The Beginning of a Failure Cascade

This may be one of the worst technological developments for humanity since gunpowder:

This is the type of AI that all leading experts have warned us about. German defense firm Helsing has announced it will provide Ukraine with 4,000 HX-2 “Karma” kamikaze drones this month. Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said he had been “very pleased that the delivery of these drones equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) technology is already underway.”

With a top speed of 137 mph, these drones are capable of traveling up to 62 miles and can be loaded with various warheads for maximum destruction against armored vehicles, buildings, or platoons. The company states that these drones do not need a human operator, rather, they will be programmed to “search for, re-identify, and engage targets, even without a signal or a continuous data connection.” A human operator may “stay in the loop,” per the company’s messaging, but these weapons are designed to act autonomously.

“With HX-2, we have created a new smart effector that combines mass, autonomy and precision. Individual HX-2s can reliably engage armored targets in highly contested environments. When deployed along borders at scale, HX-2 can serve as a powerful counter invasion shield against enemy land forces,” Helsing’s co-founder Niklas Köhler stated. The other co-founder, Gundbert Scherf, said that NATO in particular has been eager for this technology. On one hand, the company says that these drones will retain human oversight, but on the other hand, the entire purpose of their design is to be autonomous.

Forget all the Skynet possibilities. Begun the Hacker Wars have. The easiest and most effective way to combat AI-controlled drone swarms is by putting a backdoor in the manufacturing process and giving yourself the ability to take control of them. And the utility of these autonomous killer drones in repressing civilian populations is obvious; combined with facial recognition technology it could be used to deny any movement to persons deemed undeniable.

It is informative that while knives are being banned by governments, this sort of lethal weaponry continues to be legally developed. Of course, civilians are going to acquire it too, which should make for a very interesting arms race.

But if they’re actually being used on Russian troops, I definitely wouldn’t want to be working in a Helsing factory. Or at their corporate HQ. I can’t imagine they would not be a priority on the Russian target list.

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The Dragon Stirs

If the events in the Middle East cause China to begin intervening with its military on behalf of its friends and allies, that is seriously going to alter the geopolitical math in that region.

China is “deeply concerned” about developments in Syria, where jihadist militants launched a surprise offensive last week, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Monday. As Damascus’ “friend,” Beijing is prepared to take steps to prevent a further deterioration of the situation, he said.  

The Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS) terrorist group, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, and allied militias launched a large-scale attack on government-controlled territory in northern Syria last Wednesday. The militants took over a number of towns and villages in the Aleppo, Idlib and Hama provinces.   

Syrian government forces, backed by Russian fighter jets, launched a counteroffensive on Thursday and successfully liberated several settlements over the weekend, reportedly eliminating hundreds of militants and thwarting their advance into central Syria. However, dozens of Syrian army service members were lost amid the heavy fighting, the Syrian General Command said in an earlier statement.  

“China is deeply concerned over the situation in northwestern Syria, and supports its effort to uphold national security and stability,” Lin told a press briefing on Monday. “As Syria’s friend, China is willing to make an active effort to avoid further deterioration of the situation in Syria,” the official said.   

China has the manpower to swamp every other military; the Red Army is an order of magnitude larger than anything currently in seen in the Ukrainian front, which is itself two orders of magnitude larger than the conflict in the Middle East.

We appear to be rapidly approaching hitherto-unimaginable levels of Fuck Around and Find Out.

UPDATE: Speaking of FAFO, China is also ready for the trade war too.

China announced Tuesday it is banning exports to the United States of gallium, germanium, antimony and other key high-tech materials with potential military applications, as a general principle, lashing back at U.S. limits on semiconductor-related exports… China is the biggest global source of gallium and germanium, which are produced in small amounts but are needed to make computer chips for mobile phones, cars and other products, as well as solar panels and military technology.

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Color Revolution in Georgia

The neoclowns are up to their usual shenanigans in another country that borders on Russia, led by a French diplomat who somehow managed to get elected President and, like Zelensky in Ukraine, is now refusing to step down when her term comes to an end.

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili will not step down from her position despite the end of her mandate in December, she said in a video address on Saturday, explaining that she does not recognize the legitimacy of the newly-formed parliament and intends to stay in office until new elections.

“I remain your President! There is no legitimate parliament that will elect a new president,” she said in a video published on her Facebook page. “My mandate continues until there is a legitimately elected parliament that will legitimately elect a President who will replace me!”

Under the 2017 Georgian Constitution, the head of state is elected by an electoral college consisting of 300 members. Half of them are MPs, and another half are representatives of various Georgian regions. The next presidential vote is scheduled for December 14. Whoever wins is reportedly expected to be inaugurated before the end of the year.

In October, the South Caucasus nation also held parliamentary elections. The Georgian Dream party, which seeks to establish pragmatic relations with all the country’s neighbors, including Russia, emerged victorious with nearly 54% of the vote. The pro-Western opposition parties have refused to recognize the results, sparking a wave of street protests.

The French-born Zourabichvili – a career diplomat for Paris who acquired Georgian citizenship in her 50s – condemned the October election as a “Russian-style” operation, claiming that Georgian Dream is steering the nation towards Moscow and away from that of the EU. She also called for mass protests. A new wave of demonstrations was sparked this week by the Georgian government’s decision to suspend EU accession talks until 2028.

It’s all so tiresome. Once more, we see how genuine what passes for Western “democracy” is; it is now abundantly clear that it is nothing more than rhetoric meant to hide the fact that global satanists are controlling the government under a very thin veil of the supposed “will of the people” which just happens to be directly opposed to the genuine will of the people as expressed by the populist parties.

However, the world has changed since 2005 and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine that brought that tragic country into neoclown control. Even if the Georgian people are sufficiently hoodwinked to abandon their nationalists, there is no way that Russia is going to permit another NATO catspaw on its borders.

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The Takeaway

Simplicius summarizes the current stage of US-Russian pre-negotiations for NATO’s surrender in Ukraine.

The long-awaited plans we’ve theorized and brainstormed on since last year are finally resolving into view, where the West believes they can freeze the war Korean-DMZ style then insert their occupation KFOR troops to make sure Russia can never take Odessa, etc. As we said last time, they are even considering outlandishly absurd contortions to satisfy Putin’s demands, such as ‘stationing the bulk of the Ukrainian army somewhere in Europe’ in order to fulfill the “demilitarization” goals as per Putin’s Istanbul negotiations, which stated what Ukraine was allowed to have “on its territory”, technically speaking.

The problem is, Russia is in the driver’s seat and will not indulge such petty attempts to cozen and wheedle out a minor victory for Ukraine. As such, the only danger we can now expect is for the West to escalate in some brazen way should they finally realize Russia is not taking the bait. But we know neutered Europe has no political authority or consensus to act unilaterally, and at this point can only function like a pack of hyenas, if other major European states back each other’s ‘daring’ initiative…

The fact is though, the longer the Ukrainian conflict goes on, the closer the European Union comes to the verge of collapse. The conflict is outright killing Europe by exposing its bought-off treasonous leaders as the populace-hating cretins they are, causing mass discontent and political breakdown, spurring revolutionary new impulses which will soon bulge out the foundation’s cracks.

I suspect that Russia will have to destroy an American base in Europe or two with non-nuclear Oreshniks before President Trump utilizes the financial corruption and the misuse of US aid funds to provide him with political cover to cut off Ukraine and Europe alike. NATO will die of its own accord as soon as the US stops funding it, and the EU will be more focused on its own survival as a smaller supranational organization when Hungary and other member-nations start leaving it.

There isn’t going to be any US nuclear response to Russia no matter what Russia does in Europe, because no American has any interest in dying for the Europeans who can’t even bother to defend themselves. America has its own issues with its tens of millions of invaders, and is far more concerned about the global challenge posed by China than the return of historic norms in Europe. Which means that despite all the neocon bluster, Russia is ultimately free to act in its own interests; there is no economic incentive that the West can offer that Russia will be short-sighted enough to believe is either real or meaningful in the aftermath of the 13 rounds of economic sanctions and financial theft.

President Trump is under considerable pressure to figure out a way to rescue the Ukrainian rump state, but he’s more interested in the Middle East. So all of the various factors point to the USA abandoning Ukraine, the EU governments collapsing as they eventually follow suit, and Russia finally imposing its solution on whatever government succeeds the corrupt Zelensky regime in Ukraine.

Which, tragically, is the outcome that was inevitable nearly three years and one million Ukrainian lives ago.

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Winning is Not on the Table

All of the more informed military strategists concur: the US military is in no shape to win any sort of war with Russia:

Most Americans continue to believe that the United States will prevail in a conventional war with Russia. But that is simply not the case. For starters, Russia’s state-of-the-art missile technology and missile defense systems are vastly superior to those produced by western weapons manufacturers. Secondly, Russia can field an army of more than 1 million battle-hardened combat troops who have experienced high-intensity warfare and are prepared to engage whatever enemy they may face in the future. Third, the United States no longer has the industrial capacity to match Russia’s impressive output of lethal weaponry, artillery shells, ammunition, and cutting-edge ballistic missiles. In short, Russian military capability far exceeds that of the US in the areas that really count: High-tech weaponry, military industrial capacity, and experienced manpower. In order to drive this overall point home, I’ve taken excerpts from the work of three military analysts who explain these matters in greater detail underscoring the dramatic shortcomings of the modern US military and the problems it is likely to encounter when faced with a more technologically advanced and formidable adversary…

We see the same criticisms reiterated over and over again : Insufficient industrial capacity, dwindling stockpiles, “insuperable production limitations”, and diminished technological superiority. When we add these to the myriad logistical problems of conducting a war in eastern Europe with an ad hoc army of inexperienced volunteers who have never seen combat, we can only conclude that the United States cannot and will not prevail in a prolonged conflict with Russia. Even so, Washington continues to fire ATACMS missiles into Russia (13 more were launched over the past two days) apparently believing that there will be no response to the provocation. Even so, NATO Command continues to entertain illusions of victory by pressing for preemptive “precision strikes” on Russian territory welcoming the prospect of a direct conflagration between NATO and Russia. And even though, both France and the UK threaten to deploy combat troops to Ukraine thinking the inexorable trajectory of the war can somehow be reversed. It’s madness.

Five centuries of primacy have produced a cadre of western elites so drunk with hubris that they are incapable of seeing what is painfully obvious to everyone else, that the imperial model of western exploitation (the ‘rules-based order’) is collapsing and that new centers of power are rapidly emerging. It appears now that these same elites are prepared to drag the world into a catastrophic Third World War to preserve their grip on power and to prevent other nations from achieving the independence and prosperity they’ve earned. Fortunately, Washington will fail in this effort just as it has failed in all its other interventions dating back to 1945. Because the United States no longer has the technology, manpower or industrial capacity needed to win a war with Russia.

I’m no professional military analyst. But I reached the same conclusion before the Special Military Operation began in 2022, and nothing that has happened since suggests otherwise. All of the US and NATO sabre-rattling is counterproductive, because it’s like bluffing in poker with nothing in your hand but Uno cards.

One hopes President Trump is getting better advice from his experts than Clown World is getting from its various professionals, analysts, and strategists, all of whom have invested too heavily in their word spells to be capable of admitting even the most obvious truths. This is how imperial overstretch happens.

And forget China, let alone the Sino-Russo-Persian alliance.

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Occupied Britain

This level of “immigration” goes well beyond invasion and amounts to conquest and occupation:

The UK’s net immigration record has been smashed again with 906,000 now thought to have been added to the population in a single year. Huge revisions to official data show the extraordinary mark was hit in the year to June 2023 – and the figures remain at historically unprecedented levels.

Official data covering the 12 months to June this year show long-term immigration was 728,000 higher than those leaving the country. That is almost as high as the previous record. But the bar has been shifted upwards by the Office for National Statistics, with net migration for the year to June 2023 skyrocketing upwards by 166,000 from the initial estimate of 740,000.

A similar revision has been made for net migration in the year to December 2023, which was initially believed to be 685,000 and is now put at 866,000, an increase of 181,000.

The British population in 1939, on the eve of WWII, was 47,760,000. Great Britain has now been invaded as many foreigners in the last four years as the combined forces of Nazi Germany, Romania, Finland, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovakia used to invade the Soviet Union in 1941.

The UK is now in a similar state to the USA. Either mass repatriations will begin within the next ten years or the state will collapse into secessions and civil war. Russia has absolutely nothing to fear from either the USA or the UK, because it has no need to defeat either of them in war, it has only to damage sufficient economic infrastructure to begin the inevitable process of societal collapse that will prevent their militaries from engaging in foreign actions.

And between them, Russia, China, and Iran collectively possess enough economic power to inflict the necessary level of damage to Western infrastructure without ever directly attacking the USA or the UK. I don’t bother mentioning Western Europe, because, barring a complete economic surrender to Russia, the German economy is already doomed.

Lest you fail to draw the obvious conclusion, immigration is not “good for the economy”. To the contrary, over time it is considerably worse for the economy than losing a war is.

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Strike Two

There are signs that Russia is going to be launching another Oreshnik missile strike very soon.

Russia has issued another Notice To Air Missions (NOTAM) closing its air space over Kapustin Yar. This was the area from which Russia launched its new Oreshnik Ballistic Missile at Ukraine last week.

Since that Russian launch, which utterly obliterated a Soviet-era munitions factory inside Ukraine, the Ukrainians have again used American-supplied ATACMS to launch at least THREE MORE attacks into Russia, primarily in the Kursk region.

It seems logical to believe Russia is going to launch again as response to Ukraine continuing to use west-supplied missiles to strike interior Russia.

One might also theorize that it won’t be just one Oreshnik this time.

The NOTAM Begins on 11-27-2024 at 0400 UTC.

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Asking For Trouble

The US military is deploying missile bases in Japan and the Philippines in support of an anticipated war with China over Taiwan:

The U.S. military will set up temporary bases along Japan’s southwestern Nansei island chain and the Philippines to deploy missile units in the event of a Taiwan contingency, sources familiar with Japan-U.S. relations said Sunday.

The deployment of the missile units will be incorporated in the first joint operation plan for the United States and Japan to cope with a contingency involving Taiwan and China, which regards the self-ruled island as its own, to be formulated in December.

The U.S. Marine Littoral Regiment, which possesses a multiple-launch High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, will be deployed along the island chain stretching from the Japanese prefectures of Kagoshima and Okinawa toward Taiwan, according to the sources.

From an early stage, when a Taiwan contingency becomes highly imminent, temporary bases will be set up on inhabited islands of the island chain, based on U.S. military guidelines for dispatching Marines in small formations to several locations.

The Japan Self-Defense Forces is expected to mainly engage in logistical support for the marine unit, including supplying fuel and ammunition.

Apparently bravado and bluff is the order of the day. They’re not limiting their imperial overstretch to Europe.

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The Next Russian Target

Russia has publicly warned Poland and the USA that it intends to strike a US military base in Poland soon:

Russia is now warning about a new attack on a US base in Poland with “advanced weapons,” only hours after they reportedly launched intercontinental missiles inside Ukraine in response to Ukraine sending US-made ballistic missiles into Russia. According to the New York Times, America’s “President” Joe Biden gave Ukraine permission to launch the missiles, which was a major shift in US policy.

The US base at Redzikowo, which opened Nov. 13, is part of a broader NATO missile shield — known as “Aegis Ashore” — that can intercept short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles, according to the alliance.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova made the announcement today: “This long-term America’s and NATO’s construction, which lasted for almost a decade and totally neglected Russia’s security concerns, has been the focus of our attention from the standpoint of compensating countermeasures. Given the nature and level of threats posed by such Western military facilities, the missile defense base in Poland has long been added to the list of priority targets for potential destruction, which, if necessary, can be executed with a wide range of advanced weapons.”

Rumor has it that three “TOPOL-M” ICBMS have been observed on the move with their launchers. However, I very much doubt Russia would strike using the 1 megaton nuclear warheads that the missiles usually carry, since a) nukes may not actually exist and b) a conventional strike would suffice to deliver the warning without escalating to the nuclear level.

Since NATO is already at war with Russia and has launched long-range missile strikes inside Russia, there is no reason Russia should not proceed to methodically destroy every US base located in all the countries on its borders. NATO already escalated, and if the Russians have learned one thing from their experience with NATO, it is that even if one doesn’t give it an inch, it will take hundreds of miles.

If the Russians do destroy the base in Poland, it’s going to be interesting to see the response of the people who have hitherto believed the claims that all of the Russian missiles targeting Ukraine, and all of the Iranian missiles targeting Israel, have been shot down.

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The Rhetoric of London Larry

The British are gradually beginning to realize that they have bitten off far more than they can possibly chew, and that their time-honored method of providing the decisive force to help one side or the other have the advantage in the conflict is not going to work in the current situation:

Putin’s aim is not to defeat us in military combat: he knows he cannot – for now – win against the combined might of Nato, while Beijing remains unlikely to commit its millions of troops to his cause.

His aim instead is to instil cowardice in the general population – to cause ordinary Britons to turn their backs on Ukraine, and demand that their own government stop supporting the defenders.

Why support Ukraine, these siren voices will sing, when the price is misery at home?

Why do we maintain and expense a ‘tripwire’ force in Estonia?

What is the point of Nato now that an isolationist Trump is heading back to the White House?

Surely it is better to pull out of these entanglements and concentrate on our own problems?

Yet if we allow Russia to conquer Ukraine, the result will not be perfect peace. Instead, the seeds will be sown for a future conflict, one in which Britain will be in a far more parlous position.

Instead of kowtowing to our foes, we should rekindle the spirit that won previous epic contests — the world wars against Germany and its allies, and the cold war against Soviet Communism.

We need, too, a new arsenal of crafty, painful counter-measures – for example seizing the frozen £250billion assets of Russia’s central bank and using it to arm and rebuild Ukraine.

So long as our enemies believe they can attack us with impunity, they will not cease from doing so. That is why we must continue to support the Ukrainians – and show Putin that we will not back down.

Let’s count the errors:

  1. Putin’s aim is not to defeat Britain in military combat. His aim is to remove a structural threat to Russia that has spread from the middle of Germany to his borders, a threat that the USA created unnecessarily by breaking its promises to not expand NATO in return for Russia abandoning its occupation of East Germany.
  2. Beijing will absolutely stand by Russia, and has no need to send troops to Europe in order to provide decisive military aid the Russians. It can quickly and easily remove more than half the military forces capable of being brought to bear in Europe by simply pursuing its own objectives. That’s how military alliances work when properly conceived. Forget Taiwan. Just one move aimed at South Korea or Japan would be sufficient to cause the US military to abandon all support for Europe.
  3. Russia can defeat “the combined might of NATO”. It has already done so. If Putin wanted to go all the way to Normandy, he could. Russia has lost 70,000 soldiers, one-quarter of one percent of the number of Russians it lost in WWII, while inflicting casualties at a rate that exceeds that of the historical delta in favor of the IDF in the Arab-Israeli wars.
  4. The British public already wants their government to stop spending money on Ukraine. There are already mass demonstrations against the Labour government’s rapacious new tax schemes. That’s not cowardice, that’s putting the British national interest ahead of Clown World’s interest in Ukraine.
  5. Russia has frozen an equivalent amount of European assets. Stealing the frozen Russian assets and giving them to Ukraine will be counterbalanced by the Russians liquidating those European assets and utilizing them. This is an obviously futile threat.
  6. It is not within the British power to “allow” Russia to conquer Ukraine. Russia has already defeated both Ukraine and NATO in Ukraine; if Ukraine is not permitted to surrender, Ukraine will be conquered and occupied.
  7. There will be no rekindling “the spirit that won previous contests” because the multiracial, multicultural morass of New Britain is not inhabited by the same British people who contributed to the victory of the Allies in WWII. Furthermore, it was the Russian people who won the war; the British population would have been 60 percent smaller if they had suffered the same number of fatalities that the Russians did.

This is just rhetorical bluster, no different than the “mother of all battles” posturing we became accustomed to hearing from Baghdad Bob. London Larry is no more convincing, and every bit as deluded about the military prospects for the British military, as Baghdad Bob was about those formidable forces of the Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein.

UPDATE: Clown World’s most-likely replacement for Zelensky, Valery Zaluzhny, points out that North Korea, Iran, and China are already fully allied and aligned with Russia. Not only that, but they are much more likely to stand by Russia than the USA, the UK, or the European nations are to continue “supporting” Ukraine once either a) Russia decides to cross the Dnieper, b) Russia drops the hammer on the UK or a European state, or c) the next front goes hot.

Ukraine’s former military chief has warned that World War Three is already underway – with Vladimir Putin’s autocratic allies, North Korea, Iran and China, openly supporting his forces on the battlefield. Valery Zaluzhny, who is now Ukraine’s envoy to the United Kingdom, told the UP100 award ceremony in Kyiv: ‘I believe that in 2024 we can absolutely believe that the Third World War has begun.’ The General said that as of this year, ‘Ukraine is no longer facing Russia. Soldiers from North Korea are standing in front of Ukraine.’

UPDATE: Uncle John calls a scripted bluff.

Note incongruities. Beast media is running two incompatible nonsense narratives. A) crumbling Putin’s impotent rage and B) OMG nuclear war. It’s not which is right. It’s sowing chaos. Chaff. Put down a marker. No one will be using “nukes”.

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