Friday 19th of April 2024

what the rogue "deep state" really wants.....

Those behind the Throne are never more dangerous than when they have their backs against the wall.

Their power is slipping away, fast: Militarily, via NATO’s progressive humiliation in Ukraine; Financially, sooner rather than later, most of the Global South will want nothing to do with the currency of a bankrupt rogue giant; Politically, the global majority is taking decisive steps to stop obeying a rapacious, discredited, de facto minority.

So now those behind the Throne are plotting to at least try to stall the incoming disaster on the military front.

 

BY PEPE ESCOBAR

 

As confirmed by a high-level US establishment source, a new directive on NATO vs. Russia in Ukraine was relayed to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Blinken, in terms of actual power, is nothing but a messenger boy for the Straussian neocons and neoliberals who actually run US foreign policy.

The secretary of state was instructed to relay the new directive – a sort of message to the Kremlin – via mainstream print media, which was promptly published by the Washington Post.

In the elite US mainstream media division of labor, the New York Times is very close to the State Department. and the Washington Post to the CIA. In this case though the directive was too important, and needed to be relayed by the paper of record in the imperial capital. It was published as an Op-Ed(behind paywall).

The novelty here is that for the first time since the start of Russia’s February 2022 Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, the Americans are actually proposing a variation of the “offer you can’t refuse” classic, including some concessions which may satisfy Russia’s security imperatives.

Crucially, the US offer totally bypasses Kiev, once again certifying that this is a war against Russia conducted by Empire and its NATO minions – with the Ukrainians as mere expandable proxies.

‘Please don’t go on the offensive’

The Washington Post’s old school Moscow-based correspondent John Helmer has provided an important service, offering the full text of Blinken’s offer, of course extensively edited to include fantasist notions such as “US weapons help pulverize Putin’s invasion force” and a cringe-worthy explanation: “In other words, Russia should not be ready to rest, regroup and attack.”

The message from Washington may, at first glance, give the impression that the US would admit Russian control over Crimea, Donbass, Zaporozhye, and Kherson – “the land bridge that connects Crimea and Russia” – as a fait accompli.

Ukraine would have a demilitarized status, and the deployment of HIMARS missiles and Leopard and Abrams tanks would be confined to western Ukraine, kept as a “deterrent against further Russian attacks.”

What may have been offered, in quite hazy terms, is in fact a partition of Ukraine, demilitarized zone included, in exchange for the Russian General Staff cancelling its yet-unknown 2023 offensive, which may be as devastating as cutting off Kiev’s access to the Black Sea and/or cutting off the supply of NATO weapons across the Polish border.

The US offer defines itself as the path towards a “just and durable peace that upholds Ukraine’s territorial integrity.” Well, not really. It just won’t be a rump Ukraine, and Kiev might even retain those western lands that Poland is dying to gobble up.

The possibility of a direct Washington-Moscow deal on “an eventual postwar military balance” is also evoked, including no Ukraine membership of NATO. As for Ukraine itself, the Americans seem to believe it will be a “strong, non-corrupt economy with membership in the European Union.”

Whatever remains of value in Ukraine has already been swallowed not only by its monumentally corrupt oligarchy, but most of all, investors and speculators of the BlackRock variety. Assorted corporate vultures simply cannot afford to lose Ukraine’s grain export ports, as well as the trade deal terms agreed with the EU before the war. And they’re terrified that the Russian offensive may capture Odessa, the major seaport and transportation hub on the Black Sea – which would leave Ukraine landlocked.

There’s no evidence whatsoever that Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the entire Russian Security Council – including its Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev – have reason to believe anything coming from the US establishment, especially via mere minions such as Blinken and the Washington Post. After all the stavka – a moniker for the high command of the Russian armed forces – regard the Americans as “non-agreement capable,” even when an offer is in writing.

This walks and talks like a desperate US gambit to stall and present some carrots to Moscow in the hope of delaying or even cancelling the planned offensive of the next few months.

Even old school, dissident Washington operatives – not beholden to the Straussian neocon galaxy – bet that the gambit will be a nothing burger: in classic “strategic ambiguity” mode, the Russians will continue on their stated drive of demilitarization, denazification and de-electrification, and will “stop” anytime and anywhere they see fit east of the Dnieper. Or beyond.

 

What the Deep State really wants

Washington’s ambitions in this essentially NATO vs. Russia war go well beyond Ukraine. And we’re not even talking about preventing a Russia-China-Germany Eurasian union or a peer competitor nightmare; let’s stick with prosaic issues on the Ukrainian battleground.

The key “recommendations” – military, economic, political, diplomatic – were detailed in an Atlantic Council strategy paper late last year.

And in another one, under “War scenario 1: The war continues in its current tempo,” we find the Straussian neocon policy fully spelled out.

It’s all here: from “marshaling support and military-assistance transfers to Kyiv sufficient to enable it to win” to “increase the lethality of military assistance transferred to include fighter aircraft that would enable Ukraine to control its airspace and attack Russian forces therein; and missile technology with range sufficient to reach into Russian territory.”

From training the Ukrainian military “to use Western weapons, electronic warfare, and offensive and defensive cyber capabilities, and to seamlessly integrate new recruits in the service” to buttressing “defenses on the front lines, near the Donbass region,” including “combat training focusing on irregular warfare.”

Added to “imposing secondary sanctions on all entities doing business with the Kremlin,” we reach of course the Mother of All Plunders: “Confiscate the $300 billion that the Russian state holds in overseas accounts in the United States and EU and use seized monies to fund reconstruction.”

The reorganization of the SMO, with Putin, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, and General Armageddon in their new, enhanced roles is derailing all these elaborate plans.

The Straussians are now in deep panic. Even Blinken’s number two, Russophobic warmonger Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland, has admitted to the US Senate there will be no Abrams tanks on the battlefield before Spring (realistically, only in 2024). She also promised to “ease sanctions” if Moscow “returns to negotiations.” Those negotiations were scotched by the Americans themselves in Istanbul in the Spring of 2022.

Nuland also called the Russians to “withdraw their troops.” Well, that at least offers some comic relief compared with the panic oozing from Blinken’s “offer you can’t refuse.” Stay tuned for Russia’s non-response response.

 

READ MORE:

https://thecradle.co/article-view/20878/a-panicked-empire-tries-to-make-russia-an-offer-it-cant-refuse

 

 

AND WHAT DO WE WANT?

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competition....

The United States expects to exit the crisis by destroying its competitors

 

BY Valery Kulikov

 

After the end of World War II, the United States not only managed to preserve its army and economy, but it also significantly enriched itself in the war. This is not surprising given that the war occurred far from the United States’ borders and could not have had the same impact on the United States as Europe and Russia, who had paid for their victory over Nazism with completely destroyed cities, businesses, infrastructure, and the deaths of millions of their citizens.

Against the backdrop of widespread postwar devastation and disasters, Europe used to believe that the Americans were the principal winners, not Russia, who had paid for the victory over Nazism with the lives of 26.6 million of its citizens and raised its victorious flag over the German Reichstag. This perception of the United States was actively promoted by American propaganda. So there was a legend that the United States has the most powerful army and economy, which the ruling American circles used to consolidate their global hegemony.

However, in recent years, this bubble of American superiority has burst. Washington’s continuous political and military defeats (one of which is the complete failure of US policy and its military campaign in Afghanistan), as well as the United States’ annual deepening of the global financial and economic crisis, have all contributed to the decline of US power and authority. Under these conditions, one way for Washington to stay “afloat” was to stop its financial and economic crisis at the expense of other states.

In this context, the United States has recently begun to actively impose economic sanctions, arresting multibillion-dollar accounts of undesirable countries and freezing them in their banks, therefore earning significant interest from making very impressive funds seized by them “work”. In its history, the United States has repeatedly applied its sanctions against other countries. In particular, this list included more than two dozen countries in the last three decades alone, including: Balkan states (during the Balkans conflict, these were Serbia and Montenegro), Belarus (in 2004, the US adopted the “Belarus Democracy Act”), Burma (in 1997), Cote d’Ivoire (in 2011, the US imposed sanctions on President Laurent Gbagbo), Cuba (only in 2000, the US decided to use frozen accounts totaling $120 million to pay “compensation to victims of Cuban terrorism), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (sanctions have been extended several times since 2006), Somalia, Sudan, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and many other countries. The US blocked $330 billion in Russian assets in 2022, and Russians with assets worth more than $30 billion face sanctions.

Thus, Washington’s actions have become its main weapon for destroying foreign corporations that interfere with aggressive American businesses, and have earned the moniker “law fare.” Specifically, using the so-called Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977 and applying it to a company of any nationality that has nothing to do with the United States, Washington began using the FBI to arrest the management of such a corporation and send it to prison in the American territory, even under a presumption and without direct evidence. Within the framework of this law, a simple suspicion of bribery is sufficient for the US Department of Justice to bring charges against the head of a foreign company and issue a mandate to its authorities to arrest him. As a result, the US began to meddle in the affairs of any foreign company, removing its competitors.

The recognition by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) of the products of a number of Chinese companies (in particular, Xiaomi, Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, and a number of others) that were banned from import and sale due to the alleged risk to national security was a fairly striking example of Washington’s elimination of competing companies from the market. A member of the Carr commission, in order to gain public support in the country, even tried to point out that China allegedly threatens the interests of the United States through espionage through such companies.

However, such outright terror on the part of the US has recently become practiced not only against a specific foreign corporation. The United States has long abandoned “free trade” laws, providing political support to its businesses while disregarding the interests of other countries, particularly the EU. Against the backdrop of the Ukraine conflict, it became clear to everyone that the most important lever for any country’s development was energy, and the US decided to use this aspect to maintain its superiority over Europe. It began to do this thanks to new laws, shale gas and the imposition of an embargo on Russian energy resources. One of the most important laws for the United States on this path was the “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA), thanks to which the US gained a decisive competitive advantage over Europe, primarily in the field of energy.

Having unleashed a Russophobic propaganda campaign on the alleged need for Europe to move away from energy dependence on Russia, thereby removing it from competition for this EU market, Washington has made the entire continent dependent on American LNG, which is many times more expensive than Russian natural gas. And this has been repeatedly confirmed by Western media and experts who speak about the onset of a new era of American neocolonialism in this way. Companies in Europe, for example, have recently signed more than a dozen contracts for the supply of expensive US LNG, with a third of them due in 2022. This made the EU dependent on the United States and brought many dangers, especially against the background of lessons from the time of Donald Trump’s rule, which showed that the image of the United States as a reliable partner of Europe is especially low. Gas prices in the United States have already more than doubled since the beginning of last year, as have electricity prices. And, if the US does not have enough gas, it will decide to keep the majority of it for itself, condemning the EU to a severe crisis, which has already engulfed Europe as a result of America’s aggressive actions in recent months.

It is well known that a fifth of the world’s semiconductor production is accounted for by Chinese manufacturers. That is why, and in order to gain illegal advantages for itself in this industry, Washington forces its customers and suppliers in Europe to follow US policy. For example, the Dutch firm ASML has recently been under increased pressure from the United States by “American officials” to force it to stop selling some chip-making machines to China. Trying to become a global monopolist in the field of chip manufacturing, the United States has actively engaged in eliminating competitors in this way, not only in China, but also in the EU. Since October 2022, when the United States legislated a number of bans on the export of semiconductors to China, it became clear that the current White House administration is pursuing a ruthless policy in the field of chips under the motto “America first”. According to the German media, if Europe does not take action to stop this aggressive policy, it will lose its dominance in the semiconductor manufacturing industry. And not only semiconductors!

Valery Kulikov, political expert, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.

 

READ MORE:

https://journal-neo.org/2023/01/31/the-united-states-expects-to-exit-the-crisis-by-destroying-its-competitors/

 

 

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the killing fields.....

The Kiev regime is carefully hiding its real losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Indeed, the numbers are so high that they are worth to be hidden.

Adviser to the office of the President of Ukraine Mikhail Podolyak assured that the number of dead was only about 10 thousand servicemen in December 2022. In his turn, Zelensky reduced the number up to 8 thousand.

In recent days, the lies of Kiev officials that Ukrainian servicemen are crashing Russian Army, suffering almost no casualties were once again revealed, this time, by Western officials.

Ex-adviser to the head of the Pentagon Douglas Macgregor claimed that since the beginning of the Russian special military operation, the Armed Forces have lost a total of 257 thousand servicemen. This figure was reportedly claimed by the Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny during his recent visit to Washington. The Ukrainian general held several meetings with the leadership of the US Department of Defense when he “secretly informed them that Ukraine had lost 257,000 people.”

It is not clear what meeting in Washington did the Colonel speak about. The first meeting in person of the Pentagon’s top general with his Ukrainian counterpart was reported on January 17 in Poland.

However, the claims do not contradict other unofficial estimations of Ukrainian losses.

For example, Turkish Hurseda media reported, referring to Mossad sources, that irretrievable losses of the AFU exceeded 150,000 servicemen. The number likely includes only dead servicemen. The reported numbers also revealed the losses of NATO countries on the Ukrainian front lines:

  • Irretrievable losses of the AFU – 157,000;
  • Irretrievable losses of NATO – 8052;
  • Wounded – 234,000;
  • Prisoners – 17,230;
  • Aviation – 302 aircraft and 212 helicopters
  • UAVs – 2,750 (excluding quadrocopters);
  • Air defense – 497 anti-missile systems and radars;
  • Armored vehicles – 6320 tanks, BMP, APC, MRAP, etc.;
  • Artillery – 7360 units of towed artillery, mortars, self-propelled guns, MLRS, short-range ballistic missile systems.

Various sources and military specialists estimated that losses of the Ukrainian military have already exceeded 200 000 servicemen since the beginning of the Russian special military operation. Some US military specialists have already claimed losses of about 400 000 servicemen.

At the end of November last year, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, speaking about the losses of the Ukrainian army, said that they exceeded “one hundred thousand” soldiers. LINK

Back in the summer of 2022, a screenshot of the report addressed to the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, signed by the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Zaluzhny, was leaked online. According to the document, almost 130,000 servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were out of service as of July 1, 2022. These servicemen included 76,640 dead, 42,707 wounded, 7,244 captured and 2,816 missing. These figures included only losses in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, excluding the dead and wounded from other agencies deployed at the front.

According to the claims of the Russian Defence Minister in September 2022, since the beginning of the special operation, Ukraine lost more than 100 thousand people — 61,207 dead and 49,368 wounded — this is half of its original army.

 

Russian losses

On the other hand, the Turkish media also revealed Russian losses. According to Israely estimations, they included:

Irretrievable losses – 18,480
Wounded – 44,500
Prisoners – 323 (apparently, only those who have not yet been changed)
Aviation – 23 planes and 56 helicopters
UAV – 200 (excluding quadrocopters)
Armored vehicles – 889 tanks, BMP, APC, MRAP, etc.
Artillery – 427 units of towed artillery, mortars, self-propelled guns, MLRS.
Air defense – 12 anti-missile systems and radars

Data for both sides was dated January 14.

The report does not contradict the official data provided by the Russian military back in September. On September 21, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed that Russia’s losses amounted to 5,937 people.

 

READ MORE:

https://southfront.org/ukrainian-general-israeli-intelligence-reveal-ukrainian-russian-losses-reports/

 

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refugees or soldiers?

 

VOLODYMYR! MAKE A DEAL NOW! THINGS AREN'T GOING TO IMPROVE.....

 

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