The Russians aren’t coming

The Saker explains that Russia wouldn’t take Ukraine even if it could do so without firing a shot:

Russia is much weaker than what most people think. Her landmass is immense and her military arguably the best on the planet, but population is relatively small, and her economy a struggling one. Yes, the future does look bright for Russia, but presently she simply does not have the means to single handedly rescue (resurrect, really) the Ukraine. Not even close.

The reality is that even Crimea has presented Russia with major challenges. After 25 years of total neglect, Crimea basically needs to completely rebuilt most of its infrastructure. The Kremlin has poured billions of Rubles into numerous and large modernization programs, including an immensely expensive but vitally needed bridge over the Kerch strait, and she will continue to rebuilt Crimea in spite of the immense costs involved. Down the road, of course, Crimea will end up being very wealthy, courtesy of an immense tourist potential, the presence of a much expanded Black Sea fleet and because of its strategic location. But for the foreseeable future, Crimea will remain a major burden which Russia will struggle to deal with.

The situation in the Donbass is even bleaker. If Crimean was neglected, the Donbass has been almost totally destroyed. Right now the Russians are paying the pensions of the local population because the Ukronazis have stolen them, in direct violation of the Minsk Agreements. Russia is also alone in supporting the Novorussian republics with humanitarian, medical, technical, administrative and military programs. And while the Novorussians have done an amazing job rebuilding much of Donetsk and a few other cities, most of what lies within artillery range of the Ukronazi forces still lies in ruins and the economy is more or less at a standstill. This will not change until peace truly returns to the region.

What is already quite evident that regardless of who will be in the Kremlin and regardless of how much good will and self-sacrifice the Russians will have, Russia simply does not have the means to salvage the Ukraine. It just ain’t happening. Furthermore, polls show that most Russians are categorically opposed to a full reintegration of the entire Ukraine into Russia. Who could blame them? They are not only acutely aware that the Ukraine has turned into one bloody hell of a mess, but that an entire generation of Ukrainians has now been terminally brainwashed with russophobic hatred. And, frankly, Russia has no use for Nazis of any kind, even if they are fellow Slavs or even if they are basically the very same nation as the Russian one.

So even if tomorrow Petro Poroshenko and his gang decided to invite the Russians to come in an fix this bloody mess, the Russians would decline (so much for the warnings about a Russian invasion!). Oh sure, there are a lot of Ukrainians who kid themselves and think that “the Russians will come and fix this”, but this is a pipe-dream: the Russians ain’t coming. At most, Russia will let the DNR/LNR get back the territories which belonged to their regions and Mariupol might be liberated. But that’s about it. And even if by some miracle the Novorussian tanks end up in Kiev, I don’t see them staying there for very long because the Kremlin fully understands that if they grab it, they own it and they have to fix it. Eventually Russia will, of course, simply be forced absorb the Donbass and make it a part of Russia, mostly because there is no way the Donbass will ever go back to the Ukraine again, but even this process will take time.

So, why is the Obama administration beating the drum about a Russian invasion of a) Ukraine, b) the Baltic States, and c) Western Europe? Because the USA is doing what it has often done before, attempting to cover its own aggressive actions by portraying them as necessary defensive ones.

However, the fact that it is US troops that occupy dozens of other countries, and that it was the US that overthrew the elected Ukrainian government makes it very clear that while the Russians are not the good guys, the US, and to a lesser extent the EU, are the bad guys of the scenario.

And believe me, none of this has escaped the attention of the people of both Eastern and Western Europe. Putin and the Russians may not be on their side, but unlike the USA and the EU, they are not actively encouraging and enabling the one-million-strong invasion of Europe by warriors of Islam.


Preach, preacher

“Today it is written in the book of fate, that hidden, faceless world powers will eliminate everything that is unique, autonomous, age-old, and national. They will blend cultures, religions, and populations, until our many-faceted and proud Europe will finally become bloodless and docile. If we resign ourselves to this outcome, our fate will be sealed and we will be swallowed up in the enormous belly of the United States of Europe. 


We must therefore drag the ancient virtue of courage out from under the silt of oblivion.


First of all, we must put steel in our spines, and we must answer clearly, with a voice loud enough to be heard far and wide, the single most important question determining out fate. The question upon Europe stands of falls is this:


Shall we be slaves – or men set free?” 

– Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary


ISIS is good for the Jews?

Therefore, don’t destroy it, protect it from Russia, Syria, and Iran:

According to a think tank that does contract work for NATO and the Israeli government, the West should not destroy ISIS, the fascist Islamist extremist group that is committing genocide and ethnically cleansing minority groups in Syria and Iraq.

Why? The so-called Islamic State “can be a useful tool in undermining” Iran, Hezbollah, Syria and Russia, argues the think tank’s director.

“The continuing existence of IS serves a strategic purpose,” wrote Efraim Inbar in “The Destruction of Islamic State Is a Strategic Mistake,” a paper published on Aug. 2.

By cooperating with Russia to fight the genocidal extremist group, the United States is committing a “strategic folly” that will “enhance the power of the Moscow-Tehran-Damascus axis,” Inbar argued, implying that Russia, Iran and Syria are forming a strategic alliance to dominate the Middle East.

“The West should seek the further weakening of Islamic State, but not its destruction,” he added. “A weak IS is, counterintuitively, preferable to a destroyed IS.”

Inbar, an influential Israeli scholar, is the director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, a think tank that says its mission is to advance “a realist, conservative, and Zionist agenda in the search for security and peace for Israel.”

I think someone needs to explain the concept of “optics” to this guy. Does he really think it is a good idea for Israel to publicly ally with Islamic State? The Europeans are already less than entirely keen on Israel, and more and more Americans are beginning to question whether the Jews in their midst are on their side or not.

Coming out as ISIS allies strikes me as utter madness. But I’m not the strategic expert. The great Israeli military historian, and Castalia House author, Martin van Creveld is. It would be interesting to know what he makes of this, as he has written forcefully of how to fight Daesh.


Korean fire drill

William S. Lind warns that the next flash point in Asia may not be Indonesia, the Philippines, or the old Japan-China rivalry:

By now, the Korean drill is familiar to all. We take some symbolic action against North Korea. The North responds with its Tasmanian Devil act, threatening “lakes of fire”, firing missiles into the ocean and maybe, at the limit, shooting some artillery at South Korea. Casualties, if there are any, are few. South Korea in turn tugs at its leash, which we hold firmly. Yawn.

This time may be different. We did the usual, announcing some meaningless new sanctions on the North, though this time targeting its rulers by name, which slightly ups the ante. The North is playing its part, shouting hyperbolic threats, including war.

But here is where the current case departs from the script. No one is paying any attention to North Korea’s tantrum. We’ve seen it too often. The world’s reaction is, “let ’em starve in the dark.” From the North Korean perspective, the act no longer works.

Except in South Korea. This is the second change from the usual script. The South is fed up with the North’s antics. The South Korean president’s mother and father were killed years ago by North Korean assassins. She has not forgotten. In every recent incident, the South has suffered more casualties (when there were any) than the North. The general South Korean attitude seems to be, “We’re not going to take it any more.”

What can South Korea do? Invade North Korea.

Yet another warning about the risks created through the arrogant foolishness of the US playing globocop.


An advantage, squandered

The West won the Cold War, and thanks to arrogance and a dedication to diversity, appears to already be losing the peace:

A report leaked to The Times newspaper says that the British army would be “vulnerable” in the battlefield against Russia and that Russian President Vladimir Putin would have a “significant capability edge” in state-on-state warfare.

The Times revealed the report, which was produced by the British army, on Wednesday. It warns that the UK and its NATO allies are “scrambling to catch up” with Russia, which enjoys significant advantages in pretty much every key aspect of warfare.

Specifically, the report explains how Russia’s arsenal of weapons — which includes rocket launchers and advanced air-defence systems — are much more powerful than what Britain’s military has at its disposal.

Even major developments Britain has planned will not match up to Russia’s firepower. A planned £3.5 million ($4.6 million) fleet of lightly armoured vehicles will be “disproportionately vulnerable” to Russian rocket fire in a warfare scenario.

It is not just physical warfare in which Moscow has a clear edge, the report says. Russian intelligence has mastered the art of hacking and disturbing radar signals, meaning the effectiveness of British and NATO weaponry and aircraft operated using GPS navigation is under serious threat.

Of course, given the way in which Russia is now the defender of white Christians and the USA and the United Kingdom are the champions of secular diversity, these developments are considerably less worrisome than they would have been back in the 1980s.

It turns out that Sting was wrong. The Russians not only love their children too, they observably love their children, their heritage, and their nation considerably more than the English or the Americans do.


The evil of innocents abroad

Sometimes, it doesn’t turn out as well for the do-gooders as it did in the #1 bestselling literary satire, The Missionaries, as Peter Grant, South African military veteran and witness to many an atrocity in Africa, testifies:

I’ve seen this so many times in Africa that the memories are seared into my mind . . . yet the ‘innocents abroad’ keep on going there in the expectation that because they’re aid workers, they’ll be respected by the locals.  “In the event of trouble, the people we’re helping will protect us.  Everything will be fine.”  I was told that, in those specific words, by a medical volunteer in West Africa . . . two weeks before she was raped to death (including being raped vaginally and anally by multiple bayonets, after her assailants had had their fun) by Foday Sankoh’s RUF thugs in Sierra Leone.  She was an attractive woman when I last saw her.  Two weeks later, her torn, burned, sliced-open corpse was a nightmare.  I could not identify her by sight.  It took dental records and a forensic pathologist to do that.

People, if you visit a part of the world – not just Africa, but anywhere – where human life is cheap, where torture and rape are everyday occurrences, where tribal and/or religious and/or ethnic divisions are excuses for savagery and bestiality of the worst kind, then the odds are pretty good that you’re going to experience those realities for yourself.  The locals don’t care that you’re there to help them.  They don’t care about your high-minded ideals, or your purity of vision of the new Utopia you’re trying to build for them.  To them, you’re “other”.

Helping Africa is one of the very worst things any Western individual can do. Possibly the most evil individual of the 20th century is not Hitler, Mao, or Stalin, but Norman Borlaug, the so-called Father of the Green Revolution, who is credited with saving one billion Africans Indians and Pakistanis from dying of starvation.

Guess what the consequence of that particular piece of idiocy is going to be? Borlaugh’s Nobel Peace Prize will eventually come to be seen as far more ironic than Barack Obama’s.

In 1971, the population of Nigeria was 51 million. Thanks to Borlaug’s innovations and Western assistance, it is estimated that the population of Nigeria will be 400 million. The UN estimates that it will be the world’s third-most populous country, behind China and India.


With the highest rate of population growth, Africa is expected to account for more than half of the world’s population growth between 2015 and 2050. During this period, the populations of 28 African countries are projected to more than double, and by 2100, ten African countries are projected to have increased by at least a factor of five: Angola, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Somalia, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia.

My expectation is that considerably more than one billion people are going to die as a direct result of the do-gooders interventions in Africa. And not all of them are going to be Africans either.


Reinventing the tank

There isn’t going to be any ground war in Russia. There had better not be, anyway:

Russian experiences in Ukraine—where both sides are using upgraded Soviet-built tanks and anti-tank weapons—have shown that despite the best active, reactive and passive armor available, a tank will eventually be penetrated. “We discovered that no matter how skillful the crew, the tank would get up to ten hits,” Pukhov said during a luncheon at the Center for the National Interest in Washington, D.C.—which is the foreign policy think-tank that publishes The National Interest—on July 26. “Even if you have perfect armor—active, passive. In one case it will save you from one hit, in another case from two hits, but you’ll still get five hits and you’re done. That’s why now you’re supposed to have some kind of Tank 2.0.”

The Tank 2.0, as Pukhov describes it, is not the T-14 Armata—which despite its advanced unmanned turret and active protection systems—is still a more or less a conventional tank design. “I know Russians are thinking about this new tank and this tank is not Armata,” Pukhov said. “It’s what we call among us Boyevaya Mashina Podderzhki Tankov [Tank Support Fighting Machine]—but in fact it’s not a Podderzhki Tankov, but which can protect itself. So there is a serious debate about it.”

Later, during a one-on-one interview at the Center the same day, I asked Pukhov to elaborate on the Tank 2.0 concept. Pukhov said that traditionally, infantry has protected tanks—particularly in built up urban areas—but given the speed of modern armored vehicles, that is no longer possible in many cases. But while during previous eras tanks were more or less protected against weapons like rocket propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles, the latest generation of those weapons can punch through even the toughest armor.

What should alarm Western planners is that the Russians are rapidly transforming their military into a much more effective one than its larger, cumbersome Soviet predecessor. In both Ukraine and Syria, both air and ground arms have proven to be very effective; the swamp-them-with-numbers approach is clearly a thing of the past.

This wouldn’t be a problem, of course, if the Bush-Obama administrations hadn’t sought to make them an enemy rather than an ally in the Third Wave of Islamic Expansion.


An NCO leaves the US Army

And none too soon, by the looks of things:

I leave the Army for good in September of this year.  My chain of command has been shell shocked that I am going through with it.  Two years ago when I first came to grips with what was happening and resolved to no longer be a part of it, there was derision and even an officer telling me that voicing my opinions about the state of the US economy and its moral failings could be considered a violation of the UCMJ for conduct “prejudicial to good order and discipline.”

When I gave my Operations NCO a copy of the book “A Distant Mirror” by Barbara Tuchman he came to me a month later stating that if there is a civil war, he and his fellow Hispanics will “have to choose sides.”

When I told my first sergeant why I would not be re-enlisting, she said “Don’t you want to re-enlist to get your 20?”

I said that I wanted to re-enlist, but I couldn’t, that my pension was nothing compared to being prepared to sacrifice my life. Then she and I went on to discuss my (your) ideas on why there was a possible collapse of the US government in the future, she went from denying the possibility to stating “Well, it all depends on what level of collapse you’re talking about,”  needless to say I was stunned.

The re-enlistment NCO refuses to talk to me, and several other mid to senior level NCOs who previously thought I was kidding have left the Active reserves for the Individual Ready Reserves.

One stated that he too was disgusted with both candidates for president and then asked me if I thought things would be so bad, why wouldn’t I stay in and try to fix things “from the inside”?  I cited the example of the Yugoslav army and how there were fire fights within units and stated that I would refuse to follow unconstitutional orders.  I then asked, “Don’t you think if one of the two candidates gets in power that either might order the power of the state to be used against their political enemies?  That’s what would be likely to START those kinds of firefights, right?”

If you’re not familiar with military culture, NCOs are the mortar that hold the whole thing together. Young officers are eminently replaceable, as new ones can be trained up in a matter of months, but the veteran NCOs that provide them guidance are not.

The fact that the NCOs are leaving is an even more damning indictment of the current US military than women being permitted to serve in combat units or homosexuals and transvestites being allowed to serve at all.

I don’t find this chilling, though. I find it a somewhat positive sign. Because I suspect the American people are at least as likely to be designated the enemy by the US government one day as the Russian or Chinese militaries. And the prospects for We the People’s will be considerably better if most of those veteran NCOs are on the side of the nation, rather than serving the government against them.



We’ll make it up on volume

Steve Sailer observes that Muslims serving in the US military have been a net negative since 2000:

As far as I can tell, 14 Muslim-American U.S. soldiers have died in this century versus 15 American soldiers murdered in a couple of terrorist attacks by Muslim-American U.S. soldiers.

Okay, so we’re losing soldiers on each one. (Never mind 3,000 dead civilians in the U.S.)

But we’ll make up for it on volume!

But that’s not the point. The point is that global empire costs a lot of money, which lines a lot of pockets around the Beltway, so we need to keep the Invade / Invite perpetual motion money machine going.

The Khizr Khan story was pretty good rhetoric for the Democrats. But it was hampered by the fundamental weakness of rhetoric that is used to sell falsehoods rather than the truth. Of course, one can’t effectively counter rhetoric with dialectic, although Trump could have been even colder than he was in pointing to the silence of Khan’s headscarf-wearing mother.

The more effective rhetoric would have been to point out that Khan’s death likely saved American lives, as he was killed before he experienced an attack of Sudden Jihad Syndrome and turned his guns on his fellow soldiers. The outrage would have been epic and would have served to underline the fact that even some who wear the uniform and are sworn to defend the US Constitution are not, and never will be, Americans.