#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
ITEM: Rumors are making the rounds in Kiev that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will fire the head of his armed forces, General Valerii Zaluzhny.
ITEM: /pol/ reports that General Zaluzhny was fired by Zelensky.
Apparently there was just too much winning and Zelensky feared Zaluzhny’s popularity that resulted from all of the victories over Russia would allow the general to win the elections that he cancelled. Or something equally retarded.
Simplicius explains why a US invasion of Iran is unlikely even in the event of an Iran-Israeli war:
Don’t even bother thinking about boots on the ground, if such a thing was possible it would take a year or more of preparation. Remember the Iraq invasion required 6 months just of transporting materiel and assets to the region, staging them, etc. But Iran wouldn’t let you stage them because it has far more sophisticated modern ballistic systems than anything Iraq had, which means large troop concentrations and armor/materiel staging areas could be hit and wiped out long before zero hour. Don’t believe me? Just watch the video at the beginning, the US army general says it himself toward the end: he states the accuracy of Iran’s ballistic missiles was shocking and they hit “pretty much everything they wanted to hit.”
So ground invasion is out—that’s not happening. The only thing they could possibly attempt is a long-spanning aerial campaign. But to even remotely scratch Iran’s capabilities would require a vast campaign lasting minimum 6-12 months and probably much longer. Remember, all of NATO mustered for 3 months against little Serbia with 6 million people and barely managed to destroy anything of worth. Iran has a 90 million population and a country probably a hundred times the size of Serbia, not to mention a far larger military. How long do you think it would take NATO to even put a dent in that from only an aerial campaign?
In short: it would take years, and during those years, Iran would shut down every major maritime and economic chokepoint in the region, crashing the global economy. If you thought a few ships being hit now was bad, wait til you see the nominal Iranian forces rather than Houthis hitting everything in sight—it won’t be pretty. And I’ve beaten the point before about how difficult it would be to even find targets in the decentralized vastness of Iran, just like in Yemen.
Furthermore, the US military can’t afford the necessary troop commitment for an invasion. The US Army doesn’t even have enough troops to confront Russia directly without withdrawing from most of its bases all over the world, assuming that the Russians permitted the delivery of hundreds of thousands of US soldiers to Europe in the first place.
Desert Storm required 950,000 soldiers, 3100 tanks, 2200 artillery, and 1800 aircraft back in 1991. The US Army currently has 452,689 on active duty, plus 180,958 Marines, and none of its NATO allies now have more than a handful of troops, most of whom have no equipment or ammunition anymore in the aftermath of NATO’s proxy defeat in Ukraine.
At this point, a real war with either Russia or Iran would not only lead to the loss of Taiwan, it might also lead to the loss of Texas. Which means that an ineffective “air war” is about the most that the USA can use to aid Israel, and even that might be too risky now that Russia has anti-air assets in the region securing Syrian airspace.
The neoclowns are agitating furiously for war in the Middle East, and later today I will post some extremely esoteric reasons why the Netanyahu administration might even deliver them one despite the USA’s limited ability to engage in one, but from a strictly military perspective, it is hard to imagine even the most deluded Clown World puppeteer deciding it is time to have the Fake Biden administration order a ground war anywhere outside of the current US borders. But as their time appears to be running out, we cannot dismiss the possibility of a desperate decision to roll the dice while they still have the influence required to do so. They did with the Ukraine counter-offensive that was always doomed from the start, and it’s not as if they are any less indifferent to American lives than to Ukrainian lives.
There are reports that in the aftermath of the International Court of Justice telling him to stop the Gazacaust, the Israeli Prime Minister is not only going to reject their demands, but order the IDF to invade Lebanon:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prepared to start a full-blown war against the pro-Palestinian armed group Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Lebanese broadcaster LBCI reported on Saturday. Hezbollah has been firing rockets and mortar shells at Israeli positions since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. The barrages have prompted retaliatory strikes from the Israeli army.
According to LBCI, an intelligence report on Israel’s plans has been provided to Hezbollah by an unnamed Arab country. The potential IDF campaign would be aimed at compelling the militants to abide by UN Security Resolution 1701, which was adopted after the end of the last Israel-Lebanon war in 2006, the TV channel said. The UN document facilitated the creation of a demilitarized zone along the Israeli-Lebanese border.
I understand the political pressures driving Netanyahu to try to find a military success somewhere as Israel comes under increasing international and economic pressure even as the internal political pressure on him reaches a boiling point. But this would be a pretty serious roll of the dice, and one that would indicate something akin to desperation on Netanyahu’s part.
The problem is that mainstream opinion in Israel is becoming literally genocidal as the fear there grows, which tends to confirm the very worst opinions of Israel’s enemies in the Arab world as well as in what were previously less hostile BRICS countries. While China has limited itself to simply telling the US it will not lift a finger to help prevent the Yemenis from preventing US, UK, and Israeli cargo ships from transiting the Red Sea, Russia is prepared to start shooting down Israeli warplanes attacking Syria, and presumably, Lebanon. And even in Clown World, people are openly rejecting the neoclown narrative about the moral sanctity of mass-murdering civilians with a side of ethnic cleansing.
When even the most loyal of Israelis, like the great historian Martin van Creveld, are troubled by the obvious falsity of the Israeli rhetoric, it’s probably not very effective on anyone else.
One thing, and by no means not the least important thing, war always produces a tsunami of kitsch. The kind that seeks to show how utterly wicked, utterly cruel and utterly depraved, the enemy is. The kind that claims to weep for, and commiserate with, the losses on one’s own side. The kind that contrasts our heroes’ indomitable courage and commitment to the sacred cause with the dastardly cowardice and treachery so characteristic of, so inherent in, the other side. The kind that, by its very nature, stokes the flames and undermines any kind of rational thought. If, indeed, it does not prohibit such thought altogether. Needless to say, Israel—my Israel—is not exempt. Some of the stuff that has been drowning us since the 7th of October is the product of genuine emotion. But much of it—especially that pronounced by, or commissioned by, politicians—is patently false. At times, so obvious is the fakery as to make one want to puke.
And if you’re losing an Israeli-born US Jew like Ilana Mercer, you’ve already lost pretty much everyone who hasn’t sold you their soul.
These days, Israel’s political discourse is marred by the likes of Eliyahu Yossian, a mainstream opinionator… “Hamas is not the enemy,” he vociferates, “Gaza is. You level the area, and you kill the largest possible numbers, because the woman there is an enemy, the baby there is an enemy and the first grader is an enemy …and the pregnant woman is the enemy.” Yossian goes on to explain that Israel must not entertain “Western values” because these “blur basic logic.”
And so the IDF has done. Should you want proof that this man’s views have gone mainstream in Israel; look at Gaza. It’s a moonscape…
It used to be that leaders like “Yoni” Netanyahu charged with their men into battle. Not anymore. Nowadays, celebrity, champagne-swilling generals give the order, after appearing on Fox News, to chubby men in front of AI consoles to bomb the anthills from above and afar. The broad and short of it is that, no reparations can fix an irreparable Gaza, although these are owed. The Israel of my formative years was no Eden before the Fall, but it was not a terrorist state. Jewish supremacism, like the American exceptionalism driving the United States’ foreign policy, breeds barbarism.
Jewish exceptionalism is every bit as stupid, evil, murderous, and false as the German exceptionalism that led to the horrors of the National Socialist imperialism and the American exceptionalism that led to the establishment of the imperial USA and subsequent downfall of the American nation. And, if the rumors about another invasion of Lebanon are true, I doubt it will end any better for the Israeli leaders than it did for their Nazi counterparts.
The leader postures.
Frightened people shout for war.
Will it never end?
UPDATE: It won’t end now, anyhow. It appears US soldiers are already dying in the Middle East again. Why are there US Army soldiers in Jordan?
Three US Army soldiers have been killed and many others wounded by an overnight drone attack in Jordan, President Joe Biden has announced. The strike on a US army outpost represents a significant escalation of simmering tensions in the Middle East.
Spent the day wargaming with some professional types. Smart, very well-informed guys. Gave a brief presentation, listened to some longer, more detailed, and much more impressive ones. Reached three conclusions:
It appears the US military occupation in Iraq didn’t heed JRR Tolkien’s warning. What were they looking for, and what did they find?
The United States lyingly claimed they illegally invaded Iraq to find and destroy its non-existent weapons of mass destruction, but once the “shock and awe” bombing campaign stopped, American military forces set up a 150-hectare (370-acre) base around the ancient Biblical city of Babylon and destroyed its remaining archaeological artifacts while desperately searching for something.
Whatever the American military forces were desperately searching for in the ancient city of Babylon, they ignored the warning issued in Book of Revelation, Chapter 18, Verse 2: “And he cried out with a mighty voice, saying, ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place of demons and a prison of every unclean spirit, and a prison of every unclean and hateful bird.”—and the exact Greek translation for the phrase “hateful bird” actually describes the undecided element of a vast and terrible swarm of birds, and what we would describe today as flying demon monsters.
We don’t know for sure what kind of ancient flying demon monsters the United States released from their prison in Babylon, but we do know that American soldiers in Iraq were terrified of them—and we know this because American filmmaker-journalist Jeremy Corbell just released a top secret Pentagon beyond chilling video of the officially named “The Jellyfish” unknown aerial phenomenon (UAP) flying alien demon, about which is known: “The footage was taken with thermographic/forward-looking infrared radar because the UAP was not observable with night vision, appeared to jam the targeting capability of the optical platform and displayed positive lift without the usual means for lift and thrust, with no signatures for propulsion maneuvers present”.
On the one hand, this sounds like a mediocre ripoff of Aliens. On the other, it’s impossible to deny that things have been getting increasingly weird for the last twenty years, the ruling elites of the neoliberal world order are fractious and observably afraid, and as Christians, we know beyond any shadow of a doubt that spiritual evil exists and interacts with the material world in ways that we don’t fully understand.
So keep an open mind with regard to even the most seemingly absurd impossibilities, keep one hand on your gun and the other on your Bible.
“A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth—some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.”
— Michael Kinsley
I would like to use the rest of my time to describe how appalled I am that people are bringing up the Holocaust. Do not use other genocides to describe this one! I have been… oh!
Oops! That’s not so much letting the cat out of the bag, as a sabretooth tiger. Must be that vaunted 115 IQ, operating at levels far beyond our meager powers of comprehension.
But in all fairness, a potential Gazacaust can’t really be legitimately compared to the historical Holocaust. No roller coasters, no gas chambers, no eagles, no bears, and no bizarre medical experiments. Just bullets, bombs, and bulldozers.
What’s fascinating about the current situation is the way in which the invasion of Gaza is, rightly or wrongly, justified by an answer to the very question that isn’t even allowed to be publicly asked about the Holocaust.
Precisely what did the victims do that inspired this genocidal impulse on the part of their victimizers?
The US military is showing definite signs of imperial overstretch. Its proxies are overwhelmed in Ukraine, the IDF appears to be bogged down in Gaza, the Navy can’t keep the Red Sea clear for cargo transports, and Iran’s proxies have hit US military bases 118 times without much in the way of resistance.
Since Hamas’s brutal attack against Israel on Oct. 7 and the resulting Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip, tensions and hostilities across the Middle East have reached fever pitch. And with such a complex regional crisis playing out, it should not come as a surprise that the Biden administration is reconsidering its military priorities in the region.
It should be cause for significant concern, however, that this could involve a full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. While no definitive decision has been made to leave, four sources within the Defense and State departments said the White House is no longer invested in sustaining a mission that it perceives as unnecessary. Active internal discussions are now underway to determine how and when a withdrawal may take place.
The US should withdraw from Syria. It should withdraw from the entire Middle East, and Europe too. But it’s one thing to be vaguely aware that one might have limitations, it’s another thing entirely to be smart enough to actually respect them and reduce one’s imperial ambitions.
Simplicius offers a succinct explanation: My take is this: in short, the US is being run out of town by Iran. Their bluff was called and US knows their puny strikes can do nothing to truly degrade Iran’s highly decentralized hybrid warfare systems and groups. Iran has risen to become a hegemon verging on a Great Power of the region. The US has a few obsolete fleets which cannot keep up blow for blow with Iran in exchanged rounds of ammo. Iran can saturate them forever with drones and cheap rockets which the US is spending millions per every fired shot to intercept.
He’s not wrong. The problem is that there are two powerful forces resisting the acknowledgement of the inevitable: American exceptionalism and the will of the foreign ruling elite. It will probably be necessary for the former to be shattered before it is possible for the latter to be successfully resisted.
This may explain why the IDF has withdrawn a number of brigades from Gaza even as its anti-Iranian rhetoric has recently heated up. It should be obvious to the Israeli strategists that time is not on their side, and that no matter what the actual odds might be, their best chance for defeating Iran is right now, while the US military is still present in the region.
The point of no return has been reached for the Imperial USA. And the choice is between WWIII and probable defeat or a face-saving acceptance of imperial decline which will fool absolutely no one.
Sweden has apparently announced the reactivation of “civilian conscription” while British military leaders are calling for the “mobilization” of whatever is left of its adulterated nation:
Today, current Army chief General Sir Patrick Sanders raised the spectre of conscription once again, when he called on the Government to ‘mobilise the nation’ in the event of a wider conflict against Russia amid its war with Ukraine.
I wonder if all those Swedes who were gung ho about Sweden joining NATO realize that their forced military service is a direct consequence of their foolish decision to join the military wing of Clown World. I also wonder how they’re going to square the logical circle about forcing young men to fight in defense of individual freedom and democracy.
Regardless, it appears the young men of the West are going to face a choice. Fight the clowns ruling your country or fight the combined military forces of China and Russia. Based on recent events in Ukraine, the former would appear to be a much better bet.
Because I doubt the generals in Moscow are quaking over the prospect of sending their battle-hardened veterans into a war against a collection of scared and unwilling European soyboys who weren’t even capable of resisting the vaxx.
Belgium completely fails to learn from the Ukrainian example of what happens when one crosses a Russian red line:
Belgium will transfer €611 million (58.3 billion rubles) to Ukraine from income received from interest on frozen Russian assets. The information was confirmed by the head of the Belgian Ministry of Defense, Ludivine Dedonder (pictured), Belga News Agency reports. The total amount of frozen Russian assets in the EU is about €180 billion (17 trillion rubles), most of them are located in Belgium, the agency clarified.
No doubt the EU will try to hide behind the fact that they aren’t seizing the frozen capital, only the interest on the capital. This will not fool the Russians, and it’s safe to anticipate some sort of tit-for-tat will soon take place, if not escalation.
The Russians have to find this childish tomfoolery more than a little tedious by now.
Not anymore, anyhow:
The son of a brigadier general of the French army was killed by a strike by the Russian Armed Forces at a point of temporary deployment of foreign mercenaries in Kharkov. His partner (also killed) came from a hereditary military dynasty in France.
According to Mash, the name of the Frenchman eliminated by a high-precision strike is Sabastien Claude Remy Benard. He served in the RICM (formerly the Moroccan Colonial Infantry Regiment) in the Marine Light Armor unit. For reference: it was these groups that equipped the famous AMX-10RC wheeled tanks, which Paris proudly sent to Kiev as military aid. During the process, this scrap metal was deemed unsuitable for mechanized combat.
Benard first arrived in Ukraine in 2022, but did not receive the desired position in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and returned to his homeland. A year later he tried his luck again and joined the 5th Assault Brigade. On July 3, in the Bakhmut area, he participated in the medical evacuation of his wounded fellow countryman Maxim Leconte (a rifleman from the International Legion of Terrestrial Defense), who publicly admitted that the much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive turned out to be a bloody failure. On January 16, he was killed by a Russian missile strike.
His partner is Alexis Drion. He is the son of Frédéric Drion, who became a brigadier general in the French army in 2001. Alex joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces no later than last year. He served in the 2nd Battalion of the International Legion. Also was killed on January 16th.
The remaining 60 killed and about 20 wounded mercenaries are recognized activists of Nazi groups in France and other EU countries. Each of them served in the army and even belonged to a battalion of alpine hunters. Many were fired for inappropriate behavior, after which they left for Ukraine. In total, more than a hundred mercenaries from France died during the fighting in the SVO zone. – FRWL reports
The Kharkov strike is far from the only one of its kind. Many of the fatal “accidents” that have been reported occurring to US troops around the world are actually combat fatalities taking place in combat zones where US and other NATO troops are not supposed to be; you may recall the US Army Rangers who were killed in another Russian missile strike on a restaurant they frequented a few months ago. This sort of thing isn’t new, as we know, from the early days of the World Wide Web when the US military didn’t bother to block open access to its sites, that many soldiers had confirmed kills in places that US troops were not supposed to be.
The active engagement by NATO troops disguised as “mercenaries” is one reason is why I’ve been describing the situation in Ukraine as a NATO-Russian war rather than a Ukro-Russian one for more than the last year. While Ukraine has suffered the bulk of the casualties, the number of US, French, German, and other military casualties will probably shock the various publics when it is finally revealed to them.