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CIA/NYT Remove North Korean Troops From Ukraine’s Front Line
After three months of intense propaganda the CIA decided to bury an Ukrainian disinformation scheme and announced to 'pull North Korean troops off the front line'.
Well. How did North Koreans get to the front line in the first place?
On October 14 the former president of Ukraine Vladimir Zelinski initiated an information-operation designed to increase support for Ukraine. He alleged, without evidence, that Russia planned to involve North Korea into the war.
U.S. financed media outlets in Ukraine soon propped up these rumors by citing 'sources in Ukraine’s special services'. More anonymous 'sources' chimed in and soon there was talk of 3,000 soldiers from North Korea joining the fight. There was however zero evidence that anything like was ever planned or happened.
I thus remarked:
I regard the whole claim of North Korean troops in Russia as a fake news story and I am sure that most experts will follow me in that judgment.
However, today U.S. media manage to play up the nonsense:
Why North Korea is sending soldiers to the Russian front lines – Washington Post
Sending solders to help Russia’s war effort against Ukraine could earn valuable foreign currency for Kim Jong Un’s regime and bolster their strengthening ties.
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I do not believe that any politician or military in the west will believe that nonsense which is again solely sourced to Ukrainian military intelligence claims. But there is clear campaign by the Ukrainian government to make the issue stick. What is its hope? To induce South Korea to send its forces to fight North Koreans on the Ukrainian border with Russia?
A few days later it emerged that the whole Ukrainian 'North Korea' information-operation was based on a U.S. plan:
Cont. reading: CIA/NYT Remove North Korean Troops From Ukraine’s Front Line
Palestine Open Thread 2025-021
News & views related to the war in Palestine …
Ukraine Open Thread 2025-020
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
Open (Neither Ukraine Nor Palestine) Thread 2025-019
News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine …
Syria – New York Times Claims Mysterious Coalition Installed Dictatorship
Here is how the New York times announced the installation of a fundamentalist Sunni-Islamic dictatorship in Syria:
Rebel Leader Who Overthrew al-Assad Is Declared Syria’s President (archived) – New York Times, Jan 29 2025
The new leadership of the country said the rebel coalition leader, Ahmed al-Shara, would serve as president during a transitional period.
The rebel coalition that seized control of Syria last month appointed its leader, Ahmed al-Shara, as president of the country to preside over a transitional period, Syrian state media reported on Wednesday.
A spokesman for the coalition, Col. Hassan Abdel Ghani, also declared that the Constitution had been nullified and the legislature and army formed under the country’s deposed dictator, Bashar al-Assad, were dissolved, according to the state news agency, SANA.
The declarations amounted to the country’s first official steps toward establishing a new government after the rebel coalition led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or H.T.S., swept into the capital, Damascus, last month in a lightning offensive that toppled Mr. al-Assad. Mr. al-Shara, who led that coalition, has since been serving as the country’s de facto leader.
This is the first time that I have read of a "coalition" in Syria. Who but the al-Qaida aligned Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) under its brutal mass murderer Ahmed al-Shara (formerly known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani) is part of it?
Contrast the NY Times take with the one by the Washington Post:
Syria’s de facto leader declares himself president, abolishes constitution – Washington Post, Jan 29 2025
Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, on Wednesday abolished the country’s constitution and declared himself president during a meeting of armed factions in Damascus.
The former rebel leader will “assume the duties of the Presidency of the Syrian Arab Republic and represent it in international forums,” commander Hassan Abdelghani said, according to the Syrian state news agency SANA.
No mysterious 'coalition' in this one.
Halt Of USAID Exposes Malign Foreign Influence
A few days ago the Trump administration put a 90 day stop on foreign aid:
Friday’s memo shocked the humanitarian groups and communities conducting development aid across the globe. While the scope of the directive appears far-reaching, uncertainties linger over how it will be carried out.
The memo on Saturday offered only partial clarity.
The pause on foreign aid spending means “a complete halt,” it said. The only exceptions are for emergency humanitarian food assistance and for government officials returning to their duty stations. Waivers allowing delivery of emergency food during the review period will require “detailed information and justification.”
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USAID began sending a notice to contractors ordering them to “immediately issue stop-work orders” and to “amend, or suspend existing awards.”
USAID and other U.S. government entities provide money for a wide range of causes. Some are arguably humanitarian and should continue:
Trump order set to halt supply of HIV, malaria drugs to poor countries as part of aid freeze, sources say – NY Post, Jan 28 2025
Others though are not so.
In many cases foreign aid is used to transplant U.S. ideological causes into foreign societies and/or to manipulate them into favoring U.S. interests. This is often hidden under the misleading concept of a 'civil society' as the 'third sector' distinct from governments and businesses. The U.S., through USAID and other like entities, are paying foreign 'non-government' organizations (NGOs), as well as foreign media, to pressure foreign governments into following policies in U.S. interests.
Enslaved by Nonprofits: How NGOs Colonize Developing Countries – Mint Press News, Dec 12 2023
In a number of countries the halt of such 'aid' showed immediate effects (machine translation):
Cont. reading: Halt Of USAID Exposes Malign Foreign Influence
On Biden, Blinken, Etc. – Matt Taibbi On Tucker Carlson’s Show
This talk (video) with Matt Taibbi and Tucker Carlson is very interesting.
One question that's come up (chapter 4) is who was running the White House during the last year. Biden obviously didn't.
Tucker thinks it was Antony Blinken. Blinken is also said to be the one who pressed for a more aggressive war against Russia. The release of ATACMS missiles against Russian proper was on of the nonsensical measures.
Another one, Tucker says (44:12), was an attempt to kill Vladimir Putin.
I had not heard that one so far.
Recommended.
Ukraine – Organizational Chaos, Commanders Fired
The unusual combat organization of the Ukrainian army is taking its toll.
In a classic military hierarchy Corps, Divisions, Brigades and Battalions each have their own staff and responsibilities. The Ukrainian army is using a more flexible but also chaotic structure of Operational Units with less control. The results are unnecessary losses on the battle field.
After the Maidan coup the Ukrainian government designated the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk areas held by separatists as the Anti-Terrorist Operation Zone (ATO) and put it under the control of the Ukrainian secret service SBU.
In 2018 this changed:
On 20 February 2018, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko changed the status of the ATO zone from an anti-terrorist operation to "taking measures to ensure national security and defense, and repulsing and deterring the armed aggression of the Russian Federation in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts".
This allowed the Ukrainian military to take charge of the zones instead of the Ukrainian secret service SBU. As such, the ATO was renamed to JFO zone (Joint Forces Operation (Ukrainian: Операція об'єднаних сил, ООС, romanized: Operatsiya ob'yednanykh syl).
The Commander of the Joint (or 'Combined') Forces Operation is also the commander of the Khortytsia Operational-Strategic Group which is directing the war against Russian forces in eastern Ukraine.
The Operational-Strategic Group (OSUV) commands several Operational Tactical Groups (OTUs), each with their local areas of responsibility. Several brigades and/or battalions get temporarily assigned to each Operation Tactical Group to fulfill its tasks.
This scheme is largely seen as ineffective:
Cont. reading: Ukraine – Organizational Chaos, Commanders Fired
Palestine Open Thread 2025-018
News & views related to the war in Palestine …
Ukraine Open Thread 2025-017
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2025-016
Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:
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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2025-016
How The Chinese Beat Trump And OpenAI
The hype around Artificial Intelligence, the now failed U.S. attempt to monopolize it, and the recent counter from China are a lesson in how to innovate. They also show that the U.S. is losing the capability to do so.
In mid 2023, when the Artificial Intelligence hype gained headlines, I wrote:
'Artificial Intelligence' Is (Mostly) Glorified Pattern Recognition
Currently there is some hype about a family of large language models like ChatGPT. The program reads natural language input and processes it into some related natural language content output. That is not new. The first Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity (Alice) was developed by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT in the early 1960s. I had funny chats with ELIZA in the 1980s on a mainframe terminal. ChatGPT is a bit niftier and its iterative results, i.e. the 'conversations' it creates, may well astonish some people. But the hype around it is unwarranted.
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Currently the factual correctness of the output of the best large language models is an estimated 80%. They process symbols and pattern but have no understanding of what those symbols or pattern represent. They can not solve mathematical and logical problems, not even very basic ones.
There are niche applications, like translating written languages, where AI or pattern recognition has amazing results. But one still can not trust them to get every word right. The models can be assistants but one will always have to double check their results.
Overall the correctness of current AI models is still way too low to allow them to decide any real world situation. More data or more computing power will not change that. If one wants to overcome their limitations one will need to find some fundamentally new ideas.
But the hype continued. One big AI model, ChatGPT, was provided by a non-profit organization, OpenAI. But its CEO, Sam Altman, soon smelled the big amount of dollars he potentially could make. A year after defending the the non-profit structure of OpenAI Altman effectively raided the board and took the organization private:
Cont. reading: How The Chinese Beat Trump And OpenAI
Trump’s Opening Cry To Russia Falls Flat
In May 2017 the Russian president Vladimir Putin had an interview with Le Figaro. He explained his experience with policy preferences forwarded by U.S. presidents:
I have already spoken to three US Presidents. They come and go, but politics stay the same at all times. Do you know why? Because of the powerful bureaucracy. When a person is elected, they may have some ideas. Then people with briefcases arrive, well dressed, wearing dark suits, just like mine, except for the red tie, since they wear black or dark blue ones. These people start explaining how things are done. And instantly, everything changes. This is what happens with every administration.
It took only two days for that to happen with the second presidency of Donald Trump. Instead of seeking better relations with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, as he had promised during the campaign, Trump initiated a public 'dialog' with Russia that seems to make both of these aims impossible.
He posted on Truth-Social:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump – Jan 22, 2025, 15:46 UTC
I’m not looking to hurt Russia. I love the Russian people, and always had a very good relationship with President Putin – and this despite the Radical Left’s Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX. We must never forget that Russia helped us win the Second World War, losing almost 60,000,000 lives in the process. All of that being said, I’m going to do Russia, whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOR. Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. If we don’t make a “deal,” and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries. Let’s get this war, which never would have started if I were President, over with! We can do it the easy way, or the hard way – and the easy way is always better. It’s time to “MAKE A DEAL.” NO MORE LIVES SHOULD BE LOST!!!
One wonders what the people in dark suits were thinking when they fed such bullshit to Donald Trump.
Russia did not 'help' to win the Second World War. It did win it. It was the U.S. and others who were merely helpful in doing so.
As Kremlin spokesmen Dimitry Peskov rightly replied:
Cont. reading: Trump’s Opening Cry To Russia Falls Flat
Zelenski, Having Failed, Blames His Sponsors
Simon Shuster is Time’s senior correspondent for Ukraine and Russia.
For writing laudatory pieces about (former) president Zelenski Shuster received extraordinary access to the Ukrainian’s president’s office. A later portrait by Shuster depicted Zelenski as delusional. In his latest piece he asserts that the Biden administration never intended for Ukraine to win:
When Russia invaded Ukraine nearly three years ago, President Joe Biden set three objectives for the U.S. response. Ukraine’s victory was never among them.
Preventing a war between Russia and NATO, not Ukraine winning, was one of Joe Biden’s three aims.
That is why, throughout the war in Ukraine, the U.S., together with Germany, had blocked the accession of Ukraine to NATO.
In September Zelenski’s last attempt with Biden to gain NATO access ended without success:
[Zelenski’s] appeals got a mixed reception. On the question of Ukraine’s NATO membership, Biden would not budge.
That had always and will always be the case.
Despite having been rejected again and again Zelenski used the hope of gaining NATO (and EU) membership for Ukraine to market the war he was waging.
Now, as he is obviously losing it, he is blaming those who never promised NATO membership to him for not receiving it (machine translation):
Cont. reading: Zelenski, Having Failed, Blames His Sponsors
Trump Abolishes Democrats’ DEI And Trans-Craze Policies
Trump's second presidency has a strong start. On his first day in office he has issued some 200 executive actions including some 42 executive orders (EO) undoing many of Biden's attempts of socially engineering a new society.
(Unfortunately I have yet to find a complete list of those EOs. Why haven't even the agencies, AP, AFP or Reuters, compiled one?)
I do dislike many of the EOs Trump issued. Leaving the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreements, and thereby de-legitimizing them, is not good for mankind. Further supporting the Zionst entity is a disgrace.
Others I do like. Trump pardoned participants of the Jan 6 (2021) 'riots' which had never amounted to much more than a hustle.
He rescinded many of EOs the Biden administration had issued around its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. Attempts of social engineering against merit deserve to fail.
I am also very happy that Trump has ended the official Trans craze. The wording herein is remarkable:
DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being.
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This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.
There are and will be many more Trump policies which (will) deserve to be condemned and criticized.
That should not hinder us to admit that he got some things right.
Trump And Ukraine Should Concede
The Ukrainian commander in chief General Syrksi seems to have given up. Recent remarks of his suggest that he no longer sees a way to win the war. He is now simply waiting for the politicians to concede.
The Ukrainian military has recently started to move thousands of air-defense soldiers and logistic personnel into the infantry. People who were taught to detect, analyze and fight aerial targets get pushed into roles for which they did not receive training and are no qualified.
Syrski is justifying this as the only way to keep a sufficient number of men in front line trenches:
The army chief stressed that his order prohibits the transfer of highly qualified personnel who have undergone training and specialize in aircraft maintenance.
"Clearly, these are invested funds, specialists who have experience and are practically irreplaceable, on the one hand," said Syrskyi.
“On the other hand, we fundamentally need personnel on the front, and we must maintain an adequate number of troops in our mechanized brigades. Unfortunately, mobilization capabilities do not meet this need.”
According to him, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are "reasonably" reducing the logistical component and part of the support in the military, as well as those involved in maintenance.
"Therefore, the headquarters know these tasks; they have done the calculations," Syrskyi stated.
The number of freshly mobilized soldiers is lower than the number of losses. The military thus has to start to 'eat itself'. The problems being caused by this will not be visible immediately but they will over time destroy the armies core functionality.
People have done all they can to avoid a service at the frontline. Commanders have been bribed to allow for their soldiers to do duty behind the front lines. Others deserted. There are thus plenty of superfluous logistic and headquarter staff that can be moved to put up a more serious resistance.
But in few week those reserves will have emptied too. Logistics will start to slow down and air defenses will fail to defend against even the most primitive drone attacks.
Syrski sees this coming. He knows that defending the country will not win the war (machine translation):
Cont. reading: Trump And Ukraine Should Concede
Palestine Open Thread 2025-015
News & views related to the war in Palestine …
Ukraine Open Thread 2025-014
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2025-013
Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:
Russia/Ukraine:
China:
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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2025-013
Sowing Doubt About China – But At What Cost?
On December 27 2021 I mocked headlines and pieces which reported on China's achievements but questioned the cost:
When China Does Great Question Its Cost
There seem to be general meme directives for 'western' outlets with regards to official enemies.
Russia is said to weaponize everything. The position of China is not (yet) seen as in military terms. The emphasis is on economic competition. Any undeniable Chinese achievement must be declared to have been a bad investment. The directive thus reads:
"When writing about China's achievements – question their purported cost."
The results:
The list, which included 43 headlines, ended with these:
Time has past but the directive to always question China's cost is still in place. Here are a few, new and additional, entries:
Cont. reading: Sowing Doubt About China – But At What Cost?
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