Posted by: Just Observing | Mar 30 2023 14:11 utc | 1
Remember that the WSJ put up a fake news story that Xi had agreed to meet with Z.
Good move by Russia to jail that guy. The WSJ is compromised by the deep state. They’re no longer journalists, they are pieces on the game board.

Posted by: Chris | Mar 30 2023 14:45 utc | 4

@ Just Observing | Mar 30 2023 14:11 utc | 1
—
I’m quite surprised that FT’s Max Seddon hasn’t been rounded up yet.
https://twitter.com/maxseddon

Posted by: too scents | Mar 30 2023 14:50 utc | 6

Shadowbanned : In my opinion…
Natokraine: Bravo.
Shadowbanned: In my opinion…
Natokraine: Very good. I agree.
Shadowbanned: …I think…
Natokraine: That’s it.
Shadowbanned: What was done the next day…
Natokraine: Right.
Shadowbanned: …should have been done the day before…
Natokraine: Yes.
Shadowbanned: …so that the impending disaster…
Natokraine: Impending! That’s the right word.
Shadowbanned: …cannot be avoided.
Natokraine: That’s obvious.
Shadowbanned: So the Russian army’s advance is in fact a retreat.
Natokraine: Exactly. Great syllogism. Frick is Frock. I mean… It is perfectly logical.
Shadowbanned: That’s very worrying.
Natokraine (teath chattering in fear): Alas!
Shadowbanned: What do you think about it, my dear Shadowbanned?
Natokraine: “Shadowbanned”? I’m natokraine.
Shadowbanned : Oops! Sorry.

Posted by: Leuk | Mar 30 2023 14:55 utc | 8

Leuk@11
Marvellous writing. I’m not sure that you are being fair to shadowbanned who sometimes makes valuable contributions but all is fair in the cause of comedy.

Posted by: bevin | Mar 30 2023 15:09 utc | 10

@ OttoE | Mar 30 2023 15:00 utc | 13

I would love to see, in the fashion of your “…In total, since the beginning of the special military operation…” listing, a summary of the crimes against humanity committed by the Nazis. Better still, since 2014.

An incomplete OTOH here. Perhaps bar collectively contribute to a summary compilation ? Or someone aware of a concise working list already extant ? ‘Tis on topic.

Posted by: Outraged | Mar 30 2023 15:28 utc | 12

DR Montreal – 8
I’ve been thinking about the similarities with Kursk for some time as well. Both Guderian and Zalushny who tell the boss it’s risky, both launched before the armies have enough of their new armors to really punch strong enough. Both cases Russian army has set up a wide and deep defense with several lines. If Ukraine uses all that’s available, US intelligence, drones, sats, all the new tanks, it can even go far and maul the very last line of defense, before being blunted and then caught in another pincer move.
That, or they’ll try a double pincer move and both parts of Wagner’s pincer around Bakhmut, like if they’re trying to outdo Operation Uranus, and actually reenacting the failed Gallic attempt to relieve Alesia from Caesar’s siege before the eventual surrender of the city.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Mar 30 2023 15:58 utc | 14

Andrew @ 22
Thanks for that. Apparently far-right Austrian lawmakers walked out because they were unhappy about violating Austria’s neutrality.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/30/austria-far-right-lawmakers-walk-out-of-zelenskyy-speech

Posted by: dh | Mar 30 2023 16:08 utc | 16

@ DR-Montreal | Mar 30 2023 14:47 utc | 8
@ Clueless Joe
@ Milites
Quite so. The key aspect being the massive forces held ready, separately, in Front reserve, to immediately launch the Russian Strategic Offensive, OP Kutuzov, concurrent with massed counter-attacks, the moment the Heer stalled. Then second phase Offensive OP Polkovodets Rumyantsevthe. Boom-boom-boom. Entire Eastern front all down hill from thereon … definitely shades of …

Posted by: Outraged | Mar 30 2023 16:33 utc | 18

“A counteroffensive by Ukraine that has been much-anticipated should not be considered as a make-or-break moment in its conflict with Russia, Kiev’s Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba has said, urging his country’s foreign backers to maintain their support regardless of the outcome of this expected operation.
“We should counter by all means the perception of the counteroffensive as the decisive battle of the war,” he told the Financial Times, as quoted on Wednesday.
He said Kiev was concerned that the operation would not result in Ukrainian troops pushing Russia “100%” out of the territory it wishes to reclaim. However, in this scenario of underachievement, he feared, “some people may say this was the last decisive battle and now we have to think of an alternative scenario.”
The Ukrainian leadership has insisted that the only option it is considering is retaking all land lost by Kiev, including Crimea, before any peace talks can start. The government has also prohibited by law any negotiations with Russia for as long as President Vladimir Putin remains in office.
Kuleba suggested that following a counter-offensive operation like the one anticipated, minority voices “in Washington, in Berlin, in Paris, in London” will try to push for a ceasefire “along the lines of a Minsk III.” He was referring to the two Minsk agreements that were supposed to guide Kiev and its then-breakaway regions to co-operate in a stable peace.”
https://www.rt.com/russia/573869-kuleba-counter-offensive-importance/
Comment:
There’s very little faith in the much expected counter-offensive, it’s a roll of dice with poor odds. So just keep sending Ukraine more packages. In fact, Military Summary channel speculated that the Ukrainian counter-offensive might actually be postponed sometime late summer, in expectation of getting fighter jets like F-16. Of course the other obvious reason is the AFVs and tanks being blown up in warehouses along the Dnieper river.

Posted by: unimperator | Mar 30 2023 16:44 utc | 20

Posted by: Leuk | Mar 30 2023 14:55 utc | 11

Heh, reminds me of Questions from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

Posted by: Forest | Mar 30 2023 16:48 utc | 22

Now we are seeing how many countries are beginning to switch to the calculation of national currencies. Putin was the first to move this topic as a blow to the dollar monopoly, now China has joined in, which is already conducting trade operations with Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Brazil in yuan.
Europeans have begun sounding the alarm as their Euro is collapsing, losing its position as the world’s second reserve currency.
We immediately found out that the Ukrainian crisis has become a kind of catalyst for a major financial redistribution, which is now only at the very beginning.
Conclusion: the dollar will eat up its satellites, driving them into an even stronger crisis. As is now happening in the European banking sector, where large European banks are forced to take loans from the Fed, thereby becoming hostages and completely tame assets of Washington.
We expect in the near future the strengthening of US sanctions against China in order to try to somehow stop the dominance of China and the Yuan.

https://t.me/legitimniy/15059

Posted by: Down South | Mar 30 2023 16:51 utc | 24

Did anyone see the Chinese journalist take the UN to school about the US occupation of Syria? It was a thing of beauty!

Posted by: Slat1 | Mar 30 2023 16:56 utc | 26

@1 re spies
A Spanish reportero has been in a Polish jail for supposedly spying for over a year and not a peep from the “defenders of journalists”

Posted by: c | Mar 30 2023 17:01 utc | 28

It’s a conundrum for ukraine. It can’t take territory without an offensive, and it can’t end the war until it takes all the territory.
However they can’t generate enough military power to do it, as they depend on the west for almost anything, and I gotta say a hundred Abrams and leopards won’t do it.
Chinese summer peace plan is looking more likely.
Zelensky basically called off the war when he said no offensive without more weapons.
But he’s boxed himself in, and he’s publicly worried about his grip on power.
I just can’t believe Biden is going to let China be the adult and tell the kids to go back to their room.
But if it happens, then I must.

Posted by: Neofeudalfuture | Mar 30 2023 17:04 utc | 30

Posted by: Norwegian | Mar 30 2023 17:06 utc | 31
What a weapon of information mass destruction, his language is just like their prefered non musical instrument, the jackhammer. I avidly check his TG for his sound posts, amazingly entertaining and fantastic language.

Posted by: Paco | Mar 30 2023 17:11 utc | 32

Although not fully on board with PCR on this point, he does have make one, namely that the entire SMO business is extremely risky with unacceptably high likelihood, in his view, of escalation to nuclear war thanks to the neocon capture of the US. Conclusion from his latest piece:

What can be done?The Kremlin no longer believes or trusts Washington, so no assurances that this is all a mistake, even if forthcoming, would be believed by the Russians.
Perhaps if every neoconservative was fired from the government, Russophobic think tanks closed, and the military/security complex permitted a president to be elected who immediately went to Moscow, agreed to the restoration of all the broken agreements and pulled NATO off of Russian borders, nuclear war could be prevented.
But can you imagine Washington doing such a thing? It would require leadership that Americans have not seen for a very long time. It would require comprehension in Congress and in the public, and there is no media or experts to instill comprehension.
Enjoy your life.Quit worrying about the future. The neoconservatives have assured that you don’t have one.

PCR fear of NuclearWar
I think this is important in that I don’t see any positive outcome from all this unless the neocons are excised from the US Body Politic. Most importantly, which PCR doesn’t mention, they are not merely a native group pushing US interests as many like to characterize them, rather a local arm of some sort of weird, internationally linked financial-political-intelligence network intent on dominating the world status quo to maintain their Plunder model. They do not truly work for ‘America’ or ‘UK’ or ‘France’ or ‘Germany’ or ‘Ukraine’ or ‘the EU’ or even ‘the Jews,’ though those nationa state designations are viewed as the agents responsible for their various initiatives, rather they dominate each and every one of them (and more), with only their administrative-political arm in the US being called ‘neocons.’
So what’s really going on, Ma?
1. Does Russia-China have a plan for how to dislodge them? Certainly not without considerable (probably clandestine) linkage within each of these countries and more.
2. Or are Russia-China pushing for a new Iron Curtain / Cold War / fully bifurcated model? Problem: the neocons will remain in power, making nuclear war increasingly likely if they succeed in this, as PCR warns, ergo not a great plan.
3. Or are elites in Russia-China working behind the scenes with these same ‘neocon’ networks to bring about a new arrangement centered around world-wide CBDC tech after some sort of world-wide crash, perhaps making the current pandemics and conflicts a bit of internationally coordinated kayfabe-kabuki? (As I reluctantly suspect is the case, meaning that the Elite Club Membership is being expanded to those in other polities but a new system has to be put in place to include governance of many more billions in ways that are fully integrated with digital technology introduced only thirty years ago but now far advanced.)
4. Or is there a secret contrarian international network who have decided that the neocon-central bank elites have got to be brought down and somehow what is transpiring will lead to that? (Which is #1 again unless they have some devious countermeasures already mapped out as Putin as hinted is the case – unless he is in on #3.)
If I was forced to bet, I would put money on #3 though I hate that outcome. Expecting Russia-China to have some sort of benign plan (#1) to liberate innocent Western citizens – aka ‘us’ – from their multinational parasitic elites – though a consummation devoutly to be wished – is a wish and a wing and a prayer too far. Plus: if we lived in such a world, we wouldn’t be facing all this crap in the first place.
#2 has to have a magic bullet element in that they can bifurcate the world cutting the neocon-controlled polities off from 75%+ of the world’s population without any sort of neanderthal (aka nuclear) counter measures? That’s pretty risky. OR: if #2 is it, then they presumably feel they can handle and win nuclear war? Do they have a special ray gun that can eliminate all nuclear incoming? Do they control the launch codes? Do they have a fancy EMP strategy which will knock out even submarine missile launches? Well, they better. If they don’t, #2 doesn’t look all that good. And #4 is the same as #1.
It is not clear where this is all headed, put it that way, which is why PCR is concerned. Whether he is right or not about nuclear escalation risk, there are still many unanswered questions yet to be clarified…

Posted by: Scorpion | Mar 30 2023 17:15 utc | 34

Down South @24–
Interesting the Ukies becoming keen to dedollarization, but Putin wasn’t the one to initiate it. This critical 2019 presentation by Dr. Hudson, “U.S. Economic Warfare and Likely Foreign Defenses”, places dedollarization at the forefront of defenses against dollar hegemony. A search of his website using the term dollar hegemony brings many results, and of course his major opus, Super Imperialism focused on that issue when first published in 1972. So, the “tribute system” operated by the Outlaw US Empire has long been known but until now has never been seriously challenged. Hudson’s latest is a podcast at Geopolitical Economy for which no transcript is available yet, “Did Wall Street take over the Treasury? Bank crisis exposes public realities of private banking”, that I await as I prefer them to the oral presentation.

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 30 2023 17:22 utc | 36

@ karlof1 36
thx!

Posted by: AG | Mar 30 2023 17:36 utc | 38

Slat1 @ 26

Did anyone see the Chinese journalist take the UN to school about the US occupation of Syria? It was a thing of beauty!

The best part is at the end you realize how he set the UN idiot up, head fake for the dunk. Please China, more where that came from.

Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Mar 30 2023 17:55 utc | 40

Is not the UN official in question a man with a Pakistani pedigree?
His name rings a bell:
“General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq HI, GCSJ, ร.ม.ภ, (Urdu: محمد ضیاء الحق; 12 August 1924 – 17 August 1988) was a Pakistani four-star general and politician who became the sixth President of Pakistan following a coup and declaration of martial law in 1977. Zia served in office until his death in a plane crash in 1988. He remains the country’s longest-serving de facto head of state and Chief of Army Staff.[1]..”
wikipedia

Posted by: bevin | Mar 30 2023 18:00 utc | 42

Another week has passed so it must be time for another Weekly Briefing by Marai Zakharova of which Ukraine is third on the list and long as usual. It begins with the following reminder:

Yesterday, March 29 this year, marked one year since the third round of Russian-Ukrainian talks took place in Istanbul, following which it was possible to reach a certain understanding of the parameters of possible agreements.
Let me remind you that almost immediately after the start of the special military operation, Kiev requested negotiations, and the Russian side responded to this request. When the prospect of reaching mutually acceptable agreements appeared, the Kiev-regime side interrupted the negotiation process, leaving unanswered our latest proposals of April 15, 2022 on the draft agreement on the settlement of the situation in Ukraine. It is obvious that the prospect of a peaceful solution to the crisis frightened Westerners, and they forbade Vladimir Zelensky to continue the negotiation process. After that, the rhetoric of the Kiev regime and its Western masters only hardened. They were obsessed with the obsession of “defeating Russia on the battlefield.” The very possibility of dialogue with Moscow was categorically rejected. Five and a half months later, this position was enshrined in law, when on September 30, 2022, V.A. Zelensky signed a decree on the “impossibility” of negotiations with the Russian leadership. [My Emphasis]

And many paragraphs of review later, we read the following:

Western curators also do not allow them to back down, because this is all one criminal logic. They demand determination from Kiev and want to make sure that all the costs that have already been addressed to the Kiev regime are not in vain, that many people have already died, that many Ukrainian citizens have already become victims of this criminal adventure of the West and V.A. Zelensky. Thoughts of a possible truce are not allowed. It seems to me that Ukraine will soon be shot for this. I would not be surprised if a special “cruel punishment” is introduced for those (in Washington, too) who intend to think about stopping the bloodshed. We are talking about the destruction of the Ukrainian people by the forces of the West and the hands of V.A. Zelensky. Is that not clear? Obviously. ON March 28, US Secretary of State E. Blinken frankly said that calls for a ceasefire could be a “cynical trap.” The supply of weapons and the allocation of billions of dollars for the conduct of hostilities is not a cynical trap, but an effective one from Washington’s point of view. In fact, the Ukrainian army is being driven to slaughter by their curators from Washington. The whole story goes back to the last Ukrainian soldier. [My emphasis]

The briefing transcript as of now is incomplete, although the video is available at the link. Perhaps in six hours it will be done and more can be shared.

Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 30 2023 18:07 utc | 44

@42 Haq or al-Haq is a very common surname among muslims. It’s actually a suffix meaning Tuth. This particular Faran Haq seems to have trouble living up to his name.

Posted by: dh | Mar 30 2023 18:11 utc | 46

Offensive v Counteroffensive
I was led to believe that a counteroffensive is a military operation designed to disrupt/breakup an existing offensive. Since Russia has no active offensive at the moment (Bahhmut is just an attritional operation), then it’s more correct to say that Ukraine is about to launch an offensive and it’s Russia that might launch a counteroffensive to disrupt/breakup the Ukrainian offensive in the future.
Any comments?

Posted by: Ghost Ship | Mar 30 2023 18:15 utc | 48

@48 its counter to the initial invasion.

Posted by: neofeudalfuture | Mar 30 2023 18:30 utc | 50

It is not clear where this is all headed, put it that way, which is why PCR is concerned. Whether he is right or not about nuclear escalation risk, there are still many unanswered questions yet to be clarified…
Posted by: Scorpion | Mar 30 2023 17:15 utc | 34
As long as the War Party can use debt to buy weapons for Kiev, the fighting will continue. That’s why De-Dollarization is the critical variable to watch. Only De-Dollarization ends the fighting.

Posted by: Exile | Mar 30 2023 18:32 utc | 52

DR Montreal 5
I hadn’t really thought about Kursk until you mentioned it. During the SMO I’ve made comparisons (not all sound) with Stalingrad and the ’44 Ardennes Offensive but not Kursk. Indeed there are some similarities – but on a much larger scale. If you remember, the Russians, having obtained intelligence from ULTRA (I think) knew when the offensive was coming so launched an artillery strike on the German positions. I think there is a strong possibility of the Russians doing the same thing IF the offensive is ever launched.

Posted by: Rob Campbell | Mar 30 2023 18:46 utc | 54

grunzt | Mar 30 2023 16:42 utc | 19
The problem in Germany has always been the propensity of a critical mass to vote for leftwing and socialist parties. This enables incompetent socialist governments to take the reigns and ruin the country. Most of the damage has come from socialist rule, in addition to that double-agent Merkel.

Posted by: Ghi | Mar 30 2023 18:59 utc | 56

Exile @ 52

As long as the War Party can use debt to buy weapons for Kiev, the fighting will continue. That’s why De-Dollarization is the critical variable to watch. Only De-Dollarization ends the fighting.

Good point, however everyone was busted from the Great Depression going into WW2, Germany beyond flat broke, yet they always find the money for war. I’m no economist but I think you have to go to a full on war economy to do that, in this hybrid war you are correct about de-dollarization. I wouldn’t be too triumphalist though, it’s not like the dollar will go to zero, which is absurd, but it’ll probably level off at 60% for a long while, there’s a lot of inertia here, not just the petrodollar but all the three hundred years of Anglo-Saxon financial plumbing that makes global capital and trade go round. Probably it’ll take 20ys for the dollar to just become one of many currencies in a multi polar world, if hegemony winds down in a reasonable way and not in destruction and chaos inducing fitful bangs and booms.
Here’s what might speed it up a bit, it’s not zero sum for a nation idly switching from dollar to yuan, there’s actually a bonus of no longer paying the dollar tithe to the empire, so a nation will have extra money on hand, for a big nation a whole damn lot, for it’s oligarchs to steal but hopefully to invest in development – and who offers the best deal on development? The Chinese.
So, lots of things in play but IMO too complex to happen fast.

Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Mar 30 2023 19:14 utc | 58

Ghi@56
Most of what you call the socialist measures in (West) Germany were actually introduced by the Allied Occupation authorities as necessary to prevent the re-emergence of fascism.
During most of the history of the Bundesrepublik the government-in so far as it has ever had one- has been in the hands of US designated capitalist politicians. As is clear the Social Democrats are neo-liberals through and through as well as enthusiastic valets for the empire.
But then, no doubt, you would regard the USA as a government run by socialists and Wall Street as a conclave of communism.
The real problem with neo-nazis is that they are like Nazis without brains.

Posted by: bevin | Mar 30 2023 19:23 utc | 60

@Outraged | Mar 30 2023 15:28 utc | 12
Thank you for the link to your previous post (Mar 17 2023 20:07 utc | 103). What a horror! Having grown up in East Germany, we were taught the terror against Jews, conscientous Christians, communists, unionists, blacks, and many other opponents. (Not in this sequence though; Stalinism had its favourite victims; At least until the 70s). And we were shown the museums in the concentration camps. All you wrote is just…all too familiar. The parallels between these two fascist regimes and their fellow travellers are overwhelming. Those Ukrainian Nazis and the USUKEU gangsters who cultivate such scum deserve a Nuremberg-style trial. With hanging.

Posted by: OttoE | Mar 30 2023 19:29 utc | 62

So, lots of things in play but IMO too complex to happen fast. Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Mar 30 2023 19:14 utc | 58
Agreed – my timetable is similar to your 20 years, only I count De-Dollarization to have begun in the 2007-08 period …..20 years takes us to 2027 or so.

Posted by: Exile | Mar 30 2023 19:37 utc | 64

at Paul. Operation Barbarossa had a contact line as big or bigger I believe

Posted by: Tannenhouser | Mar 30 2023 19:51 utc | 66

bevin | Mar 30 2023 19:23 utc | 60 “…The real problem with neo-nazis is that they are like Nazis without brains.
Nazi with brain is an oxymoron. Proof enough is that they drove people with brains into exile. The most prominent example is Albert Einstein, I guess.

Posted by: OttoE | Mar 30 2023 19:54 utc | 68

A bit of a classic on twitter about US journalist /agent
https://twitter.com/RWApodcast/status/1641416152193613824

Posted by: Aslangeo | Mar 30 2023 20:10 utc | 70

This is my first post. What is really going on in Bakhmut? I thought from reading on MOA that it had already fallen to Russia, perhaps I was mistaken. In any event, why is it still in contention do you think?

Posted by: TreborSays | Mar 30 2023 20:16 utc | 72

@ bevin
> Having learned, during a fortnight in France, that Sputnik and RT are unavailable there I post this
swentr.site
For how long? Who knows.

Posted by: natokraine | Mar 30 2023 20:18 utc | 74

This is OT but there seems to be a lot of concern in the MSM about the Wall Street Journal reporter who has been detained in Russia on charges of espionage. These teleprompter readers would have more credibility if they had displayed any concern for Julian Assange. I would think Putin could troll the west by trading one for the other but I am not sure Julian would want to be tainted by such a deal.

Posted by: Quid Me Vexare | Mar 30 2023 20:20 utc | 76

unimperator@24
I believe that Axel Springer owns Politico.

Posted by: bevin | Mar 30 2023 20:28 utc | 78

This is my first post. What is really going on in Bakhmut? I thought from reading on MOA that it had already fallen to Russia, perhaps I was mistaken. In any event, why is it still in contention do you think?
Posted by: TreborSays | Mar 30 2023 20:16 utc | 72
Because enough people are still willing to fight for it, and pay for it.

Posted by: Bemildred | Mar 30 2023 20:29 utc | 80

@ TreborSays | Mar 30 2023 20:16 utc | 72
There’s been so much written this already. Please read through any open thread on ukraine during the past month.

Posted by: natokraine | Mar 30 2023 20:44 utc | 82

Since months Western tv news states food prices have increased “because of the war in Ukraine”. This is a good excuse to avoid blaming government. But peoples’ support for the war disappears.

Posted by: Passerby | Mar 30 2023 20:58 utc | 84

@Bevin@59
Second sentence make no sense to me as its as idealistic as u claim thinking the world is run by unseen groups.
Especially when followed by the 3rd sentence where u say we know who does these things.
Yes we do know who. Mostly the followers of neo liberalism aka Neo Cons. Naming the group responsible is hardly idealist and mistaken.
Have I completely missed youreaning here?

Posted by: Tannenhouser | Mar 30 2023 21:03 utc | 86

Xi said it in Moscow: changes not seen in a hundred years are taking place, and Russia and China are the catalysts of this change.
As always, these were not changes that the world (a conservative place) wanted,(the world did not ask for Cortez or Clive or Admiral Dewey either). They were forced upon it, and us, by that form of stupidity mixed with strength, inertia and mass that the Greeks called hubris.
The world Xi and Putin and are building will have GW Bush’s name on its foundation stone.
Posted by: bevin | Mar 30 2023 19:15 utc | 59
Great post, beautifully argued.
It appears that it all boils down to pretty much everyone in Europe and America being basically wicked and it’s time for the rest of the world to push back so they can move forward freely in the basically good ways they desire.
I tend to regard societies, especially large nations with hundreds of millions, as complex organisms with no end of interlocking and overlapping levels and layers. There are elements in any large polity that become money and/or power addicted and there is no system which has found a way to be entirely immune from the damage they can infict on both their own and other polities. And they aren’t the only form of corruption. But the point is that I find it a tad simplistic to paint entire civilizations, nations or races with overly broad brush strokes as you and others seem to be doing, though clearly not without reason.
Perhaps I am trying to hard to hypothesize a few key, small networks. One of Thierry Meyssan’s articles on the Straussians, for example, demonstrated just how efficiently a relatively tiny group spread throughout the senior levels of the USG in the past few decades. This was intentional. It has been successful. It is not simply a typical manifestation of Washington DC nor a generally imagined conspiracy hypothesis. Now, maybe it’s not an important phenomenon. Maybe the very few numbers of extremely wealthy corporations in the capitalist-modern world owning increasingly high percentages of all other corporations is also not significant because the real issue is that the entire society is filled with wicked people who quite naturally throw up wicked elites who in turn quite naturally plunder the rest of the world as much as they can get away with. It is possibly so.
But I like to think that most people are not wicked and that there are a concentrated few who are getting away with too much in which case there should be a way to get rid of ’em!
I think by and large the masses have shown that although they do have great power, they are like a herd of buffalo (or lemmings for that matter): far too easy to stampede in any direction they are told. Best to concentrate on those organizing such stampedes, I say, though of course it’s hard to make them out behind their scarves and in all that dust kicked up by the panicked herd!
That said, if you look a little into the infamous British Empire exploits in India for example, again you see a very small group of extremely wealthy and powerful at the top of various financial networks (largely based in the infamous City of London) were pulling the strings of the national government of Great Britain who was supposedly perpetrating all of this for the benefit of her own Empire. And those same muckety mucks are almost certainly behind the extraordinary success of tiny groups like the Straussians…
Well: one thing the Eurasian bloc is doing which seems truly effective is just ignoring the Old Empire as much as they can and instead going ahead with their own fun and games, including trading with their own money. What a novel idea, eh? This is giving the West a heavy, heavy, HEAVY dose of inertia. If the lunatics aren’t running the asylum there, maybe they’ll just slow down so much because of old age and fatigue and befuddlement that we won’t have another World War after all and the neocons, who some say don’t really have much to do with anything, will just all fade away and leave us alone. Now wouldn’t that be nice? I certainly hope it happens that way.
But if history is any guide, with the sort of changes Putin and Xi congratulated themselves on last week, billions will be dying before this is all over, including perhaps most of us now enjoying this bar. Many, many hundreds of millions even without nukes (war, privation, disease, crop failures etc.), but with them……

Posted by: Scorpion | Mar 30 2023 21:18 utc | 88

Julian Ropke, broke bad in my book today:
https://twitter.com/JulianRoepcke/status/1641440723638849537?s=20
This is just false. He doesn’t know the first thing about just war theory or international law.
My apologies to those who I referred to Ropke’s reporting, on the grounds he was an impartial source. I had never seen him use “scum” to refer to pro-russians before.
I disengage from anyone who uses loaded language to describe the war whether they’re calling Ukrainians chaff or Russians ‘rashists’. If you can’t speak plainly, you are not a reliable observer.

Posted by: GoFast | Mar 30 2023 21:33 utc | 90

The Americans snatched defeat in front of Victory when the 9th Army could have walked into Central Berlin in April 15, 1945 and Eisenhower decided to honor the agreement with Soviets and save maybe a few thousand lower-class American lives which were more than made up in a peninsular named Korea, which very few Americans had heard about before, 5 years later.
If Eisenhower entered the 9th Army to Berlin back then George W Bush would not have visited Kremlin and kowtow to Putin on May 9 2005
The Russian approach of sparing men will lead to the same result

Posted by: kulmthestatusquo | Mar 30 2023 21:38 utc | 92

@ GT Stroller @ Paul Demascene. Thxs for replies.
Re:
>> The neo-cans
Agree, it’s misdirection, to persuade younger voters “this isn’t who we are” and “isn’t who we’ve always been”.
Years ago, it worked on me.
Posted by: natokraine | Mar 30 2023 19:25 utc | 61
So you think they spend a long time building a highly effective political network just to fool young people about who is really in charge? Then who is it? The Presidents and Congress just like it’s supposed to be?
I recommend Thierry Meyssan’s article about the Straussians from a year ago now (March 5 2022). He is a serious writer with a pretty decent track record, I believe.
Russia declares war on the Straussians
Personally I hope he’s more or less right and that Russia is committed to waging war on the Straussians because unlike you I think – respectfully – that they are very dangerous and are not being called out nearly enough. Of course they do not operate alone, but nor are they just a harmless typical part of the overall USG doing what it does so ‘nothing to see there folks, walk-on, ha-ha!’
And will now read his latest which just noticed on his Home Page:
The preparation of a New World War

Posted by: Scorpion | Mar 30 2023 21:43 utc | 94

I am amazed by the skill with which they handled Trump’s indictment and subsequent arrest to come. They were very worried about reactions but handled it very well.
Planting false stories that the case is going nowhere, giving Trump and his allies security and thus pacifying the public did the trick.
This is why the West is still going strong despite all things going south. Factories, schmaktories. Public manipulation at level 10 is what keeps them at the top.
All enemies take notice, you need to be able to defeat that. Not militarily.

Posted by: alek_a | Mar 30 2023 21:46 utc | 96

Posted by: unimperator | Mar 30 2023 21:34 utc | 90
Also, supposedly the Russians managed to block off up to 500 UAF troops in one of the very large industrial buildings in the northern part of Bakhmut. Every day there can be several tens surrendering in Bakhmut.

Posted by: unimperator | Mar 30 2023 21:50 utc | 98

bevin | Mar 30 2023 20:11 utc | 71

Having learned, during a fortnight in France, that Sputnik and RT are unavailable there I post this

WTF ? Je suis français, and, oddly, I have lived ‘ere for a while..
I can read RT, Sputnik on my phone, no problems, and on my PC where I am using a VPN.

Posted by: Sarlat La Canède | Mar 30 2023 21:59 utc | 100