Comments by "Antony Wooster" (@antonywooster6783) on "Alexander Mercouris"
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30:50 There is no advantage to the USA to be had in Ukraine. The purpose of the Ukraine war was, as you have said yourself, to damage Russia and to collapse the Russian economy and thereby to remove Putin from power. Also NATO in Ukraine would have a very menacing position for launching nuclear weapons towards Moscow, This is only of importance to people who think they can win a nuclear war. The importance of Ukraine to the US public is very small, it is only important, very important, to a small clique. The West, the population of the west would not be damaged at all, by a Russian victory in Ukraine, on the contrary, anything that reduces the power and prestige of the aforesaid clique, can only be beneficial to them.
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1:22:26 It seems to me that the insecurity that plagues the World and has done so since 1945, is almost entirely caused by a small group of warmongers in Washington DC and their hangers-on in London and Brussels. These people form what I call for lack of a better term (I think that no one has given this phenomenon a name previously.) a "vicious circle". It consists of a complex of several parts; the USG, the firms making military arms, the members of the Congress and the Senate and the lobbyist industy, insofar as it relates to the arms industry. These components form a self-reiforcing ring-structure, where the congresscritters and USG officials are investing in the arms industry and profit from its dividedends and the notorious "Revolving door". The arms industry, in turn pays the Lobbyists to keep the congress-critters in line, by subsidizing their election expenses and the USG fuells the whole set-up by extracting taxes willy-nilly from the US public.
It seems to me that so long as this Vicious Circle exists, there will be no peace in the World. Because it is very stable, ruthless and self-protective, it is very difficult for anyone or any ordinary organization to dismantle it. However, the present and the near future are far from ordinary times. As there is almost certainly going to be a Russian victory in Ukraine, it seems to me that the Russians would be in a position to insist on the dismantling of this Vicious Circle, which could be done by making an International law that said that all firms making military equipment, had to be state owned and that no private individual or corporation was allowed to own shares in such a firm. I think it might be much easier to get agreement to such a measure than to agree to complete disarmament.
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51:55 When I was a National Serviceman in the 1950s, I was for a while in a unit that had recently returned from Korea. Our Sgt said to us on one occasion: "If you are fighting alongside the Yanks, beware of this: Suppose you are held up by a machinegun post, the British way of dealing with it, would be to try to sneak a group in behind it and attack it from the rear while the rest of the platoon, company or regiment, kept it busy from the front. The Yank's way of dealing with it, would be to call up the airforce and give them the coordinates of this machinegun post and then the airforce would come and destroy it. However, if you ever do call up the US airforce, to deal wih such an obstacle, you had better make f'ing sure that you have some bl*ody good cover, because they will flatten the whole area, including you, if you arent careful!"
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This war is not by any means or in any way, accidental. It was carefully prepared for some time, starting fairly early in the 21st century and worked on, together with a "perfect storm" of sanctions, using the war that the West knew they could provoke, to "justify" the sanctions. The purpose of the exercise was to cause the simultaneous collapse of the Russian economy and the defeat of the Russian armed forces on the battlfield, leading to unrest in Russia, leading to a color Revolution. The Collective West led by the US, seems to have been very confident that the plan would succeed and it seems that the planners assumed that the Russian government succeeding Putin's, would be more favourable to Western interests. The whole plan seems to have been founded on a totally false reading of the situation in Russia, the strength of the Russian armed forces and an equally false reading of the strength of the Ukrainian armed forces and the ability of the CW to sustain a war longer than a few months,
This scenario would explain why the CW was never interested in negotiations. They did not want negotiations, because what they wanted, was the defeat of Russia and Regime Change in Moscow. They are still not interested, so presumably, their aim has not changed.
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The situation faced by Lord Ismay was different, in that China hardly figured in his calculations, even if it did at all. Talk of Europe taking on Russia, with or without US support, is ignoring the Elephant in the Room. Europe would not be taking on Russsia, but Russia +, who knows who else besides, but almost certainly China.
Today, I learned that the White house has made it still harder for Europe to boost its production of 155mm ammo, by putting on hold LNG terminals in Texas. Thus reducing Europe's potential energy supplies. (To avoid making global warming worse, you understand.)
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I wonder if Tisdal has considered this: if, say, Poland were to send units of the Polish army into Ukraine to attack Russian troops, would the Russians be constrained to not attack military targets in Poland? Or suppose, for example, were the British, to send units of the British army, openly into the conflict in Ukraine, would the Russians feel free to shoot down planes bring them into Ukraine or even into Poland?
Another thing I wonder is: how much 25mm ammo for the Bradleys does the US have? Or TOW missiles? Likewise, I wonder how plentiful the supply of 105mm ammo there is for the French AFVs ? I wonder how one goes about replacing artillery with AFVs and the like? With Great Difficulty, I should imagine.
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1:20:50 Yes you are right to point this out. No doubt it would be better for the survival of the USA, in more or less its current form, but is that a good idea? I think that the only way the world is going to get peace, is if the US is forced to entirely reform itself, by which I mean drop the idea of "American Exceptionalism" and stop trying to prevent other countries (particularly China, but also e.g. Iran, Germany, Japan, India....) from developing economically and technically. I fear, I suspect, that the only way this will happen is if the US suffers a massive military defeat in the current conflict in Ukraine.
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1:02:43 The outcome of a "heavily armed, battle-hardened, belligerent Russia", would suit the warmongers in the West ONLY if they could benefit from it financially. In other words, only if they owned shares in the MIC. If, on the other hand they were taxpayers, like the rest of us, having been stripped of their shares, when the arms industries were all nationalized, then they would be as interesed in peace as anyone else. I hope, that the Russians will insist on this change, in any settlement of this war.
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One of the many ironies in the present situation is, I suspect, that the huge US arms manufacturers have since the end of WW2, been buying up and closing down European and other competitors, meaning that the CW, is much shorter than ever before, of firms that could make up these deficiencies, rapidly. I also suspect, as I said at the start of the sanctions campaign, that ammonia is an important raw material, for making explosives, as well as being needed for other things such as fertilizer, and about 40% of the CW's ammonia, came from Russia and Belarus. The other point is, that explosives contain a large amount of energy and this energy has to come from somewhere. So, cutting oneself off from a source of cheap energy, is not a very sensible thing to do if you want to make a lot of explosives.
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54:45 On the subject of the US being able to overwhelm the Russian in an air war. I, like you am not a military expert, however, that does not preclude my having an opinion. The Russians have a lot of ballistic missiles, against which the West has but poor defences. A US air war would require well maintained airfields, which I think would be rapidly and efficiently denied to them by Russian missiles. That would mean that the US 'planes would have to operate from US (British?) aircraft carriers,which would be vulnerable to Russian submarines and , probably, ballistic missiles too. There is also the question of Russian anti-aircraft defences as well. How extensive they are and how effective I do not know but they would be an extra difficulty. Penultimately, there is the Russian airforce, which while I read is rather small, I don't know how small and whether the people who say it is small know what they are talking about. However, it has some pretty advanced 'planes and expert pilots.
Then there is the question of how this air war by the West would be fuelled? I imagine that there are fairly limited stocks of aviation fuel in Europe and what there is, would be vulnerable to Russian ballistic missiles. In any case it would be neccessary to land most aircraft to refuel them and even if aerial refueling were possible, the refuelling aircraft have to land to tank up and if the airfields are damaged that is going to be difficult too. In any case 'planes have to land for servicing, replenishing weaopons and for the pilots to sleep. that needs good runways. Extra supplies would, I imagine, have to come by ship, running the gauntlet of the Russian submarines.
Finally, if it looked as though the Russians were losing, I do not suppose the Chinese would stand idly by and watch them go down to defeat and they have a very large airforce already, which is growing rapidly.
In addition, there is the question of the supply of weapons? Does the US have the stocks of air-air missiles and other ammunition it would need? Or is it in the same position as it seems to be with artillery munitions?
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I would not call this "statesmanship" by the US over the last few year; "Outstanding". I think the word "Egregious" would be nearer the mark! I cannot remember a more extraordinarily ham-fisted disply of incompetence and amateurism, the way US establishment has simultaneously tried to split the Russians and the Chinese apart and, at the same time attacked them, in all sorts of different ways!
At the same time, they have managed to alienate, all but their closest associates, by embracing wholeheartedly, the genocidal activities of their closest ally, Israel. Even some, who have been pretty closely associated with the US, even to the extent of ignoring the interests of their own countries to follow the US lead, such as the "G-7" have found it impossible to offer open support to the US's stance on the War in Gaza.
As though this were not enough, they having frozen the assets of Iran, Venezuela and Afghanistan, they gave, or rather made the British give, without the slightest legal justification, the Venezuelan gold reserves to their puppet Juan Guaido and then to cap it all, are now busy trying to find a "legal" loophole, which would allow them "legally" to steal Russia's reserves which were left in their "safe-keeping". All this when they are drowning in debt and an economic downturn, complicated by a strengthening dollar.
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41:14 This flexibility in the Russian High Command, contrasts with what I remember from WW2 and from my NS, in the '50s. For example, the Cambridge-based instrument-making firm called "Unicam", was charged with making gun sights for the Royal Navy. All through the war, Britain was very short of copper and Unicam found an aluminium alloy that stood up to sea water just as well as the bronze that was specified for these gun sights. They built an example and took it to the War Office and asked to be allowed to substitute the bronze, by this aluminium alloy. They explained that it was very difficult to find the neccessary material for these items, but they were told that the WO was quite satisfied with the sights made in bronze and as the Colonel who had designed them had died long ago, they had no one to authorise such a change and Unicam should simply fulfill the order as best they could.
In Cambridge, the Army decided to build a massive gun emplacement on the roundabout at the junction between Cherry Hinton Rd, Perne Rd and Mowbray Rd. Unfortunately, when they tried it out, they found that it had been built in slightly the wrong place! As a result, the gun could not get a clear shot down the road towards Cherry Hinton. So they cut down all the large trees on the North side of Cherry Hinton Rd.
At the time Britain had an acute shortage of fuel and wood and as many of these trees were very large the local inhabitants asked that they be given these trees. The reply they got was, that the army unit doing this work had orders to burn them and that was that! And they were burnt. It took many days to complete this waste of valuable resources.
I saw similar waste when my unit relocated from Italy to Germany, The Signal Platoon, had a large shed stuffed with high-tention batteries, to operate their radio sets. When we left, these were put in a roughly rectangular pile about seven metres long, four metres wide and four metres high and set on fire. I have simply no idea how much that cost the taxpayer, but it must have been quite a lot!
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The lack of weapons-making capacity made perfect sense, so long as the West did not instigate a conflict. Russia, China and Iran had no intention of starting a conflict. The lack of Weapons-making capacity (WMC) was covered up to disguise the fact that the chief product of the Arms industry was profits for the shareholders and officers of the Big Arms Companies such as Lockheed-Martin and Raytheon + a number of extremely expensive products for show and export.
As to "a staggering dereliction of duty and incompetance." you have to realise that as capitalist enterprises, WMCs are primarily responsible to their shareholders, not to the customers and not to the environment or the country. This is one good reason, why all such enterprises should be nationalized or at least be under very close governmt supervision. They should not have private shareholders. One has only to look at he situation in the USA, where you have the arms industry paying lobbyists, to pay congress-critters, to vote funds for the arms industry, who pay lobbyists and shareholders and the lobbyists, etc., etc. round and round, I'm sure you get the circular nature of this relationship, the whole set-up being financed by the taxpayers, while most of the money disappears into the pockets of the shareholders. Some might call it a "Merry-go-round" though I doubt many taxpayers would.
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31:13 Don't forget that these "bad decisions" were made by US puppets, in Brussels and NATO and were enthusiastically cheered on by the WoWs, the Warmongers of Washinton, who thought that their proxy Ukrainian army, was going to smash the Russian forces and bring about a Regime Change in Moscow, after which, with the help of a pliant Russian Regime, they would divide up Russia, into more managable sized countries, plunder them and live happily ever after on the proceeds. To anyone that doubts this scenario, as being more that my fantasy, I would say that this idea is not a secret! It was openly put forward in the 1980s and has remained as policy ever since. It is all published. I am not making it up.
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So it is! However, to a large extent, the USA has always discouraged its satraps from buying weapons from their own MICs. See as an example, how the British have been discouraged from cultivating (Have gutted!) their own firms making fighter jets. The result is that to a large extent, the 13 countries are mostly limited to US made weaponry. This makes it a much less formidable combo than it would be were Russia facing 13/34 countries each capable of supplying all the needs of its own military.
The other thing that plays very strongly in favour of the Russians, is the lack of corruption in the process of procurement of Weapon-systems. The Russian MIC is almost entirely state-owned. This means that the question of making a profit does not arise. The firms making the Russian weapons can spend what is needed to produce the result they want to achieve. Its effect on next quarter's share price does not arise. No one needs to go to Moscow to lobby for funds to do this or that. Either the funds are available or they aren't, and if they aren't, trying to bribe some committee member to make them available is probably a BAD IDEA! You would probably, do better to go to talk to the minister. The firm's remit is to make as cheaply as possible a really tough, really reliable, easy-to-use and easy-to-maintain weapon. The decisions about which weapons to produce, is probably decided by a committee whose working are secret and, which in any case, do not enrich the members of Parliament.
Contrast that with the situation in the USA, where you have lobbyists paid by the arms manufacturers, to get members of Congress to vote for very expensive projects that can be made by their firm, preferably in every state of the Union. Weapons, which look impressive and are state-of-the-art, but which will soon need either replacement or very expensive repairs. Making run-of-the-mill items like 155mm artillery shells is not wildly profitable and tends to get neglected, as the Ukrainians are now finding out, the hard way.
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I wonder about the supply chain for increased production of artillery shells. I really have no idea what the quantities are involved, i can only assume that they are large. Artillery shells are, as far as I know, made with a projectile which is filled, typically, with explosive. How easy is it to increase the manufacture of explosives? I should think the rawmaterials are easy enough to come by but it would need a lot of energy. The other part, the part that stays behind when the shell is fired, seems to be made of brass (an alloy of copper and tin). How are the supplies of copper and tin and where do they come from? I think the price of copper is already high, presumably this would increase it. Then there is the mercury for the detonators, where does that come from? Last I heard, the world was running out of mercury and these days, you'll need all the electronics for proximity fuses and so on. Machine tools are, I presume still made in the USA, (?) but most are, I believe, made in China. It looks to me like a pretty horrible nightmare for the logistics people.
Then there is the fact you'll need not only the skilled workers, but very careful skilled workers; as slapdash workers are not useful in ammunition production. You will also need, for obvious reasons, highly skilled, very experienced inspectors, which in such an environment is a dangerous and immensely responsible job. One dud inspector can demolish a whole factory in a matter of seconds. So of course can a careless worker or a broken machine. To me, he idea of setting up production lines, in a hurry, to produce explosive devices sounds, like advanced lunacy or at any rate, an accident waiting to happen.
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48:13 To put it in cartoonish terms it looks to me asthough the CW was a very large and proud, not to say "stuck-up" paper tiger, which thought itself invincible and went swaggering around poking a very large, real, flesh-and-blood bear, that it thought was weak and ill. Eventually it poked the bear once too often, in too sensitive a spot and got into a real fight. It is only now, that the paper is beginning to tear really badly, its wooden framework is starting to show through, its claws are blunted and its teeth have mostly dropped out, that it is starting to wonder, in a panic, "What comes next?"
"Ah! How are the mighty fallen!"
To put the cherry on the top of this mess, this poor, dilapidated beast has lined itself up with the most unpopular country in the world to help it commit unspeakable crimes which will, probably, haunt it for decades to come.
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58:08 I am sure you are right. This is a demonstration of the importance these people put on WILL! The alternative, you see is too horrible to contemplate, the alternative being, that it is impossible to defeat the Russians! Surely, if only there were enough WILL put into it we couold find some tanks, guns ammo, javelins, stingers, triple7s, HIMAS, Storm shadows, Shovels, what have you, that would turn the tide in Zelensky's favour! Couldn't we?
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1:26:56 The problem with the CW is that it is no longer (If it ever was) a proper democracy. Why do I say that? I say that because, to have a fuctioning democracy, the Demos, the voters iow, need access to reliable, accurate, information. The present set up is one where the source of "Information", for most voters is a monopoly of about six extremely wealthy corporations, who have their own firmly entrenched ideas, on what they want people to know and what falsehoods, they want people to believe. As there is, virtually no penalty, for telling the Demos complete lies, false suggestions and suppressing unwelcome news, the voting patterns are completely distorted in a way that is a mockery of the term"Democracy".
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52:23 Well, consider which of the states voting in the UNGA likes terrorism to the extent that they practice it? Which of them is sufficiently shameless to boast about it? There really are only very few that I can think of.
1) there is the United States which openly advocates torture, waterboarding, as a means of getting "Vital" information and is effectively getting its ally the UK to torture Julian assange at the moment, as well as the unfortunate, admittedly innocent inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay. 2) There is Israel, which is at the moment torturing the whole population in Gaza by depriving them of WATER! (And other things, such as life.)
3) Threre is Saudi Arabia which has various horrible means of putting people to death and is credibly alleged to have chopped up a journalist, with a saw, who was alive when they started.
I am not saying these are the only ones, there may well be others, but at least those are too ashamed of doing it to admit to it. (Shame being the wicked's tribute to virtue.)
However, that is by no means the only form of terrorism; Ethnic Cleansing is another and ther you can count Israel, the United States and the UK as practioners of that. (E.g. Gaza, West Bank and Diego Garcia.)
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53:30 You say you cannot understand why the CW is continuing with this war in the fashion that it is. Well, for what it's worth, I think the CW is behaving like an unsuccessful gambler. They cannot stop supplying Ukraine with weapons, because if they did the Russians would have won and admitting defeat would involve too much loss of face. They cannot continue supplying Ukraine, because they are running out of the weaponry to supply it, so they are heading for a huge crash. They could see it if they could bear to look at it, but it is easier to think that maybe, something will turn up to save the situation. So they go on supplying what they can while averting their thoughts from what is coming. "Kicking the can down the road", so to speak. In fact, it is almost an exact parallel to the financial situation, re de-dollarization.
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1@21:26 All throughout the period, since very shortly after the end of WW2, the "THREAT FROM RUSSIA" has been played up, firstly to disable the threat from left wing and communist parties in Western Europe, particularly in France and Italy and later simply to enrich the MIC and its shareholders. This game has been played determinedly and diligently, for the best part of seventy years with considerable success. However, what with the advent of the internet the MSM has been less and less able to "Fool all the people all the time". This has become very obvious, since the start of the Pandemic. (Perhaps because more people had more time to look at the internet?) If you look back at the Chat Columns of yesteryear, this change is brought into sharp relief. One sign that things were changing, in a direction that the ptb did not like, was when such organs as "The Guardian" and "The Independant" cancelled ("Temporarily suspended") their chat columns. Nowadays, even in pro-government videos, where they have chat columns, the proportion of dissident voices is quite substantial and in some videos, almost 100%.
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55:49 My impression is that the CW has all sorts of "plans" but most of them are so far-fetched that they are ashamed to talk about them! As the days tick by, it seems that yet another daft plan is exposed and so to say, bites the dust. Just recently, for example, there was the "plan" to get the Russians to agree to a ceasefire, so that Ukraine could be rapidly bundled into Neightoe and surruptitiously rearmed and then, would attack and defeat Russia! Problem is, that the Russians just refuse to go along with this! Then there was, a day or so before the most recent missile strike on Ukraine, (Which I should think has put paid to it.) the plan for European arms manufacturers, to take some of the seized $300billion and use it to set up an armarment industry in Ukraine! (A long way undergound, presumably?)
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25:16 Mislaid article; I have a similar problem, I have found that this is very helpful in keeping track of many diverse things. I have a file in "Open Office" (an analogue of "Word") I write a note of anything I want to locate, be it an article of clothing a tool, a video on the web, a book, an address... whatever; always with some keywords. Then if I want to locate it, I go to the file, go to the "search" mode (cntrl F) put the key word or anything that will be in the note, such as a date or a person's name or the colour of a pair of socks, press "Search" and in three or four key strokes at the most, I have the info I need. Typical entries are "Cables for the welder. In the toolbox beside the lathe. The Tartar Khan's Englishman, middle shelf, by the door, on the right." I find it saves me endless time trying to remember where I have put things. These files are endless so you will never run out of space and being machine-searchable, they are much quicker to search than real space.
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49:12 Of course it comes as a surprise to the Daily Telegraph and the like!! because early on in the conflict they determined that Brian Berletic, you, Alex and Col MacGregor, Scott Ritter and numerous other truth tellers, were all PUTIN SCHILLS. So, disbelieving everything they said, in fact, believing the exact opposite of what they said, became with them, an article of Faith, which it was unthinkable to doubt.
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Are you sure that the "leaders" of the CW HAVE any plans? It seems to me, that they have blundered into this war, with a sort of belief that: "It will be alright on the Night" or "We will just play it by ear and make it up as we go along!" Can you discern any coherent strategic thinking from the very start of this op?
Insofar as there seems to have been any strategic thinking at all, it seems to have been based on a wildly inaccurate assessment of both the Russian internal situation ("Russia is very weak. One good push and it will collapse.") and of Russia's international relations (We can get all the rest of the World to go along with our sanctions.") and an equally faulty assessment of the feelings of the World outside the CW, towards the USA ("Leave us out of your quarrels, we don't want to be involved.) and crucially, a wild overestimate of the depth of NATO's arsenals and an equally devastating underestimate of the strength and extent of Russian preparedness. From appearing to be "The Greatest and Most Powerful Military Machine ever Assembled on the Face of the Earth" to looking like a "Paper-Tiger", took just a few weeks! Still today as I write, Ukraine is bleeding out the arsenals of the CW and nobody seems to have a strategy to stop it or even so much as a tactic to slow it down, never mind how to repair the reputational damage or to restock the weapons stores in a reasonable time. In fact, were the West to try to do the latter, could it overcome its reliance on Russia and China for so many of the required raw material inputs?. Not in any reasonable time-frame, i would guess.
Thank you so much for all your hard work, chasing down and making available to me, news that I would never otherwise hear about!
A Very Happy and Peaceful New Year to You and Your Family!
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@jonthomas9708 Yes, I agree that is a risk. However, I think that reducing the persuasive, attractive, seductive power of the MIC for people not directly involved in it, (shareholders) would be worth taking that risk for. It would also reduce the financial power and the incentive of/for warmongers to make propaganda for war. After all, that governments organized to defeat the Axis Powers, was only to be expected. That was a response to a real threat. The "Drive for War" that has afflicted US policy since the end of WW2, was not a response to a real threat, it war an artifact. Remove the financial muscle from the group that made that "Threat", and I think you would probably so;lve the problem which looks otherwise almost insoluble.
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1:15:52 I realise that this, whole idea, may well be wide of the mark, but I have heard about some psychological research on a group of monkeys, in which the leader was an alpha-male and when he was removed, he was replaced by another alpha male. However, when all the alpha-males of the group were removed, they were not replaced as leaders by beta-males, but by females. I also read that the populations, of practically all the western world, are deficient in zinc and the sperm-count and sperm-virilty (activity) is declining at about 1% per year(!) and that the quantity of testosterone in the blood of most males in the western world is also declining at the same rate. Zinc is also important to female fertility.
Testosteron, the "male hormone" (Though females have some testosterone too.) is connected with, among other characteristics, aggression (Using the term in the sense of iniatiatve as well as belligerence) physical strength and leadership, among monkeys. Since humans are closely related to monkeys, it seems reasonable to assume that the same is true in human beings. Would this perhaps account for the current singular absence of outstanding leaders in the CW? As well as the declining birth-rate.? Might it also (I ask myself) also account for the rise of "wokeness" in the CW?
Another thing tending to produce "softer" males in the CW is the tendency of parents to keep their children at home, insted of letting them go out to play with other children in the street, because it is no longer considered safe to allow them to do so. This it seems, (according to some psychologists) to produce males who are less accoustomed to fighting and are more afraid of getting hurt.
As I said above, this maybe nothing to do with the case, but the absense of effective and competent leaders in the CW seems to be almost total and lacking in any rational explanation, so I offer it as a suggestion.
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44:51 What they are "clinging to" is the bedrock of US policy since, I don't know when, but certainly back to WW2, at the latest; which is to destroy, dismantle and loot Russia and China for the Great Glory of the USA, after which they will live happily ever after, for ever and ever, Amen. This is so fundamental to their thinking, that it is no wonder, no surprise at all, that they cannot give up on it. It will take a Regime Change in Washington for that to be contemplated and as yet there is no sign of that.
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You speak of the CW running out of weapons to send to Ukraine and indeed, it is difficult (for me) to see how that can be avoided if the war continues for much longer. Nor do I see how the neocons can really, stop sending arms before they run out of weapons to send to Ukraine. But what then!?! I would be very interested to hear what you think could/would happen if we find ourselves in a situation where the Russians are facing a NATO that is critically short of arms to defend itself.
It seems to me that the safest course for the CW, would be for the current governments to resign and for opposing (I.e more rational) governments be elected on a ticket of negotiating a real peace with the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, the Syrians and maybe others. This would , of course, only work if the Russians etc. were willing to "play along" (which I think they might.) If they were not, it seems to me, that all bets are off! I wonder what would be their minimum conditions?
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Even if it had been true a few years ago that the Russians and the Chinese deeply distrusted each other, the actions of the US, wouldhave driven them, willy-nilly into each others' arms!
They would have been forced, by the US to realise that they needed each other for support against the hostile actions of the US. The whole situation is rendered ridiculous by the US asking the Chinese for help against the Russians and asking them the buy US debt (!) at the same time placing sanctions on the Chinese and the Russians, stealing the Russian bank reserves and trying to prevent the the Chinese from progressing in commerce and technology. Asking them at the same time to buy US made chips and preventing theiir own companies from selling advanced chips to China, refusing US companies permission to use Chinese made telephone equipment and prohibiting the Dutch, Japanese and South Koreans from exporting EUV chip making equipment to China and putting huge tariff barriers on Chinese exports of cars and solar panels to the US.
As though that were not enough, they are encouraging, arming and inciting the "Independence" movements in Taiwan, Tibet and Hong Kong and their proxies are attacking (killing) their engineers working in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Myanmar.
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@JosephBisio "Uigurs slaughtering 1000 Han Chinese in the last few days", correct. They did not do that "a few says ago, they did that sort of thing some decade or so ago. Whether they took hostages too, I don't know. Nowadays, all the reports I see from Xinjiang, are of a safe and pleasant place. The Organization of Islamic States' reported on Xinjiang and said that the Chinese government was doing a good job in dealing with terrorists and they were satisfied that the majority of Muslims were content with the government. The UN sent a rapporteur to look at Xinjiang and the US refused to let the UN publish her report. They said it was "Biased", or something.
In any case, the US, which has been slaughtering Muslims in large numbers for decades and decades and has locked up admittedly INNOCENT Muslims in Guantanamo bay for more than ten years, is in no position to criticize ANYONE for abuses of Human Rights. As they pretend to be so bothered about the Chinese record in this respect, why are they silent on the treatment of the Palestinians?
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The reason why no war movement in the USA was able to stop a war and, at a guess, even Trump will be unable to stop a war, is the tightly bound, self-reinforcing structure in Washinton, that I have written about previously, calling it a "Vicious Circle", (VC) consisting of the MIC, the congress, the USG, the lobbying industry, the shareholders and employees of the MIC, the lobbying industry and its shareholders and employees.
This VC structure is very tightly bound, self-protecting and quite ruthless. It has survived and only grown in strength, since the end of WW2. (at the latest.) Until and unless it is totally destroyed, it seems to me, the World will never achieve peace, because the VC needs war and threats of war to survive and it is deternined to survive. Of course even if it were destroyed, war could still break out, but the chance of it happening, would be very much reduced.
The best way to permanently destroy it, would be to Nationalise all the arms manufacturing industries and make it illegal for any person or corporation (other than a government), to hold shares in an arms manufacturing company.
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Yes, maybe it rhymes and maybe the behavior is going to be similar on the US side, but, leaving an angry and victorious Taliban in possession of the battlefield is one thing and leaving an angry and victorious Russia in possession of the battlefield is a very different situation. If it happens and I don't see how else this ends, how are the Russians going to proceed? How is the US going to react to being openly defeated ? Those are THE questions!
There are, of course also other very important questions such as the sequilae of the Pandemic and questions around the actions of the medical authorities, both in the USA and in Europe and in the WHO, who will have to fight accusations of, together with Big Pharma, causing more deaths than the gang of four in the White House. These accusations seem set to ripen just about simultaneously with the revelation to the US and European public of the defeat in Ukraine. Add to that the growing financial crisis. Truly: "The air is full of chickens, coming home to roost!"
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The statement in he Economist that "Putin cannot be trusted" reminds me of Matilda in the morality poem by: Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) "MATILDA WHO TOLD LIES, AND WAS BURNED TO DEATH
MATILDA told such Dreadful Lies,
It made one Gasp and Stretch one's Eyes;
Her Aunt, who, from her Earliest Youth,
Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth,
Attempted to Believe Matilda:
The effort very nearly killed her,
And would have done so, had not
She discovered this infirmity."
Maybe, just maybe, people are starting to think that attempting to believe Zelensky may be similarly dangerous!
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Whilst I agree with you about the PlanA, I think you are discounting, unduly, (Or at least omitting) the western false belief in the feebleness of the Russian military. I think they thought that when the Russian forces came up against the Ukrainian forces, which had been "trained to NATO Standards" (Ra! Ra!) for eight years and battle=hardened by conflict with the Donbas Militias, they would turn tail and run or be cut to pieces in short order. After all, their "intelligence" agencies had be regaling their governments and people with stories of Russian military inefficiency, insufficiency, inadequate weaponry, cowardice and corruption, for years and by 24/2/22 their governments probably believed it.
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@danieljoseph4625 Almost, but here's a start:
US ATTACKED China in 1945-46, US ATTACKED Japan in 1944
US ATTACKED Korea in 1950-53, US ATTACKED China in 1950-53
US ATTACKED Guatemala in 1954, US ATTACKED Indonesia in 1958
US ATTACKED Cuba in 1959-60, US ATTACKED Guatemala in 1960
US ATTACKED Belgian Congo in 1964, US ATTACKED Guatemala 1964
US ATTACKED Dominican Republic 1965-66, US ATTACKED Peru 1965,
US ATTACKED Laos 1964-73, US ATTACKED Vietnam 1961-73,
US ATTACKED Cambodia 1969-70, US ATTACKED Guatemala 1967-69,
US ATTACKED Lebanon 1982-84, US ATTACKED Grenada 1983-84
US ATTACKED Libya 1986, US ATTACKED El Salvador 1981-92
US ATTACKED Nicaragua 1981-90, US ATTACKED Libya 1986
US ATTACKED Iran 1987-88, US ATTACKED Libya 1989
US ATTACKED Panama 1989-90, US ATTACKED Iraq 1991-2002
US ATTACKED Kuwait 1991, US ATTACKED Somalia 1992-94
US ATTACKED Croatia 1994 (of Serbs at Krajina)
US ATTACKED Bosnia 1995, US ATTACKED Iran 1998 (airliner)
US ATTACKED Sudan 1998, US ATTACKED Afghanistan 1998
US ATTACKED Yugoslavia 1999, US ATTACKED Afghanistan 2001-02
US ATTACKED Iraq 2002-06, US ATTACKED Libya 2011
US ATTACKED Syria 2013-19
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26:16 The US Military, consistently, for many years past, in fact back to 9/11, come to think of it, have used the "presense of IS, ISIS or ISIL as an excuse, to be in a place where the localinhabitants do not welcome them, "to combat ISIS". (E.g. Eastern Syria & Iraq.) If anyone still remembers the events of 2013-2016, they will recall that the US fought ISIS with such vigour, that the apparently unstoppable terrorists, carved out a large and rapidly expanding Califate, until the Russians pricked that bubble.
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@JosephBisio " What about that little Russian invasion of 2/24/22 ?? " That Invasion was provoked by the US whose proxy, the Ukrainian army, after spending seven and a bit years attacking the Russian-speaking Eastern provinces of Lugansk and Donetsk and killing thousands of them, threatened to wage an all out war on them and either etnicly cleanse the two provinces or masscre the inhabitants of them. The invasion was a pre-emptive strike to prevent this happenning.
" What about Chinese threats vs, Taiwan," Taiwan is a province of China, as even the USG admits. The Chinese "threat" to invade its own province (?) is that if the province declares itself an independent country the Chinese government will invade to put it back under central government control, (Which, I should think, is what any government would do in their place!) but the Beijing government has always stated that they would much rather negotiate a peaceful union with two seperate systems in the mainland and Taiwan.
" What about Chinese threats vs, Philippines, and Vietnam." Well what about them ? the relations between China and Vietnam are pretty good on the whole, true they have border disputes so do many other states in the region. The Chinese are not threatening to invade Vietnam. As to the Philipines there too the situation is similar. Until the Communists triuphed in China the US stated clearly that the islands and reefes that are disputed were Chinese. The Philipines have a new government which wants to please the US so they are upping the dispute over some islands. Thats about par for the course.
Please detail Iran's threat against Israel. How do they compare to Israels genocidal actions and threats in Gaza?
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1:06:07 The purpose of the persecution of the Russophone people of the Donbas was not to prevent them having autonomy, no, it was to provoke the Russians into protecting them by invading Ukraine, as they eventually did. This invasion was intended (By the CW) to justify the sanctions that they were anyway going to levy on Russia. The refusal of autonomy and the verbot of the use of the Russian language, were not conviction driven acts, they were a means to an end. Namely to get the Russians to invade Ukraine. This was part of a plan, (To crush Russia and divide it up and loot it ,a la 1990s.) which was based on faulty beliefs in the weakness of the Russian military and the Russian economy and the weakness of the political standing of President Putin, in Russia. Like many a plan based on faulty beliefs and information before it, it has cone unstuck. In your account of it, you make the mistake of taking the excuses that the Ukrainian Junta made for their actions, as the real reasons behind their actions.
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@feydrautha012 As you no doubt know, that story has many, many more inconsistencies than that. It is a really weird mixture of unproven allegations, insinuations, non-sequiturs, improbable coincidences and a weird poison (Deadly to all who come into contact with it!!) that sometimes kills people, sometimes makes people ill and sometimes doesn't. Murderers who seem able to kill at a distance and spend the night before doing their very complicated and dangerous work partying! A poison that is fatal except for a policeman who touched the doorknob, a cat and two guinea pigs which were in the house but were not noticed by the police search of the crime scene (!) but which necessitated the removal of the roof of the house that had it smeared on the front doorknob (!!), You really would not make this stuff up, I mean, not if you had any respect for your audience.
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1:12:22 Thinking about logistics; one of the reasons that the West is so strapped for production facilities to send more weapons and ammunition to Ukraine is the adoption by the West (and I suspect to a far lesser extent by Russia) of the philosophy of "Just-in-time Working". JITW implies no surplus anything; no surplus raw materials no surplus of half-finished goods, no surplus workers, no surplus space, no unused machines and that is just what they have! Add to that a lot of the raw materials and semi-finished goods they would need to supply materiel to Ukraine are sourced from Russia and China.
It is interesting to ask: "What is the attraction of JITW?" It is a bean-counters version of common sense. Any surplus raw material represents "unused capital", i.e. capital tied up and not earning interest. The same is true of surplus half-finished goods. Unused machines are unused capital, Un- or under-used workers are just an un-necessary expense. Surplus space, could be rented out for someone else to use or if it can't be rented out it may attract tax, so better destroy it/sell it. Probably, this reasoning cuts less ice in Russia? In the West, the overriding concern of bean-counters and directors is the bottom line and the stock market price. Probably, the Russian are working on a longer timeline.
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The Hur (Should that be "Hur?") verdict shows beyond all reasonable doubt, that the president, who it seems would be hard-pushed to run a sweet shop, is not running the USA. This means, that US "Democracy" is nothing of the sort, as the man elected to be in overall control is not. It also seems, that the woman elected to be his deputy, his stand-in, his vice President, is not running things either. As far as I can see (and I am largely ignorant of US Politics) the people who appear to be running the country's affairs, are all apointees. If it is not Nuland, Blinken, Sullivan and Burns who are in control, I wonder who is? Hunter?
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53:00 Since when has the USA developed this dislike of dictators? As you yourself will be very aware, the USA supported the Colonels in Greece after WW2. In addition, they supported and protected a lot of dictators such as Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal, the Shah of Iran, King Farouk of Egypt, King Idris of Libya, Peron of Argentina and later his wife Evita, Marcos of the Philippines, Chiang Kai-shek of China, Syngman Rhee of South Korea, a succession of dictators in South Vietnam and so on and so forth. All of these were unashamedly Dictators. In addition the CIA has installed other dictators in other countries. So what has changed? Is it, perhaps, that dictators now are not Woke enough? Don't they like LBGTXVZ manifestations? Or are they opposed to installing separate toilets for 72 different genders? Perhaps someone in these comments can inform me.
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1:32:20 The Conflict did not begin (as I know you know) in 2022 but in 2014. I wonder why the Russians are demanding security for everyone in EUROPE? By the time Russia has defeated N@0 in Ukraine, it will in effect, have defeated N@0 altogether, so why not, while they are at it, demand security guarantees for everybody? As I have said before, there is one easily identifiable threat to World Peace, which is privately owned arms manufacturers. They have a built-in need for wars, threats of wars and rumours of wars to maintain their profitability. They are not a neccesary part of society and, in my view, should be banned world-wide, They also have a clear record, particularly in the modern United States, but I dare say, that if one looks carefully, you can find their malign influence going back into ancient history. Until they are banned, I fear that the World will not know peace for any great period of time. I am not alone in understanding this, General (President) Eisenhower too, understood this.
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32:51 I heard a somewhat similar story from two men who fought in the Resistance in WW2 in Belgium. There was a coal mine which had all its machinery driven by compressed air to avoid sparks that might cause explosions and to provide ventiliation at the same time. This mine was particularly important, because the coal was suitable for producing fuel for Jet Fighters. The Resistance was given orders from London, to destroy the functioning of the mine , but in a way that would not permanently disable it, "As the owners of the mine, who were in London would not allow that" (!).
The compressed air was produced by a turbo-compressor, driven by an electric motor and it was housed in a small building near the entrance to the mine. The entrance to the mine and the compressor house, were inside an electrified barbed wire fence guarded by a unit of the Gestapo. The Resistance men did their research and found that the electricity that supplied the compressor, went from the sub-station for the mine to the compressor house by a tunnel which was blocked at both ends.
They gambled that the Gestapo did not know of the existence of the tunnel and to make sure that the great majority of the guards would be watching the fence they distributed leaflets announcing that they were planning a mass attack on the mine on the night they were planning to attack it.
On the night in question, about five men IIRC, went along the tunnel and lifted the manhole cover that gave access to the inside of the compressor house and overpowered the two men looking after the compressor. They then put 1kg explosive charges on both ends of the compressor and another on the exposed bearing of the electric motor and two more inside the crates containing the spare compressor. (The owners of the mine had contacted the Swiss firm that made the compressor to ensure that no spare would be supplied before the end of the war.) They then set time fuses and left the same way they had come, taking the two mechanics they had captured with them. When the explosives went off, the turbine disintegrated and the flying turbine blades killed a large number of the Gestapo guards.
One of the men telling me this story said: "And one of the most satisfying things about it was, that when I went later with an American unit, to Aachen we passed dozens of Messerschmitt 262s in hangars on the roadside, that had not been used, that could not be used, because there was no fuel for them."
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20:17 "there hasn't been the incentive to keep those factories" Yes, there hasn't, because the heads of government and NATO, knew, despite all their scary rhetoric, that the Russians were not planning on invading the West. Not even a weeny little bit! If they had thought that the Russians were really planning what they said they were planning, they would have been guilty of a gross dereliction of duty!
The late Victorian governments faced much the same problem with respect to the production of small arms. When they had a small colonial war, they had to go to the manufacturers of rifles (sporting gun manufactures) and get them to produce a large number of rifles in a short space of time, with all the problems you could expect from that MO. In particular, having all these guns from different manufacturers, meant that it was not possible to cannibalize damaged rifles, i.e. use parts from one damaged piece to repair another damaged one. Around 1880, they decided that they had to solve this problem, once and for all and they decided that the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich should make the army's rifles. They sent a commission to Massachusetts to buy the most up-to-date and accurate machinery available. This arrangement solved the problem and was only ended in the 1950s, when the same machines were still making the bolt action Lee-Enfield rifles used by the British army at that time.
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About the decision of the British government to send depleted Uranium weapons to Ukraine. This may look like a decision which may have a very damaging effect on the people of the Ukraine and Russia. What the "people" who made this decision may not have taken into account is that a lot of food that is grown in Ukraine is eaten in Europe. The danger of DU is that when a tank is hit by a DU shell, the DU catches fire and DU smoke settles on the ground. It then becomes part of the soil and some of it s absorbed by the plants that grow there. This food may be eaten directly by humans (e.g. as bread or flour) or it may be fed to animals, Either way, it may end up in an unborn child and if a single atom decays in a cell of that child, it may cause a mutation resulting in a hideous mutation, as Iraqis are finding out at the moment. Since DU is only mildly radio-active, it has a very long half-life, so this incredibly evil decision, may have consequences all over the world, for centuries to come, but particularly in Europe.
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There needs to be an international law against private arms manufacturers. They have proved over and over again that they cannot be trusted. The business of all private capitalist firms is to make money. Arms manufacturers make most money when there is a war or the threat of a war. Therefore they work assiduously to stir up trouble, the more the merrier!
Governments on the other hand, (When not corrupted) are concerned to spend as little money as possible. Therefore, government owned arms firms are concerned to produce arms which are effective, robust, easily serviced, cheap to produce, easy to use or better still (if possible given the political situation) to downsize!
Another idea, perhaps, easier to achieve, is a law banning politicians or politicians' families from owning shares in arms companies or "working" for them, even after they retire.
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55:21 Before the 1880s, the UK government used to get into a war and then find it did not have enough e.g. rifles. So, at vast expense to the taxpayer, it would dish out contracts (No doubt to the right people) to manufacture rifles. Then when the war stopped the orders would cease and the companies either went bankrupt or turned to making something else. Sometime in the 1880s Parliament decided to set up a commission to look into ways of improving this situation. One of their particular requirements was that the rifles should have interchangeable parts. I.e. if a two rifles were damaged beyond repair the undamaged parts from both could be cannibalized to make another rifle, This required a degree of precision that British machine tools of that time did not have. Eventually, the commission decided that the idea of sourcing standardized rifles from different private companies was a non-starter and they said that the manufacture of guns should be nationalized and the work be given to The Royal Arsenal. They also found that they could get machine tools capable of the required precision, from the machine tool factories in Massachusetts. These machines were bought and installed in the Royal Arsenal and produced rifles and other guns throughout the WW1 and WW2 and were still in use when I started doing my National service.
In the 1980s I worked in the maintenance department of an English factory, employing about 150 people. I was told that the department had no current head, as the young, newly qualified Engineer who had been given the job, had been shown the department's only lathe (made sometime during Victoria's reign) and had asked: "But where is the keyboard?" On being told that that was not the way it was controlled he had resigned.
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