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

  1.  @tinaforbes1059  Countries don't make money. Just a small number greedy and corrupt politicians and their cronies.
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  2. 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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  3. 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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  4.  @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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  5. 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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  6.  @ruffknight9549  ... in everything but ideas.
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  7. 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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  8. More like many final acts of pure recklessness.
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  9. 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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  10. 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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  11. 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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  12.  @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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  13.  @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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  14. 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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  15.  @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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  16.  @dnickaroo3574  Nonsense. There are other good trade partners for the Aussies. Nobody needs China.
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  17.  @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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  18. Commercials every 3 minutes! Hooray!
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  19. 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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  20. USA doesn't need Syrian oil. Just a handful of big companies.
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  21. 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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  22. 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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  23. 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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  24. Not all of America. But the bureaucrats and politicians.
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  25. 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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  26. 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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  27. 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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  28. 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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  29. 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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  30. 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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  31.  @adamkallin5160  Agree.
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  32.  @SuanLuang  Boeing RC-135V looks like a 4-engine passenger plane, so some kind of AWACS?
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  33.  @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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  34.  @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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  35. 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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  36. A year and a half ago? Alex must've spoken heresy against the safestest and mostest securest election, evarrrr!
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  37.  @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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  38. 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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  39.  @johannuys7914  Hopefully this is the last gasp of those who raped the corpse of the former Soviet Union.
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  40. 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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  41.  @ismaelamaro7728  They don't have to lose very many to exceed the replacement rate.
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  42. 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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  43.  @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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  44. 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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  45. 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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  46.  @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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  47.  @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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  48.  @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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  49. ... and a long, blonde wig.
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  50. 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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