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2023 starts with collective NATO in Absolutely Freak Out Mode as Russian Defense Minister Shoigu announces that Russian Navy frigate
Admiral Gorshkov is now
on tour - complete with
a set of Mr. Zircon's hypersonic business cards.The business tour will encompass the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, and of course include the Mediterranean, the Roman Empire's former Mare Nostrum. Mr. Zircon on the prowl has absolutely nothing to do with the war in Ukraine: it's a sign of what happens next when it comes to frying much bigger fishes than a bunch of Kiev psychos.
The end of 2022 did seal the frying of the Big Ukraine Negotiation Fish. It has now been served on a hot plate - and fully digested.
Moscow has made it painfully clear there's no reason whatsoever to trust the "non-agreement capable" declining superpower.So even taxi drivers in Dacca are now betting on when the much- vaunted "winter offensive" starts, and how far will it go. General Armageddon's path ahead is clear: all-out demilitarization and de-electrification on steroids, complete with grinding up masses of Ukrainians at the lowest possible cost to the Russian Armed Forces in Donbass until Kiev psychos beg for mercy. Or not.
Another big fried fish on a hot plate at the end of 2022 was the 2014 Minsk Agreement. The cook was no other than former chancellor Merkel ("an attempt to buy time for Ukraine"). Implied is the not exactly smokin' gun: the strategy of the Straussian/neo-con and neoliberal-con combo in charge of U.S. foreign policy, from the beginning, was to unleash a Forever War, by proxy, against Russia.
Merkel may have been up to something telling the Russians, in their face, that she lied like crypto-Soprano Mike Pompeo, then she lied again and again, for years. That's not embarrassing for Moscow, but for Berlin: yet another graphic demonstration of total vassalage to the Empire.
The response by the contemporary embodiment of Mercury, Russian Foreign Ministry's Maria Zakharova, was equally intriguing: Merkel's confession could be used as a specific reason - and evidence - for a tribunal judging Western politicians responsible for provoking the Russia-Ukraine proxy war.
No one will obviously confirm it on the record. But all this could be part of an evolving,
secret Russia-Germany deal in the making, leading to Germany restoring at least some of its sovereignty.
Time to fry NATO fishMeanwhile, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, visibly relishing his totally unplugged incarnation, expanded on the Fried Negotiation Fish saga. "Last warning to all nations", as he framed it: "there can be no business with the Anglo-Saxon world [because] it is a thief, a swindler, a card-sharp that could do anything... From now on we will do without them until a new generation of sensible politicians comes to power... There is nobody in the West we could deal with about anything for any reason."
Medvedev, significantly, recited more or less the same script, in person, to Xi Jinping in Beijing, days before the zoom to end all zooms - between Xi and Putin - that worked as a sort of informal closure of 2022, with the Russia-China strategic partnership perfectly in synch.
On the war front, General Armageddon's new - offensive - groove is bound to lead in the next few months to an undisputable fact on the ground: a partition between a dysfunctional black hole or rump Ukraine on the west, and Novorossiya in the east.
Even the IMF is now reluctant to throw extra funds into the black hole. Kiev's 2023 budget has an - unrealistic - $36 billion deficit. Half of the budget is military-related. The real deficit in 2022 was running at about $5 billion a month - and will inevitably balloon.
Tymofiy Mylovanov, a professor at the Kiev School of Economics, came up with a howler: the IMF is worried about Ukraine's "debt sustainability". He added, "if even the IMF is worried, imagine what private investors are thinking". There will be no "investment" in rump Ukraine. Multinational vultures will grab land for nothing and whatever puny productive assets may remain.
Arguably the biggest fish to be fried in 2023 is the myth of NATO. Every serious military analyst, few Americans included, knows that the Russian Army and military industrial complex represents a superior system than what existed at the end of the U.S.S.R, and far superior to that of the U.S. and the rest of NATO today.
The Mackinder-style final blow to a
possible alliance between Germany (EU), Russia and China - which is what is really behind the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine - is not proceeding according to the Straussian wet dream.
Saddam Hussein, former imperial vassal, was regime-changed because he wanted to bypass the petrodollar. Now we have the inevitable rise of the petroyuan - "in three to five years", as Xi Jinping announced in Riyadh: you just can't prevent it with Shock'n Awe on Beijing.
In 2008, Russia embarked on a massive rebuilding of missile forces and a 14-year plan to modernize land-based armed forces. Mr. Zircon presenting his hypersonic business card across the Mare Nostrum is just a small part of the Big Picture.
The myth of U.S. powerThe CIA abandoned Afghanistan in a humiliating retreat - even ditching the heroin ratline - just to relocate to Ukraine and continue playing the same old broken records. The CIA is behind the ongoing sabotage of Russian infrastructure - in tandem with MI6 and others.
Sooner or later there will be blowback.Few people - including CIA operatives - may know that New York City, for instance, may be destroyed with a single move: blowing up the George Washington bridge. The city can't be supplied with food and most of its requirements without the bridge. The New York City electrical grid can be destroyed by knocking out the central controls; putting it back together could take a year.
Even trespassed by infinite layers of fog of war, the current situation in Ukraine is still a skirmish. The real war has not even started yet. It might - soon.
Apart from Ukraine and Poland there is no NATO force worth mentioning. Germany has a risible two-day supply of ammunition. Turkey will not send a single soldier to fight Russians in Ukraine.
Out of 80,000 U.S. troops stationed in Europe, only 10% are weaponized. Recently 20,000 were added, not a big deal. If the Americans activated their troops in Europe - something rather ridiculous in itself - they would not have any place to land supplies or reinforcements. All airports and seaports would be destroyed by Russian hypersonic missiles in a matter of minutes - in continental Europe as well as the UK.
In addition, all fuel centers such as Rotterdam for oil and natural gas would be destroyed, as well as all military installations, including top American bases in Europe: Grafenwoehr, Hohenfels, Ramstein, Baumholder, Vilseck, Spangdahlem, and Wiesbaden in Germany (for the Army and Air Force); Aviano Air Base in Italy; Lajes Air Base in Portugal's Azores islands; Naval Station Rota in Spain; Incirlik Air Base in Turkey; and Royal Air Force stations Lakenheath and Mildenhall in the UK.
All fighter jets and bombers would be destroyed - after they land or while landed: there would be no place to land except on the autobahn, where they would be sitting ducks.
Patriot missiles are worthless - as the whole Global South saw in Saudi Arabia when they tried to knock out Houthi missiles coming from Yemen.
Israel's Iron Dome can't even knock out all primitive missiles coming from Gaza.U.S. military power is the supreme myth of the fish to be fried variety. Essentially, they hide behind proxies - as the Ukraine Armed Forces. U.S. forces are worthless except in turkey shoots as in Iraq in 1991 and 2003, against a disabled opponent in the middle of the desert with no air cover. And never forget how NATO was completely humiliated by the Taliban.
The final breaking point2022 ended an era: the final breaking point of the "rules-based international order" established after the fall of the U.S.S.R.
The Empire entered Desperation Row, throwing everything and the kitchen sink - proxy war on Ukraine, AUKUS, Taiwan hysteria - to dismantle the set-up they created way back in 1991.
Globalization's rollback is being implemented by the Empire itself. That ranges from stealing the EU energy market from Russia so the hapless vassals buy ultra-expensive U.S. energy to smashing the entire semiconductor supply chain, forcibly rebuilding it around itself to "isolate" China.
The NATO vs. Russia war in Ukraine is just a cog in the wheel of the New Great Game. For the Global South, what really matters is how Eurasia - and beyond - are coordinating their integration process, from BRI to the BRICS+ expansion, from the SCO to the INSTC, from Opec+ to the Greater Eurasia Partnership.
We're back to what the world looked like in 1914, or before 1939, only in a limited sense. There's a plethora of nations struggling to expand their influence, but all of them are betting on multipolarity, or "peaceful modernization", as Xi Jinping coined it, and not Forever Wars: China, Russia, India, Iran, Indonesia and others.
So bye bye 1991-2022. The hard work starts now. Welcome to the New Great Game on crack.
Reader Comments
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'Is the USA No Longer a Constitutional Republic? The fate of the citizenry seems increasingly determined by competing oligarchs.' by JOHN LEAKE [Link]
"For the last 49 years of the Roman Republic, the fate of the citizenry was determined not by laws and institutions, but by the decisions and actions of competing, ambitious men. First Julius Caesar challenged the authority of the Senate by leading his army across the Rubicon River and into the Italian peninsula, which inaugurated twenty years of civil war. This period of strife ended when Octavian—the nephew and adopted son of Julius Caesar—defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 30 BC. Three years later, the Senate gave Octavian the titles Augustus and Princeps , along with greatly augmented powers, thereby ending the Republic and inaugurating rule by Emperors with direct authority over the army (the final instrument of power over unruly human beings).
Since President George W. Bush invaded Iraq under false pretenses in 2003, the United States of America has increasingly resembled the last twenty years of the Roman Republic. We, the People, seem increasingly at the whim of competing oligarchs and their friends in the Administrative State. The Bushes, Clintons, Trumps, and Bidens resemble the powerful Roman families of the 1st Century BC—sometimes quarreling, sometimes uniting, always primarily serving their own interests and those of their friends. In recent years, the FBI has come to resemble the Roman Praetorian Guard during the waning days of the Republic, whose loyalty to a particular man was more a matter of preference and perceived promise of gain than law.
The success of America’s baleful, competing oligarchs depends on how well they co-opt financial, industrial, media, and institutional actors. Their relationship with the citizenry is mostly a matter of propaganda, manipulation, virtue signaling, and flattery by pretending to endorse the (faddish) ideological preferences of their constituencies.
Thankfully there is one enormous difference between the United States now and the final decades of the Roman Republic—namely, the use of U.S. military units on American soil still seems to be off limits. To be sure, the Department of Defense has played a strong role in developing, manufacturing, and distributing the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. We are now seeing increasing evidence that the DOD holds final authority over the entire program.
The above reflections have been percolating through my mind for some time, causing me to wonder if we are no longer a Republic in which all of us— including our august billionaires, political dynasties, federal police and intelligence agencies —are governed by our United States Constitution. This morning I saw that Victor Davis Hanson—Senior Fellow in Classics at the Hoover Institution—has been having similar thoughts.
His essay, [Link] The Coup We Never Knew, is well worth reading."
Russia (in form of the Soviet Union) is the only victorious WWII party that signed a peace treaty with Germany, effectively ending WWII. Gemany is still fully controlled by the remaining "Allies" (US, UK, France), and formally under martial law. A 100 per cent vassal.
And yes, Escobar definitely has his leftist biases. He seems closer to socialist/communist world views than the Russians and even the Chinese. With the latter being "communist" by name only.
"... The complaints seemingly forced Vladimir Putin himself to speak on the matter. He stopped short of confirming that there is an ammo crisis of such proportions as to affect gun crews at the front, but in a televised event with the media he confirmed that Russia was indeed depleting its ammo stock.
At the same time, a video appeared which appears to show a Wagner gun crew cursing Gerasimov and complaining they have no shells with which to support their infantry in the Bakhmut meatgrinder.
Some immediately proclaimed the video a fake — it was surely dastardly Ukrainians dressed up as Wagner! But then Prigozhin and Grey Zone made sure everyone knew it was legit. Prigozhin visited Bakhmut and sought out the very gunners who had made it and Grey Zone publicized that they repeated their complaints..."
" If you are tired of unhinged prophesies from both NAFO knuckleheads and Kremlin bootlickers (Like Pepe Escobar), follow Marko on Substack and back his valiant efforts to inject a bit of sanity into “indy” media “war coverage.” [Link]
Who Wants a Multipolar World Order?—Part I [Link] Who Wants a Multipolar World Order?—Part II [Link]
I mean come on, he starts fussing about one Russian warship. Even us British have got more than one (I think) I've even seen one.
He writes glowing things about Maria Zakharova (I agree) vs Angela Merkel (evil lying bitch) well she did admit it...but then Pepe goes full on pyscho himself...Has he been reading : Revelation, Apocalyptic Writing and the Old Testament whilst on the Absinthe and the favourite from his home town?
"Few people - including CIA operatives - may know that New York City, for instance, may be destroyed with a single move: blowing up the George Washington bridge. The city can't be supplied with food and most of its requirements without the bridge."
May I suggest Coca Cola (not the diet sh1t)
I know it tastes horrible, but I use it camping at music festivals, before several cups of coffee and bacon and eggs (the veggies love the smell - but don't like to admit it)
Tony
Maybe Pepe was making an almost subliminal comment re the Bridge and The Gas Pipeline between Russia and the Rest of Europe
In London where I have lived full time since 1993, and have worked with lots of Americans who I have massive respect for...
They all Fucked Off Back to the USA after 9/11. From being the most interesting hard working people I met in London and before that Manchester England...except for a few really nice people...I told her - just apply for the job. We all love you. You are the hardest working person we have met in our lives. She had spent some time in Australia, but born in the USA...Spoke English with no American Twang whatsover - maybe slight a bit of Australian...
So she applied for the job and got it
She then assumes I can do it...and dumped me in it with 10 minutes notice...
I hadn't done a Presentation since school...So I mainly talked used the blacboard a bit -and these flip chart things...
Basically, I was saying you should do it this way.
You have got one server sat doing f'ck all, whilst I have got two watching each other..in case one of them fucks up now in seperate data centres
Still working
My son is doing pretty much the same in London
We like to keep things working, or it all goes to shit
We do not like Centralisation and Control by American Idiots..but we do like some of you..
Are you on the Team Kid???
Hell Yes...
Tony
As an American I was always made keenly aware of the importance of 'Liberty,' and besides the Magna Carta, the US Constitution and Bill of Rights are the natural outgrowth and expressions of man's yearning to be free. My mother was from Germany, born in 1937, so unlike many of my neighbors, I had the advantage of expanding my worldview, if not by just a little, through my worldwide travels with my parents, and correspondence with my family in Germany during the 60's and 70's, learning about my family history.
I began traveling abroad on my own in the 80's, and was always taken for a Canadian, because I didn't absorb the dialect of the average New Yorker. It would always be a surprise to the people I met abroad that they were speaking with an American. I think that going to a descent private school through the primary years probably made the difference. My family was never wealthy, per se. They are all rather industrious to this day, and have enjoyed a middle class life on both sides of the Atlantic. That all may be changing now since the so called reset... Peace to you Tony!
the vid of the two wankers in front of the artillery piece...mmmm...i know guys get frustrated but there's a line of respect one just does not cross without incurring holy wrath and we've seen Wagner's discipline on telegram; so i'm thinking these two have serious ptsd or it's more than likely a ukry propaganda skit.
"...At the same time, a video appeared which appears to show a Wagner gun crew cursing Gerasimov and complaining they have no shells with which to support their infantry in the Bakhmut meatgrinder. Some immediately proclaimed the video a fake — it was surely dastardly Ukrainians dressed up as Wagner! But then Prigozhin and Grey Zone made sure everyone knew it was legit. Prigozhin visited Bakhmut and sought out the very gunners who had made it and Grey Zone publicized that they repeated their complaints.
“But Prigozhin found these positions , arrived there and did not see “Ukrainian nationalists” there , but he saw his fighters, who confirmed the problem...”
Who can say for sure?
Marko Marjanović, Editor of Anti-Empire, added:
"...Taken together, unless Murz , TopaZ , Grey Zone and Two Majors are all hallucinating at the same time, all this points to a severe shell hunger on the Russian side. (Hunger that Ukraine has been operating under since the start of the war.)..."
those two gunners must have titanium gonads, maybe it's part of a psyops chess match, who knows.
thank you, i appreciate the additional info ! 👍🏻
cheers parz !
I just said to her...in 1981...I can't turn this offer of a job in London down.
I have been on the dole for a year.
I couldn't get a job in the North of England...
Will you come with me, cos this time I am going...
The first flat I found in Putney - I thought absolutely no chance...
I had only a limited budget - running out of money - but offered a job...
So I saw this place just over Richmond Bridge in St Margarets
£72 a week....
I said.....we don't know anyone here...
You are going to lose all your friends and Family in Lancashire....
We are moving to London
Yes.
We will invite our friends and family
and we did