Comments by "Antony Wooster" (@antonywooster6783) on "Alexander Mercouris" channel.

  1. 55:03 The US adninistration could not have implimented any of the Minsk Agreements because that would have meant abandoning their plans to conquer and dismantle Russia, which have been maturing for God only knows how many decades, (7 or 8 at least.) That was never going to happen. For example it would have meant Victoria Nuland abandoning her life's work.
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  2. 1:09:05 It is no wonder you cannot remember a time when the USG has been as chaotic as this, because this is an absolutely different situation to any there has been since WW2 ended. The US has never tried to fight the Russians militarily before, and they have never been so obviously been rendered disarmed. They have never been so short of finance before. This is a unique situation in so many different ways.
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  3. 19:40 It can work against your own side's morale too. I once met a Col West who had been part of the D-Day invasion of Normandy as a Tanker and he described how in the first contact with the much ridiculed German tanks they were utterly dismayed to find that the Panzers were much harder to destroy than they had been led to expect. In fact, he said, you could, practically, only destroy them from behind. If they were facing you, they were far more likely to destroy you than vice versa.
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  4. I wish you and Alex, a very satifying and fulfilling New Year. There seems to be no point in wishing anyone a peaceful New year! But none the less I wish you both and your families all the very best of luck!
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  5. 23:49 "Why would they want to do that anyway?" Two points: If the Houthis launch enough rockets and or drones at the US warships they wil either overwhelm the US defences, or exhaust the US stocks of anti missile munitions. Secondly, even if they fail to do that they will use up much more valuable US ammunition and before long, the ships will have to leave and go to some port to stock up. All of which will help the Palestinians and the Russians and worry the US and Israel.
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  6. 33:50 "Dear Friend". I have read accounts of other people meeting with Putin and people meeting with Xi and in both cases, the writers remarked on what pleasant people both of them came across as. Could be that this term is meant sincerely.
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  7. 26:26 The constraints ARE greater today than they were in 1964 and they are called Russsia, China and Iran. Legality, has never bothered the US at all. and if anything, the US is more brazen today than it has ever been.
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  8. 49:49 The reason for the much reduced respect for the USG shown by the governments in the Middle East* is surely down to the fact that the war in Ukraine has shown that the idea of the US's invincibility, is a myth. *And all over the Global South.
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  9. Talking about Huawei; I saw an article about it on Chinese TV. It is a very interesting company. All its employees are shareholders in the company. It recruits in the following way; it holds programming competitions in various countries around the World with quite large cash prizes. After the competition, the best 20 or so, are offered jobs with Huawei at pretty enormous enormous starting salaries. The result is, that not only has Huawei most of the best talent, but the rival companies are left with the less able programmers. Its no wonder to me that they go from strength to strength.
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  10. 24:49 Ben Wallace could well be right in saying that if (When) Ukraine loses, it will destroy the "Rules Based International Order". (RBIO) Incidentally, I have always had the impression that Ben Wallace always took his information directly and exclusively from Kiev's military intelligence sources.
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  11. Of all the stupid things a commander can do, going into battle expecting to lose, must rank pretty high up the list!
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  12. 1:12:16 The effect of the US ban on Huawei in North America and the CW, has not been to destroy Huawei but to leave the US in particular and the CW in general lagging well behind China in the implementation of 5G. Whether you think that is good or bad for China, it is not what the US intended.
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  13. 42:16 The extraordinary thing to me, is not that there are rumours of a Maidan III in the works, The really extraordinary thing is, that it has not taken place long since. It must be a real tribute to the fanatical motvation of the leaders of the army that they have gone on fighting the Russians so long, in spite of shortages of weapons, munitions air-cover and more or less everything else while working under patently lunatic orders. I suppose it is an object lesson, in how hard it is to get people im the grip of an ideaology, to see the error of their beliefs. It is certainly puzzling!
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  14. 25:26 I understand that a former Israeli prime minister spoke the other day of Israel "weaponizing the Holocaust." Le mot juste!
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  15. !!:54 Thinking about Lavrov's comments I am reminded of a mixed metaphor I heard many years ago and have never had a use for until now: "He smelt a rat, he saw it floating in the air, so he nipped it in the bud!"
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  16. 34:43 The Pentagon, around that time, I have read went so far as to ask various US contractors to tender for reconstructing and adapting the Naval Base in Sevastapol.
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  17. 1:10:59 So. Not merely did the Oil Price Cap not work, but the west lost the insurance business as well.
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  18. 49:42 What is the purpose of all these deliveries of weapons to Ukraine from its NATO partners? I heard a video about a week ago, by an American ex-marine who had been fighting in Ukraine as a mercenary, at a fairly senior level, and he gave it as his opinion that it was mostly "virtue signaling" on the part of the various countries. He added that the stuff that was arriving looked to be in pretty poor condition and as though these deliveries were being used to clear redundant and obsolete equipment from the countries' storage spaces.
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  19. 2:31 It really is like Winston Smith rewriting the back numbers of The Times in the British Library in the novel "1984".
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  20. 49:34 Pity the poor Iranians, negotiating with the US, which almost never honours an agreement. Good Luck with that!
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  21. Just a thought experiment; Suppose the Russians were to conquer the whole of Ukrain up to the Polish, Hungarian,Romainian and Slovak borders, and said to the governments of each of these four states: "Sign a peace Treaty with us, We don't want to have to invade you but, If we have to, (For our own security.) we will." What do you think would be the response? Would any of these four countries rely on the US coming to their rescue? Would the memory of what Iraq looked like after being rescued by the US and Neightoe weigh on their minds? Would Neightoe care to fight the Russians, to stop them signing such a peace treaty?
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  22. 1:06:07 Can you imagine the reaction if a Russian think-tank were to propose Russia, after settling th Ukraine problem, presumably, dividing up Britain into English, Scots, Welsh and Irish statelets?
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  23. 24:32 In about five years time or maybe earlier, the truly enormous oilfield that the Chinese have just recently discovered in their own country, should be coming on stream.
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  24. 2:37 "That would give Russia its first major prize in more than a year and a half" There you are! Reuters cannot even get the length of the battle right! Here we are, a year and four days into the battle and Reuters calls it "a year and a half"!
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  25. 57:52 The prestige, the geopolitical position of NATO as the "Absolutely undefeatable" military conglomeration that it had before February 2022 has already been shot to pieces. Imoh it will never recover from that revelation, the shock may even be fatal.
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  26. 41:07 Well, it has become so obvious that this is a war between NATO and Russia that, perhaps, he has simply abandoned the "polite fiction" that it was "just a war between Ukraine and Russia with NATO as an interested onlooker."
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  27. 1:07:31 I remember that when the first transistor radios came out , if you opened one up, the interior was a mess. A real birds' nest of wires. Shortly after they firs came onto the market, some "Trannies" were imported from the USSR and people in the electronic profession were astonished at how neatly made they were. A typical remark was: "They look like military electronics!"
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  28. 1:12:20 I saw an article yesterday, I think it was Tucker Carlson, discussing the silence of the MSM about the train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio. He pointed out that the owners of most of the MSM were the self same big corporations that owned the railroad that had the crash.
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  29. 30:00 Are you not going to mention that about three days ago, now, the Iranians announced that they had a nuclear device and a suitable rocket to carry it? That seems to me to be very significant news!
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  30. 30:25 The Patriots in Saudi Arabia, failed to protect important oil installations from Houti missiles/drones and were withdrawn from Saudi (I think) to take them to Ukraine. They sound to me, like rather sub-standard defensive weapons. In any case they are effective over a pretty limited area and protect only a limited arc of territory. I.e. they do not detect things coming their way over 360°. but only in an arc of some 70° in front of them. (I am writing from memory which may be faulty on the figure but not wildly so.)
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  31. 37:18 Come to think on it a bit further, the US gets very upset if the Europeans buy their weapons from anywhere except the US and N@0 is not actually in the business of defending anyone, they have only ever attacked and targets chosen by the US at that!
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  32. The ISW is an American Organization, and the American way is to boost oneself as more wonderful than one really is. Russian understatement is SO IRRITATING because it means that one cannot say things like: "the Russians said they were going to be in Dniepro last month and they still arnn't there!" Only yesterday, I had to correct someone who said that "The Russians said in 2022, they were going to take Kiev in two days and they still haven't managed it!"
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  33. @sox3443 "Freedom" is often spoken of as an absolute, but it is not, Freeedom is if you like a two-sided coin. If i am free to go around robbing people, they are not free of the fear of being robbed. You can say that one person's freedom means someone else's restriction of freedom. In practical societies you need both rules and agreed freedoms and these vary from one society to another. In Ukraine there are laws restricting the freedom of inhabitants to speak, or educate their children in their own native language. E.g. Russian, but also Hungarian, Romanian and Greek, Maybe also other languages but anything except Ukrainian is forbidden. This is a gross restriction of the freedom of Ukrainians which is impossible rationally to justify.
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  34. 47:22 They were also spreading "Western Values, Democracy and Human Rights" to numerous other countries such as Chile and Argentina and Nicaragua and Congo and Mosambique, etc., etc. Oh! I forgot Greece!
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  35. 7:50 Repairing the Ukraine power grid. This, I predict, will be difficult. (Until the war is over.) Nearly all the firms that make high-power transformers (Such as are found in substations.) are Chinese. Any others that exist, will need insulated copper wire, almost all of which is made in China. I think, the Indians make silicon-steel that you need for transformers, perhaps they could supply that?
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  36. 51:23 A strategic defeat for Ukraine will be a strategic defeat for NATO and a strategic defeat for the US.
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  37. I would add: Wealth = goods and services. Goods and services are made/given by working people working. All the wealth there has ever been or will be, was/will be made by working people working. Working people should be able to say how the wealth they make should be used. Money is not the same thing as wealth. It is way of handling wealth and is presently used to control people. Money is worth what it will buy. Banks making money/credit out of thin air and lending it at interest, is a very sophisticated form of robbery and is bound eventually to lead to a debt-crisis.
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  38.  @michaelkatz275  Eva Bartlet, Patrick Lancaster and I think, Graham Philips have all reported on this.
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  39. 1:06:36 I would be very interested to know whether Navalny was vac*inated while he was in Germany against Cov-19 and if so with what. There is throughout the CW, an excess (10 - 20%) of deaths* of people, particularly about the same age as Navalny (I.e. "the prime of life") starting in 2020-21. It is "very puzzling" and "difficult to explain" but it seems to be causing people much healtier (apparently) than Navalny to frop dead in TV studios and sports fields and to die unexpectedly in their sleep at home. *Deaths from all causes, as compared to the average for 2015 - 2019.
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  40. Perhaps what we see in the USA is not a society governed by a system of Law but a Rules-Based Order?
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  41. 1:04:59 The US is also involved in proxy wars in Myanmar and Thailand.
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  42. 1:24:19 I was told, back in the 1950s, by two people who visited North Korea in the course of their work, that the North Koreans had a surprisingly large and sophisticated chemical industry based iirc, on coal and limestone, out of which they made "almost everything they needed". They have many mineral deposits and a large hydroelectric plant on the Yalu river.
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  43. My impression is that the British Ruling class, whose members typically have but very limited contact with working class people, are quite exaggeratedly afraid of the working class. They bear in mind the way the French working class dealt with their aristocracy and the way the Russian working class with communist leaders, dealt wth their aristocracy and they fear what would happen if the British working class found out all the ways they had been duped and exploited. Aneurin Bevan, (Later Minister of Health in Attlee's government) or maybe it was Ernest Bevin (Later Foreign Minister) (I always get them muddled up.) wrote a paper about this in 1942, I believe. He was afraid that the working class had been armed and hardened in battle and would be coming home after the end of hostilities, armed and he suggested that it would be neccessary to have at least a simulacrum of Socialism for them to come home to, to avoid the danger of a revoulution. Maybe this is what scares Ben Wallace?
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  44. 49:29 The G7 is dominated by "Dual-passport holders" (If yerno wot i meen sorta thing like!). What do you expect from them? Balance? Fairness?
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  45. 1:02:47 Time was, when any power at all, would have been scared at the thought of attacking N@0 troops. It seems that the leaders of the CW have difficulty grasping the idea that those days have gone. This is one of the truly enormous effects of the war in Ukraine. It has totally changed the perception of N@0. It is no longer the "invincible" power, that it was so long perceived to be.
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  46. 50:48 I suspect that the reason the US was/is so obsessive about getting Crimea is that they really, really want Sevastopol!
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  47.  @redscope897  When did NATO ever defend anyone? Answer: So far it has only attacked.
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  48. 1:18:40 this is not "still making gradual progress". A couple of years ago, it was confidently stated that China was ten years behind the West and Taiwan in chip technology, but although the West and Taiwan have advanced somewhat since then the Chinese have almost caught up with where they are now. This in spite of the US embargoing the Dutch manufacturer of chip-making machines from supplying the Chinese market with their most advanced machines. This latter ploy is, I think , in the process of breaking down, as the Dutch are unwilling to give up their most lucrative market and are alarmed that the Chinese are threatening to overtake them anyway, as a result of their own research.
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  49. 53:03 You could say, "The Americans led them down a blind alley and then doubled back and left them deep in the doo-doo"!
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  50. Listening to your descriptionof Atritional war, it occurs to me, that it is much easier to do this if you are operating close to home, than if your doing it from the other side of an ocean.
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