Tag: war

WWIII and the Élefsiton

Andrei Martyanov corrects some comments by Jeffrey Sachs:

  1. We ARE NOT on the path to WW III, we are already in WW III and the West already lost it. NATO has neither troops nor resources to introduce anything in 404. Russia’s tactical nuclear drills was a message to European chihuahuas, primarily UK, after showing UK ambassador in Moscow the list of British targets Russia will strike OUTSIDE 404 if London continues with terrorism. Russia is not afraid of Article 5.
  2. US is NOT a republic anymore–it is a corrupt uniparty oligarchy sliding towards totalitarianism. Its foreign policy and media are controlled by the state of Israel and Zionist lobby inside the US, which is based on a broad foundation of Christian Zionist population in the US.
  3. US higher education as related to humanities is over. It has been over for some time. Eventually, all remnants of a free thought and facts-based academic study will be purged.

Martyanov is entirely correct. WW3 technically began back in 2014, but will probably be recognized as starting in 2022, just as WWII began in 1931 with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, not the 1939 German invasion of Poland. It’s not over yet, obviously, but the eventual outcome is no more in doubt than it was in December 1941, and for the same reason: industrial capacity.

The USA hasn’t been a republic since 1865. The most recent change is the foreign seizure of control over the imperial US government, which can be best illustrated by AIPAC’s most recent bragging about how 48 out of 48 Democratic candidates who were funded and endorsed by the organization won their primary races.

And it’s not as if the Republicans are any better, as in addition to criminalizing insufficient personal enthusiasm as well as refraining from economic engagement with Israel, two Republican Senators are now attempting to prevent anyone criticizing Israel from access to air travel.

Sens. Roger Marshall (R-KS) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) have introduced a bill that would designate student protesters “Terrorists” and add them to the “No Fly List” for protesting Israel.

It may strike you as counterintuitive, but this point, the US government actions are so obviously intended to generate white-hot hate carefully directed against a very small percentage of the population that it is clear there are only three rational explanations for them:

  1. AIPAC and other political organizations are so stupid that they don’t realize the probable outcome of their attempt to impose a religious totalitarian state on millions of well-armed Americans. Very highly unlikely. It’s just barely possible that they’re legitimately that blinded by arrogance and past success, and certainly there are some individuals who are that clueless and historically ignorant, but I very much doubt that any of the leaders believe they can openly retain control of an increasingly hostile population numbering in the hundred millions for very long. In fact, we know from the 2004 Wye conference that they don’t believe that.
  2. An esoteric mass sacrifice is being prepared in yet another attempt to summon the long-awaited messiah and immanentize the Élefsiton. Just as military generals don’t hesitate to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of their countrymen’s lives in war, the esoteric elite are perfectly willing to sacrifice the ritualistic millions of their own they believe are required to bring about their global rule. Keep in mind there are only two places that Holocaust 2.0 can happen, Israel and the USA.
  3. Because life in the USA among Americans was too easy and risked eventual destruction through integration, it was deemed necessary to increase US anti-semitism to the point that US-resident Jews become sufficiently afraid to make aliyah. Given the growing intensity of the attempt to complete the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and its direct connection to these new anti-semitism laws, as well as open talk of sending the Palestinians to the USA and Canada, this appears to be the most likely motivation. I tend to doubt it is a coincidence that there are a similar number of Jews in the USA and Palestinians in Israel, 6.3 million vs 5.3 million.

Of course, it’s entirely possible for all three motivations to be in effect among the rival elite factions, since the secular faction doesn’t believe in (2) except as a useful justification for (3), while the esoteric faction would support (2) as being entirely in line with its long-term objectives.

Regardless, WWIII is very far from over, and the map of political geography that it creates is probably going to look rather different than today’s map.

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“Enough,” said the Bear

The UK is rapidly approaching the “find out” zone:

Moscow will retaliate against British targets in Ukraine or elsewhere if Kiev uses UK-provided missiles to strike Russian territory, the Foreign Ministry told London’s ambassador on Monday. Ambassador Nigel Casey was summoned to the ministry following remarks by British Foreign Secretary David Cameron to Reuters that Ukraine has the right to use long-range missiles sent by the UK to strike deep inside Russia.

”Casey was warned that the response to Ukrainian strikes using British weapons on Russian territory could be any British military facilities and equipment on the territory of Ukraine and beyond,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement following the meeting.

Ukraine does have the right. And so does Russia. What we’re seeing here are clear and present signs that Russia is now ready for direct conflict with NATO, in Ukraine, in Europe, and in the Americas.

I guess we’re going to find out just how stupid the clowns running Clown World really are. The problem is that they’re so accustomed to lying and bluffing all the time, they don’t recognize a straightforward warning when one is provided.

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The End Approaches

Simplicius considers the implications of Russia putting the unelected dictator of the Kiev regime on its wanted list:

The most interesting development surrounds the Kremlin having designated Zelensky himself—as well as several other top Ukrainian officials and generals—as “wanted”, though oddly enough, the precise legal reason is unclear and not listed on the Russian Interior Ministry’s site.

The most immediate repercussions of this are:

  • Russia may be sending a signal and setting the groundwork for the revocation of any “peace deals” with Zelensky, as placing him on the wanted list ensures that the Russian state cannot legally parley with a wanted criminal.
  • Even more darkly, it potentially sets the stage for Russia to eliminate him following his total loss of legitimacy on May 21st, when the Ukrainian presidential inauguration would have taken place.

As to the first point, there have been a lot of signals from both the West and Ukraine itself about coming back to another ‘negotiations’ within the Istanbul mode, particularly given the upcoming global ‘Peace Summit’ in Switzerland on June 15th. Russia may be sending the West a message that no matter what they come up with during this summit, it will be impossible to treat with a man considered not only illegitimate but even a wanted criminal at the state level.

One of the other interesting things in Simplicius’s article is a reference to Russian prisoners being held by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. First, the prisoner ratio is 3.45:1, which implies that the Ukrainian casualties over the course of the operation have been more than three times that of the Russian forces. Second, and more importantly, only 13.8 percent of the Russian prisoners are actually Russian. 86.2 percent are described as “separatists”, which proves exactly what I have been pointing out from the start: the Russians have been mostly saving their professional military forces for the potential conflict with NATO and relying heavily upon the Novorossiyan militias, with support from the Russian army’s air and artillery, to defeat the Ukrainian armies.

And recall that a fair number of those “Russian” prisoners are quite likely prison-mercenaries from Wagner and the other private companies or Chechen light infantry. In fact, the initial blitz attempt on Kiev had a heavy complement of Chechen fighters, who were ultimately driven back from Bucha.

This suggests that if the Russian generals decide to utilize their own ground forces in one of the expected summer offensives, the results might be considerably more negative for the Kiev regime than is commonly anticipated. Meanwhile, the Russians also appear to be stepping up their warnings to the NATO regimes propping up their Clown World counterpart in Kiev.

A blaze has engulfed a plant in Berlin belonging to German arms manufacturer Diehl, the local fire department has reported. The company produces the IRIS-T air defense system, several units of which the German government has supplied to Ukraine since late 2022.

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An Unconscionable Hope

A lieutenant colonel from the 2nd Armored Cav tells the Council on Foreign Relations that it is time for Ukraine – and its Clown World masters – to surrender to Russia, because there is no path to military victory and absolutely no chance that they will ever succeed in their war against Russia.

I have 20-something years of military experience, four combat deployments. I fought in a large tank battle in Desert Storm with the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment. We also served time on the east-west border in Germany, where we had to patrol against the potential onslaught of the Soviet Union coming in. So I had to actually study the Soviet doctrine, their tanks, the way they fight, the way they do offense, the way they do defense, in terrain very similar to what’s going on in Ukraine right now. I was also the second-in-command of an armored cav squadron for the U.S. 1st Armored Division in the mid-2000s.

Believe me when I tell you there is no chance that Ukraine will ever succeed in its war against Russia. There is no path to military victory for Ukraine, period. It doesn’t matter if we give $60 billion. It doesn’t matter if we give another $120 billion, $200 billion. It’s not going to make any difference, because the fundamentals that go in to build combat power at the national level are decisively and irrevocably on the Russian side. You cannot buy your way into this situation where you can turn the tables because you can’t undo the fundamentals.

The air power on the Russian side is overwhelmingly and irrevocably on the Russian side. Air defense, thei military industrial capacity to be able to crank out large numbers of artillery ammunition, the weapons themselves, the drones, electronic warfare, and most importantly of all, the people. Russia has more people and they will always have more people, and it’s throughout the West. They will never be able to match what happens on the other side.

In my view, it is unconscionable to continue hoping against hope that the Ukraine side can win if we just give a little bit more cash, because it won’t work out that way.

I’ve been saying the same thing since before the Special Military Operation launched in February 2022. So has anyone with a sufficient grasp of both economics and military history. The only reason Ukraine has lasted as long as it has is because a) Russia elected to switch to an attritional strategy after its initial attempt at a rapid decapitation strike failed in order to preserve its military manpower and b) NATO constructed two additional armies to replace the original Ukrainian army after it was destroyed.

The army that is now more than twice-decimated and in desperate need of a nationwide mobilization to prevent it from collapsing is the THIRD Ukrainian army of the war. Few yet understand that the extent of the losses to Ukraine is already more severe than the generational losses England suffered in the first and second world wars.

Unfortunately, as we have been told by more than a few conspiracy analysts, Ukraine is the Deep State, and Clown World does not care how many innocent people it has to sacrifice to try to save itself. Unless and until Putin and Xi start striking at the parties responsible for unnecessarily prolonging the war, or the UFA flat-out refuses to fight anymore, I don’t see how it will be possible for the Ukrainian people to save themselves by surrendering.

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Turkey Cuts Ties with Israel

The Gazacaust continues to have global ramifications:

The Turkish government has suspended all trade with Israel in response to the Gaza war, the Trade Ministry in Ankara said in a statement posted on social media on Thursday.

Türkiye has been one of Israel’s fiercest critics since the conflict with Hamas broke out in October. The suspension of all export and import operations has been introduced in response to the Jewish state’s “aggression against Palestine in violation of international law and human rights,” the statement read.

Ankara will strictly implement the new measures until Israel allows uninterrupted and sufficient flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the document added.

This is significant, because Turkey is not only a member of NATO, but it has historically been one of the more friendly nations in the Dar al-Islam to Israel. And while we can’t rule out the USA deciding to sanction Turkey, it’s further evidence that US diplomatic efforts are in a serious state of crisis.

Passing anti-speech laws and anti-boycott laws in US states isn’t going to matter much if the greater part of the planet refuses to economically engage with Israel.

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The Failed Counterstrike

Pepe Escobar reports that Israel tried to nuke Iran in response to the massive drone strike, but the F-35 carrying the bomb was shot down by Russian air defenses:

From a very high level intel source.

In Asia.

NOT Russia-China.

Although the strategic partnership, of course, exchanges at the highest level 24-7.

Confirmed and re-confirmed.

It will be great to know what Sy Hersh hears from his Beltway sources.

Here we go.

Israel initially chose to respond with extreme force.

An F-35 loaded with a nuclear bomb was sent east over Jordan.

The mission: cause a high-altitude detonation over Iran that would provoke a surge in the high-capacity power lines, crippling Iran’s electric grid, as well as disabling all electronic devices.

An EMP attack.

However… as the Israeli F-35 was leaving Jordanian airspace it was shot down by the Russian Air Force.

Hence the publicised version of the Israeli counter response was such a travesty.

In the end all sides decided not to publicise the real news – to de-escalate what could well turn into WWIII.

I think it is absolutely foolish to express any opinion at all about the veracity of this report. There is no question that the Netanyahu government is sufficiently daring and/or desperate to risk an EMP attack; Netanyahu is almost certainly also willing to risk trying to nuke the center of Tehran if he thought he could get away with it without fatal consequences for Israel.

While it could just be fiction or disinformation, the nature of the reported attack being more of a restrained warning, a limited escalation, tends to lend to the credibility of the report. And Escobar has been reasonably reliable in the past, so there is no reason to dismiss him simply because the scary n-word happened to be involved. Moreover, this is exactly the end result that I, and other observers, have expected would happen in the event that Israel attempted some sort of air strike against Iran.

Larry Johnson thinks the reported scenario is unlikely, but I don’t find his reasoning to be even remotely compelling. Given the ranges at which Russian air defenses are operating over Ukraine, the idea that Russia could not have tracked a lone Israeli F-35 and shot it down in part of the crowded real estate in the Middle East nominally under U.S. air control does not strike me as even remotely difficult or improbable. That doesn’t mean that he’s not correct; as I said, I refuse to express any opinion at all about the likelihood of an event about which I have literally zero information.

If legitimate, I think this report is very encouraging, as it indicates a) the Israelis are not overconfident about their ability to utilize their nuclear weapons and are not going to go all-in on the first hand, b) the Russians are exerting their superior air defense capabilities to prevent unnecessary escalation in the Middle East, and c) Iran is exhibiting the same sort of patience that is required to see out the inevitable collapse of Clown World that has been demonstrated by Russia and China.

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Waterloo Need Not Have Been Fought

A fascinating coda to the tale of Wellington’s most useful intelligence officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Colquhoun Grant, during the Peninsular War suggests that but for an incompetent Prussian cavalry general, Napoleon would likely have been defeated at the Battle of Ligny, thereby rendering the historic battles of Quatre-Bras and Waterloo entirely unnecessary.

It will scarcely be believed that this resourceful man was back in the Peninsula by September and reported himself to Wellington just four months after he had been captured near Sabugal. His chief got him a brevet-colonelcy without delay, and employed him as his head Intelligence officer during the remaining eighteen months of the war.

He was again called out during the Hundred Days from the Military College at Farnham, where he had been given a berth as instructor in 1814, and was put by Wellington in charge of his Intelligence department in Belgium. He always maintained that the surprise of the British and Prussian armies by Napoleon on June 15th would never have taken place but for the stupidity of a cavalry brigadier, who stopped one of his emissaries bearing certain news of the outmarch of the French army. Grant’s messenger was detained by the Hanoverian general Dõrnberg, whose cavalry was watching the frontier about Tournai and Mons. He did not send him on till the fighting had already begun around Charleroi, and Grant could only deliver the message to Wellington a day late, when the Battle of Quatre-Bras had actually begun. The loss of the twenty-four hours was almost irreparable: if Dõrnberg had not stopped the all-important news, Wellington’s whole army would have been concentrated a day earlier than was actually the case, and he would certainly have co-operated with Blücher at Ligny, instead of being forced to hold back Ney at Quatre-Bras with detachments that kept dropping in all through the day.

History repeatedly teaches that having the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time is one of the most costly mistakes that any leader of any sort of organization can make. The consequences are often not merely limited to immediate failure, but result in complete catastrophe and an existential crisis for the organization.

In this case, more than 20,000 British and Prussian soldiers were killed or wounded unnecessarily, due to the unnecessary action of a single officer.

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Damn the Drones, Full Speed… RETREAT!

The French navy has been defeated by the Yemenis in the Battle of the Red Sea:

France’s Aquitaine-class FREMM frigate Alsace has turned tail from the Red Sea after running out of missiles and munitions repelling attacks from the Yemeni armed forces, according to its commander, Jerome Henry.

“We didn’t necessarily expect this level of threat. There was an uninhibited violence that was quite surprising and very significant. [The Yemenis] do not hesitate to use drones that fly at water level, to explode them on commercial ships, and to fire ballistic missiles,” Henry told French news outlet Le Figaro in an exclusive interview published on 11 April.

“We had to carry out at least half a dozen assistances following [Yemeni] strikes,” he added.

The commander of the Alsace also revealed that, after a 71-day deployment, all combat equipment was depleted.

“From the Aster missile to the 7.62 machine gun of the helicopter, including the 12.7mm, 20mm, or 76mm cannon, we dealt with three ballistic missiles and half a dozen drones,” Henry adds.

According to the French commander, the Franco–Italian Aster missile – each carrying a price tag of up to $2 million – “was pushed to its limits” by the Yemeni armed forces, as the Alsace had to use it “on targets that we did not necessarily imagine at the start.”

They cheated, they surprised us by shooting at us! The surprise on the part of the former colonial powers is almost comical, considering the way in which things that were obvious to every armchair history buff doesn’t seem to have quite penetrated the skulls of the various admirals and defense ministers of Clown World.

However, it does make what always appeared to be the strange behavior of Civil War and WWI generals a little more understandable, as apparently no military adapts easily to technological changes that necessitate new and different tactics and strategies.

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The Boomtardery Never Ends

Boomer Jews are fantasizing about a rehash of the 1981 bombing raid on Iraq’s nuclear reactor.

Iran took its best shot (or a very significant one) at Israel with over 100 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and over 100 drones, totaling over 300 forms of aerial attack from many different sides and vectors.

What if Israel finally decides to strike back? What if it decides to take this opportunity to finally bomb Iran’s prized nuclear weapons program?

Such a scenario has been gamed out for years, but here is one version of what it could look like.

Several quartets of F-35 stealth combat jets could fly by separate routes to hit sites across the massive Islamic Republic, some as far as 1,200 miles from the Jewish state.

Some of the aircraft might fly along the border between Syria and Turkey (despite those countries’ opposition) and then race across Iraq (who would also oppose). Other aircraft might fly through Saudi airspace (unclear if this would be with quiet agreement or opposition) and the Persian Gulf.

They might arrive simultaneously or in waves (as Iran did overnight between Saturday and Sunday) to first eliminate the ayatollahs’ air defenses at dozens of Iranian nuclear sites, carefully hand-picked by the Mossad and IDF intelligence.

First, Iran obviously did not take its best shot. It used less than one-tenth of one percent of its drones and missiles to send a strong message to the USA. Second, keep in mind that Israel used 14 planes, 8 F-16s and 6 F-15s, in 1981’s Operation Opera. It now possesses 614 aircraft, among which are 50 F-35s. Given the fact that only 20 percent of the USAF’s F-35s are currently operational, it would be very surprising if the IDF had more than 25 available for this sort of long-distance action.

Now consider that Iran acquired the S-300 missile defense system from Russia in 2016. With only 100 legacy S-300 systems inherited from the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian Armed Forces managed to prevent the Russian Air Force, which is five times larger than the Israeli Air Force and has much better fighters and bombers, from making use of its air superiority until very recently. Iran may also have S-400 and S-500 systems by now, as Russian leaders have spoken openly about supplying the Iranians with them, and Russian troops in Syria are known to have both S-400 and S-500 systems deployed with them.

In other words, attempting to repeat what was a surprise attack 43 years ago would be far more likely to lead to the literal decimation of the Israeli air forces than to harm Iran in any serious way. One of the consequences of the end of the fighter jet-era is the elimination of what has been, for the last fifty years, Israel’s advantage of regional air supremacy.

Even Hollywood knows this, as evidenced by the recent Top Gun sequel, so it’s a little surprising to see how many Boomers in the US and Israeli medias alike do not.

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More Than Just Theater

Simplicius explains why the theatrical and easily-defended drone strike was, contra the initial appearances and Clown World media reports, considerably more than just the usual Middle East Kabuki, and was actually a significant and serious message delivered to the US-based patrons of Israel more than to the Netanyahu administration or the IDF:

This strike was unprecedented for several important reasons. Firstly, it was of course the first Iranian strike on Israeli soil directly from Iranian soil itself, rather than utilizing proxies from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, etc. This alone was a big watershed step that has opened up all sorts of unprecedented milestones and potentials for escalatory spirals.

Secondly, it was one of the most advanced and longest range peer-to-peer style exchanges in history. Even in Russia, where I have noted we’ve seen the first ever truly modern near-peer conflict, with unprecedented scenes never before witnessed like when highly advanced NATO Storm Shadow missiles flew to Crimea while literally in the same moments, advanced Russian Kalibrs flew past them in the opposite direction—such an exchange has never been witnessed before, as we’ve become accustomed to seeing NATO pound on weaker, unarmed opponents over the last few decades. But no, last night Iran upped the ante even more. Because even in Russia, such exchanges at least happen directly over the Russian border onto its neighbor, where logistics and ISR is for obvious reasons much simpler.

But Iran did something unprecedented. They conducted the first ever modern, potentially hypersonic, assault on an enemy with SRBMs and MRBMs across a vast multi-domain space covering several countries and timezones, and potentially as much as 1200-2000km. This has never before been witnessed…

The point is that, just as we’re in the midst of the Houthis having proven the West’s total inability to sustain defense against mass persistent drone swarms, here too Iran may have just proven an absolutely lethal inability of Israel and the West to sustain against a potential long drawn-out Iranian strike campaign; i.e. one prosecuted over the course of days or weeks, with consistent daily mass-barrages. Such a campaign would likely critically deplete the West’s ability to shoot down even the lowest scale Shahed drone threat. Just look at Ukraine—it is going through the same lesson as we speak.

What does this mean?

One neglected consequence of this is that Iran now stands to field the ability to totally disrupt Israel’s economic way of life. If Iran were to engage in a committed campaign of mass strikes, it could totally paralyze the Israeli economy by making entire areas uninhabitable, causing mass migrations in the same way the Hamas attack led thousands of Israelis to flee.

Unlike Israel’s barbaric and savage genocide aimed primarily at civilians, last night’s Iranian attack exclusively targeted military sites. But if Iran wanted to, they could launch mass infrastructure attacks in the way Russia has now done to Ukraine’s energy grids, further compounding the economic damage. In short: Iran could mire Israel in months’ and years’ long economic malaise or outright devastation.

I suspect the degree of restraint shown by the Iranians, combined with their now-proven ability to hit well-protected Israeli targets with both their slower ballistic missiles and their hypersonics, was sufficient to convince the US military that any escalation on its part would be disastrous. It is one thing to flex rhetorically and chant “bomb-bomb-Iran” when no one on either side is actually doing anything, it’s another to start playing the attrition game when the other side has at least an order of magnitude advantage.

It’s estimated that the attack may have cost as little as one-fortieth the expense of the combined US-British-French-Israeli defense, and utilized less than one-tenth of one percent of Iran’s ballistic missiles.

I think it is far too soon to conclude, as Ha’aretz already has, that Israel has been defeated. After all, the Ukrainians have been fighting at the behest of Clown World for more than two years, and there is no reason to imagine that the Israelis are going to be let off the hook simply because the most probable outcomes look grim at the moment.

But at least we can be relieved that both the US military and the Iranian military are not simply playing along with the neocon-Netanyahu plan to escalate into the war for which the neocons have been publicly calling since the late 1990s.

The next few weeks should be informative. But regardless, it is clear that the second front in WWIII is now officially active.

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