Gangsters and Philanthropists – Remember the Covid Lies?

Remember the promises, the lies, the scare mongering, the hysterics? 

Straight from the Mouth of the Cabal

by Karl HAEMERS via Unz Review

In a recent The Occidental Observer essay titled “Life Without Jews: The Amazing Adventures of Israeli Trans-Pedophile and Tampon-Fetishist Jonathan Yaniv,” author Tobias Langdon recounts the grotesque and perverted—and typically Israeli Jewish—behavior of this being who had the “attention of millions of people around the world” for just one of his/her vile acts.

Inspired by the topic, here we will examine the outrageous behavior of another Israeli Jew who has attracted the attention of many millions around the world. Yuval Noah Harari is described as an “advisor” to the globalist transhumanist cult of power known as the World Economic Forum, whose Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab has openly stated it is developing “a fusion of our physical, biological and digital identities” for all humankind. Amazingly, Harari’s public statements, many of them made from the main stage at the annual World Economic Forum conference where he has become a favorite keynote speaker, are far more outrageous and outraging than even Schwab’s. Almost half the age of Schwab, Harari at 46 is less likely to be an “advisor” than a spokesman for the sociopathic transhumanist futurology the World Economic Forum is not only envisioning, but increasingly imposing over today’s world through its many partners.

Harari’s popularity and influence is immense. From his About website:

Prof. Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, philosopher, and the bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, and the series Sapiens: A Graphic History and Unstoppable Us. His books have sold 40 Million copies in 65 languages, and he is considered one of the world’s most influential public intellectuals today.

The World Economic Forum’s bio on Harari further boasts that he has published with the Guardian, Financial Times, the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Economist and Nature magazine. New York Times is of course by the Jewish Sulzberger family, the Economist is still 21% owned by the Rothschilds with Evelyn de Rothschild Chairman for over fifteen years until the late 80s, Nature magazine was co-founded by the early transhumanist Thomas Huxley (grandfather of Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World), the Guardian “has continued its long-standing tradition of liberal [i.e., radical] politics” (primarily globalist), and the Atlantic is currently majority-owned by the Emerson Collective which promotes non-White immigration, works to “combat the achievement gap among students of color,” and engages in “philanthrocapitalism.” Harari has found suitable outlets for his transhumanist ranting, and/or they have found him.

Harari’s first popular book Sapiens is derived from lectures he gave to his undergraduate world history classes. He began his academic career in the program of the Israeli Defense Forces known as Atuda, which allows high school graduates to defer their mandatory conscription in the IDF to attend university, provided they study topics applicable to the military. Harari published such works as “Strategy and Supply in Fourteenth-Century Western European Invasion Campaigns” in the Journal of Military History, and “The Concept of ‘Decisive Battles’ in World History”, among many others. He was exempted from IDF service due to “an undisclosed health problem” but nothing “catastrophic.”

He lives with his husband on a moshav, an agricultural co-operative, outside Jerusalem. Being gay, he says, helped him to question received opinions. “Nothing should be taken for granted,” he has said, “even if everybody believes it.”

Harari’s husband is also his agent and manager, Itzik Yahav. “He likes to say, ‘You don’t understand—Yuval works for me!’” Yahav declined an invitation to have Harari participate in the World Economic Forum, at Davos, in 2017, because the proposed panels were “not good enough.” A year later, when Harari was offered the main stage, in a slot between Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, Yahav accepted.

At his 2018 addresses at the World Economic Forum, Harari’s outrageous statements found their greatest reach. He participated in four speaking events that year, including two panels titled “Questioning Our Human Future” and “Putting Jobs Out of Work.” It was Harari’s keynote lecture “Will the Future Be Human?” that should concern the rest of humanity most. This is Harari’s opening statement:

We are probably one of the last generations of homo sapiens. Within a century or two, Earth will be dominated by entities that are more different from us than we are different from neanderthals or from chimpanzees. Because in the coming generations, we will learn how to engineer bodies and brains and minds.

Harari speaks with certainty and even excitement about processes for which humanity should have a choice. In his view however, this transhumanist future is inevitable.

  • “This will be decided by the people who own the data. Those that control the data control not just the future of humanity, but the future of life itself.”
  • “We have reached the point where we can hack… human beings and other organisms.”
  • “…the rise of machine learning and AI are giving us the necessary computing power. And at the same time, advances in … brain science are giving us the necessary biological understanding.”
  • “You can really summarize 150 years of biological research since Charles Darwin in three words: Organisms are algorithms.”
  • “When the infotech revolution merges with the biotech revolution, what you get is the ability to hack human beings.”
  • “You will not be able to hide from Amazon, Ali Baba and the Social Police.”
  • “Once we have algorithms that understand me better than I understand myself, they could predict my desires, manipulate my emotions, and even take decisions on my behalf. And if we are not careful, the outcome could be the rise of digital dictatorships.”
  • “If democracy cannot adapt to these new conditions, then humans will come to live under the rule of digital dictatorships. Already at present, we are seeing the formation of more and more sophisticated surveillance regimes throughout the world.”
  • “By hacking organisms, elites may gain the power to re-engineer the future of life itself. … This will be the greatest revolution in biology since the beginning of life four billion years ago.”
  • “Science is replacing evolution by natural selection with evolution by intelligent design. Not the intelligent design of some god above the clouds, but our intelligent design. … These are the new driving forces of evolution.”
  • “If we don’t’ regulate (data), a tiny elite may come to control not just the future of human societies, but the shape of life forms in the future.”
  • “As a historian I can tell you two things about the past: … it wasn’t fun … and it’s not coming back. So nostalgic fantasies are really not a solution.”
  • “We had better call upon our scientists, our philosophers, our lawyers and even our poets—or especially our poets—to turn their attention to this big question: how do you regulate the ownership of data? The future not just of humanity but the future of life itself, may depend on the answer to this question.”

Thus Harari ends his address to the WEF in 2018 with a big question. But there can be little question that the answer of who will regulate the data is those “elites” he appears to warn us about. They are the partners in the WEF, which include the world’s most powerful corporations, the governments of most current nations of the globe, globalist “think tanks” and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), the world’s military and intelligence agencies, and above all, the most wealthy and powerful Jewish banking family dynasties that top the pyramid of power. These are the “elites” who will own and control the data, and from that, everything else. Harari must know this, since he is their spokesman. Knowing his people will dominate the elite, a digital dictatorship is a future he is looking forward to.

Looking through these key statements, we see that Harari dismisses God more thoroughly than Nietzsche, and replaces Him with the technocratic “elites” which include Harari himself. This is a distinctly Judaic concept. He impresses the inevitability of his technocratic future, and asserts that we cannot return to an unpleasant past to avoid the challenge. He ascribes an omnipotence in the future to those who own the data, and conveys a helplessness among the rest of humanity before this ultimate power over all of life. The god-like “elites” are watching, and there will be no escape.

Harari allows for no glitches in the programs, no side effects from the technologic hacking of humanity, no machine failures, no problems except “digital dictatorships.” Critiques of his books however are more scathing. Canadian Professor of Anthropology Christopher Robert Hallpike stated in a review of Sapiens that:

…one has often had to point out how surprisingly little he seems to have read on quite a number of essential topics. It would be fair to say that whenever his facts are broadly correct they are not new, and whenever he tries to strike out on his own he often gets things wrong, sometimes seriously. … [W]e should not judge Sapiens as a serious contribution to knowledge but as ‘infotainment’, a publishing event to titillate its readers by a wild intellectual ride across the landscape of history, dotted with sensational displays of speculation, and ending with blood-curdling predictions about human destiny.

This past summer, Current Affairs magazine published “The Dangerous Populist Science of Yuval Noah Harari,” which stated: “The best-selling author is a gifted storyteller and popular speaker. But he sacrifices science for sensationalism, and his work is riddled with errors.”

Last month the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called Harari a “brand” created by his partner to sell everything from comic books and children’s stories to videos (a distinctly Jewish approach), and that his fans treat Harari like a “pop star” despite his grim message that humans are obsolete and machines will replace us.

Harari was back as a featured speaker at the World Economic Forum in 2020. He was introduced by the IDF-trained Israeli Jew Orit Gadiesh, who calls herself the “chairman” of Bain Capital (once headed by Mitt Romney), and as I reported in this TOO essay, is on the Board of Trustees of the World Economic Forum. Harari spoke along with the long-time Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte, on the topic “How to Survive the 21st Century.” He may have surpassed his 2018 address in outrageous quotes.

  • “…three problems pose existential challenges to our species … nuclear war, ecological collapse and technological disruption.”
  • “…technology may also disrupt human society and the very meaning of human life in numerous ways, ranging from the creation of the global useless class to the rise of data colonialism and of digital dictatorships.”
  • “…automation will eliminate millions upon millions of jobs.”
  • “…the automation revolution … will be a cascade of ever bigger disruptions.”
  • “In the past, humans had to struggle against exploitation. In the 21st century, the really big struggle will be against irrelevance. And it’s much worse to be irrelevant than to be exploited. Those who fail in the struggle against irrelevance will constitute a new useless class. People who are useless, not from the viewpoint of their friends and family of course, but useless from the viewpoint of the economic and political system (sic). And this useless class will be separated by an ever growing gap from the ever more powerful elite.”
  • “…AI will likely create immense wealth in a few high tech hubs, while other countries will either go bankrupt, or become exploited data colonies.”
  • “…the other major danger we face is the rise of digital dictatorships, which will monitor everybody, all the time.”
  • “We humans should get used to the idea that we are no longer mysterious souls. We are now hackable animals.”
  • “If this power (to hack human beings) falls into the hands of a 21st century Stalin, the result will be the worst totalitarian regime in human history.”
  • “If we allow the emergence of such total surveillance regimes, don’t think that the rich and powerful in places like Davos will be safe.”
  • “…the ability to hack humans might still undermine the very meaning of human freedom.”
  • “…humans will simply not be able to understand the computers’ decisions … [H]umans are likely to lose control over our own lives, and also lose the ability to understand public policy.”
  • “What will be the meaning of human life when most decisions are taken by algorithms?”
  • “If we fail to conceptualize the new hell quickly enough, we might find ourselves entrapped there with no way out.”
  • “…AI and biotechnology will give us god-like abilities to re-engineer life, and even to create completely new life forms.”
  • “Our intelligent design is going to be the new driving force of the evolution of life. In using our new divine powers of creation, we might make mistakes on a cosmic scale. ”
  • “Of course this is not a prophecy. These are just possibilities. Technology is never deterministic.”
  • “To do something effective, we need global cooperation. All the three existential challenges [nuclear war, ecological collapse and technological disruption] that we face are global challenges that demand global solutions.”
  • “If we allow such an arms race to develop in fields like AI and bio-engineering, it doesn’t really matter who wins the arms race. The loser will be humanity.”
  • “In the 21st century, good nationalists must also be globalists.”
  • “If we return there now (the jungle of constant war), our species will probably annihilate itself.”
  • “I very much hope that we can rely on the leaders assembled here, and not on the rats.”

Some of this—even quite a bit of it—may come to be true. We are already seeing increasing gaps between elites and everyone else, surveillance is continually being refined, and already there are powerful forces that seek a dictatorship, digital or otherwise and are eager to rid the public square of traditional freedoms such as free speech. But Harari’s is certainly a dystopian vision that should be resisted at all costs.

The main pattern of Harari’s discourse is fear requiring globalism as a solution. This is the old Hegelian dialectic we have seen many times before, most recently with the Covid pandemic virus as the fear (another invisible menace), and lockdowns and vaccines as the solutions. Harari here admits the possibility of mistakes, but never suggests that his technocratic near future is anything but inevitable. Machines will take over human jobs, and the “useless class” will grow. This is by no means inevitable however, as National Socialist Germany showed with its program of restricting mechanical labor and promoting manual labor in the building of the Autobahn, in order to improve and eventually all but eliminate unemployment. Harari’s techno-future could be heaven, or it could be hell, and even the “rich and powerful” and the “leaders” in Davos could be subject to the hellscape. The closer they are to the peak of the global hierarchy, the more closely they will be watched. That’s how Stalin did it.

Stalin (Dzhugashvili) also had his Jewish “advisors,” and, as the Darling of Davos, Harari will excel among the technocratic elites beside Klaus Schwab, who also was mentored by Jews such as Henry Kissinger and Hermann Kahn, and who also incited fears of global catastrophe. Schwab cites Jewish author Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, who wrote The American Challenge, as a great influence, and Harari cites Jewish author Jared Diamond of Guns, Germs and Steel as his literary influence. As a spokesman for instilling and normalizing the 4th Industrial Revolution that will make humans “hackable animals,” Harari will never become useless like so many of the rest of us. His mad ravings are worshiped among the WEF power elites as revelations straight from the master Machine. But among the rest of us normal humans, Harari must appear a sickly vegan degenerate homosexual Israeli Jew holding dangerous sociopathic delusions of dystopian grandeur.

(Republished from The Occidental Observer by permission of author or representative)

Kiev’s Needs Has Outstripped the Available Supply

via RT

The fighting in Ukraine has “exposed flaws in US strategic planning” and “revealed significant gaps” in the US and NATO military industrial base, the Washington Post reported on Friday. As Kiev’s forces consume more ammunition than the West can produce, the Pentagon seeks to cope by training them to fight more like Americans.

“Stocks of many key weapons and munitions are near exhaustion, and wait times for new production of missiles stretches for months and, in some cases, years,” the Post noted, as part of a narrative about how the US has funneled some $20 billion in military aid to Kiev just this year. Only $6 billion of that has been in new weapons contracts, while the rest came from the Pentagon stockpiles.

The US military-industrial complex can make about 14,000 rounds of ammunition for the 155-mm howitzers, the Post quoted US Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, while Ukrainian forces go through about 6,000 a day during heavy fighting.

The US military-industrial complex is “in pretty poor shape right now,” Seth Jones of the Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) told the Post.

“We are really low… and we’re not even fighting,” Jones said, adding that in scenarios where the US is facing China or Russia in a conventional conflict, “we don’t make it past four or five days in a war game before we run out of precision missiles.”

Washington’s allies in Europe are in similar shape, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Michal Strnad, owner of a Czech ammunition conglomerate, said Ukraine chews through 40,000 rounds a month, while all of the European NATO members put together can produce 300,000 a year.

“European production capacity is grossly inadequate,” Strnad said, adding that it would take up to 15 years to restock at current production rates, if the conflict were to somehow end tomorrow.

Moscow has repeatedly warned the US and its allies that shipments of increasingly modern and long-range weapons could lead to a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO, and accused the West of prolonging the conflict and causing civilian deaths in Ukraine.

While Western officials have demanded a ramp-up of production for months, recent EU legislation blocked many investments into weapons manufacturing by designating it “not sustainable,” according to the Journal. Germany is now in the process of funding a factory in Romania that could produce both NATO and Soviet-caliber ammunition for Ukraine.

The Pentagon is trying to deal with the problem by training Ukrainian troops to “fight more like Americans” and use different tactics, according to the Post.

“I think if we can train larger formations — companies, battalions — on how to employ fires, create conditions for maneuver, and then be able to maneuver like you’ve seen [the US military] maneuver on the battlefield, then I think we’re in a different place. Then you don’t need a million rounds” of artillery, a senior US official – who did not wish to be named – told the outlet.

De-Dollarization Accelerates


De-dollarization and the New Economic Order

The Biden administration’s idea of transforming the dollar and the global payment system into weapons has caused many countries and investors to actively diversify their assets away from the dollar system.

As Bloomberg reports, countries such as Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, and Laos are in talks with China to increase their use of the yuan, while Beijing and Moscow are developing joint mechanisms for mutual settlement without using the dollar, and India is promoting its rupee as a regional currency by starting to provide a bilateral payment mechanism with the United Arab Emirates.

Another reason for the flight from the dollar is its potential strengthening in the coming years due to a change in the course of the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy. Corporations around the world are selling an unprecedented amount of their debt in local currencies, fearing a further strengthening of the dollar.

As Bloomberg columnist Michel Jamrisco writes, there are increasing voices saying that the dollar is being used to “intimidate small countries.” Southeast Asian countries are therefore using this reason to trade more in local currencies, moving away from the dollar.

Assessment made by Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces

Statement from Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation at a briefing for foreign military attachés:

▫️Russian Federation estimates the amount of aid that Ukraine has received from Western countries at $ 100 billion.

▫️The United States, Britain, Poland and Romania make the most significant contribution to the supply of weapons to Kiev

▫️The aviation of the Russian Federation demilitarised more than 11 000 units of the AFU during the SMO, drones destroyed more than 600 Ukrainian objects.

▫️Since the beginning of the special operation, Western countries have supplied Ukraine with more than 350 tanks, 700 artillery systems, 100 multiple launch rocket systems, 30 helicopters, at least 5,000 drones, 1,000 armored fighting vehicles, at least 800 armored vehicles, 5,300 portable anti-aircraft missile systems

▫️The situation on the front line is stabilized, the main efforts of the troops are focused on completing the operation in the DPR

▫️Hypersonic missiles “Kinzhal” proved invulnerable to Ukrainian air defense

▫️Russian missile strikes have paralyzed the work of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex

▫️The fighting has been fierce from the very beginning of the Special Military Operation

▫️NATO’s actions increase tensions and reduce the level of security on the Russia-NATO relations

▫️The length of the front in Ukraine is currently 815 km

▫️The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in the framework of its strike hit more than 1,300 critical objects of Ukraine, which significantly reduced the combat potential of Ukrainian troops

▫️Kiev uses civilians as a human shield, blocks the exit of civilians from cities, and tortures prisoners of war.

▫️Sweden and Finland want to be included in NATO under a far-fetched threat from Russia

‘Too Little, Too Late’: US Not ‘Flexible Enough’ to Compete With China in Africa

“I’m not sure the US is flexible enough to play the kind of game the Chinese are playing. […] I think that the Chinese have been much more creative and shown much more foresight in what they want to do in Africa. And I don’t think western powers are going to be able to catch up with them,” says Dr. Frederick Golooba-Mutebi, Ugandan independent researcher and political scientist with a special interest in political economics.”


by Petr Baryshnikov via Sputnik

The 2022 US–Africa Leaders Summit, which took place from 13 to 15 December in Washington DC, was the second such event in history. It has been widely seen as part of an American attempt to counter growing Chinese influence in Africa. Sputnik asked various experts to assess Washington’s chances of success.

America’s intensified efforts to compete with China in cooperating with Africa face several obstacles, with the Chinese development model being more attractive to the developing nations than the US model, Dr Ezzat Saad, director of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, said in an interview with Sputnik.

“It is remarkable that China does not seek to impose its development model or governance system on other countries, but through a flexible Chinese policy that is compatible with the changing conditions […] in Africa, and is based on a development pattern that meets the needs of the continent away from competition or any ideological considerations, in contrast to the American approach in this regard,” he underlines.

Saad also notes that Washington treats Africa “as a bloc without states with their own interests and concerns”, which “undoubtedly reflects the strength of the relationship between Washington and Africa”.
The American strategy on the continent, which is characterized by a high level of politicization of relations, is connected to the US global political interests, says Ovigwe Eguegu, a Nigerian policy adviser at consultancy Development Reimagined, specializing in geopolitics – with particular reference to Africa in the changing global order.

“I think the US, of course, would continue to increase its pressure campaign on China and try to recruit African countries to take part in western-sponsored UN resolutions and proposals also in the United Nations, the Human Rights Commission, to try to use the UN system to exert pressure on China. And that is likely to increase both. There’s a concern that African countries are not going to play along,” he notes.

There are all sorts of fields of competition among foreign powers in Africa. One of the most important is investment, as the continent is still “in dire need” of funding, mainly to develop infrastructure and human capital, says Nicholas Dweh Nimley, a writer and research scholar on China-Africa Cooperation who is also chief editor of Liberia’s NEWCOM Television. According to him, if the US was serious about wanting to compete with the East Asian giant, it could provide low-interest loans to Africa or write off infrastructural loans as China does – but it is uncertain whether such measures would be approved by Congress, “because it is the US taxpayers’ money”.
For his part, Saad believes that the announcements made at the Washington summit – such as plans to invest at least $55Bln in Africa over the next three years, to allocate $2.5Bln for food aid and to lend up to $21Bln through the International Monetary Fund to low and middle-income countries – are too paltry to eclipse Chinese influence.

The bottom line is that the aforementioned western initiatives are ‘too little, too late’, even according to some western experts, and that inflation and domestic policies in major western countries will limit the funding that governments will provide, and the private sector in these countries will be very reluctant to invest in an environment of instability,” Saad said.

China, in contrast, sees insecurity in Africa as a consequence of insufficient sustainable development, believing that economic and technical assistance as well as investments in infrastructure projects are necessary to achieve “stability, security, social peace and good governance in the countries of the continent”, he underlines.
China is Africa’s main direct backer, with its investment roughly double that of the US.

What Putin Has to Say

Videos not played on Apple’s devices due to its anti-Adobe maniacal policy.

The resources of Western countries are not on the verge of exhaustion, Ukraine receives mainly Soviet weapons, we knocked them of by the hundreds, burned it out, this technique is close to exhaustion – Putin

◾️ No one wants unification of the Russian people, except for us ourselves. And we will do it. 

◾️Russia shows much better economic performance than many G20 countries; its unemployment rate is below the pre-pandemic period.

◾️Our youth demonstrate a desire to keep the country moving forward, they have a high level of education and training.

◾️United States has long been meddling in the post-Soviet space, including in Ukraine. Even in Soviet times, they prepared the ground [for disorder].

◾️Our adversary has always tried to divide us and lead us astray from one another. 

◾️We endured it all and hoped for peace – but later we find out that we were simply ‘led by the nose.’

◾️[Nord Stream 2] is an act of international terrorism – individuals without the support of authorities could not have done this on their own. 

◾️The fact that now they [West] are trying to impose an energy price cap is an atavism of colonialism.

◾️The United States achieved its prosperity firstly from the slave trade, then the First World War; they used to rob their way through, but the world has changed – they can’t do it now.

 

 

Military Expert Aleksandr Artamonov on New Deliveries to Ukraine

▪️The Patriot battery consists of four launchers with two missiles each. A salvo costs between $700,000 and a million. The AFU could hit our Geranium-2(Shahed-136) , but it makes no sense. Our drones fly in huge numbers, not to mention high-precision X-101 and X-38 missiles. Weapons are promised to Ukraine as political corpses. Those who come to replace them must still agree to the deliveries. 

▪️Americans produce 13-14 thousand 155 mm shells per month. During a period of escalation, the Armed Forces of Ukraine use 6 thousand shells a day. For every one of their arrivals four strikes from us follow. It takes 2-3 years to put the economy on a war footing. We are unlikely to give the enemy that time. 

▪️Ukrainian and some American officials are asking the United States government to supply MIM-Hawk systems. They were withdrawn from service 12 years ago.

▪️Patriot missiles don’t see anything. Six years ago the Yemenis hit oil depots in Saudi Arabia defended by the Patriot system. The air defence system failed to shoot down the drones. The radar did not detect them in the airspace. 

#time will tell

Meanwhile,

Since the beginning of Russia’s Special Operation, the West has supplied Ukraine with more than 350 tanks, 700 artillery systems, 100 multiple rocket launch systems, 30 helicopters, and at least 5,000 drones  Head of Russian General Staff Gerasimov

UPDATE: Russia’s Kinzhal (“Dagger”) hypersonic missile proved invulnerable to Ukrainian air defenses – Gerasimov

Ukraine – Is There Really A Change Of The Narrative?

via Moon of Alabama

In Alastair Crooke’s latest piece he discusses the change of narrative that occurred due to The Economist‘s recent Ukrainian interviews:

The Economist leads with interviews with Zelensky, General Zaluzhny and Ukraine’s military field commander, General Syrsky. All three are interviewed – interviewed in The Economist, no less. Such a thing does not occur by happenstance. It is messaging intended to convey the Ruling Class’ new narrative to the ‘golden billion’ (who will all read and absorb it).

On the surface, it is possible to read The Economist piece as a plea for more money and many more weapons. But the underlying messaging is clear: “Anyone who underestimates Russia is heading for defeat”. The Russian force mobilisation was a success; there is no problem with Russian morale; and Russia is preparing a huge winter offensive that will start soon. Russia has huge reserve forces (of up to 1.2 million men); whereas Ukraine now has 200,000 who are militarily trained for conflict. The ‘writing is on the wall’, in other words. Ukraine cannot win.

Scott Ritter, in discussion with Judge Neapolitano, believes that The Economist interviews reveal the West pushing aside Zelensky – as Zaluzhny administers his large dose of reality (that will be shocking to many sherpa loyalists). The Economist interview emphasis thus was unmistakably on General Zaluzhny, with Zelensky pointedly de-emphasised – which Ritter suggests indicates that Washington wishes to ‘switch leadership horses’. Another ‘message’?

Just to be clear, General Zaluzhny once said he considers himself a disciple of Russian General Gerasimov, the Chief of General Staff. Zaluzhny reportedly is familiar with the latter’s writings. In brief, Zaluzhny is known in Moscow as a professional soldier (albeit one committed to the Ukrainian nationalist cause).

So, is the West preparing its narrative to cut from this unwinnable conflict –Ukraine – and to move on?

That might indeed by a possibility. Could the U.S. and NATO just limp out of the situation and leave it to Zaluzhny to negotiated his defeat with Russia?

But haven’t Biden, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg and Germany’s chancellor Scholz said that Russia ‘can not be allowed to win’? Sure, they have.

But Crooke points to Afghanistan and how fast the chaotic retreat from Kabul has vanished from the media and is now mostly forgotten. The Taliban were another enemy that could not be allowed to win. They won. And no one cares about it.

I dearly hope that the scenario, as Crooke lays it out, will soon come true in Ukraine. But alas I am a realist. Russia will not stop the war without achieving its aims. Zaluzhny will not be allowed to negotiate for peace.

M. K. Bhadrakumar notes that any peace negotiations depend on Biden’s agreement:

The clearest indication that the US is far from in a hurry to negotiate comes from none other than the White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan whose visit to Kiev last month (just before the US midterms) had triggered a flurry of speculations that Washington was pressuring President Zelensky to negotiate.

Now, Sullivan’s remarks at an appearance at the Carnegie last weekend made it clear that the US is in Ukraine for the long haul. He said:

“We don’t know when this is going to end up. What we do know is that it is our job to continue to sustain our military support to Ukraine so that they are in their best possible position on the battlefield, that if and when diplomacy is ripe, they will be in the best possible position at the negotiating table.

“That moment is not ripe now, and so, as a result, we’ve gone to Congress and asked for a substantial amount of further resources to be able to continue to ensure that Ukraine has the means to fight this war. We’re confident we will get bipartisan support for that…

“I am not going to precept the future, I’m only going to assure that in the present we are doing everything we can to maximise Ukraine’s chances of defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity… yes, it is likely to go on for quite some time…”

Basically, the US claims to have a winning hand in Ukraine.

The Economist interviews were published on December 15. The Sullivan talk at Carnegie was held a day later. If there had been a change of mind in the White House it would have been part of that interview.

I also think that Zaluzhny is not the kind of leader who is likely to organize, or allow himself to be drawn into a coup. In fact it may well be that the rumors from Kiev are true and that Zelensky and his staff are working to push him out. He would be replaced by the other Ukrainian general The Economist had interviewed:

On several occasions, [General Syrsky] was actually senior in the chain of command to Valery Zaluzhny, appointed to be the commander-in-chief of the entire armed forces in July 2021. Some political actors behind the scenes may be using that fact in an apparent attempt to foment tensions between the two. Rumours even persist that the presidential administration might be inclined to replace the popular but independent-minded General Zaluzhny with his former boss. Cracks of disunity have high-placed Western military officials worried. The two generals on their part say they fully trust each other and wish to stay out of politics. General Syrsky is uncomfortable with the conversation. “The army is outside of politics,” he says. “It is how it should be, and how the law demands it to be.”

Neither Zaluzhny nor Syrsky are men for a coup. If Zelenski is to go, some other politician, probably a more radical one, is likely to take the lead.

As Bhadrakumar concludes:

Therefore, in the prevailing circumstances, Russia’s option narrows down to inflicting a crushing defeat on Ukraine in the coming months and installing a government in Kiev that is not under Washington’s control. But that requires a fundamental shift in the Russian military strategy, which would factor in the real possibility of a confrontation with the US and NATO at some point.

Even while they are still deluded about Ukraine’s chance for success, neither NATO nor the White House have shown any appetite for war with Russia. They have likely come to understand the real meaning of General Zaluzhny’s request:

I know that I can beat this enemy. But I need resources. I need 300 tanks, 600-700 IFVs, 500 Howitzers. Then, I think it is completely realistic to get to the lines of February 23rd.

At the start of the war Ukraine had, at least on paper, a well equipped military:

Ukraine has a lot of tanks and is ranked 13th across the globe with 2,430. In terms of armored vehicles, Kiev also ranks high, occupying the seventh spot globally with 11,435. Kiev’s artillery power is also formidable at 2,040 batteries.

That General Zaluzhny requested all that new stuff is a confession that most if not all the old stuff is gone. That includes the weapons he received after the war started. If the 20 percent of the Russian military that was used in Ukraine could do so much material damage in such a short time how long would a NATO army in a war against Russia survive?

Lavrov, Blinken and Nuland

The relationship between Washington and Moscow is irreparable. Recently, Russian foreign minister Lavrov while flying to US, took his isle seat besides Blinken and Nuland returning to Washington. Soon after taking off his shoes Lavrov start to relax, the middle seat Nuland said to Blinken “now I wouldn’t mind to have a cold beer”. The Lavrov responded “no problem I will get it for you”. While he left for the beer the two Ami spit in his shoes. When Russian came back with the beer and sit, the window Blinken exclaimed “I would like to have a beer too”. Lavrov again offer to bring the beer. The two Ami again spit in his shoes. When plane was landing in Washington and Lavrov put his shoes on, he immediately realized as to what happened and started shouting “this animosity between our countries, this hate, this spitting in shoes and pissing in beer must stop”.

Traces of humor may be detected.