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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2024-275
Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:
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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2024-275
English Outsider On Trump’s Cabinet Of Curiosities And How Little It Matters
Referring to Judge Napolitano discussion with Col Lawrence Wilkerson about Trump and the Defense Department (video) English Outsider writes:
"Yes, the man all hoped would give the quietus to the neocons seems to be appointing neocons himself.
Mercouris has made some valuable preliminary observations on the subject of Trump's appointees so far. Risking paraphrasing him (the reference is to his video of a couple of days back), he considers that these appointments are made mainly to ensure Trump has in place those loyal to him, that consideration over-riding any question of whatever foreign policy stance the prospective nominees may hold.
As said, these are preliminary or tentative conclusions arrived at by Mercouris but I believe they make very good sense. Following on from Mercouris' conclusions are I believe further conclusions on the subject of these somewhat hawkish proposed nominees.
1. It no longer matters what US foreign policy is with respect to Ukraine and maybe with respect to the ME.
Cont. reading: English Outsider On Trump’s Cabinet Of Curiosities And How Little It Matters
Fourth Time The Pentagon Is Faking The Books For Ukraine
For a fourth time the Pentagon is 'finding money' outside of the budget that can be spend on Ukraine.
I had previously noticed three occasions in which the Pentagon, on order of the Biden administration, used some or 'accounting error' gimmicks to 'find' more money for Ukraine.
Pentagon Again Applies Budget Lies To Deliver More Weapons To Ukraine - Jul 26 2024, MoA
The piece referred to three relevant news reports:
Exclusive: Pentagon accounting error overvalued Ukraine weapons aid by $3 billion – May 19 2023, Reuters
Pentagon accounting error provides extra $6.2 billion for Ukraine military aid – June 20 2023, AP
Pentagon finds another $2 billion of accounting errors for Ukraine aid – July 14 2024, Reuters
From the last link:
The Pentagon has found $2 billion worth of additional errors in its calculations for ammunition, missiles and other equipment sent to Ukraine, increasing the improperly valued material to a total of $8.2 billion, a U.S. government report revealed on Thursday.
Here is now another, the fourth, incident of creative budget accounting in favor of money for war in Ukraine:
All reports previously indicated that there was $4.3 billion left in the Presidential Drawdown Authority account, which reimburses the U.S. armed forces for munitions and equipment sent to Ukraine.
Turns out, the number is actually $7.1 billion, thanks to some revised accounting the Pentagon has done, DOD officials tell your anchor. That extra $2.8 billion isn’t just found money. The way things work is that the Pentagon calculates how much buying replacement goods for what it sends Ukraine will cost. The number crunchers at the Pentagon ran through the lists and discovered that replacement for some items cost less than anticipated.
The plan is for the administration to spend down that whole $7.1 billion by Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20 …
Luckily, not all of the money will reach Ukraine:
[Spending the money] is a pretty tall order given the cadence of aid packages being announced roughly every two weeks work between $200 million and $500 million. Those numbers are going to have to go way up, but even then deliveries of that equipment would continue well into the Trump administration, which could turn off the spigot at any time.
I bet that the lower 'replacements costs' the Pentagon has found to spend more on Ukraine, will themselves turn out to be 'accounting errors'. The replacements will – unfortunately they will say – later require much higher outlays than anticipated today.
Creative accounting like this, i.e. faking the books, is a no-no for commercial entity as it might well end with time spent in jail.
I'll repeat myself:
Any commercial company doing what the Pentagon is doing here would be asking for serious trouble.
One wonder if and when Congress will wake up to this.
Palestine Open Thread 2024-274
News & views related to the war in Palestine …
Ukraine Open Thread 2024-273
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
Open (Neither Ukraine Nor Palestine) Thread 2024-272
News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine …
Oct 7 2023 – Netanyahoo Knew The Attack Was Coming – He Let It Happen On Purpose
The prime minister of the Zionist entity, Benjamin Netanyahoo, is under fire. New criminal allegations have been raised against him.
People in Netanyaho's office had 'leaked' secret reports obtained by the Israeli military intelligence from some low level Hamas leader. Before leaking the documents, which included proposals for future actions, the leakers manipulated them.
The manipulated documents appeared as 'news' on foreign websites which allowed the censored Israeli media to repeat their content. As leaked the documents claimed that Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, accompanied by Israelis taken hostage, intended to escape to Egypt from where he would travel to Iran.
It was pretty obvious that the claims were fake. But Netanyahoo did use them to prevent further negotiations about hostage releases.
Several people involved in the leak of the manipulated top-secret papers have since been arrested.
Another scandal is currently brewing about events which immediately happened before the October 7 incursion of Hamas into Israel.
On October 6 a significant number of Hamas fighters in Gaza activated Israeli SIM cards which would allow them to use their cell phones within Israel. Various survival systems noted this and raised alarm. Meetings were held by several security councils, including the one involving the prime minister, but no further alarm was raised (machine translation):
Cont. reading: Oct 7 2023 – Netanyahoo Knew The Attack Was Coming – He Let It Happen On Purpose
Elections Have Consequences – We Just Don’t Know Which
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is selecting a number of hawkish people to fill his cabinet.
There are currently a lot of hot takes what these appointees will do.
- Marco Rubio, the likely Secretary of State, may want to launch a new coup in Venezuela.
- Michael Waltz, the potential national security advisor, is anti-Russian and anti-China.
- Elise Stefanik, a Zionist, will serve as the Israel's second ambassador to the United Nations.
If there were no limits either of these people would launch new wars.
That Trump is selecting rightwing nuts is not unexpected. He needs their backing to push things through.
But the fact that Trump is selecting these people does not mean that he will listen to them or follow their advice. His first term demonstrated that the people he selects often do not last. There is thus no reason to despair over this or that bonehead selection.
There are also objective reason why policies Trump or his acolytes might want to pursue might well be impossible. To lower taxes while the budget deficit is at a record and interest rates are high is not really doable. To push Ukraine towards a victory will fail due to facts on the ground. Any itch to attack Iran carries a high risk of a military defeat.
We will have to wait for the administrations real policy decisions to anticipate where it will go. A good sign will be when Trump succeeds in implementing policies that the hawks he has chosen oppose.
I am not really optimistic about that. My earlier prediction still holds:
[Trump] had previously chosen people who were opposing and sabotaging his policies. He lacked the authority and/or will to rein them in. I do not believe that he has learned from it.
But maybe he did learn from it. I for one will try to stay objective and to give him a chance.
Why Is WaPo Reporting A Trump-Putin Call That Did Not Take Place?
This is curious.
The Washington Post is reporting a phone call between U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation.
Trump talked to Putin, told Russian leader not to escalate in Ukraine – Washington Post, Nov 10 2024
President-elect Donald Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday and discussed the war in Ukraine, according to people familiar with the call.
President-elect Donald Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, the first phone conversation between the two men since Trump won the election, said several people familiar with the matter.
During the call, which Trump took from his resort in Florida, he advised the Russian president not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe, said a person familiar with the call, who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
Ukraine's government, says WaPo, was informed of the call.
The Kremlin denies that any such phone call and talk has taken place:
Kremlin denies call between Putin and Trump – AFP/MSN, Nov 11 2024
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed reports of a conversation, calling it "completely false information."
Cont. reading: Why Is WaPo Reporting A Trump-Putin Call That Did Not Take Place?
Palestine Open Thread 2024-271
News & views related to the war in Palestine …
Ukraine Open Thread 2024-270
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2024-269
Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:
> Amid a breakdown of trust between society, the army and the political leadership, Ukraine is struggling to replace battlefield losses with conscription, barely hitting two-thirds of its target. Russia, meanwhile, is replacing its losses by recruitment with lucrative contracts, without needing to revert to mass mobilisation. A senior Ukrainian military commander admits that there has been a collapse in morale in some of the worst sections of the front. A source in the general staff suggests that nearly a fifth of soldiers have gone AWOL from their positions. <
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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2024-269
‘Pogrom’ Against Hooligans Accusations Follow A Zionist Propaganda Scheme
There are two recurring schemes in pro-Zionist propaganda:
- In any conflict the Zionists (or Jews) are always the victims.
- Conflicts with Zionists always occur out of nowhere, i.e without any provocations and outside of any context. They are thus pure anti-semitism.
On October 7 2023, following provocations of radical Zionists at the Al Aqsa mosque, Hamas soldiers and random Gazans broke from their open air prison and attempted to take Israeli hostages. These were to be exchanged for Arab prisoners in Israeli hands. During the operation the Israeli military ordered its forces to follow the Hannibal directive which says that any potential Israeli hostage shall be killed before it is taken to Gaza.
Various reports have since shown that the majority of those killed on that day were Arabs from Gaza. The majority of Israeli casualties of that day were caused by the Israeli military, primarily by its helicopter forces which fired Hellfire missiles and machine cannons against random cars fleeing the scene.
But the Zionist friendly media reported the Hamas excursion as unprovoked. It seemed to have happened without any context. But there is a context of more then 70 years of expulsion and killing of Arabs up to today.
It also depicted the killed Israeli as the victims killed by the Arab attackers even as Israel's own military admitted that it had killed a large share of them.
A recent incident in Amsterdam follows a similar scheme.
Israel decries ‘pogrom’ in Amsterdam as soccer fans come under attack by rioters – Times of Israel, Nov 8 2024
All Israelis accounted hours after 10 injured, many besieged in hotels as gangs of hooligans — apparently Muslims and Arabs — ambush, beat Israelis after game
The headline suggests that:
Cont. reading: ‘Pogrom’ Against Hooligans Accusations Follow A Zionist Propaganda Scheme
Palestine Open Thread 2024-268
News & views related to the war in Palestine …
Open (Neither Ukraine Nor Palestine) Thread 2024-267
News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine …
Trump And Ukraine
How will a president-elect Donald Trump handle the war in Ukraine?
I doubt that he will be able to close down the war in 24 hours, as he had promised. I rather think that he will escalate it. As I stated two weeks ago:
I expect the new president to double down on the anti-Russian project in Ukraine …
A new Wall Street Journal piece on Trump's promise does not give me any reason to believe otherwise.
Trump Promised to End the War in Ukraine. Now He Must Decide How. (archived
Foreign-policy advisers close to the president-elect put forth different versions of a plan to effectively freeze the front line
Like in Trump’s first term, different factions are set to compete to influence the Republican’s foreign policy. More traditionally minded allies such as Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state now in contention to lead the Pentagon, are likely to push for a settlement that doesn’t appear to give a major win to Moscow. Other advisers, particularly Richard Grenell, a top candidate to lead the State Department or serve as national-security adviser, could give priority to Trump’s desire to end the war as soon as possible, even if it means forcing Kyiv into significant concessions.
But what are ways to do that?
Cont. reading: Trump And Ukraine
Election 2024 – Random Thoughts
Some random thoughts on Trump's reelection.
Trump's win in 2024 does not prove that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats but it raises a new stink about the issue.
bigger
When Biden was pushed out of the race there were calls among Democrats not to rush a choice, but to hold full-fledged primaries. Barack Obama had called for it. But Nancy Pelosi and the Clinton clan kept pushing for Harris. As a vacuous and unlikable person – carrying all the baggage of the Biden administration – she was the most likely to lose.
This is, hopefully, the end of wokeism and DEI nonsense. And of 'trans' children and teens.
Cont. reading: Election 2024 – Random Thoughts
Election 2024 – Trump Has Won
MoA, two weeks ago:
My hunch is that Trump will win the election. What policies will follow will largely depend on the people he will select to run the show. He had previously chosen people who were opposing and sabotaging his policies. He lacked the authority and/or will to rein them in. I do not believe that he has learned from it.
It currently looks like Trump has won yesterday's election. The presidency and majorities in the Senate and House will be held by Republicans.
That does not change my policy prediction:
I expect the new president to double down on the anti-Russian project in Ukraine and on support for the genocide the Zionist are committed to finish. The U.S. will continue to be bogged down in Europe and west-Asia. The 'pivot to Asia' to counter China's rise will continue to stall. The economic standing of the U.S. will continue to deteriorate.
This is good news for China, Russia, the BRICS project and those involved in it. As the old world order continues to drag itself down the new one gains time and space to evolve from it.
My hope for Europe is that Trump, being afraid of a real confrontations as he is, will lose the contest with Russia. As Emmanuel Todd had summarized:
It is the outcome of this war that will decide the fate of Europe. If Russia is defeated in Ukraine, European submission to the Americans would be prolonged for a century. If, as I believe, the United States is defeated, NATO will disintegrate and Europe will be left free.
Ukraine – North Korean Soldiers Are “Disguised As Buryats”
The story of North Korean soldiers who are allegedly fighting for Russia against Ukraine continues to evolved.
There are now supposedly some 11,000 or 12,000 North Korean soldiers in the Russian Kursk region. They are, supposedly, getting ready to fight against the Ukrainian incursion forces on Russian ground.
I continue to believe that the whole story about North Korean soldiers in Russia is bovine excrement.
As I had written two weeks ago:
Ukraine – Threat Of North Korean Soldiers Is Based on U.S. Info Campaign
Shortly after RAND proposed a U.S. information operation campaign around the theme of North Korean soldiers in Russia the Ukrainian military intelligence service under CIA trainee Budanov started to spread rumors of North Korean soldiers soon to fight on the Russian side. The numbers claimed by Budanov have since steadily increased. South Korean intelligence, also associated with the CIA, and U.S. media have joined the campaign. The chair of the House Intelligence Committee is milking the campaign to make political points.
Evidence that was supposed to support the claims has been exposed as being fake. The whole story is thus based on nothing but 'intelligence' rumors which are following a RAND proposed script. Don't fall for it.
Since then new fake news items about the 'North Korean soldiers' have been added each and every day. The numbers have grown bigger. The 'North Koreans' have come more near to Ukraine. Warnings are coming from more and more officials and places.
I have been wondering if and how the people who have spread this nonsense would finally produce evidence for it.
I first though that this would be handled like the fake reports about an Iranian missile transfer to Russia. Such a transfer never happened but Iranian civilian airlines got sanctioned over it. Since then no new reports about any such missile transfers came out. It had been a pure 'information operation', which had used false assertions from anonymous 'officials', that had achieved its purpose.
But there is nothing left to sanction about North Korea or Russia. So what is this about?
The likely purpose of the 'North Korean soldiers' campaign is to get more support for Ukraine.
This, [Zelenski] hopes, will incite western forces to send their own troops to Ukraine if only to counter the North Koreans.
But to achieve that requires to present real evidence. No western country, nor South Korea, will send weapons or soldiers based on pure rumors. There will be requests of real evidence. How can the lack of such be explained?
Today the Ukrainian Minister of Defense, Rustem Umerov, has given a hint how Ukraine will handle this issue (machine translation):
Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov confirmed the words of the head of the National Security and Defense Council's Center for Combating Disinformation, Andriy Kovalenko , that the first "small-scale fighting" had already taken place between the Ukrainian Armed Forces and North Korean soldiers, and the Koreans had suffered losses.
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Umerov also said that the Russian Federation disguises Koreans as Buryats, so the dead and prisoners must be identified before Ukraine calls the number of enemy losses.
Buryats?
The Buryats are a Mongolic ethnic group native to southeastern Siberia who speak the Buryat language. They are one of the two largest indigenous groups in Siberia, the other being the Yakuts. The majority of the Buryats today live in their titular homeland, the Republic of Buryatia, a federal subject of Russia which sprawls along the southern coast and partially straddles Lake Baikal.
There are about half a million Buryat citizens of the Russian Federation. To western eyes Buryat look Asian and not immediately distinct from people from North Korea. A decent share of the Buryats have taken well paid jobs in the military forces of Russia. There will be several around the fronts in Ukraine.
As soon as some Buryat soldier of Russia will turn up dead, the Ukrainian military will present him as a disguised North Korean soldier. Some black and white photos will be found of a similar looking person in North Korean uniform …
"There is your prove. Now send soldiers and weapons." will Umerov say.
Either that – or the whole thing will die down and soon be forgotten.
Presidential Election 2024
"Neither is qualified. Both deserve to lose."
Video: Prof. Jeffrey Sachs Q & A at Cambridge Union as published on Oct 30 2024
Starting at 48:06 min (automated transcript, slightly edited):
Sachs:
I will not vote for a candidate that doesn't meet the minimum threshold for being president of the United States and we have two candidates, lead candidates, that don't. And so I decided I'm not voting – period. Because I want a candidate that actually has some possibility of doing something.
Now maybe they will but not based on what they say every day.
It is a profession of love for Israel's murderous reign in the Middle East. Okay, by itself I wouldn't support that. That's enough for me because Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza and it's sickening and it's obvious and we see it every day. And if a candidate can't figure out to say something about then I can't support them. Period.
But then Kamala Harris, who would normally be my candidate because I was a lifelong Democratic Party voter. Although with great disappointment whether they won or lost. Because when they won I was disappointed with what they did. When they lost I was disappointed that my candidate lost. So I've never been happy for a while about us politics.
It's been five miserable presidents as far as I'm concerned from Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, awful all of them. They brought us to the brink of nuclear war. I can't forgive them for that kind of recklessness.
But when it comes to Ukraine Harris says we stand with Ukraine. Just everybody understand what does it mean to stand with Ukraine, like Boris Johnson stands with Ukraine. It means 2,000 Ukrainians killed or wounded severely every single day. That's not standing with Ukraine. That is standing with the destruction of Ukraine. It's exactly the opposite. And so that's a purely Orwellian idea that we're standing with Ukraine by continuing this war.
And that's what she says because she doesn't seem to have any idea other than what she's told to say or she says her ideas. And either way I can't vote for her.
And with Trump – don't even get me started.
So the answer is I don't see either of them based on what they're saying right now doing much.
But I think there's another point that is important in this. I'm not without hope for a quite different reason and that is that our politics is not determined by American presidents. Our politics is determined by the Security State apparatus. And what is happening right now is not in America's security interest and so they could change their mind.
President Putin said something actually very interesting in an interview in 2017, I think in Figaro. By the time he had three presidents as his counterparts, Bush, Obama and Trump, and he said to this French reporter in 2017.
He said: "You know I've dealt with three American presidents. Now they come into office with ideas but then men in dark suits and blue ties come to tell them how the real situation is and you never hear of those ideas again."
And this is from a very tough-minded leader who was himself KGB he understands how the American system works very well. He understands what the CIA means for American foreign policy. He understands that American foreign policy is very deeply rooted.
It's not this one wins then Obama changes everything and then Trump comes in and changes nothing like that. By the way this has been a consistent foreign policy arguably since 19 certainly since 1991 and arguably since 1945.
– end of Jeffrey Sachs quote
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