.
It doesn't really matter what Russia does, since Russia has no real way to affect the decisionmakers in Washington, the US and its puppets will do what they want to do.
EDIT I should have added that Russia will be depicted as brutal, regardless what Russia does. If real atrocities cannot be found, fake ones will be manufactured.
Russia is not in control of American propaganda :)
Israel/zionists are in control of American propaganda... them and CIA/Nazi’s. Two wings of the same genocidal birs.
The zionists aren't a lobby, they are proxies, treat their propaganda as that of state broadcasters.
Thanks for beating those idiots to First Comment.
"First. I commented first. Everybody, look at me. I care about this war because I was here first. Me!"
:)
I interpreted their "First" humor (I liked it and laughed a lot too) as a message to Simplicius of how much they can't wait for his new post to appear and how much they appreciate his writing. I don't think it was "look at me" and a show-off :).
I mean I for one am always waiting here impatiently :D
Me too... but people who post first and don't comment meaningfully thereafter are questionable. That's been regular behaviour on comment sections for years of the internet's history. But everyone else can have their opinion. I sure didn't mean it to become a thread because that distracts too.
That is precisely why I posted it - as an indication of my impatient anticipation of Simplicius's posts and to provide just a little light-hearted humour to the seriousness of the discussions.
Apologies to any who took my comments any other way.
Calm down dude, it's 2023. Nobody actually cares about really being "first." :-)
Victoria Nuland: "Hold my beer!"
lol no shit
'It doesn't really matter what Russia does, since Russia has no real way to affect the decisionmakers in Washington, the US and its puppets will do what they want to do.'
This is incorrect - Russia does not play the westie propoganda game like you do, snakes and mirrors - you are trapped in.... whatever
The RF 'affects' by their success on the battlefield, and by the increasing strength of their economic and political alliances across the rest of the world to reduce the power of the USEU - the most recent results of which can be seen in Africa
In my view the information war is a key part of the conflict. The theory goes that you can't defeat a nuclear armed super power but you can create enough political, economic and civil dislocation to create unrest and strife that will lead to internal collapse and regime change. You use the war and your reporting of it as a catalyst to achieve that end. It is pretty clear that this NATO media operation was planned and set up before the first Russian tank rolled across the border. Well in my view the NATO information war has been decisively won with western publics but has been a complete failure within Russia itself and the ROW. I would argue that an unintended side effect of this "victory" is that western leaders and experts have come to believe their own propaganda and fallen victim to groupthink - and no longer recognise what the Soviets used to term "objective reality".
Exactly
The fact of this war is summed up in this one eyed westie perspective - because Russia, as the rest of the world, has ways of thinking and acting which are different, radically so, from this westie point of view - which then as now the west dismissed or ignored
As if the westies were going to win the war amongst themselves, with no regard for the battlefield and for the political and economic alliances and structures the RF is building with China and ....Africa as well as the remainder of the rest of the world
This suits a culture and countries so inward looking and ignorant of reality that they say they prefer their own fantasies and propaganda, how they can and do is a mystery best left to them
What is the point of winning an 'information war' when for real war you can not recruit soldiers, for drug addiction ill health and obesity, industrial production ditto, and the only countries who can to your surprise turn out to be your enemies
Yet war is the only solution you are able to advance
There is an old African saying...with enemies like these who needs friends, or perhaps it is the other way round
For Western nations, ideology and delusions are reality. It's just that the other 90% of the world prefers to believe in facts.
The information war and the hybrid war against Russia has been very harmful to Russia. It's not like they got off scot free.
This is the problem of westie thought 'inside the bubble' - the 'narrative' - in other words what we think, is all that counts, therefore....
The designated target of the information war is primarily to condition westies, incidentally anyone who wishes to think like one
The rest of the world is outside and un infected
But - perhaps you can give some examples of the harms inflicted?.... instead of self justifying assertions (as per info war procedures)
Good point. We often forget that those who provide propaganda often end up believing it too. It's not just the sheepish masses who are fooled. As for information wars, you have a choice. You can win the information war or you can win the one on the ground. Russia has chosen the second option.
Well you might also think they are winning their own information war too. Just not with westerm publics.
The information war is extremely important and obviously Russia is losing or has lost it in the West, and we have no idea when in the foreseeable future any nation in the West will be positive or even neutral about Russia.
Propaganda works! It works great! And Westerners seem to be uniquely susceptible.
Interesting but in the Global South people are more intelligent than Westerners. There are quite a few nations in the Global South where the vast majority hates the government and doesn't believe anything they say. Approval ratings below 10% for presidents are very common in the South. When will we ever see that here? NEVER.
In addition, there are countries down there where the entire media is saying one thing - for instance, rooting for the Nazis against Russia - but no one listens to them, and the public is with Russia and against the Nazis.
Can you imagine Americans ever going against their government and media on foreign policy? Never going to happen and even if it did, I'm afraid the media would keep carrying on with the imperial line anyway. Since when did the US imperialists ever care about our views?
This is inaccurate
The only people the westies care about, because they are afraid of them, is their own - hence the 'information war' (and the rest of the propaganda) to condition you all
The only people who can influence and change the course of the US EU history or society are the working class and the poor
Instead of lamenting your feebleness, you should take note of what you can do, as other countries and peoples have done - if not it will be done to you
As for Russia, they have formed alliances both political and economic with much of the remainder of the world , and by their successful resistance to all that the westies have thrown at them, sanctions weapons etc, have shown how frail the west is - not only the western military governance and politics, but the western people's in and of themselves
True , the western side is winning the info war up until this point, but you can’t lie in the face of reality forever. Upon the collapse of the U’ side it will be one more nail in the credibility of their info ops.
Very true, but you can see already the excuse machine going into over-drive. And changed narratives. Now it is sinking oil tankers, a month ago it was retaking Crimea. The average Joe is not interested enough to notice. But I think you are right. We need a Kabul 21 situation to drive this home.
Yes, and the brits are prepping for another bout of viruses and lockdowns, so maybe we can infer that the cratering finances need another bailout excuse. This may also be good cover for lack of supply as trade wars and sanctions on China ramp up. You know the mindset - it worked last time. Gaslighting is endless. No wonder populations in the west are perpetually stupefied.
This is one of the most admirable qualities I find in the Russian political/military structure and conduct of this war (SMO - apologies) - a total disregard for reacting to any Western propaganda and maintaining a consistent, deliberate posture to the effort, always keeping in sight their major objectives.
Sure, but it doesn't really matter anymore what the narrative in the West is, does it?
Its been shown to simply not have the physical power to make much difference on the battlefield or anywhere else.
Russia has to be convinced by negotiation to take a certain course of action.
It cannot be "forced" to do anything.
The West is not facing a collapsed Soviet Union that was feeble and easily manipulated.
The West has physically forced its will on others for so long that it has lost the will and the skills needed to negotiate an acceptable compromise.
The West's leaders have been shown to be weak and incompetent gasbags only interested in their own short-term political objectives.
They do a great deal of blabbering and flapping about aimlessly but very little actual meaningful performance.
The West continues to double down.
You can only do that for so long.
Then you run out of resources and you're forced to run away and hope the other guy doesn't follow you and put your head on a spike or...
Negotiate from a position of weakness.
I.e. become a vassal.
And still hope the other guy doesn't put your head on a spike - which he probably will metaphorically speaking.
Or run away, get caught and become a vassal.
The West is running out of resources.
It cannot negotiate from a position of strength anymore.
That opportunity came and left in a hurry last year with that wooly-headed moron Boris Johnson.
And the West certainly can't militarily force its foe, Russia, to do its bidding.
That attempt has proven to be a miserable failure.
So, hoping to not be spiked it is then.
Which is probably an idle hope given how the West treated Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union - and the Western regimes know that.
Russians have very long memories and tend to hold grudges if they've been wronged.
That whole situation is very difficult to accept for the West.
People who have always had the physical power to force their will on everybody else whatever their protestations.
They'll be wriggling around like worms on a hook for a while looking for a way out - which is what they're doing now.
Then they'll just have to accept the new order of things.
If they want to survive that is.
We've been hearing that for a long time now but it never seems to happen, just as Russia is always reported to be out of missiles/men/tires/aircraft/burrito coverings but that never happens either.
We'll see then, won't we?
Basically. It doesn't really matter what any of us say or think or want.
What's terrifying is that if, by a miracle, the West comes to its senses, I can't think of anyone at present whom the Russians would trust to negotiate with.
The infantile, short-sighted idiots running the West won't come to their senses or the negotiation table until they're forced to.
At the table Russia will be waiting.
As it always has been.
Patiently.
This is why i view this conflict as having only 2 possible outcomes: some kind of revolution or collapse in the West that sweeps away its current criminal Oligarchy, or nuclear war.
As you point out, we are quickly reaching the point where the Western Oligarchy have no conventional weapons left to send. Once Ukraine reaches that point of collapse, these Oligarchs will have an either/or choice to allow Russia a devastating and world altering victory, or play Samson and bring the entire temple down w nukes. These Oligarchs are utterly incapable of negotiating in good faith a just peace w Russia.
Pretty much what I've been thinking for about a year now, I was an "early adopter".
So, waddayagonnadoaboutit. Any methods short of resorting to tumbrel carts and gravity powered choppers in the public squares.
https://www.britannica.com/technology/tumbrel
whatever
If you double down, you hit the ground twice as hard.
Russian's are showing cowardiness by talking about what nato or west will think despite the fact that england is daily attacking Russia through proxi. shameful excuse
Well, at least they're not showing any cowardice.
SMELL THE GLOVE.
IOW, Russia can't win.
How many Ukrainians are currently training in the EU and USA? That would be a factor in determining NATO's commitment to prolonging the war.
I'd then compare that with Medvedev, in that video about Russian conscription: "The results of these and other measures of the state are obvious. According to the Ministry of Defense, from Jan 1 to Aug 3, that is, today, more than 231,000 people have signed the contract."
The above time frame amplifies the achievement and commitment.
Then 231000 will be crushed and then only hired special forces or contractors can fill up the gaps.....
We don't read about this so much anymore whereas before we had a lot of articles in the western MSM about it. Doesn't mean it is not happening but makes you wonder. But I hazard a guess that the main training effort is going on in western Ukraine.
Since "no crisis can be allowed to go to waste", why do you think that more than that bare minimum required to ensure that as many Ukrainian men continue to die as possible ARE being trained just enough to slow down the OPFORs?
Depopulating Ukraine of military aged males who never reached their theoretical IQ due to chronic iodine deficiency since end of Soviet Union ended public health care/money for iodine supplements DOES seem to be a feature, not a bug at this point.
Depopulating Ukraine of tall-ish, pretty-ish girls who through poverty limited calories & eating largely less processed/home grown food missed exposure to all the synthetic estrogen analogues and other crap that along with overeating have turned most USA women of last 2+ generations into dumpy pear shaped midgets that reach mennarchy @ 9 YO to fill the whorehouses of the world too.
The arms shipments too are calibrated to a nicety, just enough to force the OPFORs to walk slowly not run, not enough to hold let alone counter meaningfully.
A sociopathic accountant with an unmentionable agenda sets the real world delivery of war material now.
When the same shit keeps happening for years, no matter what the rhetoric is, that's the actual policy.
"A sociopathic accountant with an unmentionable agenda"
A bit too close to home that one.... :-)
Very few are trained in the west. 2000-3000 per month according to official figures. Even if you double that, it is still not a lot.
You're right. I'm trying to figure out the MIC's dedication to prolonging (not winning) the war.
@ Mike Hampton
Depopulation of the most valuable farm land in the world, soon to be bought up for less than 1/3 price by Blackrock/Cargill + sticking a thumb into Russia's metaphorical eye, all while maximizing returns on MIC profits/maintaining the USA forever war driven political status quo.
I'm sure that's their intention.
It doesn't really matter how many are being trained.
It takes along time to do adequate training on Western weapons and tactics.
Time the Ukrainians just don't have.
I fully agree that's part of the equation.
Yes, that's part of the equation.
A large, complicated one that Russia is a past master at wielding.
But so is the West - especially the US.
I doubt if one could become as wealthy and powerful for as long as these two did without understanding that calculation intimately.
Unfortunately it seems to entail the use of proxies to do your fighting for you to save your own people and quickly dropping them if the tide turns against you.
Proxies who then die or have to quickly find their own way out before their foe crushes them.
It looks like this is happening now to Zelensky and his crew.
Zelensky and chief henchmen will be shot with a sub gun by a military officer in an APC during a pallace coup shortly. He can compare notes on the USA MIC/3 letter agency retirement policy for "assets" with president Diem in hell afterwards.
https://www.vietnamwar50th.com/1945-1964_the_road_to_war/President-Diem-is-Overthrown-and-Assassinated/#:~:text=November%202%2C%201963,Dinh%20Nhu%20in%20November%201963.&text=Generals%20in%20the%20South%20Vietnamese,his%20brother%20Ngo%20Dinh%20Nhu.
Blinken condemning Navalny’s persecution was clown world at its best this week. The Premier League is organizing a bunch of fundraising football games for Ukraine, Putin is literally shaking!
Tony Blinken is a blinking idiot of the 1st magnitude. It is absolutely amazing that Yankeeland is still running given the state of those supposedly in charge.
Might be a bit like most large companies at Christmas. They usually run better because all the management have gone on holiday.
It isn't still running, though. The car's on fire, and it's only still moving because it's rolling downhill and the tires haven't fallen off yet.
🤣🤣🤣🤣........
Biden is 80 years old and visibly diminishing day by day. He is wrapping up his 365th vacation day since he took office in 2021. He is only allowed to work from 12:00-4:00 because of the sundowning issue. They have a new short ramp he can use to make it onto Air Force one without breaking a hip. The Democratic Party sees this, knows at some level that the most likely outcome is that by Election Day he is a vegetable, but plan to stay the course and cover up, as was done for Wilson and Roosevelt last century.
I’m American but I lived through the years of the fall of the Soviet Union and I remember the final sequence of temporary leaders. Andropov and Chernenko. It seems we Americans are now at that stage, where a whole generation of leaders that should be taking over just doesn’t exist.
Part of this was the long Her Turn tenure of Hillary Clinton. All of her contemporaries were kneecapped to clear the way for Hillary. Obama slipped through and she doubled down for the next time. She made a list of every elected democrat in congress and rated them by personal loyalty to her. Seven Stars got you a future cabinet position. Only Three stars and you’d better check behind you when you enter the parking garage to make sure you aren’t being followed. They are reaping the fruits of this still.
As the Russians joke, in 1990 they began to build capitalism in the USSR, and communism in the USA. The construction was carried out as the builders learned from newspapers and TV - corruption, lawlessness, bandits everywhere and a huge gap between the rich and the poor in Russia, in the USA - the Gulag, thoughtcrime and total control. As we say, in every joke there is only a part of a joke - the rest is true.
two stars and below.. arkancide? :)
I star and no cigar (from Bill)
well... who says that she ever got Bill cigar???
It was clear to me in his campaign and early on as POTUS that Biden was suffering from dementia. But like Rocky who became smarter the more he got hit on the head, Biden seems to be improving his cognitive abilities as he gets older. Makes me wonder if something is up?
As Russia improves it's combat technologies in the field so do the Americans their pharmaceuticals to keep their fine leaders pumping to maximum capacity.
Perhaps it appears so, but POTUS election campaign requires more work and travel than being a POTUS, thus after he became the president, it became easier for them to show him publicly only during his best hours.
Just comparing the way he struggles to get through reading a speech off of the teleprompter recently versus how he was reasonably coherent during the 2020 presidential debate, he is declining. He was never particularly intelligent or well spoken but he didn’t used to mutter and trail off and stammer the way he does now. Of course, they try to limit his speaking engagements and edit out the worst parts.
He's not. Not at all.
"He is only allowed to work from 12:00-4:00 because of the sundowning issue."
How do you know this is true?
His work schedule is public knowledge, i interpolated the sundowning explanation. At the recent NATO summit, he skipped the state dinner to go back to the hotel and rest. His staff explained that he was tired because he’d had to work each of the last three days.
There were sundowning reports from staff as early as the 2020 campaign.
The problem here is that staff say that in meetings he is completely, even remarkably lucid and extremely knowledgeable about many things, understands everything that is said to him, has a good memory and vocabulary, and has excellent analytical skills. All of which rules out dementia last time I checked.
Want to know what dementia looks like? Diane Feinstein.
Though I admit I don't understand the concept well. Hell, I'm a "senior" myself now and my memory is definitely not what it used to be. I guess I must have dementia!
There are such things as "senior moments," too.
There was a recent article claiming he becomes enraged and swears profusely at his staff, which would be consistent with Alzheimer’s. Also a separate article that he has had multiple dogs while president (German Shepherds) and they have all had biting issues, serious enough to send secret service officers to the hospital. Dogs take cues from their owners, if Joe is swearing at the help, the dog would be likely to follow his lead.
The "Democrats" have finally equalled the Reagan administration record for presidential dementia while a pack of 2 legged hyenas run foreign policy.
Pity they couldn't have found a front man with better acting chops & a more capable PR team, the Reagan myth won't be eclipsed by this bunch.
Yankeeland has a lot of inertia, it will keep moving forward in same general direction even with those wheels falling off, until it actually goes over a cliff.
I think I can see signs for the scenic view overlook @ Grand Canyon coming up.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=vybgt_s6xVQ&feature=share9
Simplicius, you might find this article interesting as it examines how woke communism is destroying the west, and how Russia is avoiding making the same mistake.
https://sonar21.com/why-is-the-west-so-weak-and-russia-so-strong-the-role-of-human-capital-and-western-education/
Thanks, believe it or not I have it open on my tab to be read when I get a minute--oddly enough, by way of Martyanov's site http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/ who recommended it from Larry who likewise passed it down from another new author. So I'll read it soon
I wonder whether this is related to the internationalisation of economic profession indicated here: A socioligist describes the Transnationalization of Economics:"The Construction of a Global Profession:The Transnationalization of Economics" by Marion Fourcade.
Abstract:
This article relies on an analysis of the institutionalization of economics worldwide during the 20th century to argue that the logic of professional development in this particular field has come to be increasingly defined in global terms. Connections to (mainly) U.S.-based standards of work and professional practice are routinely used in the local competition whereby different professional segments and groups seek to assert their authority on particular jurisdictions (scientific, corporate, or political). In this process of professional construction (or reconstruction), economies are being transformed through complex transnational mechanisms which, ultimately, feed back into the identity and jurisdictional claims of the economics
profession itself, both in the “core” and in the “periphery.”
Excerpt:
"The strength of Marx’s picture is that it brings to light the dual character of the capitalist developmental logic—the intensification of exploitation through both technological upheaval (the vertical or temporal dimension) and worldwide expansion (the horizontal or geographical dimension). Just like the capitalist production process, economic ideas and
technologies are never fixed—they work continuously at their own revolution. And just like capitalism, they strive for international diffusion. Professionals—private consultants, public technocrats, and scientific experts, many of whom are trained economists—constitute the main vehicles of these transformations."
Thanks for the link. Good article.
You are very welcome
Woke…”communism”?! 😂😂😂
Communists in the USSR also built up a kind of cancel culture. Also, in earlier times, they also wanted to rebuild the society and create these "Soviet people". It included a lot of separation of kids from their parents, hurting the family.
Thankfully, they saw early on that it can only damage these "Soviet people" and they changed their methods.
Putin himself mentions this while describing western cancel culture.
Of course, modern wokeism does bear this similarity, but otherwise it has nothing in common with communism.
The Bolsheviks weren't the ideologically heterogeneous group the Western low level propaganda made it out to be. I'm not overly interested in this topic myself, but I believe it was a guy named Trotsky and his followers who prominently advocated the ideas you mentioned. His influence only lasted for a few years after the revolution.
As a German, born in 1961, I have lived in the socialist Eastern part, with much impact from Western media, mostly through television. Their propaganda perpetuated the narrative of the "communistic" society trying to destroy the traditional family. I can attest to the fact that it mostly wasn't true. Many children were put into Kindergartens, simply due to the fact that the economy needed women to join the workforce. I was one of six children, our family therefore enjoyed some privileges. The tradional morals and values regarding marriage and family were under discussion, but in the end they have been sanctioned and upheld. Of cause this is a very superficial summary, hampered by the limitations of my grasp of the English language, but to draw parallels between the Socialistic societies of Europe and modern woke-ism is laughable, for many more reasons than the few I have scratched the surface of.
Communist party after the revolution became more and more heterogenous over time. That's why Stalin suggested to let the "Bolshevik" word out of its name, what finally happened in 1952. The party itself was evolving surprisingly fast. While before the war, it was ideologically relatively "pure", which was strengthened during the purges (to an extent Stalin was strongly unhappy about it), it quickly became patriotic-first (as opposed to international communist thinking), which was understandable. After the war, more and more internal factions rose up, but by that time the biggest part of its "cancel culture" was dissipated and it became more moderate ideologically.
It was mostly the first Bolsheviks who aimed to rebuild society into something different (those were the people Putin talked about), but later they sort of aimed at similar values than Orthodox Church preached - which was the reason why they wanted to cancel it. Religion wasn't the enemy, but a direct ideological competitor.
The only valid parallel to wokeism is the desire to create some kind of new class of people. But that isn't a commonality, it's just a similarity of methods. But then, many different ideologies and revolutions used very similar methods to each other. But unfortunately, some people equate them to each other, because of this.
In reality, none of these new "Marxists" as some people call them, have ever read Marx.
Thank you for the clarclarifications.
You are absolutely right about the desire to create a new kind of person. One of the reasons to strive this goal was to create some sort of situational awareness, in the sense that the citizen might develop an understanding for the less than ideal circumstances and how they eventually would evolve into something better. Also, for the intended communistic future to have a chance to be successful the citizenry would have to consist of people with a minimum of egoism. Greed and the ambition to have what your neighbour has, preferably bigger and better should be things of the past. I don't know if the political elite believed in the possibility to create such humans, scientists working in the fields of social psychology and ave been aware that no elite/leadership is able to fully implement the educational goals sanctioned by the state.
I agree with your assessment of the reasons to suppress the church as a competitor. I can only gauge the role religion played during the existence of the Soviet Union through the lens of art, specifically in the form of Soviet literature. It seems that while the clerical institutions have been supressed many people, even communists, privately held religious beliefs. Therefore I wasn't surprised by the rapid renaissance of the Orthodox Church, institutional Islam etcetera.
The traditionally overwhelmingly Lutheran parts of Germany that formed the German Democratic Republic are a different matter. We weren't taught that the church is the enemy, but while most people have been sceptical towards Marxism in some regards, it's inherent atheism has formatively influenced a majority. It is still true today.
The crucial difference between the woke mob of today and the average absolvent of the socialist educational system of Eastern Germany is blatant. The woke ideology and especially the trans cult are religious movements in denial while we were led to believe in the universal applicability of siences. So, for better or worse, we were able to sense that our society headed toward a cul de sac and put an end to the "socialist experiment". I'm not going to delve into the different political and ideological factions within the Eastern German population and into the reasons for opting to join the capitalist Federal Republic of Germany, that's a different topic. I was just trying to point out that we were able to think critically and to assess our situation based on reality, the followers of the woke religion on the other hand are fanatics.
"I was just trying to point out that we were able to think critically and to assess our situation based on reality, the followers of the woke religion on the other hand are fanatics." - this is something I am always perplexed by, as a person growing up and ending up living in an ex-commie country.
Back in the day (older generations - not all of them, plenty of exceptions) people instinctively knew they were being often fed BS so they thought about all that stuff, could read between the lines and form a real opinion about matters (even without the internet feeding them all kinds of alternative explanations from outsiders or insiders). These people still retain this ability (except the aforementioned exceptions) and they most often see what's happening now. It somehow explains the West vs East Germany difference these days.
But then, there are people who are now as old as they were in 1980s, but they absolutely can't recognize what is happening to them. They are worse than hardcore Communist apparatchiks because those apparatchiks at least knew what was a lie and what wasn't.
I would have never thought something like this was possible. Not even the most dystopian science fiction writers went this far.
"it quickly became patriotic-first (as opposed to international communist thinking), which was understandable."
This was during the war.
Speaking of Cancel Culture, how about the US reactionaries and their Red Scare bullshit?
"but later they sort of aimed at similar values than Orthodox Church preached - which was the reason why they wanted to cancel it. Religion wasn't the enemy, but a direct ideological competitor."
This makes no sense because they went after Judaism and Islam as much as Orthodoxy.
"The only valid parallel to wokeism is the desire to create some kind of new class of people."
I came out of the cultural revolutions of the 1960's and 1970's. Hell I was on the mailing list for the WEATHERMEN LOL.
Let me tell how exactly what we hippies were trying to do: create a whole new class of people. Later I was in the punk movement and the goal was the same. I guess we were all communists?
These goals are typical of any wide-ranging revolutionary processes, even purely cultural revolutions.
"In reality, none of these new "Marxists" as some people call them, have ever read Marx."
Some of them have. In fact, the Western Marxist Left are some of the most insufferable woketards of them all.
"Speaking of Cancel Culture, how about the US reactionaries and their Red Scare bullshit?" - that was more institutional delusion than cancel culture. It was a similar thing to internment camps for the Japanese living there during WW2.
I didn't claim there wasn't cancel culture in the US - your hippie thing is a good example (and it was not nearly as innocent of pacifist as it's portrayed now). I just pointed out that Russians know what they're talking about because they have experience with it.
"This makes no sense because they went after Judaism and Islam as much as Orthodoxy." - I didn't claim they were not against Judaism and Islam. They were, but Orthodoxy was one with the state in Russian empire, while for example Islam was simply accepted as one of the many religions present in Russia previously. It didn't need so much work to cancel it, unlike the Orthodox Church which needed to be purged from power structures.
"In fact, the Western Marxist Left are some of the most insufferable woketards of them all." - this is one of the things I am lamenting about in other comments - they are not Marxists or left. The left-right political axis is about the ownership of production means. Big corporate cultural shills are not left or Marxist. They're far right, mo matter how many times they're called "leftists".
You're right. These people are American rightwingers - reactionary dogs and Trumpian fascists. Reactionaries are always crazy and they never make sense as a general rule. If they made sense they wouldn't be pushing Reaction!
"Also, in earlier times, they also wanted to rebuild the society and create these "Soviet people"."
It was called "the new Soviet man."
"It included a lot of separation of kids from their parents, hurting the family."
That didn't go on for very long. It was already over by 1926-27.
"Of course, modern wokeism does bear this similarity, but otherwise it has nothing in common with communism."
Then why call it Communism? If you do you are guitly of the kidnapping, torture, rape, and murder of words.
Woke COMMUNISM? Are you high? There is no communism anywhere in the West and certainly none here in the US. I'd know it when I saw it too, as a sort of-Marxist.
Simplicius, would be great if you provided a single analysis of the Black Sea situation, and its possible futures.
I can't imagine the war lasting 5-10 years. Either there's a 'Korean' line which last decades, or Ukraine collapses because America focuses on China whilst the EU comes to terms with its new conservative governments who will look to make peace with Russia.
What would be the benefit for Ukraine allowing Poland into territories it knows they want? Nobody gives up something without self-enriching motive.
Instead of "The weak level of English among Ukrainian pilots proved to be a stumbling block for the start of their training on F-16 fighters", how about "The weak level of Ukrainian among American pilot trainers proved to be a stumbling block..." :)
David Wu relegated Scott Ritter to second place on the confidence list. Hoping that video is on Bitchute or RT so that I can embed it one of my posts.
Lira posted videos at 2am Ukrainian time, and he recorded them in daylight. I still don't have a set opinion on him. A period in prison, in pain and with your family under threat, can make people turn. I just don't know.
Simplicius, your shorter post length allows me to spend some time in the sun today :)
NATO really wants Odesa is why
I have a suspicion that Russia wants it too :)
Historically it is Russian. Point of fact technically and legally all of Ukraine is still Russian.
Yes, I forget the name, but I think they pulled out of a treaty which made them sovereignless. I recall Putin speaking about that but never made a note.
The problem is that Russia doesn't want Ukraine. But there was no choice.
Critical for access to Black Sea...
I can easily imagine the war lasting a good 5-10 more years and it scares me. The way it happens is conflicts in Africa, Asia, and possibly the Americas all become part of the same war, and this is just the opening act.
The bigger context of The Cold War may be frighteningly long :(
Precisely. Context is important. The Ukrainian weapon is only one of many that the West will utilise in its long war against Russia and China.
What was a war became a battle in a bigger war.
Kike 0wned Yankeeland has done what it can for now to wreck Europe and it now has problems in Niger while it is planning to war on China in 2027 plus its entire infrastructure is falling to pieces and its 'NGO's'[read CIA fronts] are being kicked out of countries all over the globe and some countries are sanctioning Yankeeland which it cannot process. Add in that the only reason the Petrodollar still exists is that BRICS+ want countries to be able to recover their gold and cash in their US Securities before it pulls the plug on Yankee hegemony once and for all time and the future for all is a worry with Yankeeland in its death throes might just decide to start throwing nukes around.
"Kike 0wned Yankeeland"
No doubt we're all free speech champions here, but is this kind of language really necessary?
Idiots will be idiots.
yes it is. The elephant in the room must be addressed.
What may be your elephant is mostly likely other's flea.
Western media reported on a drone severely hitting a Russian naval ship?
Yes, the drone got hurt :)
A Russian ship was damaged not sunk. Thereafter an oil tanker was hit too. I assume this has something to do with the USA's plane that was flying around the middle of the Black Sea earlier this week. Ukraine lost the land war (ages ago) but the sea situation is problematic. I expect Russia will retaliate on ports as they did opposite Romania.
SA Jerm?
Good to know the ship wasn't sunk. SA?
Ok, not the same guy :) There's a South African podcaster/cartoonist called Jerm. He hosts a mixture of conspiracy theorists and intellectuals. Last month, I listened to an old episode of his wherein Aleksandr Duginon gave an interersting lecture - https://jermwarfare.podbean.com/e/aleksandr-dugin-on-the-fourth-political-theory/
Definitely not that guy. Conspiracy theorist, sure, but never been accused of an intellectual lol!
Ha ha!
https://youtu.be/mkd4obNd5zQ
OK, so the old Simplicius is getting back. In this article there was practically none of that June/July "counter-offensive" Telegram circlejerk.
LOL the picture of the US Marines is the funniest thing I've seen in a very long time. Thanks Simplicius for sharing that 🤣
That was the pick of the bunch as well!
I remember clearly those MCRD billets with the pebble front "gardens" that had to be kept spotless at all times, and and all the fun that basic Marine training brings with it. But honestly, I don't remember recruits who looked like that....
If it moves, salute it; it if doesn't move, paint it white. Ah, the crap you're prepared to take when you're young.
Diversity is our strength.
I'm not sure whether I shouldn't feel sorry for those kids.
I do feel sorry for them.
Another great update. The Russian communication tech upgrades is very interesting. The one thing the west is clearly very good at is intelligence. Not just battlefield recon or planning specOps, but communication and logistics Intel. Things like the Iran drone deal, or Wagner supposedly getting weapons from the NORKs. I wonder if the FSB/Russian Intel is also seeing massive upgrades in its ability to counter CIA/MI6 Intel.
"The one thing the west is clearly very good at is intelligence. " - You are kidding right?
Right on I thought similar, intelligence agency seeing their own population as the domestic terrorist, we’re the one to destroy not those of the other side. Western intelligence fighting westerners, besides how many dams, nuclear plants and Nordic pipelines have they to destroy before westerners wake up from this war against themselves and their genes?
Don't confuse 'intelligence' with 'propaganda'. The West has excellent ISR - it's just that they don't know how to use it effectively against an opponent like Russia.
There was a long thread on MoA some time back about why western intelligence agencies keep getting this wrong. I don't recall their being a consensus but one theory that came out is that they have in effect been politicised and subject to institutional groupthink. It is a career limiting move to argue against the consensus and you can always find evidence to back that up. Not in anyway a real world thing but a pal and I use the term the 10th man in World War Z. He seems to be AWOL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcNK7M2eCI4
Yes. Intelligence gathering is one thing. Application of that intelligence is entirely another.
Is it really intelligence gathering when you predetermine what the intelligence will say?
It's being properly gathered, but by the time it filters its way to the top, it is saying what the top wants it to say.
British and US Intel has been very vocal about things they know Russia is doing. Whether it's weapon trading, weapons manufacturing, supply chains within Russia, etc. Even the ability to know/track the location of major Russian military and political leaders. They get enough right to know they have human intelligence as well as electronic surveillance. We'll probably never know what Russia is doing to counter it.
Thank You, Simplicius. I was most curious about what move Wagner would make, since Prigozhin dropped the hint a few days ago It is early enough in Niger for a modest Wagner presence to be a strong deterrent to an invason. There seems to be limited local Afriican desire to invade Niger. The winds are shifting against French neo-colonialism.
Nobody really wats to be on the wrong side of history in Africa...
It's fatal, of course.
The ironic or prescient thing is that going on 1.5+ months ago now, Prigozhin said that "Wagner would be back from vacation on August 5", and it's exactly August 5.
Yeah, that comment, and the Russian military transport plane...
Interesting Simplicius identity hint here
As a former EME in my country's Army the words in that last video meant a lot. We still had to meet all the standard requirements of grunts, trained with special units and the various corps usually just to get abused when something didn't work which was often due to operator abuse.
The other guys I think need recognition are cooks. How those guys come up with some of the meals they do under sometimes shit conditions amazes me but a hot meal with a hot drink can make life worth while.
My USMC dad, Korea/Vietnam vet, often said, "life's never quite so bad if you can just get a good cup of coffee". Vietnam was not good for Dad. His mom said Korea had changed him, but I was not yet incarnate.
I grew up around young Marines training, running, doing obstacle courses on bases.
I had that same visceral reaction to the photo, of its wrongness
Daddy was a war crim; you must be so proud.
That was very constructive. You should apply for a job with the US State Department. Vicky Nuland is looking for skillfully subtle operators such as yourself.
What makes you think he isnt already on the payroll?
"incompetence, corruption and simply disregard for people"
Whatever that is in latin i am pretty sure its ukraines driving principle
Where are you getting the figure for 30-50k soldiers reduced on the front lines due to Wagner being removed from the battlefield? I didn't think all of Wagner went to Belarus, i thought a large number of them decided to sign up with the MOD with contracts?
No one seems to know the exact number but some have claimed that a small percentage of Wagner signed contracts with the MOD, but it's impossible to know for definite.
Thanks, i guess it's hard to know with so much information shrouded from view. The whole Wagner saga is one strange affair.
I think the 40,000 figure may be suspect. I could be wrong but whilst a lot of guys rotated through its ranks, many will have been lost at Bakhmut and more will by now be contract expired. I'm not sure there were ever more than 20,000 at any time but cannot confirm this view. Some will be a hard core (who might now be moving Africa direction, some are clearly in Belorussia and some will have joined the RF proper. My guess is that the Russian High Command planned for a permanent reduction in this and other private armies and the "loss" will have been covered off.
I agree with the 20k number, but only if you exclude all of the convicts who signed 6 month contracts with Wagner. That boosted their numbers considerably, but only for a short while. It's said (but unconfirmed) that about 32k former convicts finished their 6 month contract and went home when it was over.
That was probably part of the rush at the end of taking Bakhmut, and likely a big part of Prigozhin's mounting frustration at the time. The bulk of the 6 month contracts were coming to an end, and he hadn't been able to take the whole city yet.
I've always assumed Wagner's strength (in the SMO area) after the departure of the 6-monthers to be about 20k, plus or minus 5k.
What I wonder now isn't how this conflict in Ukraine will wrap up, but what the war after it will look like, and how soon will it happen?
Assume for a moment that this doesn't spiral into a world war on its own, which is an assumption I can't justify with the Nigerian, Syrian, Sudanese and Taiwanese situations all hovering about, but that I hope we can all agree is better than the alternative.
Poland takes some portion of Western Ukraine. Russia takes the rest of Ukraine, or leaves a strip completely defanged and 'protected' (as in, Protectorate) like the Rhineland in the Interwar period. How comfortable is Poland with Russia as a next-door neighbour and no buffer states to speak of in between? Conversely, how good a neighbour are they going to be to Russia? The long history of Polish-Russian relations doesn't look promising. Too, Poland will have spent whatever time they have buying and training a fully modern army. The Polish defense procurement business is booming, and with not a little money siphoned off so-called Ukrainian aid. (This is part of Ukraine's complaint, by the way. There are still tanks and artillery pieces and rounds in Europe. Poland has a lot of them, and she's keeping them. Maybe I'm wrong about the size of it, but that only pushes things out by a few years.)
Russia, for her part, will have gone through the fires of war and emerged on the other side with a large, cutting-edge, world-class professional army and the very recent proof she can take NATO and win, at least industrially.
So you have two states with historically extremely poor relations, newly large and well-funded and equipped armies, one of whom just won a conventional land-war against what it perceives as a much bigger enemy (NATO), and the other of whom probably feels like she didn't lose, it was those idiots next door who hardly count as people anyway, and she could show what a real war looks like, and it's about time to take her enemy down a peg or two.
Throw Belarus and the Baltics into that toxic brew, and the flashpoint that is Kaliningrad and its supply situation.
All this leads me to ask myself when the next war starts, and what does it look like?
As you probably know, many people have rightfully compared the current decade to the 1930s with the looming 'big war' potentially set for the 2030s as analog to the 1940s, or even the late 2020s as analog to late 1930s.
Some have compared the Spanish Civil War of the 30s to the current war as well, in how both sides used the conflict as a 'test bed' for technologies, weapons, in preparation for the much larger looming war just ahead.
It's definitely possible, particularly the comparisons to the economic situation, the post 'great depression' period can be compared to the post 2008 crash which still hasn't been resolved.
The only difference in my mind, and maybe it's an idealistic or overly optimistic view, is that back then the elites, secret societies, burgeoning intel agencies were all nascent and ascendant, but now much of that is on the decline with an opposite force currently ascendant all over the world. The next round of elections around the world, particularly the U.S. 2024 ones for obvious reasons, could change the direction of a lot of things.
What's interesting is the analogous position Russia seems to occupy in both comparisons. In the late 1930s they were about 25+ years out from a major epochal change, the post 1917 revolution and economic struggles through Lenin's NEP and everything else. Stalin's 5 year programs salvaged a lot of the situation. Similarly, Russia is now 30 years out from the collapse of the USSR and a terrible low, with Putin's equivalent economic rebirth period. There's a lot of parallels that can be studied.
Ultimately though, how would the potential next war look, probably not too different than WW2.
Particularly if/when the real fun begins as all satellites are taken out, kesslerization is achieved, and all nations are forced to pretty much fight an archaic WW1/2 style war without any guided weapons, ISR, intel, etc.
One way this might play out is for the U.S. to push Poland to fight Russia and push Taiwan and Australia to fight China.
Their calculation is they can supply weapons while building the military and just like WW2 they come in late and take the glory.
Except .. that won’t happen.
One, the proxies are much weaker than their adversaries. We’re talking about two great powers getting stronger by the minute. These wars will be won much quicker than anticipated.
Two, today’s U.S. is not the same of the 30s. Industrially, culturally, socially, economically it is much weaker. They can’t buy enough time to rebuild. You can’t print that.
So, either way U.S. hegemony is over. The only question for every country, especially for The EU, is do they want to go down with the losing side or regain their sovereignty and independence?
Forget Australia, total military is approx. 50,000. Actual fighting forces a fraction of that. Fat, lazy, and many women. An absolute joke of a military.
US hegemony is definitely over, whatever happens. The question now is how will they react. Will they at last kick out the crazy neocons and adjust to the new reality? Or will they double, treble, quadruple down and create hell on Earth? I think that the leadership of every Western nation will have to be changed for any good outcome to happen.
My hope is that the US will either reestablish something like the Articles of Confederation w little or no central government (ideal) or split into regional confederations free of this sick Empire addiction. The world will be a much better place without the Hegemon.
Agreed. It will happen. It's just a question of whether it will happen peacefully or otherwise.
I can't really envision another war like the two previous ones. Everything is different now. But the greatest difference, I think, is the lack of industrial power of the West, including and especially, the United States. You can't fight for long without the industrial capability to support an extended effort. And you can't fight effectively in today's world with a 5000 mile logistical nightmare subject to hypersonic and electronic weaponry that is generations beyond your own. Western sea power was a major factor in those wars - no more, as all sea vessels are sitting ducks for modern weaponry. Western air power is also at risk as they placed great reliance on stealth and multi-purpose aircraft like the F-35, a complete catastrophe of the Western alliance. The multi-layered, fully networked AD power of Russia is truly formidable - I even question now if America's nukes can get through it. Lastly, there is the manpower (or LGBTQ++ inclusiveness power, if you will) issue - where will all the 'manpower' needed come from? Even if they conducted forced mobilisation, where will all the uniforms and equipment come from as most of their industrial capacity has been outsourced to other countries? Where will the needed needed NCO's and officer corps who are experienced and educated in modern combined arms warfare like Russia is conducting come from? And let's face it - the Western MIC is thoroughly corrupt and inadequate for the task of modern war. Also, I believe most of the populations of the Western countries have lived fat and easy for too long and thanks to the Internet, they are distrustful of their own governments and suspicious of the part those governments have played in bringing about war. People have to be motivated to go to war - in the past governments have relied heavily on propaganda to keep the people focused and motivated, but with the Internet it is hard to put a lid on truth for long.
The West will implode on its own in the coming decades - it is inevitable. If, however, they have the hubris and delusional perspective to think they can start a war and win it, I believe they will be defeated soundly and quickly - nukes or no.
I think you're largely correct, but I'll offer my thoughts on two points on which I disagree.
First, US naval power for truly military purposes is still formidable, though it would quickly decline from use. Yes, large surface groups are probably largely useless, though don't count them out entirely. As Russia has shown in the Black Sea, they're still important enough to take into consideration. However, the Silent Service is the one remaining area of the Navy where warfighting dominance takes precedence. Seawolf and Virginia are both hugely impressive platforms capable of taking down entire surface groups alone, and the US retains a huge edge in underwater capabilities.
Second, plenty of armies in history are turned by their host states into useless, contained, low-status pressure valves because the regime feels no need to win military contests against peers. The best example I've seen worked out in the Blogosphere is the Song dynasty, but there are plenty of others. Given both warning and cause, such armies quickly shed their useless, corpulent baggage to become fighting services again. You need look no further than Russia for a current, successful example of this. Assuming the real possibility of a broad-scale war manages to get through the self-congratulatory illusions of the US' power clique, LGBT and other social status signalling in the armed forces will be expunged ruthlessly, even if it means bodies hanging from the walls of the Pentagon.
The question in my mind is whether, once the situation truly breaks in on them, said power clique will decide - being old, decrepit, robbed of the hopes for immortality they had which were lies all along, and steeped in lies and perversion - that if they can't have the world, nobody can. I wish I could feel comfortable believing that either through cowardice or prudence they wouldn't press the button.
Right now my main hope is that through lack of maintenance and modernization the US' nuclear arsenal is significantly less capable than most believe it to be.
I agree with most of this, but the nuclear issue needs a little refinement.
Even if poorly maintained, which I don't think is the case, there would still be some viable nukes and missiles. The big problem from the western perspective is that Russia has much better missiles (hypersonics, and others) and Poseidon (the stealth nuclear drone torpedo) which the Pentagon knows will get through. The US has inferior air defenses and none of them can stop normal ICBMs, let alone hypersonics. Russia on the other hand has the S-500 which can take out ICBMs.
The Pentagon knows all this even if the president and the state department are idiots. I imagine, that if push came to shove, the Pentagon would tell the Whitehouse that it will not launch the missiles. They might even depose the president to cheers of joy from a greatful populace.
We can all hope that the men in charge of actually pressing the relevant buttons would have second thoughts. It's happened before.
The US sub service is in pretty bad shape at present, with (according to Colonel McGregor) 40% of its craft out of action for major repairs. They will still be a threat, but a reduced one. Also the Russian sub service, like all its other arms, has come on leaps and bounds. And even if the US sub fleet was top notch, you can't really win wars today with subs. Naval power is all about force projection, which means aircraft carriers and troop transports. These would be taken out very quickly by Russian and Chinese hypersonics.
I have no beef with the good Colonel, but if you listen to the Army to tell you what the Navy's doing you deserve what you get. Anyway, there are definitely undeniable problems in the USN on all fronts, and I'm not here to mount a defense for them, but always remember how easy it is to conflate "there are problems in this military" with "this military in ineffective", unless you want to end up with as much egg on your face as Western analysts of Russian capability.
You have to be very tactful with “the good Colonel”. He has a particular sensitivity to “some familiarities”.
Sincerely (Lol)
American air defence is utterly worthless. A few Kinzhals can sink the entirety of the fabled carrier strike group.
What manpower the men all turned into women
If the next war truly threatens to look like WW2 again it'll quickly start looking like a nuclear hellscape instead. Existential wars use existential solutions. That's part of the genius Russia (and NATO, let's be clear and give credit where it's due) has shown so far in the handling of the Ukraine war. Even just calling it a Special Military Operation and refusing to change the name has been vital to making sure existential responses remain beyond the pale. (Unless you're Ukraine, but they gave up their nukes because they didn't understand nuclear strategy.)
Ukraine never had nukes and no one was happier about Russia getting nukes out of Ukraine than USA.
I can’t really see this as the prelude to a third WW, more like the final wrapping up of the last one. Culturally, socially, economically and ideologically the world is a very different place to what it was up to the 1940s. No, America is spent, it’ll kick and scream alright for a long time but there is not the appetite for the sacrifices of the past and rightly so. The next chapter will be the reckoning of Africa with its elites.
The US won the Cold War but lost the Cold Peace. It could all have been so different, but we had to push NATO expansion and sneer at the Russians.
There either won't be a 2024 election in America, or if Trump is taken out, then any election would not represent the majority of Americans. If somehow there is an election and Trump is successful then I'm not sure if he can do much, if anything, when both parties are against him even though he has the support of the people.
I made a comment above that basically if the war expands beyond the current hotspots now in play I believe Lithuania would be jeopardy.
There will be an "election" alright. But it will be w preapproved candidates and rigged for the desired outcome. Elections in the US have been a charade for...well, since the emergence of the 2 party system.
I am aware that my vision of the Spanish Civil War (1938-1939) can be disconcerting. As a Spaniard and not very enthusiastic about the figure of General Franco (who should have retired from power in time) I am increasingly convinced that the Republican side kept international public opinion deceived and thus summoned an international force with the Brigades of volunteers (Polish, English, Irish, etc.) who thought to liberate the Spanish people (or their government, in favor of the extermination of believers) by ending "the fascists". With this simple narrative it seemed as if the republican Madrid was the blessed paradise of freedom. What happened when Franco, against all odds, won the war? The republican authorities fled abroad, Franco was in command in our country for almost forty years and the Second World War began in Europe. Now the anti-fascist heroes are in Kiev. I hope that the Ukrainian denouement improves the story of our civil war.
I hope you enjoyed my machine translation
Saludos.
This is the start of that next war, WW-3, but it's form is still developing. The contest is between self-cannibalizing western neoliberal financial-capitalism, which claims 10X as many debts need to be paid to it, as can happen in reality, and production-based national mixed economies of markets, industry and central direction by governments, with some accountability for decisions.
This could go lot of ways, but global resources are half gone, and the flow is slowing, so industrial economy can't be rebuilt after nuclear holocaust.
The owners just need to get rid of most of us "useless eaters", gobbling up their jet fuel and their nature...
Had your boosters yet?
If we knew the answer to all that, we'd be called God. However, we can make some educated guesses. Concerning Ukraine, Putin now knows that no-one in the West can be trusted to negotiate honestly and stick to any peace deals. That means he could well take most of Ukraine up to the Dnieper, including Odessa, and ensure that Ukraine can never be used as a NATO proxy threat ever again. As for the post-war relationships in the area, let's hope that by then everyone has sobered up and calmed down enough to think rationally. That's my tuppence worth and I could be completely wrong.
'This includes a new design for an FPV drone zapper being tested on tanks, which is a small unit placed on the back of tanks and armored vehicles which disabled FPV drones in 4 channels and neutralizes them before they can make contact.'
I am amazed by all the new technology that Russia is quickly developing, but I wish that the minds being used to do this would instead be used to create things for the betterment of humanity. Just think if the trillions spent on killingree was used instead on livingree. Words made up by Buckminster Fuller. And I’m appalled by the numbers of deaths for both sides. And for what? In a hundred years none of this will matter except to the families that have lost loved ones.
Fred Kagan, BiL of Victoria Nuland who is married to the other Kagan brother thinks that Ukraine still has a chance of winning and making Russia scurry back home. It’s funny how he plans things out for Ukraine who has already been doing those things and thinking that they have a snowballs chance of winning. If you need a good laugh….
👇👇👇
https://time.com/6300772/ukraine-counteroffensive-can-still-succeed/
I think they need drones to detect and mark mines in minefields for deactivation, and other drones to do that dangerous work.
Yes I understand that and that helps save lives. But if the human race hadn’t been at war since they lived in caves I like to imagine what kind of world we could be living in today. I am still a big Star Trek fan and I wonder how close we could be to its message of peace. Yeah I’m a dreamer and I’m sure I’m not alone.
😕
Star Trek ended in 2005. Everything that came after that was ridiculous cringe woke crap and an insult to science fiction
The original series and movies are "Star Trek" to me.
I consider the last season of Enterprise (the other 3 were just a big missed opportunity) to be the most cleverly written ST to date. They had the courage to finally write a real prequel and they maneuvered between previous series' inconsistencies surprisingly well. It ended up being cancelled at the worst possible moment.
In your opinion. You don’t speak for all fans of the show.
Nor do you
I think the useful-function of the "owners" is to slaughter a lot of people from time to time, when people outgrow the resource base.
We will need another way to avoid that overgrowth.
I seek spiritual guidance and direction. I think that could work if everybody did, then we wouldn't "need" to periodically slaughter each other in massed attacks.
I don't know what "critical mass" would be, and I'm not an evangelist, but you might consider checking it out from time to time, and see if it seems helpful to you.
Oh, the Star Trek episode where they simulated a war by drawing names at random and people walked into a death chamber comes to mind, but I was never convinced.
You are not alone, indeed... Live long and prosper!
War is the main driving force of progress. US and Soviet space programs started from developing of military ballistic missiles. Nuclear energy started from invention of a nuclear bomb.