Tag: war

You Don’t Get What You Pay For

Mercenary companies always sound very impressive. G4S is the flavor of the day, apparently

With roughly 800,000 employees, G4S maintains its own rapid response units – essentially private strike teams supported by in-house intelligence operations. Many Western PMCs now have access to reconnaissance aircraft, satellite data, and cutting-edge surveillance tools. “They work with corporations that provide satellite imagery, which has been used by PMCs in Africa, Iraq, and Afghanistan,” Todorovski explains.

Alexander Artemonov, a defense analyst at the Eurasia Heritage Foundation, estimates G4S maintains a fighting force of 250,000–280,000, equal to the number of troops Russia deployed in Donbass. The rest of the workforce consists of support staff, prison guards, and logistical teams.

G4S’s arsenal includes everything from AK-47s and Glock 17s to MP5s, sniper rifles, Uzi submachine guns, and even Israeli Hermes 450 drones. Their operatives have access to anti-personnel mines, grenade launchers, and portable anti-air systems. For mobility, they rely on armored Land Cruisers, Humvees, and military-grade carriers like the Cougar and RG-33.

“Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe” – Niccolo Machiavelli

As Machiavelli pointed out in his works, mercenaries are actually good at one thing and one thing only: getting paid. They’re not getting paid to fight and die, they’re getting paid to put on a good show and provide deterrence. The ideal mercenary operation is to get paid to defend a location or an individual, deter any attacks from taking place, and go home considerably richer in return for doing nothing.

It’s when they actually have to deliver results that mercenaries tend to show their true colors, as G4S already has:

G4S has also assumed control of prison facilities traditionally run by governments. In the UK, the company managed two immigration detention centers and six prisons, including those in Oakwood and Birmingham. In 2018, the Birmingham facility was returned to government control after inspectors uncovered appalling conditions: inmates roamed freely while staff locked themselves in offices; cells were filthy, infested with rats, and reeked of bodily fluids.

If they can’t manage a prison successfully, what are the odds that they’re even going to show up to fight Russian regulars?

Some might point to the successful use of the Wagner Company by Russia in the Donbass. But first, they were more convict conscripts than mercenaries proper, second, they were utilized as urban warfare cannon fodder, and third, they too showed the expected lack of reliability when Prigozhin staged the short-lived revolt against Moscow that ended his career with an accidentation.

DISCUSS ON SG

Walking Away is the Right Move

There are various reports that President Trump is rapidly approaching acceptance of the fact that he cannot dictate peace terms to either Russia or Clown World:

The United States will tell both Ukraine and Russia that the US recommends the following to achieve peace in the Russia-Ukraine conflict:

1) Ukraine must agree to a ceasefire, right now.

2) Ukraine and Russia MUST begin direct negotiations with each other

3) Crimea is now Russian territory

4) The areas of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye that are under Russian control, will remain Russian.

5) Ukraine cannot and will not EVER join NATO.

6) If the two sides agree, the US will remove all anti-Russian economic sanctions

7) If the two sides do not agree, the United States will walk-away from the peace process.

I don’t think that either Russia or the Kiev regime will accept those terms. Russia wants Odessa and the full territories of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, and it is within their power to achieve those things without reaching an agreement with anyone. The Kiev regime wants to continue collecting revenue while killing as many young Russians and Ukrainians as possible. A better move would have been for Trump to give Russia whatever it wants in return for imposing peace on the Kiev regime and the various Clown World regimes, since either way, he’s going to end up walking away and dropping all support for Kiev.

DISCUSS ON SG

Pay Now or Pay More Later

The Chinese Global Times points out some of the obstacles that are facing the USA’s attempt to bring back the semiconductor industry:

The substantial losses incurred by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) factory in the US state of Arizona illustrate both the consequences of ignoring market logic and the deep-seated difficulties the US faces in its attempt to forcibly restructure global semiconductor supply chains through political intervention. TSMC’s Arizona facility incurred a staggering loss of nearly NT$14.3 billion ($441 million) in 2024, the largest loss since the establishment of the US factory, Taiwan-based media outlet Economic Daily News reported on Monday, citing TSMC’s latest Annual General Meeting Report to shareholders. By contrast, TSMC’s factory in Nanjing, East China’s Jiangsu Province earned nearly NT$26 billion last year.

This financial disparity goes beyond a simple comparison of operational efficiency; it underscores the challenges of replicating TSMC’s traditional profitability model in the US, a market plagued by high costs and a fragmented supply chain.

TSMC’s Arizona struggles were predictable. It is no secret that the decision to build chip manufacturing plants in the US was never driven by commercial viability but by geopolitical pressure under the CHIPS Act. There are multiple causes for TSMC’s losses in Arizona. While the site has been in volume production since late 2024, the trajectory of financial deficits indicates that its problems are not temporary. 

A key factor is the disruption of the supply, industry and market chains. The semiconductor industry is a highly complex and intricate system where upstream and downstream companies are closely interdependent.  While the US excels in chip design, it lags significantly behind Asia, especially East Asia, in terms of the complete supply chain needed for manufacturing. TSMC’s Arizona factory relies heavily on importing key components and raw materials, which not only drives up logistics costs but also extends the supply cycle. Any hiccup in the supply chain can lead to production standstills.

All of these issues, problems, and challenges are real. And yet, what is the alternative? There is no alternative, unless the USA is willing to become dependent upon either a self-reliant USSR or the global manufacturing giant China for all of its digital devices?

The point is not efficiency or minimum cost; it’s the misplaced focus on efficiency and lowered costs that created this dilemma for the USA in the first place. The point is national sovereignty, particularly when war is increasingly going to be decided by large-scale high-tech drone manufacturing. It’s important to take market logic into account, but it’s even more important to avoid confusing market logic with national best interest.

DISCUSS ON SG

Clown World Fears Peace

The hypocrisy of Clown World truly knows no ends. For decades, we’ve been instructed that land mines are one of the worst sins of Man, and the European governments have sanctimoniously engaged in numerous demining campaigns in Asia and Africa. But now, without so much as any threats from Russia, a number of European governments have announced intentions of mining their borders.

They’re showing similar hypocrisy in their relentless attempts to disrupt the peace talks between Russia and the USA.

Numerous foreign actors are attempting to sabotage the dialogue between Moscow and Washington, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s investment envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, has claimed. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Dmitriev weighed in on his talks with US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, in St. Petersburg last week, which focused on finding a settlement to the Ukraine conflict.

Dmitriev called the negotiations “extremely productive,” but claimed that third parties are trying to impede progress. “A lot of people, structures, and countries are trying to disrupt our dialogue with the United States,” he said.

“There is a very active propaganda campaign against Russia in the United States through various media, so it’s very important to communicate Russia’s position directly – and this has certainly been done,” Dmitriev noted. “There is a very useful dialogue going on. It is certainly going on in very difficult conditions – constant attacks and constant misinformation,” he said.

Americans are not going to fight on behalf of Europeans again. It’s just not going to happen. The sooner that everyone from the Baltic to the Middle East realizes that the US military is not going to protect them from anyone or anything, the better.

DISCUSS ON SG

Importing Taiwan’s Semiconductor Industry

There is a lot more going on in the trade war between the USA and China than just escalating tariff rates. The Chinese are obviously concerned that the US is going to essentially import all of Taiwan’s most valuable intellectual capital.

In response to media query on concerns on the Taiwan island over the US hollowing out its semiconductor industry are growing, Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, said that the concerns of Taiwan’s industry are not groundless. TSMC has long become a political pledge of the DPP authorities’ attempts to seek “Taiwan independence” by leaning on the US. It is only a matter of time before Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is handed over by Lai Ching-te, who is a “professional traitor of Taiwan.”

According to Reuters reports, TSMC and Intel recently discussed a preliminary agreement to form a joint venture to operate the US chipmaker’s factories. TSMC will take a 20 percent stake in the new company. Taiwan’s major chipmaker United Microelectronics and US-based GlobalFoundries are looking into the possibility of a merger.

As hard as it is to build, it falls as quickly as a spark sets hair on fire. If the DPP authorities are allowed to continue down the dangerous path of selling out Taiwan and ruining Taiwan, Taiwan’s industrial sector and the public will not only lose their current jobs, but also the opportunities for future development, said Zhu.

This is where trade war can lead to actual war. Remember, what President Trump is attempting to do is set up the USA in the best possible position for when the current international trade regime collapses entirely. Getting Taiwanese semiconductor companies to move to the USA would be a major coup, and it’s obviously one that the Chinese authorities will seek to prevent.

DISCUSS ON SG

NATO’s Failed War on Russia

It’s obviously not a proxy war when literally thousands of soldiers from NATO countries have been killed inside undisputed Russian territory. The Russians released a report on bodies recovered from the Kursk incursion; these are fatalities, not casualties.

In just a few months, NATO lost nearly as many soldiers as the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” did in eight years of invading and occupying Iraq. The USA didn’t lose a proxy war in Ukraine, it lost an actual war; remember, these are just the fatalities from one single Ukrainian offensive.

DISCUSS ON SG

Ill-Suited for War

It turns out that the profit motive tends to undermine actual military performance, which is why Clown World has long preferred subversion and color revolution to direct conflict:

Spiegel published a quite eye-opening piece yesterday, which reveals the long-kept truth about the performance of German weapons systems in real wartime conditions:

A German military assessment exposes major issues with NATO weapons in Ukraine.

The PzH 2000 howitzer, while advanced, is so technically fragile that its combat usefulness is in doubt. The Leopard 1A5 tank is used mostly as makeshift artillery due to weak armor. The Leopard 2A6 is too expensive and complex to maintain at the front.

Air defense systems also face problems. The IRIS-T works well, but ammo is too costly and scarce. The Patriot system is called “unsuitable for combat” because its MAN carrier vehicles are outdated and lack spare parts.

This information was revealed in a transcript of a lecture given by the deputy military attaché of the German embassy in Kiev. The summary of the paper is very clear: “Hardly any large German piece of equipment is fully suitable for war.”

The report cites “an internal paper of the Bundeswehr” about the real practicality of Germany’s top weapons. We can assume that the very same results extend to the entire constellation of NATO weaponry in general, since they are virtually all constructed with the same design philosophies, often even with interoperable systems—like the 120mm Rheinmetall tank barrels shared between the Abrams and Leopard series.

Also, for the sake of thoroughness and to establish context, Spiegel explains that the ‘report’ was taken from a lecture given to junior officers of the Bundeswehr by a ‘deputy military attaché of the German embassy in Kiev.

None of this should come as a surprise. The so-called “military-industrial complex” is neither military nor industrial; it’s really just another way of feeding off federal funds through government grants, no different than Politico making a living by selling massively overpriced subscriptions to USAID.

And the more things change… overengineered, expensive, hard-to-maintain weapons systems have been a German tradition since at least WWII, one that the USA inherited when it imported all the German scientists in the post-WWII migration that launched the US space program.

Which, of course, is also a fraud. No wonder the Russians are entirely confident of victory even if they have to face the entire continent of Europe alone. Simply living in objective reality instead of a hazy fog of financialization and rhetorical fever dreams is a material advantage that cannot be overcome, no matter how many delusional sales pitches are pronounced by unelected politicians.

Here is a useful metric: if a leader has no genuine followers, he’s a puppet and everything he says will be intrinsically false and is intended to be misleading.

DISCUSS ON SG

Unthinkable Evacuations

Simplicius observes that the mainstream media is now openly accepting the idea that Ukraine is going to have to give up its five former separatist provinces that are now part of Russia:

For the first time we’re beginning to see major Western publications begin realistically acknowledging the possibility of Ukraine losing all five of the regions demanded by Putin, including Kherson and Zaporozhye in whole. Until now these long-standing Russian demands were virtually ignored or dismissed out of hand by MSM, which only spoke condescendingly enough about the prospects of Russia keeping Crimea, Lugansk, and Donetsk, let alone the others.

But now, reality is beginning to dawn on them. The Telegraph piece breaks the omerta and broaches the delicate eventuality:

How would the map of Ukraine change after such a one-sided ceasefire? Putin claims five provinces: Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. The last three are still only partially occupied by the Russians.

Agreeing to withdraw Ukrainian forces from these regions would increase the Russian-occupied area from about 20pc to roughly 25pc of Ukraine’s sovereign territory. That might sound like a sacrifice worth making to stop the slaughter, though it would inevitably deprive Kyiv of yet more economic resources and its fortified front lines.

But such a deal would also mean evacuating millions of civilians. After the well-documented murder, torture and abduction of tens of thousands in Bucha, Mariupol and elsewhere, it is unthinkable that Zelensky would abandon his people to Putin’s paramilitaries and secret police. So a war-torn, impoverished country would have to absorb a huge influx of refugees.

Confirmation they understand this would include losing the capital cities of these regions themselves:

Worse, a ceasefire on Putin’s terms would crush Ukrainian morale. Some of the cities that would be lost, including Kherson itself, have already been liberated from the Russians, often at great cost.

It’s clear that little by little the inevitable acceptance of Russia’s full demands is being digested.

But what’s particularly fascinating—and egregious—to observe about the above, is the suggestion that “evacuating millions of civilians”, particularly after many of them were allegedly ‘tortured and murdered’, is something so unthinkable, that it beggars the contemporary imagination, and should definitely be resisted by the moral forces of the world. After all, there is simply no place on earth we could even conceive of where millions of people are currently under similar threat of both mass genocide and forced displacement. The highly principled Western press would certainly apprise us of such an obvious parallel, bringing to light the stupendous hypocrisy thereof, were it to exist somewhere on this small rock, no?

And this highly righteous press would unquestionably condemn the mirroring tragedy—if such a hypothetical one existed—with the same pharisaical outrage as exhibited here, right?

….Right?

The propaganda ministers of Clown World still don’t seem to grasp that it’s no longer possible to decry the actions of the declared bad guy du jour while simultaneously defending precisely the same actions by a different international actor. If the world is supposed to respect the Israeli claim on Palestine due to its historical conquest of Canaan, and assert that the various acts of aggression and ethnic cleansing are justified by that claim, how do they imagine that the much stronger Russian claim to eastern Ukraine or the even stronger Chinese claim to Taiwan are not similarly justified?

The interesting thing which very few people appear to be noticing is the way in which the stage has been set for an Israeli-Turkish struggle for not only Syria, but Jerusalem itself. After all, the Turks owned that land for nearly 200 years, from 1517 to 1917.

DISCUSS ON SG

China Hits Back

Even though the trade war is not the war that China can win right now.

China will soon impose an additional 34 per cent tariffs on all American imports in retaliation for Donald Trump’s 34 per cent levy. Beijing announced the measure today, the most serious escalation in a trade war with Trump that has fed fears of a recession and triggered a global stock market rout.

The new tariff, which comes into effect on April 10, matches the rate of the ‘reciprocal’ tariff imposed by Trump this week. The levies are in addition to the existing tariffs already imposed on US goods.

US exports to China totalled $143.5 billion last year, according to Office of the US Trade Representative data. Oilseeds and grains, including soybeans, machinery and aerospace products were America’s top exports to the country. The US imported $438.9 billion worth of goods from China last year, with top imports including electrical and electronic equipment, machinery, toys, and plastics.

I don’t know why China is doing this, since the balance of trade surplus means that the more US-China trade declines, the more it will hurt China rather than the USA. All I can think is that China isn’t actually concerned about the inevitable trade war, but is more interested in gradually turning up the heat in a conflict that it knows to be unavoidable.

Time would appear to be on China’s side in this regard. It has been 25 years since Bill Clinton announced the United States-China Relation Act of 2000 that opened the floodgates of US-China trade.

DISCUSS ON SG

EU Hit From Both Sides

The EU’s reaction to getting a taste of its own medicine is downright humorous:

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyden has three big concerns with the new trade/tariff reset. I strongly suggest everyone to read the EU concerns slowly to fully absorb decades of hypocrisy now surfacing:

  • The EU will not be able to compete for U.S. market share with 20% general tariffs and 25% auto tariffs.
  • The EU must deploy countermeasures against the risk of losing industrial capacity and manufacturing to the United States.
  • The EU must defend itself against China dumping cheap products into the EU now rejected by the USA.

Von der Leyen is concerned mostly about the extremely valuable U.S. consumer being leveraged by President Trump, essentially blocking exploitation from EU and Asia. The EU will not tolerate losing access to the most valuable customers in the world, Americans.

So, just to be clear, the EU is now going to a) fight a shooting war with Russia, b) fight an economic war with the USA, and c) fight an economic war with China.

I strongly recommend exiting the so-called Union at the earliest opportunity to every leader of an EU member state. The EU is the last surviving vestige of the neo-liberal world order and it’s going to collapse soon.

DISCUSS ON SG