© News Forensics
Larry Johnson has just published a brilliant article by Helmholtz Smith.
Now that the Ukraine war is dragging to a close and NATO is running out of willpower, money, guns, tanks and artillery shells, with shaky economies, unstable politics, too many angry farmers and new wars (domestic and foreign) to worry about, it's time to remember just how it all began.The focus is on the war in Ukraine - why NATO has lost; why Russia has won, as I and some others predicted they would in March 2022 — not because we were smarter than anybody else — but rather because we weren't delusional.
Easily, lightheartedly, stupidly -
if you don't know anything, everything looks easy.
False assumptions and false history explain how Washington and the NATO it controls got into this mess.
Smith concludes thusly.
Russia hasn't collapsed, run out of weapons, the ruble isn't rubble and Putin is still there. The Russian economy, says the IMF, grew more than any G7 country last year and its military, says General Cavoli, is stronger and those who were then sure that "Putin is finished", now tremble for their foundations. And maybe NATO has ruined itself.False assumptions, false history
Have they learned anything? Let's ask Victoria Nuland who is just returned to Kiev for the tenth anniversary of gluing the thing together. Nope. Failure.
Smith puts America's failure down to monumental hubris.
What Smith does not do, however, is explain why the US makes these mistakes, contrary to easily available fact and all reason.
- Assumed Russian economic weakness. They believed that the Russian economy was weak, easily demolished and that Putin's rule was based on sharing the loot with underbosses. Sanctions would cripple the economy and cut the underbosses' takings and they would get rid of Putin and that would be that. Maybe Russia itself would break up. "Cripple the economy", "Ruble to Rubble".
- Assumed Russian battlefield incompetence. They swallowed the "Three Alibis". Russians were no good at war and only beat the Germans because Hitler made stupid decisions, it was cold and they had endless manpower resources. The work of David Glantz's team was forgotten.
- Assumed NATO superiority. They believed that NATO training, weapons and everything else were wonderful, superior and "game changers" - ooh, so powerful! Russian weapons were junk, they were running out of them, superior NATO training and weapons would make the disheartened and untrained Russian oafs run screaming in terror.
- Bad history. They swallowed the postwar falsification of history - captive nations, "communist subjugation of free people" - all Nazis were Germans and Hitler drove the trains. Nazi collaborators became brave freedom fighters who dreamed of the American Way. We knowingly let Nazis into our countries? No way. So when Putin talked of Nazis in Ukraine, they knew he was just making it up.
Comment: Whilst these sabotage attacks do appear often in nations considered to be 'enemies' of the establishment, they are occurring on their home turf, too, and with a focus on energy and food supplies: In 24 hours: Major gas explosion in Kenya, outage at US BP refinery triggers evacuation, large blackout in Toronto
See also: Predatory Sparrow: The terrorist attacks of an Israel-linked hacker group
Just a week ago in Russia: Notably, some of these suspect explosions and fires are on the radar of UK intel agencies:
Also of note, just 1 day ago: