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Harry Mills
Alexander Mercouris
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Comments by "Harry Mills" (@harrymills2770) on "Alexander Mercouris" channel.

They drop 10,000 shovels from a height of 10,000 feet and each one scoops a little hole. Russians are very good with shovels.
35
Yes. The number of people who don't know the origins is inordinate.
19
While I'd prefer to see a Russian Constitution, guaranteeing the rights of the people, the current Russian leadership is pretty rational, and seem to have pretty common-sense economics and foreign policy. When the West finally succumbs to the inflationary spiral it's been storing up for generations, the Russians will be pretty immune, financially. Lavrov comes off as a great statesman, because he's not fooled by feckless Western liberal/globalist narratives AND he's not beholden to the EU, the USA or anybody else. Sound currency. Self-sufficiency. They keep their word better than USA or China. Lots of good things to say about Russia in the current era. Still too authoritarian, so you hold your breath when Putin steps down. But at present, pretty level-headed and clear-eyed about Western theater.
14
Anecdotally, where I'm at in Northwest USA was cold and wet well into June. Other places around the USA have had a very warm spring and hot summer. There's been an assault on agriculture for decades. First, pushing us towards chemical farming, at the expense of nutrition, small farmers and soil health. Now, they're pulling the plug on petroleum products, making farming go from difficult to impossible. Ideologues think they can re-shape everything, instantly, with a snap of their fingers. Want green? snap Green! No real understanding of the consequences of rapid change on the most vulnerable. The poor and the infirm are just collateral damage along the way to utopia.
12
@darialexn Actually, Russian gov't has done a better job living within its means than the U.S. gov't. Much of Russia's inflation is external-sanctions related. America can keep inflation down by buying cheap goods from abroad, but its production base is really struggling, and its federal debt is greater than its gross domestic product. Both nations would be better off if they ceased meddling in the affairs of others. Of the two, the U.S. is guilty of far more meddling, although neither nation is without sin.
12
@karlk9316 Yup. I don't think this new initiative from Trump moves the needle. There needs to be a "come-to-Jesus" moment by the collective West that just isn't there. What has Russia really done to provoke all the sanctions? How does it compare to the things WE have done? I care about human progress and I worry because our leaders seem hell-bent against it.
12
@samnelton8496 They make up the rules as they go along. It's telling that they have abandoned the term "international law." That is because they violate international law at their whim, and point to a new rule they just dreamt up.
12
@victordevers1364 Russia's a lot more spread-out.
11
@alext5285 This is why there are wars. When foreign powers won't negotiate or take "No" for an answer, you have no choice but to resort to force, much as you would rather not.
10
@mv69969 Nobody on the NATO side wants anybody bringing up any history.
10
That's how liars think. They're so used to "putting one over" on people who are trusting and trustworthy. They conclude that others are stupid, because they fool them over and over. Of course, it all eventually catches up.
10
Anyone with a heart is already crying over the loss of life and waste of resources. My biggest fear is a desperation strike or a false flag to justify a desperation strike by NATO, when it becomes clear that it cannot win a conventional conflict. That may be why Putin's content to sit on Ukraine and in no big hurry to take Kiev, assuming he has that intention, which I do not. $oon, it won't matter what if any kind of armistice is obtained, as the destruction of Ukraine's war-fighting capability makes any kind of negotiation irrelevant to Russia.
10
@jorgoasparuhov4131 You could put it that way. "The empire that dare not name itself," where they let you think you remain in control of your property and destiny, but the companies you buy everything from follow (and help write) the the government's edicts. "We don't want to own Romania, exactly, as long as we own their leaders and they do what we want them to do. But they're totally a free country."
10
Why make the un-sound dollar the reserve currency? The USA frittered away its economic supremacy and - just like failing media at home - it's pushing every button and lever of that supremacy even as that supremacy is waning. It's like a last, desperate push by a failing system. The system is doomed. The question is how much harm will be done in its death throes. The monetary system doesn't serve ordinary working, productive citizens in the USA, in particular, and the West, in general. Their fascist/socialist fecklessness is finally catching up to them. In the USA, you can live as a client of the state or be punished for working and saving the old-fashioned way. They want us to live as serfs.
9
I think they can knock down 'most anything, with a large enough expenditure of anti-aircraft missiles. But they only have so many, and a successful defense, today, may be defenselessness, tomorrow. Patriot is expensive and in limited supply.
8
@neithanm Territory matters less than erosion of Ukraine's ability to fight. Casualty ratios heavily favor the Russian side. Counter-offensives for Western news consumption cost far more than they actually gained.
8
Woke is the new warmonger.
8
With any luck, we will see last April's approval of $61 billion aid package for Ukraine as the highwater mark of the insanity.
8
Hitler knew they needed Ukraine and the Caucasus. His generals knew they had to knock out Moscow. They pursued a mixed strategy that achieved neither, and ended up over-extended and Hitler was too stubborn to give up, some say, but he knew, I think, that to fail in that push was to fail, utterly. Only pressing on gave Germany a fighting chance. A slim chance, but still a fighting chance. They NEEDED that oil.
7
Ignored. Yes.
7
@billyboy9436 What's the best way to help from a distance? Who's doing the most good out there?
7
Yes. Ukraine abounds with impolite fictions.
6
The Russians never managed to cut Vuhledar off, before. This seems significant to an amateur.
6
@13thmistral USA is net energy importer, as we speak. We could be exporters except the same people crippling Europe are crippling USA.
6
@MaxZadow Stalin had to be talked out of throwing people at the Germans in Stalingrad. It was far better to be on the defensive. Finding positions the enemy feels they MUST attack, whatever the cost, is a solid strategy. The Russians continue this strategy. On the offense, they spend artillery rather than troops. Then they invite costly counter-attacks, where it's less about holding ground than about inflicting maximum casualties on the enemy. That's what's happening, now.
6
4 or 5 hours is ridiculously long. The closest Trump came to that was 3 1/2 hours on Joe Rogan. Nobody in the collective Western leadership could ever do 3, let alone 4 or 5 hours, except maybe Trump, who'd probably hold forth another 5 hours, if you let him.
6
... and Churchill's world view was Victorian.
6
@oscarnmhaffmans Can't the people take the miscreants to court?
6
Depends on what kind of vulcanism you're talking about.
5
Common sense, nuance, and admitting the limits of one's own knowledge. Thanks, gentlemen.
5
@AIUnrealNews Quit drinking the Kool-Aid.
4
@marilenaefthymiou3504 The 'collective West' is splintering.
4
Russia gains objectives with minimal troop losses and maximum casualties on the enemy. But they don't hold those objectives very tightly. They retreat against offensives, inflicting maximum casualties. Rinse and repeat. As for Prigozhin announcements, I think it's all smokescreen. Convey the impression of weakness and division, inviting Ukrainian forces into yet ANOTHER forlorn hope, at great cost to themselves. Russian ammo expenditures are off the charts, but Russia prepared well in advance, with enormous stockpiles, while the West frittered away its actual fighting abilities and economic wherewithal to support them. USA is trapped in cascading errors and misconceptions, if you assume its purpose is liberty, civil rights, and economic prosperity for all. To my eye, they're making things as bad as possible for themselves, to trigger cascading crises that will justify the final step(s) to functional dictatorship. Right now, the apparatchiki think they will all rule beside their masters, but they will be the first to go, as power at the top seeks to consolidate. Who will be our Lenin? Who will be our Trotsky? Who will be our Stalin? The wheel turns. May human progress prevail in spite of those who insist on shaping it by force.
4
What we need is a measured, restrained Middle Path, that I think the permanent government despises. If we had shown any grace in victory over the Soviet Empire, starting by keeping our damn promises, the world would be a better place. Clinging to empire by the most underhanded and vile tactics and morally repugnant strategy spells the doom of these would-be aristocrats' designs. I don't agree with Berletic on everything, but he can do arithmetic and knows when one number is bigger than another.
4
@teodorojaranilla5008 They're not angels, but the British "traders in flesh" outlawed slavery and enforced it, against the protests of nations in N. Africa and Middle East.
4
If you can afford your payments and your mortgage rate is fixed, that's a built-in inflation hedge.
4
One guy alone in a bar is less likely to get his a$$ kicked than a guy in a bar with a buddy who tells him "I've got your back."
4
@freemanreed5228 They thought Prigozhin was on Putin's side.
3
@dm8579 USA will put up a few and drag a few with them from their allies in NATO.
3
@tinasvensson5295 Their purpose isn't to conquer Ukraine. Their purpose is to destroy Ukraine's war-fighting capability, which their strategy is doing quite well. If anything, they wish Ukraine would attack more. They have a very efficient meat grinder in operation. Why should they be in a hurry to gain more ground? They're fighting the proximal threat on foreign soil, rather than their own.
3
@May_Day45 Wagner's getting a lot of artillery help. That shifts the odds. Meet resistance. Call in strikes. Reduce buildings to rubble. Then go in.
3
Yes. Further investment in the Ukraine Project amounts to nothing more than "spite checks," postponing inevitable checkmate, at great cost in life and material resources by both sides.
3
@debbiedogs1 'The Americans" doesn't include 90% of America. It's the same deluded, echo-chamber eggheads mismanaging Europe and N. America. I could just as easily point to the influence of EU dunderheads on top officials in the USA. There's an entire class of out-of-touch technocrats trying to run the West fascist style: from the top down. Our freedoms are why we became great from the ground up. They despise our freedoms.
3
@lowersaxon J. Lennon inked those words from the lap of luxury.
3
@BRANFED One wonders by what criteria the standard for "free press" is measured, because I know for a fact that the USA is very authoritarian and censorious, while pretending not to be. I'm not in a position to judge the functional level of freedom in Russia. I am in a position to know the USA has nothing to brag about in that regard. I've seen too many dissenting voices silenced by whatever means necessary by some kind of media-government BORG that sets itself up as the unquestionable arbiter of truth and freedom. Whatever the state of things in Russia, America's traditional institutions are self-serving and out of touch with the common people.
3
@JohnJohnson-n3n Yes. When you're over the target or just too factual, YouTube masters kick in. This will eventually spell the doom of YouTube.
3
@Driver-ur9mf I'm sure NATO has inducements. It also has a reputation of past dominance. NATO is like a small liberal arts college in the USA: You know it's about to go out of business when it starts massive construction projects it doesn't need and can't afford.
3
Let's hope it doesn't become kinetic! Whichever side "wins," the people of both sides will lose.
3
Yes, and it highlights the fact that America was VERY top-down during the war, and didn't always go with the best, most practical designs. Chassis and track designs came from engineers whom the U.S. Government rejected. T34 was superior to America's Shermans in many respects. I've begun to question the value of main battle tanks in modern warfare. Might not be the most bang for the buck. For the price of one, I could train and equip thousands of men with light, agile, motorized tank-killers.
3
@@stewart3134 Wagner was given the toughest assignments. Even giving better than they got, they were taking more casualties than others. They also had better pay and perks.
3
He's pretty pro-Russian, but backs it with facts.
3
Very concerning. But half right is better than all wrong. Even as a staunch supporter of Israel, I think Trump may very well insist on fundamental changes to how things are done.
3
Expecting new leaders with too much power to fix problems that old leaders with too much power created is futile.
3
@damn6 Those who fled might want to stay fled.
3
@tommyboss4067 There was never a significant number of foreign volunteers. The aid has been orders of magnitude less than the true scale of the conflict.
3
Happy holidays and best wishes!
3
@billyandrew I used to read LaRouche's stuff, back in the '70s. Some of it held up. Some of it didn't. I liked having his paper as an alternative resource. I can't even remember what it was called.... Looking... Oh yeah. "New Solidarity." I was just a kid, but Dad was pretty omnivorous, always looking for alternate voices that confirmed his biases. As I recall, some of his stuff was good. Some of it was trash. But it was excellent for contrast-and-comparison with MSM. My main takeaway was he was pretty fast and loose, sometimes, which made him only about 1/4 as bad as MSM. I came away from the '70s concluding that the best thing was to ignore the day-to-day news, diversify my sources, and basically believe NObody, 100%, just try to arrive at principles that seemed to be moral and seemed to work. You can devote your entire waking life to this stuff and end up more full of misinformation than facts, because EVERYone has an axe to grind. EVERYbody has something good to offer. EVERYbody has something to hide. The one principle that seems to hold up is that any concentration of power is prone to corruption and will eventually be corrupted, because the wrong people will eventually be in those high positions. Organized distrust of concentrated power in the hands of a few always seems to be the right stance. Think not of all the good they can do, but all the harm that will inevitably be done, and visited on EVERYone. Keep the power de-centralized and nobody can screw everything up for everybody, and MOST people will handle their business better on their own than under the orders of others.
3
I don't know the history of how Donbass region became mostly Russian. But accepting that as a given, it's hard to fault the Russians for recognizing their sovereignty in the wake of western-backed coup in 2014 and ongoing war on Donbass ever since, and the flouting of Minsk Agreement(s) by Ukraine on the advice of NATO leadership. Obviously, sanctions are backfiring, which was totally predictable, given the resource realities and the fiscal recklessness of the West.
3
I disagree. When you're in an insane situation, only something crazy is going to work. For instance, the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in December, 1941 wasn't a mistake. It was trying to take a puncher's chance in a situation the Japanese knew would otherwise end in their subordination to American and European interests, like China and every other Asian nation at the time. Japan was the Last Man Standing in Asia that wasn't under the thumb or had a chance at getting out from under the thumb (See "Commodore Perry steams into Tokyo Harbor (circa 1830, iirc)." It was crazy. The USA was a behemoth compared to Japan. But Japan was slowly, inevitably losing if they did nothing, and the USA was only getting bigger and stronger in the meantime. Maybe Kursk offensive pays off. Maybe it triggers an outpouring of foreign assistance that's an order of magnitude (or 2) greater. Game changer. Maybe the political impact of the brazen attack galvanizes support for scrappy Ukraine from nations all around the world. If it had (It didn't), then the audacious, strategically unsound offensive is made into something much more. Ukraine needed to change the game. It was losing the game. The Kursk offensive will hasten their end, if it fails, which it appears it has, but it gave them a puncher's chance of re-setting the game board, something Ukraine desperately needed.
3
@John Rosa Just type the time off the bottom of the video when the events occur.
3
@Bougiebete I couldn't agree more. "What's this? I didn't order a tailor!" "You want to look good in your uniform, don't you, private, er, ah, Senator?" "Get McConnell on the phone! We've GOT to give peace a chance, dammit!"
2
@consciousgentile5141 America is increasingly crooked, largely by functional one-party rule by the Democrats. Everything wrong about America is when it departs from the principles most of its people used to believe in, like individual rights. But yeah. The more we get bribed and corrupted by CCP, the more we run things like La Cosa Nostra. There've always been robber barons in this country, almost from the start. And they've always done the most harm and gained the greatest wealth NOT by being left to compete in the free market, but by government assistance. Every agency created to protect the people from the robber barons has protected robber barons from the people. Government as the panacea is the problem. Government solutions are never solutions. All the cases of "runaway capitalism" have had at their root a law or regulation that SEEMED to benefit the people, but in the end just benefited the biggest robber barons. The FDA works for Big Pharma. The Dept of Agriculture works for Monsanto. The list goes on and on.
2
@rphb5870 Pretty much. But establishment of the Warsaw Pact wasn't entirely unjustified.
2
@imrekalman9044 In the '80s, the West over-reported Soviet strength by a factor of 10.
2
@PerceivedREALITY999 Pretty much my take. Our media ignore recent history and the rot that set in in the West when the Soviet Union ended.
2
Thanks for the update.
2
@76verdee You made sense until you started your own regime-change rant. Forcible regime change anywhere only cements the most corrupt, most corruptible, and least competent and answerable to the wishes of people who would be fine if just left the hell alone.
2
@dabig_guy2204 The lengths to which The Swamp will go to cover its blunders and corruption are limitless. A bunch of Obama officials SHOULD have gone to jail, but instead we had 3 years of RussiaGate.
2
@DTJKS Free speech is rarely a feature of democracy. Free speech is a feature of a constitutional republic with rights guaranteed by law.
2
@anonymoussource7999 YouTube enforces the ruling class's preferred narratives. It's state-run in everything but name.
2
Only a Catch-22 if they rely entirely on negotiation.
2
Just did a little scribbling. The yield of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was in the neighborhood of 4 billion joules. The effective yield of an Oreshnik with say 100 kg of dead weight coming down, would deliver about 450 million joules, which is slightly more than one order of magnitude less than Hiroshima, give or take. The scary thing is that they're saying the payload of the Oreshnik is closer to 1.5 (metric?) tons. That's another order of magnitude greater than the 100 kg I put in the (1/2)mv^2 calculation, in kilograms-meters-seconds units, so these conventional arms have the power of a small nuke, basically. And it's all directed downward. Can't be defended against and rivals or exceeds Western bunker buster munitions.
2
We all knew the spigot would eventually run dry. Top officials are still living in denial of reality, but they can't lie to themselves about the politics, which are following economic realities. There's zero appetite for it in the mass of people, and cobbling together neocon ruling coalitions is growing increasingly difficult, even though they're very good at keeping the peace-mongers out of power.
2
"No entangling alliances." - George Washington
2
@themanwiththegoldengun1998 Tactics have evolved a lot in the last couple years.
2
Glimmerings of common sense emerging in our discredited State Department and White House?
2
They've gotten too big for their britches.
2
If we abandon our proxies, it makes it harder to recruit new proxies.
2
The only way to legitimize themselves is a crisis sufficiently great to get the people to rally to the flag. War's a favorite tool for this purpose. But I think it's getting harder and harder to manufacture consent, these days.
2
American potential WAS unlimited, back when the government was limited. Imagine the government's joy at discovering war as an excuse to exceed its legal limits. Uni-Party on war goes way back to the days when the Republicans were war hawks and even as the minority, they could push through defense spending with the votes of a handful of Scoop Jackson hawks amongst the Democrats. That was when Republicans still fought against massive social spending. By Bill Clinton's presidency, the Republicans joined the Democrats on the social spending side, and the Democrats joined the Republicans on the defense spending side. More spending wins re-election for both sides. There's a lot of posturing, but both sides want to take all our money and throw their weight around, abroad. Everything about the U.S. federal government is un-American, at this point. No liberty. No self-responsibility. "Obey and we will take care of you at others' expense" is the Uni-Party.
2
We're exceptional because we distrust power and don't play imperialist games. But our leaders think that because we're exceptional, we can play imperialist games, without regard for the rights of individuals or nations.
2
@jpphua602 I just imply a question mark at the end of all my random thoughts, like this?
2
@yuribeard5753 I can get on board with that. The "who's winning?" fades by comparison to the lives lost and lives damaged beyond repair.
2
@redscope897 Kievan Rus faced the Mongols almost 1000 years ago. But go on,
2
@redscope897 Mostly yes. Napoleon depended on pillage and Russia went scorched-earth on him. The parallels to Ukraine are few.
2
@wafudave6041 TOFU DREGS!
2
I never thought I'd say this in my lifetime, but I don't feel like the USA has the moral high ground, like I used to feel. The Ukrainian government looks like a puppet regime installed for profit by American and Ukrainian oligarchs. The influence peddling is right out in the open, and the only person charged was Donald Trump, who was on the verge of exposing all of it by trying to help Zelensky clean up the Ukrainian justice system that was OBVIOUSLY, ADMITTEDLY being manipulated by threats to cut off U.S. aid if the guy investigating Burisma wasn't fired.
2
Sadly, this applies to career government officials and establishment media, who are their minions, no different from "access media" who give Hollywood tongue baths.
2
The main psychotic aspect of it is the deep-seated belief that government officials need to "run things." They need to guarantee our liberty and let US run things.
2
@DennisMerwood One can glean wisdom from fiction, especially mystical and allegorical fiction that's survived millennia, if for no other purpose than to figure out what's in the heads of people around you!
2
@duellingscarguevara Yeah. I tried to donate to the local food bank, only to learn that it's regional. I want to help my local community. I don't have anything against other communities, but charity starts at home, and - honestly - I don't want all my donations being sucked up by some big, corrupt blue city.
2
@john99776 Can't reform it. All you can do is cut it, which they refuse to do.
1
@tombombadil8709 Russia can keep on pounding NATO/Ukraine forces at much greater cost to them than to Russia. Russia doesn't have to conquer all of Ukraine. It just has to destroy the war-fighting capability of Ukraine to remove it as a threat. This has many of the hallmarks of the Kursk incursion. Great success, at first, only to find yourself worse off than when you started, because of the resources that were wasted. USA has been building up the rebels for quite some time, so they have an early advantage, but is the wherewithal there to really hold Syria? We'll see. I think American logistics aren't up to the task. I don't think American will to fight another war in the Middle East is there. Even if it's there, the military is soy, and totally beholden to the military industrial complex, which wants to see expensive weaponry that only works if you have total air superiority, which nobody has in a battle between major powers. What I'm not sure of is how much Turkey has to put into the effort or how serious Turkey is about trying to hold on to Syria. That will make a huge difference, one way or the other.
1
@schrodingerscat1863 Exactly. He's made these statements. It's caused a stir. Ukrainians went on the offensive and were destroyed. Russians are taking light losses and inflicting heavy casualties. Over and over. What angers me most is Western nations thinking it's a good thing, the longer this goes on, because it's sapping Russia. Reminds me of the joke where a man killed himself trying to f*** his wife to death.
1
Russia and USA would be natural allies if the American Establishment weren't so feckless.
1
Counter-offensive = Battle of the Bulges.
1
It's a metaphor for the low regard the NATO virtue-signalers actually have for ANYone not in their little club.
1
Huawei is blocked because CCP is crime organization.
1
@consciousgentile5141 I didn't say that. But I know we are much better off, here, in the USA than the average person in China, and it's not even close. We have more freedom, functionally speaking, than in China, although they're working tirelessly to turn us into another China, as we speak.
1
Yes. Zoomed-in accounts of a skirmish along the tree-line bordering a 10-acre wheat field is not very useful.
1
Watching Ukraine's Offensive at 1 Month - Losing the War of Attrition. Thx for the title.
1
He's more sorry for the lost revenue.
1
If Russia approaches the total defeat of Ukraine, Poland will probably seize all or most of the Ukrainian territory for which it lusts, and it is very lusty. Still, Russia would go a long way towards shutting Poland up by ceding it a piece of Ukraine in its possession.
1
Clearly, business as usual was reaping diminishing returns. Kursk makes total sense in an insane and unsalvageable situation.
1
They're not distracting from Russia's security concerns. That's a by-product of their single-minded attempts to distract Americans and British, especially, from the failures of their respective governments, in my opinion. Americans will "support the troops," which is the wedge our government uses to manufacture consent for more wars.
1
@barquerojuancarlos7253 Harris just went on a "bribe the officials" visit to Africa. We never wanted to help Africa build their own middle class. We just want leaders who'll trade their resources to us, and keep Russia and China out. Even if you don't like those two countries, our policies have made Africa hate US.
1
@matthewnewell4517 No, but you can arrange for a pallet of tank ammo to 'fall off a truck,' never to be seen, again. U.S. officials admit they don't know where most of the money and materièl end up.
1
@matthewnewell4517 The Ukrainian gov't's been skimming cash off low-interest-loan guarantees. $1 or $2 billion can make a lot of people rich at the top, without being noticed. I'm against government-to-government aid. Instant, widespread corruption and incompetence.
1
If they don't respect the rights of their own people, I don't want to trade with them. I don't like de-stabilization efforts by dirty tricks like funding rebels, etc. But I think trade restrictions and other economic sanctions are a much better tool of diplomacy than going to war.
1
@Mr.Tickle05 The American people are addicted to Free Stuff. At least they're waking up on the foreign policy front, but the establishment is still lagging far behind the people. The permanent government and influential monied interests want empire. The people just want liberty and prosperity, and we don't need any stinking empire to have both.
1
@axiom1509 This audience member isn't exactly a 3-star general. But yeah. On those rare occasions I hold my nose and watch lamestream media, they act like Russia's trying to conquer Ukraine, when I think their objectives are limited to a resolution of affairs in Donbass, after Ukraine and its allies flouted the Minsk Agreement(s). You don't have to like what Russia's doing to be a total cynic when western leaders throw around the "rules-based" phrase.
1
I don't take anybody's word as gospel, but this channel gives more - and usually more sensible - perspectives than MSM. You do have one pie in the face, dismissing the warnings before the SMO, scoffing at the warnings, right before hostilities ensued. I think you were caught a little flat-footed.
1
Meanwhile, the U.S. Government is either going to shut down or worse, pass a huge, omnibus spending bill that throws tons more money at Ukraine, which will hurt Russia, for a while, but destroy the USA, economically, as the debt grows without bound. IF U.S./U.K. are determined to escalate, their governments will fall. Trump will win in the USA and the British people will be out in the street with pitchforks.
1
The Deep State isn't giving up on its hegemony within American policy-making, but even if Trump beats them back, the Biden admin may have poisoned the waters to such an extent that the hope of real peace, where foreign powers put ANY faith in any agreements with such a whimsical USA, is forlorn. Even if they believe Trump is sincere and would rather do business for mutual gain in a peaceful world, they can't trust that his policies will survive his 4 years in office. I think the fact that Trump stormed back into power with strong electoral and popular vote tallies may change that calculus a bit. Also, Trump is wiser, now. None of his people will be talking to the FBI without a lawyer present. Christopher Wray ain't gonna last 'til March or April, like crooked Jim Comey did.
1
@AIUnrealNews They can't even use F-16s until anti-aircraft capability is destroyed. This isn't like flying sorties over undefended skies of Iraq. They won't be able to sortie over Russian-defended territory. They can get rid of a lot of retired F-16s and give the Russians some target practice. But the elephant in the room is the miserly amount of actual aid provided. A few planes. A handful of tanks. The ammo spigot has dried up, without any industrial capacity to replace. America's Debt:GDP is 130%. After WW II, it was at a record high 30%. The USA USED to pay down its debt in peacetime. Now, it can't balance budgets in peacetime, and it hasn't for DECADES. Western economies are about to nose-dive. We're not the slumbering manufacturing giant we were in the 1940s. We NIMBY'ed manufacturing elsewhere! There's no doubt in my mind that Russia has total escalation dominance in the theater.
1
@anonymike8280 They can't fight beyond the reach of their air defenses. In modern warfare, sorties over enemy territory in manned aircraft is suicide. Supporting ground troops by air needs anti-aircraft suppression, and that's not so easy to come by against a Great Power like Russia.
1
Conscription age of 18 doesn't sound extreme. Isn't that the conscription age in the USA? Maybe it's a cultural difference or something. But inasmuch as Ukraine's resisted this move for so long, in a war in defense of the motherland, it does appear that it is finally admitting it's in a state of extremis. I didn't know they only made 3700 ATACMs, total, or that they stopped making them in 2007. This channel is pretty much a broken record, but then, the reality needle just seems to keep skipping, so I suppose the news has no choice but to follow.
1
@EleniR-j8p I don't understand what you're saying.
1
China and Japan have hated each other since long before the USA existed.
1
If there's one thing the U.S. and U.K. have proven in recent years, it's to not take their word on anything without proof.
1
@davidapsey8515 Russia's trying to evolve into a classical liberal representative republic, but the West won't have it. It would show up their creeping socialism and economic illiteracy.
1
@michaelkatz275 Uncannily similar to what the EU is doing its own farmers as we speak. The script has flipped. The West is top-down authoritarian, while pretending to be of, by and for the people.
1
China's wrong. The US Government is looking for something - ANYTHING - external, to distract its sheeple from the atrocious job it's doing here at home. If we focus on Russia-Russia-Russia, then maybe the people forget the wreck our "leaders" have made of the economy and the environment, simultaneously.
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Yup. We thought we finally had a chance to drain the swamp and he's appointing swamp. They've all been contrary to one or more neocon propositions, but we don't need hawks. We need good, common-sense security, good common-sense trade, and we need to disengage from the Israel Project.
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1.25 speed is more listenable.
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@JosephBisio I wonder how totalitarian Russia would be if the West didn't go insane every hundred years or so an start a war of aggression.
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Woodrow Wilson ran on a peace ticket. "'I'm not sending our boys to go fight overseas," or words to that effect. Then he broke that promise. All our allies could see was the defeat of Germany. Europe's been a basket case ever since, and adopted MANY of Hitler's policies (government-run education, health care and media), and they're repeating the same mistakes. They just use different words to make it seem their socialist insanity is somehow different.
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@Theone-bc7tr They're on a quest for New World Order, under one body. This means they have to tear down EVERY major power. The funny thing about this is that the countries that are "in on" the project are crippling their own ability to effect change around the world, because part of their plan is to cripple national sovereignty. It amounts to cutting off your nose to spite your face. The question remains whether they can dominate the 2/3 of the planet that opposes the Globalist Project. it appears that they cannot, but they can still do horrendous harm to people and the planet in their mad plans.
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Depends on how late you stay up.
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These actions by first Finland and now Sweden are in opposition to public sentiment. There, as well as France, Spain, and even Germany and Britain, we're seeing tectonic shifts in the political landscape AWAY from the globalist, global-warming grifters. Those who have cheered on the New World Order are getting their wish, only the New World Order is Multi-polar, with its center of gravity much farther South and East. I used to fear this, in my youth. But after the last 50 years of decay and government expansion in my country (USA), I see it as inevitable and even necessary. The USA is nearly full-on fascist, now.
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Without control of the skies, conventional warfare is a losing proposition. Establishing and maintaining order AFTER winning conventional warfare requires a LOT of boots on the ground, unless the territory won is friendly to you. Even then, a small number of insurgents can defeat you in "peacetime." There's a pretty simple formula dating back decades, for how many troops per square mile are needed. We haven't seen those kinds of numbers since the end of WW II. Now, we just destroy and abandon.
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How about we spend less on EVERYthing? Government ruins everything it touches. You want a better country, get a smaller government. The domestic spending is almost as bad as the war pig policy. It all takes from production and gives it to the favorite flavor of the day for ivory-tower bureaucrats and politicians and the NPCs who elect them.
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Wellington was strict. What scant sympathy he had for rogues was when they fought like devils for Wellington.
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@Jamicaman516 You mean like Iraq? Libya? Israel?
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It would've been easy to declare itself neutral and be friends with both East and West. It could've been the leading natural gas hub for most efficient distribution of our cleanest form of fossil fuel. It could've had a perfect industrial-agricultural balance. It could still own Crimea. But there's no way Russia could or would tolerate a hostile Crimea. Ukraine was and is a corrupt oligarchy that was and is a handy pawn for American 'leaders' who don't care what the cost or whom they hurt, because their own goals are so "good" and so "vital" that they will stoop to anything and stop at nothing to achieve them.
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@stuartjarman4930 ... or a billionaire.
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We have deputized federal agencies to pass regulations that have the force of law.
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Zelensky's out of his depth. Ukraine is a pawn. Ukraine was at war with itself long before the Russians stepped in.
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@vplan It's not America, either. It's a small but powerful group of demented cold warriors who view the world as their playground.
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@ellisduckworth5908 CIA's been in there, stirring up shit, for over 10 years. US officials brag about it. The coup in 2014 looks more like CIA manipulation than Russian invasion.
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"They'll never carry out that threat if we do X." Does X. "Evacuate the embassy!"
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@cashcash5995 Collapse of the establishment institutions, yes. But I think the country comes out of this stronger. It's getting harder for the clowns to hide from the consequences of their disastrous policies. But the American people are strong.
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You make 3 meals a day, every day. You brush your teeth every day. Alexander's just brushing his teeth. When your work is fun, all you do is play. That's the other piece of it. Saying "Alexander did an upload today" is like saying "Alexander put on a shirt, today.'
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@imsneedandifeedinseed The greater danger of using nukes is on the side of the West, because they cannot win in Ukraine, conventionally. They don't have the resources to slug it out. Yes. Nothing lasts forever. But the current situation and the current trends strongly indicate that NATO is on the losing side of this war in Russia's back yard. The West needs to get its financial and manufacturing house in order before it can lord it over the rest of the world, and by the time the West does that, IF it even has the means and the will do DO that, it will be too late, by all indications. Western leaders strut around like they still hold all the cards, but all they hold are gimmicks. The core industrial/manufacturing capacity has been offshored. They're all in debt up to their eyeballs. Europe is an old man in a wheelchair who thinks making love to his wife every day will wear her out.
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It's just rhetoric. They want to sound strong, even though they're totally in China's hip pocket.
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@sameface Russian shovels are better than Chinese shovels. Tofu dregs.
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@The-Burning-Man How the U.S. Navy would fare against the Chinese Navy isn't clear. It's not in the interest of either country to find out.
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It seems the political class wants us on a war footing, so it can invoke increasingly authoritarian measures to quell dissent, and get things back the way they were, when people still believed the government's proxies in media.
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Whether things go well or poorly, they're out whatever they've already put in. Economic realities are finally overwhelming the delusional thinking of western leaders.
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They're Russophiles, so take it with a grain of salt. But their research always holds up to scrutiny.
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@tinaforbes1059 Countries don't make money. Just a small number greedy and corrupt politicians and their cronies.
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Tough call on the opening moves of the SMO. The scale of the original build-up was enough to raise flags in the West, but I don't think it was enough for them to believe that the Russians would strike at all, let alone strike as hard as they did. Alexander pooh-poohed the idea that the Russians were readying for the attack. The feint at Kiev tied down a LOT of Ukrainian forces, at the cost of high losses in a relatively small number of heavily armed, elite Russian forces, whose value is in arriving before they're supposed to, and fighting like demons. They scoff, with sarcastic "3 days to capture Kiev and end the war," but it just seems to me that they achieved what they wanted, at relatively little cost. There wasn't a long, drawn-out struggle to bring their forces to the gates of the key cities, which they had enough power to grind down, while the more general mobilization got underway. They haven't had any problem slowing down and destroying the counteroffensive. I think the killed-and-wounded are much higher on the Ukrainian side. Even if they're not, the Russians can afford the trade; whereas, the Ukrainians cannot. I did not know, nor have I double-checked, the fate of the SU's that've been launching the guided air-to-ground missiles. If the 2-aircraft teams that are firing these salvos are being downed at anywhere close to Alexander's claimed 50% rate by Russian aircraft/missiles, that's very bad for the Ukrainians.
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The fact that 5 Leopard 2's is a significant number is more significant than the loss of 5 Leopard 2's.
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@MeryKeit Putin basically came into power in 1998. He's been very state-crafty to weld the former atheist USSR into a God-fearing Russia. I'm no expert on world affairs, but I see a very systematic "Get our house in order" approach taken by Putin, simultaneous with Western leaders getting every big decision wrong.
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Didn't the Swedes (and/or Finns?) have deals with the Nazis to provide iron ore before and during WWII? The (un)funny thing about Nazi Germany is the autarchy (self-sufficiency) they sought was within their reach, if they hadn't nationalized key industries for the purpose of autarchy! Of course, building an enormous war machine also beggared their economy, as well, but socialism was the main reason they couldn't feed themselves or even deliver coal in winter. The ironies run deep in that failed rendition of the form of feudalism we call "socialism."
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@ruffknight9549 ... in everything but ideas.
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The party that's been demonizing Russia to cover its own fecklessness is in power. None of this is any surprise. None of this is encouraging.
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More like many final acts of pure recklessness.
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When your policies are the opposite of sensible and effective, it's not lack of foresight. It's delusion, at best, malice, at worst.
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Russia's not in the echo chamber in which the USA's policy-makers reside. USA, EU, and Canada are in the chamber. The rest of the world recognizes the clownishness of Western Establishment.
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Trump was in the process of a rapprochement with North Korea and assisting the North and South in easing tensions. Neocons running Biden Admin don't get it.
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@SuanLuang In the context of the time, those bombings were justified. In the larger context of European and American colonialism in the Far East, the attack on Pearl Harbor was justified.
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@stephenhenry5072 Some would argue that the manufacture of consent through lies and distortion dates back to the Spanish-American War and the Hearst empire. The BBC has been the establishment's mouthpiece for decades. UK and Europe have never been coy about censorship. They don't have a 1st Amendment. In the USA, where our constitution supposedly forbids it, the propaganda and censorship have been more hidden, but all the more pernicious, because the majority of Americans believed that the government actually obeyed the constitution. It's very cringe, thinking back to the '70s, when I laughed at the bald-faced lies in Soviet propaganda, totally unaware of the bald-faced lies in American propaganda. I didn't start waking up until the '90s, wondering what the hell we were doing dropping bombs in Yugoslavia. Then I read my dad's old copy of Heinlein's "Expanded Universe," where he did a deep dive into Soviet logistics and American claims about Soviet power. Routinely off by one or sometimes two orders of magnitude. I thought Frank Church was a traitor in the 1980s. By the 2010s, it dawned on me that the Reagan administration set us up for a lot of the regime-change BS we've seen unfold, regardless of which party owned the White House. It's abhorrent.
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You should take what these guys say with a grain of salt. They've gotten a few things wrong, here and there, but they're much more reliable than American dinosaur media. They were laughing off the very idea that the Russians would pursue anything remotely resembling what is now called the "Special Military Operation." They were totally caught off-guard by the invasion in February, 2022. That was a very big miss.
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@xmaverickhunterkx UK's an excellent proxy, with looser rules on what they have to tell the people (or the parliament), plus they have no constitutional guarantees of free speech. Speech is at the pleasure of the government. Anything the government thinks is in its best interest is justification for arresting a truth-teller who dissents.
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@dnickaroo3574 Nonsense. There are other good trade partners for the Aussies. Nobody needs China.
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@litlnote-wu6yv I don't think Russia's goal is conquest. I think they've largely achieved their goal of grinding the Ukrainian Army to dust, depleting both men and armaments, and ending the open war on ethnic Russians in Ukraine. At the very least, they've exacted a heavy price for NATO and Ukraine puppets trashing security arrangements from 30 years ago. NATO solemnly agreed that NATO would not expand to the east, and let Russia have peaceful, neutral neighbors, without Western interference. It's not Russia who's gone rogue. It's USA and NATO countries, whose domestic and international policies are suicidal. Words didn't work. Russia resorted to force. Except for Ukrainian and Western propaganda, the whole rest of the world sees this for what it is. As NATO continues pressing, it's losing the last vestiges of high ground it has enjoyed since the 1940s. Look at the USA's national debt. Look at how the madmen in power are spending like there's no tomorrow (a self-fulfilling prophecy). They're driving 2/3 of the world away from the U.S. dollar. When and if BRICS wrests hegemony away from the USA, the bottom will fall out and the house of cards comes tumbling down.
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Commercials every 3 minutes! Hooray!
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Prigozhin wouldn't last 5 minutes if things were truly as he said, or if Russia thought he was hurting their cause. My conclusion is that Putin WANTS NATO to continue destroying itself. But then I see Europe and the USA as much more fragile than Russia. Russia's taken the slow, careful way, and its fundamentals look very good to me, and I see more nations around the world turning to BRICS, further undermining the dollar that the USA seems bent on destroying.
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USA doesn't need Syrian oil. Just a handful of big companies.
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We'll just have to see how it all turns out. I'm just hoping the outgoing administration stops trying to do as much damage as possible before it leaves. I'm not at all sure how the tensions within the Trump administration are going to play out. Will they actually reform and re-fit the Ship of State? Will they scrape the hull and pump out the bilge? I've never seen any of his appointees in action as cabinet members and agency heads. I don't think anything short of a major purge of top officials and a good chunk of middle management will significantly change our nation's suicidal course setting. 8 years of Obama peppered the government with political hacks throughout the military and intelligence services, which were already disastrously neocon even before Obama. Trump didn't make much of a dent in 2017, and the Biden admin was Obama 2.0, a version full of bugs, but with many of the same faces, and the same (apparently) ill intent.
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Antonovsky Bridge: The bridgehead is celebrated like the Normandy landings of 1944. What was it? A crossing by 50 (or 70?) special forces? Is it just me, or are the actions of the counteroffensive massively over-reported? Chasing away a squad or platoon of infantry on video from a field in the middle of nowhere doesn't mean the Russians are in disarray. It means the Ukrainians have a local, temporary firepower advantage that's probably not worth more than the propaganda value, and likely came at great cost compared to its concrete value, strategically. I'm not discounting the hearts-and-minds aspect. But hearts and minds are not enough, when actual, concrete wherewithal of forces is utterly lacking. If you really wanted to win a war of attrition against the Russians, the best strategy would be what the USA's done over and over since WWII: Fund an insurgency, keep the American people in the dark, or better yet, convince them the insurgents are Democrat-ic freedom fighters, bravely resisting tyranny. Throw some economic sanctions their way, to make the public angry at their increasingly desperate and tyrannical government, et voila! An "organic" rise of "democracy." All it takes is some illegal covert aid, a bit of spin, It all has a limited shelf life. But as long as they can win TODAY, they don't care. If anything, the (un)intended consequences give even more reason for more extreme and more violent measures to "restore democracy" in the future.
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Hard to say. Is there an iron-clad clause forbidding military aid to Ukraine? Is there an iron-clad clause forbidding Ukraine's membership in NATO? Putin could make it clear that any ceasefire is contingent on adherence to the agreement, and any violation will result in a re-opening of hostilities, at Russia's discretion. They could hammer out an agreement with strong verification methods. If the verification methods are in any way obstructed, then all bets are off. I think they could make an agreement with teeth in it. It is not in Russia's best interests to continue fighting forever. They can sustain it, if they have to, but I'm sure Putin would rather not. He has other things he'd like to do with those resources, like build his civilian economy and develop Russia's vast resources. I think we're on the cusp of an era of peace and plenty, if we can lay down our arms, and end our designs on global empire.
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Not all of America. But the bureaucrats and politicians.
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He's in an impossible situation, elected president of a nation hemmed in by oligarchs, secret police, and generals. Like Trump, he probably had the right idea, but was in over his head when it came to whom to fire, HOW to fire them, and whom to appoint in their place.
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It's not as if F-16s and SUs are dog-fighting all over the skies. Unless you have suppressed anti-aircraft capabilities, you're flying F-16 or SU missions. That reduces their mission to airborne stand-off weapon platforms and bombing or ground support on the front lines where you have air superiority. The Russians can be more active, because they've eroded the local air defenses to near incapacity in many places along the front, and so they can afford to use manned aircraft. Anyway, it's looking more and more like a drone war, and it may come down to who can make more drones and devise new drone defense.
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Much less fog of war, nowadays, with everybody having an eye in the sky. The only fog is in the minds of so-called leaders.
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I guess there wasn't any room for the Kulacks, who were collectivized to DEATH by the Soviets, resulting in widespread starvation, one of the main features of socialism. But thanks for the summary, otherwise. People in the USA don't have the history of being invaded by European madmen in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Imagine how paranoid we'd be about Mexico if were kept getting invaded by mad dictators from the South. Then imagine Russia was trying to make Mexico a proxy against the USA after beating back 2 invasions at great human cost.
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There's bound to be some tension between Wagner and Russia, with Prigozhin's latest complaints falling along expected lines, if that's what you're looking for. I agree that it looks more like feeding Western narratives and false hopes, and - as you say - enticing another foolhardy and costly offensive. In modern warfare, mass troop movements can't be hidden. Rushing aid to an embattled Bakhmut exposes the relief forces to artillery.
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The people behind these disastrous policies covered their arses before hostilities ensued. They can pass the buck forever, while in the meantime seeing to it that the innocent will be prosecuted if they come too close to the truth. By the time the smoke clears, we'll be two crises into the future.
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@adamkallin5160 Agree.
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@SuanLuang Boeing RC-135V looks like a 4-engine passenger plane, so some kind of AWACS?
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@kevinwaalker LOL! That seems likely! OTOH, you can probably get away with filming pretty easily if you don't act as though you are filming, with a phone, go-pro, or other small camera.
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@SuanLuang I'm pretty sure I've heard U.S. officials brag about building an army in Ukraine to defeat Russia. Not sure exactly when, but it's been between 2014 and present. Probably some throwaway line by Lindsey Graham when he was all flushed with aggression and righteousness.
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The lack of authorization to strike into Russia tells everyone who's really running the show in Ukraine. It isn't Zelensky. It's the CIA and eggheads in think tanks in the USA and UK, who think they can "play the world" like a game of RISK. Unfortunately for the USA, the entire government is run by eggheads in think tanks, who think they can just run everything top-down, when NOT running everything top-down was what gave the USA its TRUE power: An economy that dwarfs all others. We don't HAVE to play "revolution in the 3rd world" games with the Chinese and Russians. Just be true to our Constitution, and nations will flock to our side, because things are so much better here than elsewhere. Instead, we're being dragged down into totalitarian, one-party rule. Former president Barack Obama WANTS that. Now he's attacking the 1st Amendment, which will put him in the Hall of Shame for U.S. Presidents. In fact, he will go down as the worst president, ever. We don't need to be MORE like the Chinese. We need to be LESS like the Chinese, and get back to our limited government-and-self-responsible citizens, who are free to speak, create, and do business, without being crushed by megacorporations in league with the U.S. Government.
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A year and a half ago? Alex must've spoken heresy against the safestest and mostest securest election, evarrrr!
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@Finlandlover-p7q You're not supposed to notice that. FAIK, NATO engineered the Maidan Coup and thought Russia was just the next domino to fall. FAIK, the abortive coup ended in the FSB round-up of infiltrators who were planning bombing and infrastructure attacks in Moscow. I heard one report of a major round-up, but nothing since.
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Delusions of grandeur. Ruinous disregard for the interests of anyone or anything beyond themselves. I think they're the mediocre inheritors of sophisticated systems of control that they operate like a spoiled rich kid in Dad's car.
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@johannuys7914 Hopefully this is the last gasp of those who raped the corpse of the former Soviet Union.
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The Western elites will stoop to anything and stop at nothing. That there will be radical shifts in power is in no doubt. What harm will be done while that power is pried from the claw-like clutches of the donor class remains to be seen. We're dealing with people who would gleefully burn it all down rather than relinquish control
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@ismaelamaro7728 They don't have to lose very many to exceed the replacement rate.
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Trump will get a deal done. He'll ask for the world and settle for something fair, because he knows how to negotiate. You can't really predict what his bottom-dollar deal is with Putin until he actually sits down with Putin, and the world is shocked that a fair and realistic deal is struck. And if goes neocon on us once he's in office, like every other president, he'll lose half of his base and face a Democrat-controlled Congress after the midterm elections.
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@matthewnewell4517 A distinction without a difference. You see the NATO brand on the horse and quibble about who made the saddle blanket.
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I'm glad I'm not the only person who INSTANTLY saw the rhetorical groundwork being laid for WWIII via ZNPP. These people are INSANE, RUTHLESS, and have a perverse disregard for human life.
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It's hilarious! The Gen Z that the establishment trained and is trying to appeal to with wokeness, don't want to be soldiers and make terrible soldiers. The sons who would make good soldiers are all contenting themselves fixing their own cars, hunting, and spending time on the shooting range, and want nothing to do with either 'woke' or undeclared wars of regime change around the world. Their only solution would be a draft, but if they try to start up a draft, the whole country (USA) will be up in arms.
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@louise_rose Meh. They're in a war for survival. Very asymmetrical situation. Of course they will stoop to anything. Wouldn't you fight by every means available if YOUR neighbor just occupied a big chunk of your country? I don't fault Zelensky for that. I DO fault the Ukrainian government for succumbing to the tactics of Western subversion and regime change. One thing we don't talk about is the extent of Russian de-stabilization of Ukraine that gave the CIA such a strong wedge to overthrow the old and influence the new. II really couldn't tell you how much of the civil war is drummed up by Russia, or how much the regressive policies of the Ukrainian gov't are influenced by Russian provocations. I don't think their hands are entirely clean. My bottom line is the strategic and economic realities of the situation. I don't think there's much that NATO can do about it. They lack the economic wherewithal to win on the ground, conventionally. My biggest fear is NATO will go nuclear and bring about the end of the world as we know it. Just a few people in holes and a bunch of cockroaches.
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@yurichtube1162 They need a scapegoat and a unifying cause to justify their continued positions of power. If they can't blame the coming fecal storm on somebody else, they're dead. My guess is they're way ahead of me on this, and the coming perfect storm will argue for the Strong Man they will only too happily provide.
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@Sammyli99 Yes. General Millicent has many virtues and not a single cosmetic defect that can't be cured by a pound of foundation and a push-up bra.
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... and a long, blonde wig.
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Given what Assad paid his people, it's hard to imagine Israel being unable to penetrate Syria's secrets with bribes. I think American troops sitting on top of Syria's oil and agriculture is the true humiliation. It's a humiliation shared by all the indigenous parties in the region, except Israel. I think the fall of Assad frees up Turkey to concentrate on the Kurds. I think there were problems that Assad could have cause the Americans that he did not, for fear of reprisal. I don't think your average jihadi or mercenary cell is going to feel constrained in the same way. Things might have just gotten more difficult for Israel and the West. The danger to the USA and Israel is if they try to take full advantage of the almost bloodless victory in Syria. I think Russia was wise to step back and not throw resources at trying to maintain Assad in power. It's much cheaper to undermine anyone trying to restore order in Syria than it is to re-establish order in Syria and try to make it a functioning nation-state. Also, now if there are raids on critical infrastructure for the extraction of the oil wealth they're sitting on, there is no national government to blame. They will be raids by independent jihadi/mercenary forces that can't be tied directly to Damascus. USA/Israel could get caught up in a costly game of whack-a-mole from the south AND the north, making the U.S. presence there a quagmire, with no one to really blame, but themselves.
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Yes. We're seeing the outgoing administration do what I feared: lashing out at the civilization it despises, since it can't remain in power.
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@harrietb2141 He leans to the Russian side. He insisted the Russians weren't preparing to invade Ukraine in the critical weeks before they invaded. Memorable moment in history, because U.S. Gov't intel and propaganda got it right.
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Command economies suck at everything except building weapons. Even that, they often get wrong, because of the top-down methods, and the fact that as the orders come down, every bureaucrat down the chain takes their cut. Pretty much all labor in China is slave labor. It's just a matter of degree and how well particular slaves are treated.
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@rockymount2393 Yes. If only we lived under dictators, all our problems would be solved.
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When I hear people talking about the sorry state of the Russian war economy, they do so without any sense of irony or self-awareness.
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Civilians walking up and down the street, unafraid and unthreatened.
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@johnbradshaw5900 I think the Trump admin would. Previous administrations could never permit such a thing, because they don't want the public to even hear questions that are "off-message." Trump's used to hostile questioning. It's all he ever got from MSM for years. I bet a Russian reporter would probably be more fair to him than legacy news reporters in the USA.
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It looks like Western leaders are trying to stretch Russia and its allies too thin. I don't think they have any real concept of thinly they are stretched and how unready they (we?) are for the kinds of fights they're picking. We can keep other nations from messing with us with our shock and awe, but we are in no position to fight everyone at the same time in their own back yard. We really shouldn't be fighting anyone or be engaged in proxy wars abroad. You want American protection? Put in for statehood. We take care of our own and we mind our own business.
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USA, Canada, and Europe have all spent themselves into penury, but their governments still spend money like it's water. That was the cleverest thing Putin did: Slashed government and balanced accounts, while he expanded Russia's industrial and resource base. Basic good governance. I've been predicting the Big Crash for decades, but somehow, the system has remained resilient enough to continue ticking on far beyond what it can realistically support. It has 80 years of momentum carrying it, but its fundamentals are very poor, right now. I don't see anything short of a big crash doing anything to reverse negative trends that are now baked into Western political economy.
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Yes. $300 billion wasted on death and destruction that could've been used to POSITIVE purpose.
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Western leadership, in league with captured media giants, is accustomed to imposing its hallucinations on the people at home. This has worked perfectly for generations, and western leaders are not at all used to being hindered by actual reality. If you have enough POWER, your lies ARE truth. Perception isn't reality, but perception shapes reality. But if perception and reality diverge too much, reality always bites. Sucks that things have to get really BAD before the truth starts asserting itself.
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The only way for increasingly unpopular ruling class to remain rulers is to create enough crises to bypass ordinary democratic checks on their hegemony.
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@mamacryright5740 USA just needs to un-elect Democrats and our energy problems evaporate almost overnight. USA's totally energy self-sufficient, if it wants to be.
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I think Putin's just trying to make hay off recent allegations that Denmark was used by USA to spy on Merkel in Germany. So big show about "We would never do anything like that." Standard propaganda coup for Russia.
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Too many ads.
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The permanent government runs itself. Even when the president thinks he's calling his own shots, all the information he has is only what his underlings choose to put in front of him. Any U.S. administration is actually run by the department heads and the Cabinet. See who'll be in the cabinet to see how the president will govern. This is not necessarily and indictment of the presidency, although it argues for a much-diminished role for the executive branch. The bigger it gets, the less it's actually being run by the man elected to run it. Great generals are always made by their staffs. Great staff = great general. The greatness of a general is their ability to recognize and build a great staff. I think the same goes for the president, which is why Trump loses a lot of greatness points in his first 4 years.
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@Ged-v8i Par for the course. FEMA spent all its money on immigrants and other stuff. The well is dry. Democrats spent the funds like they spent their campaign funds. Spent way more and got way less.
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@constantquestioning4010 Just because Google pushes Wikipedia doesn't mean Wikipedia is in any way an authoritative source.
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@clintloranrand951 The EU is authoritarian and suicidal. Joining the EU or staying in the EU is giving up your sovereignty to the WEF.
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He's not going to stop until he has real security guarantees, and, with the track record of Ukraine/NATO, that means Russia will guarantee their security without regard for the words coming from the West, including anything Trump says. If I'm Putin, I don't stop until I KNOW that I can crush any violations of any ceasefire/treaty. There can be no trust, not even with Trump, because his term only lasts 4 years. Cutting off military aid to Ukraine is a real concession that brings Russia much closer to its goal, more quickly. But I don't see Russia stopping until it has the most defensible front possible. That might be the Dnepr. It might be key high points in a pretty low-rolling landscape, without obvious geographical barriers other than the Dnepr and some (relatively) high points, so any attackers will have to attack uphill.
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"We're not gonna trade with you! Nyaaaaaahhhh! What's this? You won't sell us what we need when we need it? That's evil!"
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@zima3181 Total lack of self-awareness! Then again, Sleepy Joe can brag about a quid-pro-quo to protect his son and keep the gravy train running, and nothing happens. Maybe it's not lack of self-awareness. Maybe this "slipped out" because they know they can get away with anything and don't have to hide it. I heard the same story, but nothing came of it. Maybe it was just click-bait speculation.
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@zima3181 Don't let fecklessness of Western leaders blind you to territorial aspirations of Russia since before Lenin.
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