Tag: war

China Prepares for Sanctions

It’s pretty obvious why the Chinese are expecting sanctions to be imposed in the next year or three.

China’s Communist Party will block promotions for senior cadres whose spouses or children hold significant assets abroad, people familiar with the matter said, as Beijing seeks to insulate its top officials from the types of sanctions now being directed at Russia.

WWIII is already underway. The fact that it is primarily unrestricted rather than military doesn’t change the fact that it is observably underway.

Plan accordingly.

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The Idiocy of Expansion

Even neutral parties grasp that joining NATO is a foolish action by Finland and Sweden:

NATO membership won’t make Finland and Sweden more secure, but would likely see them fighting somebody else’s wars and hosting American bases, Dr. Jan Oberg, director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, has told RT.

“It’s a disastrous decision,” Oberg said on Sunday, following an official declaration by the Finnish government that it is planning to join the US-led military bloc. Hours later, a similar announcement was made by the ruling party in Sweden. The two Nordic nations stayed out of NATO during the Cold War, but their governments said Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has become a game-changer.

Finland and Sweden have failed to carry out “long-term consequence analysis,” he added. “Nobody seems to ask whether NATO is the right thing to join. After all these years since 1945, NATO has proven that it’s not able to deliver what taxpayers are paying for, namely stability, peace and security… and then Finland and Sweden say: ‘We’ll join this failed organization,’” he remarked.

One has to be almost completely ignorant of military history to conclude that joining a military alliance makes war LESS likely. The history of war is literally the history of military alliances, from the Delian League and the Latin League to the League of Cambrai and the Triple Entente. Only neutral nations such as Spain, Switzerland, and Ireland managed to stay out of WWII, which is why it is absolutely counterproductive for formerly neutral nations such as Switzerland to impose sanctions on Russia and totally insane for formerly neutral nations such as Finland and Sweden to voluntarily sign up as co-belligerents to engage in a war against both Russia and China.

Because that’s what they’re signing up for, even if they don’t realize it yet.

UPDATE: Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Russia appears to have started moving nuclear-capable missiles to Finland’s border just a day after the country announced it will bid to join NATO. Video posted on Russian social media today shows trucks carrying Iskander ballistic missiles – which can be tipped with nuclear warheads – moving through the country, reportedly on a highway to Vyborg, on the Finnish border. ‘As soon as the president of Finland said they were joining NATO, a whole division of Iskanders, seven of them… is moving towards Vyborg,’ the video’s narrator says.

UPDATE: Sweden boards the geopolitical short bus.

Sweden has said it will join Finland in bidding for membership of NATO, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted an ‘historic’ shift away from decades of neutrality. Magdalena Andersson, the Swedish prime minister, announced the move on Monday – just a day after Finnish counterpart Sanna Marin tabled her own bid. Andersson said the move was being made in conjunction with Helsinki and marks ‘a historic change in our country’s security policy’ which has relied on a pledge of neutrality to deter attacks since the Napoleonic era.

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The Consumer Costs of War

Karl Denninger points out a few uncomfortable realities about the US military interventions in Europe:

Folks, understand one thing about the US getting involved in an actual shooting war with anyone.

You immediately will have no semi-conductor anything, zero lithium batteries for anything at all from electric cars to cellphones, 75% or better of the pharmaceuticals in common use will disappear instantly, finding tires will be nearly impossible, automotive and machine parts, specifically wear parts such as bearings will all become unobtanium and more. Even something as simple as a circuit breaker for your house will not be able to be sourced. ALL of the large transformers used to distribute electrical power in the United States, never mind nearly all of the switchgear, are made overseas in whole or part and thus if they fail, whether due to natural or man-made cause they cannot be replaced in such an event either. Within a few months spares for critical parts that are considered wear items and thus must be replaced on a schedule will run out in our energy generation and distribution system and failures will begin to occur with impact from local areas to entire regions.

Your local gas station and supermarket cash register (never mind most modern refrigerators, HVAC systems and similar) all have chips in them that are only made overseas; there is no replacement available made in the United States. Your much-vaunted heat pump that is so “green” has a defrost control board in it without which it will not function — if you bypass it (which you can in some cases) once the temperatures get below about 40 degrees outside the unit will fail or be destroyed without it, and there won’t be a replacement available at any cost. Even the contactor (relay) in that outdoor unit has no US supply and without it the unit doesn’t work. Your gas furnace has an ignitor and control board without which you have no heat, they do fail and, again, there is no US supply. We did this to ourselves with our decades-long stupidity offshoring everything and by doing so made it possible for any nation that can sink even a single container ship to break the United States economy and perhaps even a few million people’s survival within minutes.

Commercial shipping will go to zero basically immediately as anything that floats and is big is easy to sink and without insurance, which nobody will write, nobody will ship anything because someone is going to eat the entire cost if the ship ends up on the bottom of the ocean and there is nobody in their right mind who will take that risk.

This isn’t just a theoretical prediction. Car dealers and auto repair shops are already seeing these issues in the automotive industry at the consumer level.

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Why Washington Wants WWIII

It’s not just the neocons and their Russian revenge fetish. It’s also because the leading globalists in the USA, along with their funding masters in Big Pharma, have been caught red-handed doing some extremely bad things in Ukraine.

The provisional results of evidence being collected about the work of U.S. bioweapons in Ukraine are simply astonishing. These are the main takeaways.

1. U.S. bioweapon ideologues comprise the leadership of the Democratic Party. By linking with non-governmental biotechnology organizations, using the investment funds of the Clintons, Rockefellers, Soros and Biden, they profited from additional campaign financing – all duly concealed. In parallel, they assembled the legislative basis for financing the bioweapons program directly from the federal budget.
2. COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna, as well as Merck and Gilead – of Donald “known unknowns” fame, and affiliated with the Pentagon – were directly involved.
3. U.S. specialists tested new drugs in the Ukraine biolabs in circumvention of international safety standards. According to Kirillov, acting this way “Western companies seriously reduce the costs of research programs and gain significant competitive advantages.”
4. According to Kirillov, “along with U.S. pharmaceutical companies and Pentagon contractors, Ukrainian government agencies are involved in military biotechnology activities, whose main tasks are to conceal illegal activities, conduct field and clinical trials and provide the necessary biomaterial.”
5. The Pentagon, Kirillov pointed out, expanded its research potential not only in terms of producing biological weapons, but also gathering information on antibiotic resistance and the presence of antibodies to certain diseases among the population in specific regions. The testing ground in Ukraine was practically outside the control of the so-called “international community”.

These findings, amply documented, suggest a vast “legitimized” bioweapon racket reaching the highest levels of the American body politic. There’s no doubt the Russians plan to thoroughly unmask it for the benefit of world public opinion, starting with a War Crimes Tribunal to be set up this summer, most probably in Donetsk.

An ongoing U.S. bioweapons program in Ukraine was one of the Top Three reasons that led to the launch of Operation Z, side by side with preventing an imminent NATO-managed blitzkrieg against Donbass and Kiev’s desire to re-start a nuclear weapons program.

The Russians cannot back down, not with NATO now threatening to expand to the Russo-Finnish border. The Europeans could back down, but they are occupied satrapies with political classes controlled by Washington, and their popular attempts to revolt against that control have been suppressed. And the USA will not back down as long as the guilty parties possess the levers of power in Washington.

WWIII is not inevitable, but it is increasingly likely now due to the conflicting interests of those who possess the ability to start it. The X factor is China; only China has the power to break Washington’s hold over Europe now. (Theoretically, the American people could as well, but they won’t, because they are too fat, stupid, and oblivious to recognize either their own national interests or the danger to themselves.) The problem here is that it is in China’s interest to wait and let the Imperial USA commit itself to war with Russia before opening a second global front.

And the Russians clearly know this. They don’t want to fight WWIII, but they absolutely will if that’s the price of protecting their nation, as demonstrated by the recent warning by Defence committee deputy chair Aleksey Zhuravlyov.

He claimed Finland is being provoked into joining NATO by the US and Britain.

‘The Finns have nothing to share with us. They receive more than 90 per cent gas, timber and much more from us. ‘Who needs fighting first of all? The Finns? They are not afraid that Russia is attacking them. ‘Of course, sooner or later the Americans will force them to do so. Just as they forced Ukraine to do it, they are trying to force Poland and Romania. And, as practice shows, they succeed.

‘It is impossible to say that Finland will join NATO and behave towards us as before – this will not happen. The Americans will incite them to provocations.

‘We endure for a long time. But this cannot go on forever.’

Reflecting a view among hardliners around Vladimir Putin he said: ‘The United States will do everything possible to make World War III happen. Just not on their territory. They will try not to lead to nuclear strikes, but they will try to draw the whole of Europe into a conflict with Russia, inflame the situation in Asia, [and] set fire to as many countries as possible.’

At some point, Russia is going to stop issuing warnings and will actually take action against the responsible parties instead of the proxies. Unfortunately, the mainstream media is successfully characterizing these very serious warnings as “wild threats” that are being hurled about for no reason at all, so the US and European publics consider them to be on the cartoonish level of Baghdad Bob babbling about “the mother of all battles”.

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UKRAINE Shuts Off Europe’s Gas

Ukraine is proving to be a less-than-trustworthy ally for the European nations:

Ukraine’s operator OGTSU announced it would halt further deliveries starting May 11, due to the presence of “Russian occupiers.”

Gas Transit Services of Ukraine (OGTSU) declared force majeure on Tuesday, saying that it was impossible to continue the transit of gas through a connection point and compressor station located in the Lugansk area. As OGTSU personnel “cannot carry out operational and technological control” over the Sokhranovka connector point and Novopskov compressor station, the company cannot continue to fulfill its contract obligations, it said.

Gas from this connection will not be accepted into the transit system of Ukraine starting at 7 am on Wednesday, OGTSU said. Sokhrankovka accounts for almost a third of the Russian gas that transits through Ukraine to Europe – up to 32.6 million cubic meters per day – according to the operators.

This would appear to indicate either a) an increasing level of desperation on the part of the Ukrainians, or b) the determination of the neocons to trigger a hot war between Russia and the USA. Cutting off the supply of gas to Europe is supposed to one of Russia’s trump cards, so Ukraine preemptively playing it – if only in part – is surprising.

Sure, it’s only a third of the supply so far. But if the desired results aren’t achieved, it’s obvious that the percentage will rise.

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Countdown to WWIII

Fake President Biden signs a bipartisan lend-lease act that historical precedent suggests is likely to precede a hot war with the Sino-Russian alliance within one year.

Washington sought to portray a united front against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Monday as President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan measure to reboot the World War II-era “lend-lease” program, which helped defeat Nazi Germany, to bolster Kyiv and Eastern European allies.

The signing comes as the U.S. Congress is poised to unleash billions more to fight the war against Russia — with Democrats preparing $40 billion in military and humanitarian aid, larger than the $33 billion package Biden has requested.

From Infogalactic:

The Lend-Lease policy, formally titled An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States, (Pub.L. 77–11, H.R. 1776, 55 Stat. 31, enacted March 11, 1941)[1] was an American program to defeat Germany, Japan and Italy by distributing food, oil, and materiel between 1941 and August 1945.

Less than eight months later, the USA was formally at war with Japan and Germany.

UPDATE: According to the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Russia is now engaged in military conflict “with Ukraine and the West”.

Notably, while the EU and US have been rocked by soaring inflation and record gas prices, the White House has until now insisted that Americans will not experience food shortages. Haines’ statement marks the first time that a US official has acknowledged that this may be a reality. Haines also referred to the situation in Ukraine as Russia’s “military conflict with Ukraine and the West,” an apparent acknowledgment of the US’ role as a participant. In the eyes of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the West is already “essentially going to war with Russia through a proxy” due to its sharing of arms and intelligence with Kiev.

The neocons finally get their war. It’s not the war they ideally wanted, but hey, when you’re shopping with someone else’s credit card, you have to buy whatever is available while it still works.

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Foreign Legion Fail

A Canadian sniper returns from Ukraine, unimpressed:

Once lauded by the international media, a Canadian sniper known as ‘Wali’ has returned from Ukraine to Quebec, telling local media that his experience there was a “terrible disappointment.” He claimed there was inadequate weaponry, poor training and heavy losses, as well as profiteering and desertion in the ranks.

When ‘Wali’ answered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call in March and volunteered to fight for Ukraine, he was given lavish coverage by the Western media. A former Canadian soldier who had also volunteered to fight with Kurdish militants in Iraq, Wali was described by Spanish media as “the best sniper in the world,” celebrated by American military bloggers for “hilariously troll[ing]” Russia and praised by the New York Post for “grabbing anti-tank missiles in a warehouse to kill real people.”

However, he said that reality left him disillusioned. Back home in Quebec, Wali told La Presse on Friday that his Ukrainian commanders initially “didn’t know what to do” with foreign fighters like himself. Tired of waiting for an opportunity to fight, Wali joined the ‘Norman Brigade,’ a private unit led by another former soldier from Quebec.

However, several members of this brigade told La Presse that weapons and armor promised by the brigade’s head never showed up, and some of its members found themselves near the front lines with no protective equipment. Around 60 members of the brigade have since deserted, its commander told La Presse, and some soldiers “schemed” to steal a $500,000 shipment of American-supplied weapons and form their own unit.

Wali eventually joined a Ukrainian unit fighting near Kiev, and described having to seek out weapons, food and gasoline. “You had to know someone who knew someone who told you that in some old barbershop they would give you an AK-47,” he recounted. “Even for the meals, it is often the civilians who provide them.”

In the end, Wali said that he ended up firing two bullets into windows “to scare people,” and decided to come home shortly after two Ukrainian conscripts he was posted with in the Donbass region exposed themselves to a Russian tank and received “highly accurate” shell fire in return.

I’m surprised he managed to survive. Of course, simply telling the truth about his experience will almost certainly get him banned from social media for “disinformation”.

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Australia Threatens Invasion

The utter hypocrisy of the globohomogenized remnants of the West could not be more clearly demonstrated than the difference in the reactions to a) Russia’s response to Ukraine’s attempt to join NATO and b) Australia’s response to the Solomon Islands agreeing to a security pact with China:

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison has urged the Solomon Islands’ leader Manasseh Sogavare to remain “calm” after he said his country was being “threatened with invasion” over a security pact it signed with China.

“We need to be calm and composed when we deal with these issues,” Morrison said on Thursday, insisting the relationship between Australia and the Solomon Islands remained friendly even while acknowledging he was concerned over “security” in the region following Sogavare’s decision to sign the “secret arrangement” with China.

Sogavare has criticized both the US and Australia’s response to the security pact his island recently inked with Beijing, insisting there is “nothing to be concerned about” and that the island nation is “insulted” by the West’s response to the move.

“We are being treated as kindergarten students walking around with Colt 45s in our hands” who “need to be supervised,” Sogavare complained, insisting his country was being “threatened with invasion” over the controversial pact and that Australia’s response demonstrated a “lack of trust.” Sogavare said on Tuesday that there had been a “warning of military intervention” in the Solomon Islands if other countries’ security goals were undermined. “We are threatened with invasion,” he warned. “Now, that is serious.”

Morrison insisted that Australia remained Honiara’s “primary security partner,” and that his country trusted the island nation as an equal.

No final version of the pact between the island nation and China has yet been published, though a draft leaked in March mentioned Chinese warships were to be given safe harbor in the islands. Morrison had previously warned that a Chinese military base in the Solomon Islands would be considered a “red line” for Canberra.

Australia reacts to ‘invasion’ threat claim, 5 May 2022

So, we’re supposed to believe that Ukraine attempting to join NATO and threatening to put nuclear missiles on Russia’s border is not a casus belli, but the Solomon Islands permitting China to put a military base over a thousand miles away from Australi is.

Inversion is always a certain sign of evil.

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US Targeting Russian Generals

And yet, we can be confident that the US military is going to screech like a violated owl when the Russians and/or the Chinese return the favor and strike back at its generals.

The United States has provided intelligence that has helped Ukrainian forces kill several Russian generals since Vladimir Putin’s troops invaded the country, senior US officials said.

The US officials said that of the approximately 12 Russian generals killed by Ukrainian forces, ‘many’ had been targeted with the help of US intelligence, reports the New York Times.

Washington has provided Ukraine real-time battlefield information on Russia’s expected troop movements and the location about Russia’s mobile military headquarters, which relocate often.

Ukraine has combined those details with its own intelligence, which includes intercepted communications that reveal whether senior officers are located within a base, to conduct artillery strikes and other attacks that have killed Russian generals.

We knew the neocons wanted war with Russia. What we didn’t know was that the US military has degenerated to the point that its leadership appears to want it too.

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You Don’t Say

The former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO says the quiet part out loud.

“I think we are in a proxy war with Russia. We are using the Ukrainians as our proxy forces.”

Philip Breedlove, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO

Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Minister let a little something slip out too.

“So what if Zelenskyy is Jewish? The fact does not negate the Nazi elements in Ukraine. I believe that Hitler also had Jewish blood. It means absolutely nothing. The wise Jewish people said that the most ardent antisemites are usually Jews.”

Wait, what?

Oh, that’s right. Of course Hitler is Jewish. After all, we’re all one race, the human race.

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