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Energy Wars

“Nord Stream 1-Blast: It Was a Mini Nuke!”

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A report by Attorney at Law Viviane Fischer, photo Wigwam nuclear test of the USA, 1955.

Swiss physicist Dr. Hans-Benjamin Braun has meticulously analyzed the Nord Stream 1 explosion. His finding, presented to the Corona Investigative Committee on June 30, 2023: the blast was made using a thermonuclear (fusion) mini-nuke with the greatest possible shockwave impact on Russia’s Kaliningrad. Like the investigative journalist and Pulizer Prize winner Seymour Hersch, Dr. Braun suspects the USA behind the attack. Among the authorities, politicians, journalists and scientists whom he has informed of the results of his analyses since December 2022, there is one thing above all: radio silence.

Dr. Braun is a renowned scientist specializing in statistical physics, quantum physics, neutron scattering, condensed matter physics and materials science, magnetism and topology. For years he taught as Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Catholic University of Dublin. In 2014, he was honored to be one of four “Distinguished Lecturers” (editor’s note) worldwide from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers IEEE, Magnetics Society, who has given 50 lectures internationally at the invitation of individual institutions or sections. Dr. Braun has widely cited publications in Nature Physics, Nature Communications, and Advances in Physics.

The puzzling, contradictory public interpretations of the explosion event at the pipeline at 17:03 UTC on September 26, 2022, had piqued his scientific curiosity as a physicist who also holds a master’s degree in earth sciences, Dr. Braun reports. Why, he wondered in this context, did the UN Security Council not initiate an investigation despite the many unanswered questions.

In October 2022, he set to work analyzing what had happened via six entirely independent methods: Evaluation of seismic data according to two methods, analysis of the development of aerosol clouds after the detonation, consideration of underwater currents in the Baltic Sea, especially in an underwater canyon between Bornholm and Kaliningrad during the following days, temperature development on the seafloor, and spread of a possible radioactive fallout after the blast.

The surprising result: the seismic measurements suggest an explosive force in the equivalent of up to 1-4 kilotons TNT, a strong contrast to the estimated data of an equivalent of 250 kg TNT published e.g. in the renowned magazine Nature.

© Dr. Hans-Benjamin Braun

The comparison of seismic measurements in the Baltic Sea, e.g. of Sweden and Finland with the values of the well-documented North Korean nuclear event also identified by the Columbia University Earth Institute on the basis of IRIS data shows a very similar pattern.

© Dr. Hans-Benjamin Braun

According to the infrared satellite data, four hours after the detonation a distinct aerosol cloud with an extension of up to 100 km was formed away from the explosion site in wind direction and in the Kaliningrad region due to the impact of shock waves on the steep Kaliningrad shoreline. Such a phenomenon would not occur to this extent with a much smaller explosive charge, Dr. Braun said. The opening photo of this paper shows aerosol formation during the U.S. “Wigwam” nuclear test, with an explosive force equivalent of 32 kT, in 1955 in the Pacific Ocean, 900 km southwest of San Diego.

© Dr. Hans-Benjamin Braun

During the days following the detonation moment, significant underwater currents have been formed in the Baltic Sea (~50km and more), focusing into the underwater canyon directed directly towards Kaliningrad. As a result, a vortex current formed in the Bornholm Basin. According to the Nature publication of March 15, 2023, the explosion stirred up 250,000 tons of sediments that were subsequently deposited. Indeed, it appears that this process also affected water temperatures on the seafloor during the whole winter time.

Remarkably, according to satellite data, the water temperature at the seafloor increased by up to 5 degrees Celsius year-on-year over an area of circa 100 km x 100 km in the winter of 2023 compared to 2022. Dr. Braun clarifies that this cannot be explained by natural fluctuations, especially since the mean temperature in the more distant regions of the Baltic Sea tends to be even lower.

© Dr. Hans-Benjamin Braun

In Poland, radioactive fallout was detected one day after the blast; in Switzerland, it showed up three days after the event.

Highly noteworthy, Dr. Braun said, is that the blast site apparently must have been chosen to reflect and amplify shock waves due to the elliptically shaped Swedish coastline, allowing them to focus precisely on Kaliningrad via the underwater canyon. The city, 500 km away, experienced a seismic effect 10 times greater than that of neighboring Bornholm, which is only 70 km from the pipeline blast site.

Dr. Braun’s investigative conclusion: “None of the seven independent geophysical observations can be explained by the use of a conventional explosive; a thermonuclear weapon must have been used. The Nord Stream sabotage was also a targeted shockwave attack on Kaliningrad, which to me makes the U.S. the only plausible culprit.” He considers a tactical self-endangerment of the Russians by the detonation unlikely, Ukraine as another possible aggressor does not possess nuclear weapons. The U.S., however, had nuclear weapons, delivery systems and, through NATO’s BALTOPS 22 exercise in the Baltic Sea, which took place in June 2022, extensive fresh barythmetric knowledge of conditions at the eventual site. “BALTOPS also provides a unique opportunity for the U.S. Research, Development, and Acquisition communities to exercise the current and emerging UUV technology in real-world operational environments. This year featured the current and future programs of record for mine hunting UUVs in the MK-18 and Lionfish systems. Both systems were put through the paces over 10 days of mine hunting operations, collecting over 200 hours of undersea data,” writes the U.S. NAVY under the heading “BALTOPS 22 a perfect opportunitey for research and testing new technologies.” Of course, a collaboration of other geopolitical interest groups besides the U.S. would also be conceivable, Dr. Braun adds.

Precisely such an autonomous underwater drone as the Lionfish, which was tested during the NATO exercise BALTOPS 22, could have been used to transport the explosive charge to the scene, Dr. Braun elaborates. To actually carry out the detonation using such an unmanned vehicle would have required the involvement of only a few people. It is clear, however, that if the USA were involved, it would have to be assumed that the blast was carried out with the knowledge and will of US President Joe Biden. The U.S. company Sandia Labs, a longtime partner of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), writes on its website: “The nation’s nuclear weapons must always work when commanded and authorized by the president of the United States, and must never detonate otherwise.” The U.S., Dr. Braun notes, is incidentally the only country in the world that has not joined the international ban on a nuclear first strike.

Dr. Braun reports that he made his findings available to selected journalists and politicians on December 22, 2022, seven weeks before Seymour Hersh’s article appeared. On January 3, 2023, he reportedly informed the Swiss government, and on January 25, 2023, he informed the Swiss parliament. At the same time, he wrote to a colleague at MIT, who drew his attention to the imminent article by Seymour Hersch. On March 27, 2023, he had contacted Prof. J. Sachs as a representative of the UN Security Council, and on April 4, 2023, he had formulated an open letter to the Secretary General of NATO, the Finnish and Swedish governments, and three Nobel laureates in physics. On April 4, 2023, he had written to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the White House, the Kremlin, the Russian and Chinese embassies in Switzerland, and on April 24, 2023, again to the UN Security Council, this time under the new Russian chairmanship. The answer: radio silence.

Dr. Braun demands that the matter be completely clarified. Due to their easy scalability, with which one can adjust the detonation strength by a factor of 100 with a flick of the wrist (so-called “dial a yield”), thermonuclear weapons pose an increasing threat to humanity, especially through the combination with rapidly advancing artificial intelligence, which is used in autonomous air and underwater vehicles, and can also be used in covert operations.

Western Hegemony's Collapse

The U.S. Wars Against Russia And China – Have No Economic Logic, But Self-Destruction

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via MOA

The U.S. politician Zbigniew Brzezinski was a hardliner with a (neo-)liberal core. He had a wide influence on U.S. policies:

Brzezinski is the author of The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, a 1997 book on geopolitics that was based on Mackinder’s Heartland Theory. Brzezinski argued that the US could retain global supremacy only if it prevented the emergence of a single power on the World-Island.

The Brzezinski Doctrine remains influential in the US foreign-policy establishment. His protégés, among them Ukrainian émigré Victoria Nuland, undersecretary of state for political affairs, are a powerful voice in the US State Department.

Brzezinski had argued that without Ukraine, Russia would be unable to rule the Asian heartland and could not challenge U.S. power.

But I just learned via a Pepe Esobar essay about Henry Kissinger’s visit and a potential great power war with China, that Brezezinski had in later years changed his mind:

“The Grand Chessboard”, published in 1997, before the 9/11 era, argued that the US should rule over any peer competitor rising in Eurasia. Brzezinski did not live to see the living incarnation of his ultimate nightmare: a Russia-China strategic partnership. But already seven years ago – two years after Maidan in Kiev – at least he understood it was imperative to “realign the global power architecture”.

In a longer piece published in 2016 in American Interest, Brzezinski indeed argued for great power cooperation:

A constructive U.S. policy must be patiently guided by a long-range vision. It must seek outcomes that promote the gradual realization in Russia (probably post-Putin) that its only place as an influential world power is ultimately within Europe. China’s increasing role in the Middle East should reflect the reciprocal American and Chinese realization that a growing U.S.-PRC partnership in coping with the Middle Eastern crisis is an historically significant test of their ability to shape and enhance together wider global stability.The alternative to a constructive vision, and especially the quest for a one-sided militarily and ideologically imposed outcome, can only result in prolonged and self-destructive futility. For America, that could entail enduring conflict, fatigue, and conceivably even a demoralizing withdrawal to its pre-20th century isolationism.

The U.S. did not follow Brzezinski’s advice. It alienated China by launching an economic war against it and pushed the Ukraine into a proxy-war against Russia that was supposed to destroy Russia’s capabilities. In consequence Russia and China united their capabilities against their common new enemy, the United States of America. We will see during the next years if the consequences Brzezinski foretold for the U.S. under these circumstances will come into light.

It is interesting that the old rivals and political opponents Kissinger and Brzezinski have late in their lives come to the same conclusions.

As Stephen Roach in his take on Kissinger’s visit to China states:

For several years, Kissinger has expressed great concern over the worrisome state of the US-China relationship. As far back as late 2019, he warned that that the United States and China were already in the “foothills of a new cold war.” Given the trajectory of conflict escalation in the ensuing four years, there is a new urgency to his concerns. In the Chinese readout of this week’s meeting with [Defense Minister] Li Shangfu, Kissinger is reported to have said. “Neither the United States nor China can afford to treat the other as an adversary. If the two countries go to war, it will not lead to any meaningful results for the two peoples.”

Opposition to the U.S. bi-partisan policy of economic warfare against China is now also coming from the bigwigs of the U.S. economy:

Leaders of the largest US chipmakers told Biden officials this week that the administration should study the impact of restrictions on exports to China and pause before implementing new ones, according to people familiar with their discussions.During meetings in Washington on Monday, Intel Corp.’s Pat Gelsinger, Nvidia Corp.’s Jensen Huang and Qualcomm Inc.’s Cristiano Amon warned that export controls risk harming US leadership of the industry. The Biden officials listened to the presentations but didn’t make any commitments, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks were private.

Economic logic provides that the U.S. (and European) economy would be better off by avoiding a conflict with Russia and China. But, as Micheal Hudson explains, this now gets overwritten by national security preferences which have remarkable conseqences:

Instead of isolating Russia and China and making them dependent on U.S. economic control, U.S. unipolar diplomacy has isolated itself and its NATO satellites from the rest of the world – the Global Majority that is growing while NATO economies are rushing ahead along their Road to Deindustrialization. The remarkable thing is that while NATO warns of the “risk” of trade with Russia and China, it does not see its loss of industrial viability and economic sovereignty to the United States as a risk.

This is not what the “economic interpretation of history” would have forecast. Governments are expected to support their economy’s leading business interests. So we are brought back to the question of whether economic factors will determine the shape of world trade, investment and diplomacy. Is it really possible to create a set of post-economic NATO economies whose members will come to look much like the rapidly depopulating and de-industrializing Baltic states and post-Soviet Ukraine?

This would be a strange kind of “national security” indeed. In economic terms it seems that the U.S. and European strategy of self-isolation from the rest of the world is so massive and far-reaching an error that its effects are the equivalent of a world war.

The question is really why the U.S. is doing this harm to itself instead of following Brzezinski’s and Kissinger’s advice. As Yves Smith says in her preface to Hudson’s piece, it is a quite bizarre spectacle:

One of the subthemes of the latest offering from Michael Hudson on the bizarre spectacle of the US escalating against China is puzzlement that the West is not operating in its best interest. Lambert has been chewing over this conundrum too.Perhaps it’s that they really do believe their propaganda, and still don’t recognize that the military and economic clout of the US/EU bloc on a relative basis isn’t anywhere near substantial enough for them to push the rest of the world around. But you think their self-delusion would have started to crack with the failure in their efforts to pressure many countries, such as India and South Africa, to side with the US and condemn Russia’s actions in Ukraine, and now with the supposedly superior US/NATO war machine not performing too well.

Another possibility is the so-called Iron Law of Institutions, that individuals and interests are operating to maximize their own position, with little/no concern to the impact on the system.

I have come to the conclusion that the main actors in this game, the Bindens, Blinkens, Sullivans and their bipartisan supporters, are driven by a blind ideology that has dismissed or replaced global realities with wishful thinking.

The failure of their sanctions against Russia should have demonstrated to them that the real word is by far not the one in which they believe to be living. They however are now repeating their errors by waging a similar war against China.

It will not end well for the people they are supposed to lead.

Western Hegemony's Collapse

Neocons Want War With China

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by Pepe Escobar via Sputnik Globe

It was a photo op for the ages: a visibly well-disposed President Xi Jinping receiving centenarian “old friend of China” Henry Kissinger in Beijing.

Mirroring meticulous Chinese attention to protocol, they met at Villa 5 of the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse – exactly where Kissinger first met in person with Zhou Enlai in 1971, preparing Nixon’s 1972 visit to China.

The Mr. Kissinger Goes to Beijing saga was an “unofficial”, individual attempt to try to mend increasingly fractious Sino-American relations. He was not representing the current American administration.

There’s the rub. Everyone involved in geopolitics is aware of the legendary Kissinger formulation: To be the US’s enemy is dangerous, to be the US’s friend is fatal. History abounds in examples, from Japan and South Korea to Germany, France and Ukraine.

As quite a few Chinese scholars privately argued, if reason is to be upheld, and “respecting the wisdom of this 100-years-old diplomat”, Xi and the Politburo should maintain the China-US relation as it is: “icy”.

After all, they reason, being the US’s enemy is dangerous but manageable for a Sovereign Civilizational State like China. So Beijing should keep “the honorable and less perilous status” of being a US enemy.

The World Through Washington’s Eyes

What’s really going on in the back rooms of the current American administration was not reflected by Kissinger’s high-profile peace initiative, but by an extremely combative Edward Luttwak.

Luttwak, 80, may not be as visibly influential as Kissinger, but as a behind the scenes strategist he’s been advising the Pentagon across the spectrum for over five decades. His book on Byzantine Empire strategy, for instance, heavily drawing on top Italian and British sources, is a classic.

Luttwak, a master of deception, reveals precious nuggets in terms of contextualizing current Washington moves. That starts with his assertion that the US – represented by the Biden combo – is itching to do a deal with Russia.

That explains why CIA head William Burns, actually a capable diplomat, called his counterpart, SVR head Sergey Naryshkin (Russian Foreign Intelligence) to sort of straighten things up “because you have something else to worry about which is more unlimited”.

What’s “unlimited”, depicted by Luttwak in a Spenglerian sweep, is Xi Jinping’s drive to “get ready for war”. And if there’s a war, Luttwak claims that “of course” China would lose. That dovetails with the supreme delusion of Straussian neocon psychos across the Beltway.

Luttwak seems not to have understood China’s drive for food self-sufficiency: he qualifies it as a threat. Same for Xi using a “very dangerous” concept, the “rejuvenation of the Chinese people”: that’s “Mussolini stuff”, says Luttwak. “There has to be a war to rejuvenate.

The “rejuvenation” concept – actually better translated as “revival” – has been resonating in China circles at least since the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1911. It was not coined by Xi. Chinese scholars point out that if you see US troops arriving in Taiwan as “advisors”, you would probably make preparations to fight too.

But Luttwak is on a mission: “This is not America, Europe, Ukraine, Russia. This is about ‘the sole dictator’. There is no China. There is only Xi Jinping,” he insisted.

And Luttwak confirms the EU’s Josep “Garden vs. Jungle” Borrell and European Commission dominatrix Ursula von der Leyen fully support his vision.

Luttwak, in just a few words, actually gives away the whole game: “The Russian Federation, as it is, is not strong enough to contain China as much as we would wish”.

Hence the turn around by the Biden combo to “freeze” the conflict in the Donbass and change the subject. After all, “if that [China] is the threat, you don’t want Russia to fall apart,” Luttwak reasons.

So much for Kissingerian “diplomacy.”

Let’s Declare a “Moral Victory” and Run Away

On Russia, the Kissinger vs. Luttwak confrontation reveals crucial cracks as the Empire faces an existential conflict it never did in the recent past.

The gradual, massive U-turn is already in progress – or at least the semblance of a U turn. US mainstream media will be entirely behind the U turn. And the naïve masses will follow. Luttwak is already voicing their deepest agenda: the real war is on China, and China “will lose”.

At least some non-neocon players around the Biden combo – like Burns – seem to have understood the Empire’s massive strategic blunder of publicly committing to a Forever War, hybrid and otherwise, against Russia on behalf of Kiev.

This would mean, in principle, that Washington can’t just walk away like it did in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Yet Hegemons do enjoy the privilege to walk away: after all they exercise sovereignty, not their vassals. European vassals will be left to rot. Imagine those Baltic chihuahuas declaring war on Russia-China all by themselves.

The off-ramp confirmed by Luttwak implies Washington declaring some sort of “moral victory” in Ukraine – which is already controlled by BlackRock anyway – and then moving the guns towards China.

Yet even that won’t be a cakewalk, because China and the about-to-expand BRICS+ are already attacking the Empire at its foundation: dollar hegemony. Without it, the US itself will have to fund the war on China.

Chinese scholars, off the record, and exercising their millennia-old analytical sweep, observe this may be the last blunder the Empire ever made in its short history.

As one of them summarized it, “the empire has blundered itself to an existential war and, therefore, the last war of the empire. When the end comes, the empire will lie as usual and declare victory, but everyone else will know the truth, especially the vassals.”

And that brings us to former national security adviser Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski’s 180-degree turn shortly before he died, aligning him today with Kissinger, not Luttwak.

“The Grand Chessboard”, published in 1997, before the 9/11 era, argued that the US should rule over any peer competitor rising in Eurasia. Brzezinski did not live to see the living incarnation of his ultimate nightmare: a Russia-China strategic partnership. But already seven years ago – two years after Maidan in Kiev – at least he understood it was imperative to “realign the global power architecture”.

Destroying the “Rules-Based International Order”

The crucial difference today, compared to seven years ago, is that the US is incapable, per Brzezinski, to “take the lead in realigning the global power architecture in such a way that the violence (…) can be contained without destroying the global order.”

It’s the Russia-China strategic partnership that is taking the lead – followed by the Global Majority – to contain and ultimately destroy the hegemonic “rules-based international order”.

As the indispensable Michael Hudson has summarized it, the ultimate question at this incandescent juncture is “whether economic gains and efficiency will determine world trade, patterns and investment, or whether the post-industrial US/NATO economies will choose to end up looking like the rapidly depopulating and de-industrializing post-Soviet Ukraine and Baltic states or England.”

So is the wet dream of a war on China going to change these geopolitical and geoeconomics imperatives? Give us a -Thucydides – break.

The real war is already on – but certainly not one identified by Kissinger, Brzezinski and much less Luttwak and assorted US neocons. Michael Hudson, once again, summarized it: when it comes to the economy, the US and EU “strategic error of self-isolation from the rest of the world is so massive, so total, that its effects are the equivalent of a world war.”

Western Hegemony's Collapse

Russian Advanced Microchips?

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The Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IPP RAS) in Nizhny Novgorod is developing the first Russian lithography facility for the production of ultra-small nanometer microelectronics. This is reported on the Nizhny Novgorod Region Development Strategy website.

At the moment, scientists of the Russian Academy of Sciences have created the first demonstration sample of the equipment. On this installation, individual images on substrates with a resolution of up to the ultimate 7 nm were obtained.

In 2024, an “alpha machine” will be created. Such a machine will become a working machine on which a full cycle of operations can be performed.

In the second stage, a “beta machine” will appear in 2026. The equipment systems will be improved and complicated, the resolution will increase, productivity will increase, many operations will be robotized, as noted on the website of the Nizhny Novgorod strategy. The machine will already be able to be used in large-scale production.

And at the third stage (2026-2028), the domestic lithograph will receive a more powerful radiation source, improved positioning and feeding systems, and will begin full-scale operation.

It's All About Jews

Judaism as a Self-Terminating Religion

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by Nick Kollerstrom via Unz

Untrue stories exist at each end of Jewish history’s three thousand years – fictional, fabricated and of immense magnitude. We may start in the tenth century BCE, where archaeologists have after diligent study found no trace of King Solomon, his Temple or his empire. Half a century of intensive excavation of the Holy Land has now reached that conclusion. The alleged mighty empire of David and Solomon, stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates – on the basis of which the modern state of Israel was formed – did not exist. Meanwhile the Bible makes no mention of the great empire of Egypt, which really did in that period stretch from the Nile to the Euphrates. These things must be relegated to storyland, like Moses parting the Red Sea. Experts were finally attaining this negative conclusion as the new millennium dawned, e.g. –

  • Mythic Past, Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel, Thomas Thompson, 1999
  • David and Solomon, In search of the Bible’s sacred Kings, Israel Finklestein and N.A. Silberman, 2006
  • The Quest for the Historical Israel, Finklestein and A. Mazar, 2007
  • The Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand, 2009
  • Palestine, a Four Thousand Year History, Nur Masala, 2018.

Moses, Wikipedia assures us, is just a myth. ‘The Exodus’, traditionally the basis of Jewish self-identity and the most-told narrative in the western world,[1] spawns great conferences which tend to end up with the same threefold negation:

  • no evidence for the Children of Israel in Egypt or escaping therefrom,
  • no evidence of their trekking across the Sinai desert
  • no evidence of them storming into Canaan and conquering the locals.

In modern times, Jews were given land in Palestine and called it ‘Israel.’ Inspired by a great hope, their conviction was that archaeology would validate their epic history, as it had unfolded through past millennia. They went to work with a trowel in one hand and the Bible in the other but received a big shock. The Holy Land did indeed reveal to them centuries of devout monotheism during the time recorded by their ancient scriptures – but, it was a reverence for the Goddess, as shown by the thousands of figurines dug up everywhere in Judea where they excavated. They were all similar with head, torso and large naked breasts.[2] Nor could any trace be discerned of a fierce invasion of Canaan by the Children of Israel as their texts averred, plus the odd record of their Jehovah-god had him with a partner, his ‘Asherath.’

It was discovered that, in the tenth century BCE there had been an intensive drought (the ‘Mycenaean Drought’ which spread across the whole Eastern Mediterranean, lasting for a couple of centuries, which caused many farms and villages to be abandoned. Jerusalem, built on a mountain, had little by way of water supply or fertile land and may well have then been uninhabited, or at best it was a small village selling olives – that’s all. It had no king because there were no kingdoms. Only a century later did the little kingdoms in Canaan – viz. Judea, Ephraim, Samaria/Israel, Moab and Edom, etc. – start to develop, as the drought eased off and the grip of Egypt’s empire weakened. The main cities having temples were then Samaria and Megiddio but not Jerusalem – the latter only grew into the thriving capital city of Judea a few centuries later.

Ancient Israel was sometimes called Samaria and the Assyrians alluded to it as the land of Omri or Omrides, king Omri being its first king. ‘Israel’ may have been more the name of a people than a nation-state. As a region West of the river Jordan – south of Galilee and north of Ephraim and Judea – it was wiped out forever in 720 BCE after it made the mistake of challenging the mighty Assyrian empire. Israel was defeated and absorbed by the Assyrian army, then Hebrews started moving south to Judea which grew strong and prosperous.

Hebrew scriptures told of a brutal god:

Anything devoted to destruction is most holy to the Lord

(Leviticus 27:28) and gave heroic-but-fictional accounts of the wiping out cities, slaying of armies, grabbing the loot, etc., with a god constantly reassuring them that they were the apple of His eye and inherently superior to other peoples.

That narrative, whereby they were chosen, has been disintegrating during the 20thcentury. The hope at the foundation of modern Israel is in the process of self-extinguishing, as the full implications of the whole history-that-never-happened continue to unfold. The learned opus by professor Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People, well reviewed this process of self-knowledge, a process of cultural implosion, of apprehending that which had not historically existed.

Jews today hardly believe any longer in the god of Deuteronomy or Leviticus. To quote the view of a modern Egyptologist:

The rules he [Yahweh] laid down … were draconian in the extreme, and the deity’s will utterly barbaric. Alien groups whose actions or even presence were deemed in opposition to Israel are consigned to genocidal slaughter at the behest of Yahweh (Exod. 17:14; Num. 31; 1 Sam. 15:3); even fraternization with foreigners brings the plague (Num. 25:9, 18). Anyone who dissents Yahweh burns up (Num. 11:1-3; 16:35); anyone who complains he strikes with plague (Num. 11:33; 14:37; 16:49), or sends poisonous snakes after (Num. 21:6). Aberrant cultic practices, even though indulged in innocently, bring death (Exod. 32:35; Num. 15 :37-40).[3]

With belief in their Yahweh god fading, can their collective identity endure?

The science of genetics looked as if it would come to the rescue, and the search for an ‘Abraham gene’ was on. Or, would it merely show that European Jews had come from Khazaria, an empire on the steppes of Russia which broke up in the tenth century, as Arthur Koestler had argued?[4] Koestler’s thesis remains moderately credible, though the historical record is scant: ‘Khazaria collapsed some time before the first indications of the presence of Jews in Eastern Europe, and it is difficult not to connect he two.” (Sand, p.246)

As regards the genetic studies, Shlomo Sand reckoned that, “The bottom line is that, after all the costly ‘scientific’ endeavors, a Jewish individual cannot be defined by any biological criteria whatsoever.” (Sand, p.278) Modern Israel had become, Sand concluded,

‘a state whose main purpose is to serve, not a civil-egalitarian demos, but a biological-religious ethnos that is wholly fictitious. (p.307)

He was doubtful, as to whether that could endure.

Jews have always had a strong collective being. As an intellectual and cosmopolitan people they tend to lack an inherent connection to a land, a country, a geography. Their self-perception is a continual merry-go-round as to whether they exist as a race, nation or religion. The Hebrew script does extend right back to the 8th century BCE being one of the very first alphabetical scripts and the only one that has endured for so long. It is their story which unfolds over millennia that confers upon them their ‘we,’ binding them together. Their power comes from getting others to believe it.

Today, excitement thrums around the so-called Temple Mount in Jerusalem where Jews plan to build the Third Temple. Surely they cannot do so because no ‘First Temple’ ever existed, no temple was ever built on that site.[5] No Hebrew temple was built at the top of a mountain, whereas the Romans always built their forts at the highest point of a locality. That large, flat surface of 35 acres was built as the site of the Roman Tenth Legion and has amazingly lasted for two thousand years. There never was a Temple of Solomon or ruins thereof on it or underneath it.[6] That wall the Jews pray to is the side of a fort where dwelt the Tenth Legion – the one that helped to wipe out a million Jews[7] in 70 AD.

This could be a time for Christians to pay attention to the verse “Do not believe the stories of the Jews’ (Titus 1:14).

Comparing the land of Israel as it was formed in 1949 (see map) with the ancient land, one notes with amusement that the so-called ‘West Bank’ area, where ancient Israel did actually exist (see map) was excluded! That indicates a degree of historical confusion. Also, how come they got to claim that large chunk of the Sinai desert, nowhere near either ancient Israel or Judea?

Three millennia later, we arrive at a comparably massive untruth. The story of the Holocaust served to confer upon Jews their special ‘chosen’ identity in the 20thcentury. It came to the rescue, by employing a dualism whereby the Nazis of WW2 were Evil, and the Jews whom they targeted were Good. That Manichean dualism of good-versus-evil was established at the post-war Nuremberg trials, since when it has been promulgated relentlessly through the entertainment industry. If Jews had been rounded up by the evil Nazis, then by that modern secular criterion they could re-emerge as the Chosen Ones. It’s quite simple, just watch Stephen Spielberg.

This theme has been explored in Gilad Atzmon’s The Wandering Who?:

Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the philosopher who was an observant orthodox Jew, told me once: “The Jewish religion died 200 years ago. Now there is nothing that unifies the Jews around the world apart from the Holocaust” Remember what? Remember how? Uri Avnery 19.3.05[8]

[N.B., Atzmon, a Sephardic Jew who grew up in Israel and served in the IDF, was found guilty of ‘antisemitism’ in Marylebone Magistrate’s court – sued successfully by the Campaign Against Antisemitism! It was surreal: those guys just don’t know when to stop.]

Towards the end of the 20th century as belief in the origin stories was fading away, the Holohoax morphed into a fearsome modern religion, in which belief is compulsory. As a passport of identity it confers upon Jews a unity and reinforces their special status. Nowadays a mere statue of Anne Frank can conjure up the narrative.

How great an effect does such an untruth exert upon our world! As a science historian I appeal for a recognition of the way in which normal hygiene technology did then operate, in the German labour-camps.[9] Debate on this topic is prohibited because the Establishment knows that it will lose the argument. As to why they need to hang onto it, let us have the courage to answer that question.

Certainly, in WW2 the deadly Nazi cyanide gas chambers were most efficient and they killed millions. Yes. They killed millions of bugs, not jews. Is it not time Jews stopped trying to confuse themselves with bugs? It is undignified. Because of their high IQ their continual claim that it was they, not bugs, that the Zyklon killed continues to warp our whole culture.

Take the fact that around 40% of labour-camp inmates were Jewish. That is unbearable, and why is it unbearable? We are not allowed to discuss it even though it comes from public-domain information.[10] It is unbearable because it would destroy the ‘chosen’ status of Jews. They comprised less than half of the camp inmates. But that would mean they were no longer special. Whereas, it is OK to say that homosexuals were rounded up and likewise doomed to go into the ‘death camps.’ They are allowed to share the virtue of being rounded up by Ze Evil Nazis. They can participate in the fictional narrative because they would be very few in relation to the Jews and so their imaginary presence would not invalidate the holy, sacred doom of the Jews.

Or, take another simple fact: mortality of Jews in the camps was on average no different from other inmates, i.e. overall, they died at much the same rate. It is (I suggest) preferable to avoid giving numbers, so relentless has been the mental programming in that realm. People have padlocked minds and you’ll only get a short soundbite on the matter, if that. Nonetheless if humanity wants a constructive future it needs to endure open discussion on this topic, painful though it may be. Let’s be crystal-clear that the Revisionist is going to win any such debate. Try this for a short soundbite: ‘More Catholics than Jews died at Auschwitz.’[11] Simple facts like this could (I suggest) be effective. Or if you prefer to avoid using the J-word, how about: nobody died of gas in WW2; or maybe: ‘Large human gas chambers have never existed in human history .’ Such simple affirmations can clear away fear and horror. Or, an allusion to the colour pink should be fairly non-threatening, maybe? Try saying, ‘Shame they got the colour wrong’. Death by cyanide leaves a bright pink body, a result of its oxygen-denial mechanism and there was not a single allusion to a pink corpse in any German labour-camp made at Nuremberg,[12] or anywhere else. Bad science – they got the colour wrong! Or, try this short quip used by Kevin Barrett: Once Zyklon started to be introduced into the German labour-camps, in the summer of 1942, mortality went down, not up.

These soundbites are short enough that you might just be able to get them in before the key of the mental padlock is turned.[13]

Christians need to apprehend that it is not a virtue to believe in that which never existed. That won’t save your soul. At both ends of the amazing three-thousand years of Jewish history are tremendous phantoms, imaginations which we the Goyim have been led to believe. That which never was, which never had existence is inscribed as fact in books the whole world over. We need a collective therapy experience of discussing What Really Happened. Only the power of Truth can save us now. Are we capable of that?

Judaism we may conclude must inevitably self-terminate in this 21st century, simply because of the intellectual power of modern Jews, who cannot hope to avoid seeing how their identity-defining narratives have disintegrated. They were tremendous stories, but were never true.

Relevant texts: Shlomo Sand, Invention of the Jewish People 1999; Gilad Atzmon, The Wandering Who? 2011; John Tiffany, Fountain of Fairytales a Scholarly Romp through the Old Testament, 2013; N.K. Breaking the Spell, the Holocaust Myth and Reality, 2014.

Notes

[1] Exodus ‘probably the most influential story ever told:’ Jan Assmann, From Akhenaten to Moses 2016, p.25.

[2] Sawah, Firas Jerusalem in the Age of the Kingdom of Judah, in Thomas Thompson 2003, pp.114-144.

[3] Donald Redford, Egypt Canaan and Israel in ancient times, 1992, p.274.

[4] Arthur Koestler, The Thirteenth Tribe: the Khazar Empire and its Heritage, 1976.

[5] Robert Cornuke, Temple 2014; Marilyn Sams, The Jerusalem Temple Mount Myth, 2014.

[6] “No archaeological evidence, direct or indirect, supports the proposal that ancient Jerusalem should be sought within the present-day Temple Mount.” Geva H. and de Groot, A.’The City of David is not on the Temple Mount,’ Israel Exploration journal2017, 67,1, pp.32-49, 32.

[7] Over one million killed: Josephus The Wars of the Jews; the Roman historian Tacitus has less, 600,000.

[8] Quoted in Atzmon, The Wandering Who? P.148.

[9] NK, Breaking the Spell, The Holocaust Myth and Reality, 2014; whatreallyhappened.info.

[10] whatreallyhappened.info/daily.html (discussed in my book Breaking the Spellwhich is NB hard to obtain).

[11] whatreallyhappened.info => Bletchley Park Decrypts => Deaths at Auschwitz in 1942

[12] whatreallyhappened.info/pinknotblue.html

[13] For the changing zeitgeist on this topic, compare Ron Unz’s 2017 article russia-insider.com/en/mainstream-holocaust-narrative-substantially-if-not-entirely-false-editor-top-us-conservative-site with his more recent www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-harvard-racial-discrimination-and-holocaust-denial/

Military Affairs

Why Ukraine is Losing the War

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Russia is DESTROYING Ukraine On the Battlefield

YouTube: youtu.be/kqQxMkShbeM

Rokfin: rokfin.com/post/142589

Odysee: odysee.com/@richardmedhurst:3/russia-is-destroying-ukraine-on-the:b

#RichardMedhurst

Cultural/Ideological Divide

It’s Not The Really Blatant Propaganda That Gets You

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by Caitlin Johnstone via Caitlin Johnstone

One of my favorite follows on Twitter right now is a smallish account run by an anti-imperialist activist who goes by “Left I on the News”, because he has a real knack for going through articles in the mainstream press and highlighting the mundane little manipulations we’re fed each day to shape our worldview in alignment with the US empire.

One story he singled out recently was a New York Times article titled “Russia Fires Drones and Missiles at Southern Ukraine,” which opens with the line, “Russian forces launched drones and missiles at cities in southern Ukraine from the Black Sea early Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said, a day after Moscow blamed Kyiv for an attack on a bridge linking the occupied Crimean Peninsula to Russia.”

Can you spot anything funny in that sentence? It’s not super obvious at first glance.

“Look how the NYT phrases this subhead to make Russia sound extra evil,” Left I tweeted with a screenshot of the article. “Not ‘a day after Kyiv attacked the Kerch Bridge’, but a day after Russia blamed them for doing it (as if it’s just some wild accusation). Remember — the most effective propaganda is the subtlest.”

“The most effective propaganda is the subtlest” is a phrase you should try to remember, because it’s so very true.

It is indeed ridiculous to try to frame this as some wild accusation by Russia, as though Moscow should have remained open to the possibility that the bridge was struck by Bolivia or Nepal. CNN reports that Ukrainian officials have taken credit for the attack, and just days ago Ukraine’s deputy defense minister publicly acknowledged that Ukraine was behind last year’s attack on the very same bridge. No serious person doubts that Ukraine was behind the attack, including those who support Ukraine.

But that subtle manipulation didn’t really stand out when you first saw it, did it?

As we’ve discussed previously, these subtle little adjustments of perception are what constitutes the vast majority of the propaganda westerners ingest through the news media from day to day. This is because the really overt, ham-fisted propaganda isn’t what’s effective; what’s effective is those sneaky little lies that slide in unchecked underneath people’s critical thinking faculties.

Contrast the above example with the response we’ve been seeing to Yeonmi Park, whose outlandish, larger-than-life propagandistic lies about what it’s like to live in North Korea have turned her into an internet meme. She’s become so widely mocked that even The Washington Post, among the first to help amplify her as a trustworthy North Korean defector after her arrival in the US in 2014, is now openly questioning her credibility.

This is because propaganda only works if it doesn’t ring people’s cognitive alarm bells. You can’t slide propaganda down people’s throats if it triggers their critical thinking gag reflex. If you want to poison someone’s food, you can only pull off the deed if they don’t taste the poison or throw it up before it takes effect.

So most propaganda isn’t of the Yeonmi Park “communists are so poor that they have to eat mud and get out of the train and push it because there’s no electricity” variety. It’s subtle. It’s these tiny little adjustments where US allies are reported on more sympathetically than US enemies, claims made by unaligned governments are reported with much more scrutiny and skepticism than aligned governments, and the sins which take place within the US-centralized power structure are overlooked while those outside it are amplified and condemned.

We’ve been ingesting these tiny little manipulations all our lives like microplastics in our water supply, and they build up within our reality tunnels to significantly warp our perception of what’s going on in the world.

And the fact that it’s been so many tiny little lies over years and years means it’s a lot harder to extract all the perception management from our worldview once we’ve discovered that it’s happening. If it was just a few really big lies we could reorient ourselves toward truth fairly quickly just by recognizing them, but because it’s so very many tiny manipulations it takes years of sincere work to fully free yourself from all the distortions and false assumptions you grew up with.

But it’s worth doing, because positive change can only come from an awareness of what’s true, whether you’re talking about individuals or humanity as a whole. Our task as humans is to come to a truth-based relationship with reality to the furthest extent possible, and that means fearlessly diving headfirst into the long, hard slog of sorting out fact from fiction, one lie at a time, no matter how subtle.

Military Affairs

Igor Strelkov on the Crimean Bridge Vulnerability

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by Igor Strelkov a.k.a Igor Girkin
(Machine translation)

Another successful attack of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the Crimean Bridge was inevitable due to two factors.

The first is political, connected with the policy of “agreements” with Ukraine and its allies, which the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin personally are actively trying to pursue. The “grain deal” allowed Ukraine to launch semi-submersible kamikaze drones from the sea coast near Odessa, as well as from sea cargo ships that provide this deal from the Black Sea. This is also facilitated by a virtual ban on strikes against Ukrainian transport communications, as well as against production facilities involved in the production of Ukrainian Mykola-3 marine drones, as well as against energy facilities that provide these enterprises with energy.

The second factor is military-technical. The Russian army does not have weapons systems capable of successfully combating semi-submersible kamikaze drones. Hundreds of defense industries and research institutes were deliberately destroyed in the largest deindustrialization in world history in 30 years. As a result, thousands of technologies were lost, and in this regard, our lagging behind the advanced countries is already decades.

For a successful fight against semi-submersible kamikaze drones, their timely detection by means of space and aviation technical intelligence is necessary.
But our space grouping is extremely small in number and is not able to fulfill this task.

Our naval aviation is more dead than alive. In order to timely detect these drones and target strike aircraft at them, it is necessary to provide round-the-clock patrolling of the airspace over the Black Sea by anti-submarine patrol aircraft equipped with modern radar equipment for detecting surface and underwater objects. But according to the open press, we have only 22 obsolete Il-38 anti-submarine aircraft and about 20 Tu-142s in the Northern and Pacific fleets. All of them, in terms of their tactical and technical characteristics, do not meet the requirements of today and are significantly inferior to the modern American Boeing P-8 Poseidon anti-submarine aircraft, of which only the United States has 128 and dozens of their allies. In addition, it is not known whether the outdated radar equipment of our Il-38 and Tu-142 will be able to provide effective detection of small-sized semi-submersible kamikaze drones. The supply of new anti-submarine aircraft for the Russian army is not even planned.

Another effective means of detecting semi-submersible kamikaze drones are airborne early warning and control aircraft (AWACS), which easily detect surface sea targets. But even with this we have huge problems. Our nine obsolete A-50 (A-50U) aircraft manufactured in the 1980s, due to their small number, are not capable of meeting all the needs of the Armed Forces, and we do not have the production of new AWACS aircraft.

And without long-range detection of semi-submersible kamikaze drones by technical means, followed by targeting strike aircraft at them, an effective fight against them “on distant frontiers” is impossible.

Only passive means of combat remain – blocking the Kerch Strait with booms, which proved their effectiveness back in the years of the First World War for combating submarines. Judging by today’s attack, they are absent in the Kerch Strait. Why? Is there a large sea traffic from the Black Sea to the Sea of ​​Azov and vice versa in the conditions of war in connection with the entry of the Russian grouping to the coast of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov and its transformation into the inland sea of ​​the Russian Federation? Is it really impossible to temporarily completely stop this traffic and thereby secure the Crimean bridge at least from the strikes of semi-submersible kamikaze drones.

I am sure that now among my readers there will be many who will begin to ask the question: “What does Putin have to do with it?”. I hope most people don’t ask this question.

Military Affairs

The March on the Kremlin

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by Israel Shamir via UNZ

Russian generals are similar to the US generals depicted in Catch-22, the jolly novel by Joseph Heller: quarrelling, arrogant, caring more about their position and reputation than about the war. They too make their fighters fly more missions, perhaps leading their careers to greater glory. Fighters get killed, but who cares? They were greedy, too, and ready to bomb their own airfields if the enemy paid them enough to do it. The Russian general Ivan Popov was very popular with his troops for his panache, but he was forced out by general Gerasimov, the Head of General Staff. Wagner PMC head Eugene Prigozhin, the hero of Bakhmut, needed ammo, but Shoygu from the MoD lusted after another medal (to add to the 60 he has already amassed), and ammo for the Wagner group was not a priority for him. Prigozhin marched with his army to the gates of Moscow to get Putin’s attention, which he got – along with his ammo after some delay. Some journalists accused Prigozhin of mutiny, but instead he was given millions in roubles and dollars, gold and guns that were taken from him in the aftermath of his escapade. Foreign minister Mr Lavrov described the event as peredryaga, meaning trouble, mess, or confusion. General Popov also wants to speak to Putin, to explain himself, but he has no soldiers to march with him.

Both Popov and Prigozhin openly criticized the way Mr Shoygu of the MoD, and General Gerasimov, his head of Staff, are managing the war in Ukraine. But some US officials and the Russian pro-Western opposition preferred to call their criticism a coup d’état. So many people wanted this coup to happen that now it is difficult to claim it was a nothing-burger. Let’s examine in detail what happened between the Russian state, the General Staff, the Ministry of Defence and the proprietor of Wagner PMC, Mr Prigozhin.

Prigozhin is a Russian billionaire and entrepreneur. He did some catering for the Kremlin (a position of great trust), then delivered meals to schools in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and lately has expanded into media operations. He established the so-called Troll Factory: a major source of influence in Russian social media. Before this, it was the Western intelligence services that ruled supreme in Russian social media, be it Facebook, Instagram or VK. Prigozhin’s Trolls were able to quickly counteract the efforts of Western propaganda warriors, and as a result he became close to Putin personally. Around 2015, he moved from commanding internet trolls to commanding real warriors: he established a private military company called Wagner, after the nickname of its co-founder. They fought for Russia in many countries – in Africa, in Syria, in Latin America. At some point, the Russian state turned to them for help. The head of the General Staff, General Gerasimov personally addressed Mr Prigozhin, and asked him to take part in the Ukraine War. Wagner initially participated in the battle for Popasnaya (Lugansk People Republic). Prigozhin was proud to fight a heroic war for the sake of victory and the glory so desired by men, but after more than a year of fighting Prigozhin could see that the Russian army was not in a hurry for victory. The war seemed designed to achieve a stalemate, not conquest.

The real reason behind the delay is that the Ukrainian resistance was a surprise for Russians. Before the war, they thought it would take a few days. That the Ukrainians won’t fight. That the West wouldn’t supply weapons. Even such knowledgeable and wise people as Anatoly Wasserman thought it will be over in a few days; they only wondered would it be a three-day war, or a four-day war? Putin also had unrealistic expectations of a rapid victory. When the Russian generals saw that this was not going to happen, they began to withdraw South, and they deliberately left expensive military equipment behind them as they retreated. I was told by knowledgeable people that this was a US trap set for Putin.

Here the big dichotomy of Russian politics began to play an important part. There are Yeltsinites and Patriots. An experienced man at the top of the administrative ladder, Shoygu was a Yeltsinite. He was close to Yeltsin, managed his re-election in 1996, led the ruling party, and became a minister in 1992 while Yeltsin was the president and Putin was as yet nobody in St Petersburg. Shoygu was a minister for Emergency Situations (EMERCOM), and later he was selected as Minister of Defence. At thirty-two years in the government, he holds an absolute record. Shoygu is a personal friend of President Putin. So is Mr Abramovich, the oligarch. Yet both Shoygu and Abramovich hold very different views from Mr Putin. Putin seeks Russia’s greatness and independence. On the other hand, Yeltsinites like Shoygu would prefer Russia to be defeated and quietly returned to the Neoliberal policies of Yeltsin’s days. Still, Putin is a man of his word and once upon a time he promised Yeltsin that he would safeguard the Yeltsinites, so he could not easily dismiss Shoygu, even if his war management was atrocious. There is a growing opinion that Shoygu assisted the US in their plans to mislead Putin and trap him in the quagmire of the Ukraine. In not entirely unrelated news, Shoygu is considering the run for presidency in 2024 to supplant Putin. Alternatively, the post of President might be occupied by other pro-Western officials: by the Mayor of Moscow Sergey Sobyanin, or similar figures. All the work done by Putin would be undone, and Russia would return to the days of Yeltsin. Prigozhin would prefer Putin do at least one more term, else he himself might compete for the patriotic electorate.

The role of PMC Wagner in this war has changed unexpectedly. Instead of acting as a special group of assault troops to provide victory in the most crucial battles, the Wagner group has more and more become an infantry unit, albeit a special one, but infantry assigned to trench warfare all the same. What was worse– instead of thanking them for this – they were turned into perpetual beggars for armaments.

In the logic of Prigozhin, this is very strange. If you were called up for military service and asked to shoulder the burden, one shouldn’t have to march to beg for ammunition, getting nothing but excuses and squabbles. In this sense, he considered himself deceived. Furthermore – not an unimportant aspect – is the question of profit. After all, the businessman (including the patriotic businessman) still understands that he must earn money to be able to feed his army. And this was the case for the Wagner group: Prigozhin made sure that his soldiers were fed and dressed. In contrast, the soldiers under the MoD were poorly fed and even worse clad. They had to apply to kind-hearted grannies for socks and underwear.

The generals had stolen the army budget and provided for themselves, while soldiers were unkempt and uncared for. Wagner group soldiers were well provided for, except when it came to Russian arms and ammunition. The MoD had no intention of sharing their armaments with the Wagner group, and Prigozhin began to worry that there was nothing left to share: he suspected that the generals had sold their stores of weapons to enlarge their profits. Moreover, Prigozhin understood (after his previous conflicts with MoD and their squabbles over armaments) that no matter what he did, he was going to be framed as the bad guy.

Next came the story of the new contract. The MoD tried to form a PMC of their own, but it was unsuccessful. Then the minister decided to appropriate the Wagner group. Prigozhin’s fighters were told to sign a contract with the MoD. Prigozhin recognized this as a blatant attempt to steal the Wagner group out from under him. His glorious force would be sent to die in the trenches, and Prigozhin would be kicked out. He complained that he did not apply for a position with the MoD. He rightly considered that his own Wagner group was a wonderful unit to be deployed strategically even in the most dangerous places, but it was not to be wasted in trench warfare. He felt he was deceived and misused by Minister of Defence Shoygu and by his Chief of Staff General Gerasimov.

It is not the first time Prigozhin had a problem with Mr Shoygu. In March 2016, in Syria, he was asked to help and take Palmyra, an important position in the desert. He took it, and passed it back to Syrian/Russian forces; but in December 2016, as a result of a surprise attack, a tiny ISIS force recaptured Palmyra, and the garrison placed by the Russian MoD fled the city, leaving huge stockpiles of weapons, ammunition and equipment – and even cooked food in the dining room! Russian forces could not retake Palmyra, and once again they turned to the Wagner group, which was able to recapture the city in March 2017.

Despite the fact that Wagner did not brag about his military successes, Shoygu was embittered with hatred. His opportunity for revenge appeared in less than a year. In February 2018, the Wagner group, with the consent of Assad, decided to “squeeze out” the pro-American Kurds from Conoco’s large refinery near the village of Hasham in the province of Deir ez-Zor. Knowing that the Kurdish defences were covered by the US Air Force, Prigozhin agreed in advance with the Russian command in Syria to have his operation covered by Russian air defence (armed with S-300 and Panzyr) and their full cooperation was promised to him. On the night of February 7-8, 2018, the Wagner group attacked the Conoco plant. The Pentagon immediately contacted Shoygu by direct special line: “Are these yours?” – to which the Americans received the unambiguous answer “No”. After that, the American HIMARS, Apache helicopters and the AC-130 flying battery attacked Prigozhin’s soldiers. The Wagner group suffered the largest (before Ukraine) losses in its history – 334 killed and about 700 wounded. According to Prigozhin, by Shoygu’s order the entire air defence unit was withdrawn and the liaison officers cut off their communication lines with the Wagner group.

Much later, when it was time for the generals to hand out medals to their troops, Prigozhin walked in. He asked Shoygu: “Can I talk with you about the situation that occurred on February 8 under Deir ez-Zor?” Shoygu turned, calmly and arrogantly answered: “Did you want to act a hero? All the heroes are here in this room” – and he waved his hands to indicate all the officers in their splendid formal uniforms – “and you just lost your bearings.”

This is the way Prigozhin told it. According to the Russian side, Shoygu could not hope to defeat the Americans and so he cut a deal with them. In the first Russian reports, all participation of Wagner group was flatly denied. In the Wikipedia, there are a few versions of the encounter. Yet another version is given in the New York Times. In any case, the Wagner group was badly beaten and relations between Prigozhin and Shoygu were permanently spoiled.

After the battle for Bakhmut it became even worse, if that were possible. The MoD did not reply to Wagner group telephone calls, and they were given none of the armaments they needed. Prigozhin worried that if the Wagner group was thrown onto the frontlines, it would now be only for suicide missions, beyond his normal issues with shells, lines of communications and other supply difficulties.

Thus, the rebellion of June 24, 2023 is not a sudden madness of Prigozhin, but only the next stage of an old confrontation. This feud is not just between Shoygu and Prigozhin (although here the personal factor takes precedence), but can be traced much deeper – between the Ministry of Defence and GU (Military Intelligence). Formally the GU is subordinated to the Ministry of Defence, yet practically it has always been and continues to be “a ministry within the ministry”, pursuing its own policies for its own ends.

Prigozhin, from his point of view, has completed his tasks, capitalised on his image, and attacked his adversaries. His was no rebellion; he planned no seizure of power from the start. He proved his loyalty to the president Putin. Though Putin’s enemies have trapped him in the Ukrainian quagmire, Prigozhin proved that his men are still the president’s storm troopers. Prigozhin has consistently completed all the tasks set before him brilliantly. Those on the outside who observe the implementation of Prigozhin’s operations, may (I suppose) differ on the correctness or incorrectness of his actions. I do not have any behind-the-scenes or secret information about the motivations of all the participants in these controversies, but I expect that, in addition to what we observe on television screens and on the Internet, each of these parties has his own private motive. For example, the battlefield tactics of respected generals like Surovikin or Alekseev were naturally constrained by preventive measures to avoid collusions with Prigozhin, and were not intended to influence or injure the Wagner group. Military delays are not always incompetence; often they are tactical moves designed to solidify positions. With any such complex behind-the-scenes gambits, each of the public participants (including those whom we cannot see) have their own reasoning and goals.

What do we mean when we say “Prigozhin went to Belarus”, asked Andrew Pinchuk, the author of Clausewitz and Emptiness, the book approved by Prigozhin? He removed himself from the controversy. Furthermore, he stepped up into international space. Tomorrow, the presidents and leaders of at least two or three dozen different countries – Asian, African, Latin American, Central American and, I think, some European will line up at the ASEAN conference. At the same time, because of all the news swirling around both Prigozhin himself and the agency headed by him, the Wagner group is now the most famous non-state paramilitary brand in the world. And what will it be called next? PMC Wagner? PMC Asia? PMC Global? No, we cannot say that Wagner ceased to exist. I think we need to say that Wagner got a new life.

The story of General Popov is quite different. This brave general has been squashed by the MoD. It was said the reason was his harsh critique of general Shoygu. But there is another plausible explanation. A unit under the command of general Popov succeeded in seizing intact one of Britain’s most prized missiles, called “Storm Shadow”. Instead of being congratulated, the unit was punished, and general Popov promptly retired. It is possible that the MoD intended to use the Storm Shadow in a different way. Popov’s soldiers had delivered it to a scientific institute for studies. Did Shoygu and Gerasimov want to return it to the UK? Or were they just upset that the missile went to the institute connected with Mr Rogozin, former head of Russian Space Research?

It could be; Russia is a new Byzantine Realm, full of complicated intrigues. Meanwhile, the rapidity of the Popov dismissal shows that Yeltsinites are as powerful as ever and President Putin continues to follow their disastrous advice. As he says, he does not want to act under pressure. But even the laughing-stock generals from Catch-22 won the war that is WWII. So will win the Russian generals, or rather Russian soldiers.

Edited by Paul Bennett.

Scamdemic - Corona Virus

“We Will Bring You Down” – 7 MEP to WHO

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German MEP Christine Anderson last week shredded the World Health Organization, calling it a group of “globalitarian misanthropists” who she – and a group of seven other MEPs, have vowed to dismantle in order to oppose the WHO supplanting democratically elected governments.

In the front row: Christine Anderson (Germany) and Cristian Vasile Terhes (Romania).

“An unelected body like who is controlled and run by multi-billionaires should never be allowed to act in place of a democratically elected government,” she said during the Citizen’s Initiative conference in Brussels.

Anderson says she’ll expose and name any individuals, including government officials and parliamentarians, who support the WHO ‘power grab’ and disrespect democracy.

“It is you [WHO] that is the small fringe minority,” she continued. “You are the ones who do not have the right to dictate to the people what they want and what they don’t want.”

“So take it from me … take it from the millions and millions of people around the world. We will bring you down,and we will not tire until we have done just that. So brace yourselves. We are here, and the fight is on. So let’s have the fight.”

Watch: