On the Road to Serfdom ?

Nicole Schwab – Get Used to “Permanent “Climate Lockdowns”

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The daughter of World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab has emerged from the shadows and issued a chilling threat against humanity.

According to Nicole Schwab, the global elite are preparing to roll out permanent “climate lockdowns” whether you like it or not – and you had better get used to the idea because there is nothing you can do about it.

Schwab’s daughter says the global elite’s plans for a so-called “new humanity” are so far advanced there is nothing that ordinary people like you and me can do to stop them. But there is a fatal flaw in the globalist’s agenda that we can use to exploit and spoil their plans

Woke Lunacy

Who Protects Soros? — That’s the Real Evil!

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by Tyler Darden via Zero Hedge

In January 2023, Joe Rogan spoke with former CIA officer Mike Baker, and reflected specifically on George Soros:

“I had a conversation with the governor of Texas about him, with Greg Abbott, where he was explaining to me what George Soros does,” Rogan said.
“And it’s f’ terrifying that he donates money to a very progressive, very leftist — whether it’s a DA or whatever, politician, and then funds someone who’s even further left than them to go against them,” Rogan added.
“And just keeps moving it along. So he’s playing like a global game. And that he enjoys doing it.”

“Yeah. He enjoys doing it. But it is, it’s telling right? He understood early on where you wanted to seize power,” Baker replied.

Early on, indeed.

And now, in an ironic twist, Patrick Bet-David explained this week – also to Joe Rogan – Soros has been acting out his ‘god-like’ plan since at least 2004.

No lesser media outlet than The LA Times wrote (in 2004) following an interview with USA Today:

The begin by noting that George Soros’ motto, “If I spend enough, I will make it right”, is the essence of his articulated ideas about changing society.

Then the ‘god complex’ conversation happens: (via The LA Times) (emphasis ours)

It seems that Soros believes he was anointed by God.
“I fancied myself as some kind of god …” he once wrote.
“If truth be known, I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood, which I felt I had to control, otherwise they might get me in trouble.”
When asked by Britain’s Independent newspaper to elaborate on that passage, Soros said, “It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.”
Since I began to live it out.
Those unfamiliar with Soros would probably dismiss the statement out of hand. But for those who have followed his career and sociopolitical endeavors, it cannot be taken quite so lightly.
Soros has proved that with the vast resources of money at his command he has the ability to make the once unthinkable acceptable. His work as a self-professed “amoral” financial speculator has left millions in poverty when their national currencies were devaluated, and he pumped so much cash into shaping former Soviet republics to his liking that he has bragged that the former Soviet empire is now the “Soros Empire.”
Now he’s turned his eye on the internal affairs of the United States. Today’s U.S., he writes in his latest book, “The Bubble of American Supremacy,” is a “threat to the world,” run by a Republican Party that is the devil child of an unholy alliance between “market fundamentalists” and “religious fundamentalists.”
We have become a “supremacist” nation.

Can anyone imagine The LA Times writing anything like that today about The Open Society founder – protector of minorities, supporter of progressives, and general global anti-right chaos agent.

Worse still, this ‘god’ (with a small g) thinks he might be mad:

“Next to my fantasies about being God, I also have very strong fantasies of being mad,” Soros once confided on British television.
“In fact, my grandfather was actually paranoid. I have a lot of madness in my family. So far I have escaped it.”

Perhaps that explains his omnipresence at the loci of every chaos-engine-enabling event around the world.

The LA Times ends on a prophetic note:

In his book, “Soros on Soros,” he says: “I do not accept the rules imposed by others…. And in periods of regime change, the normal rules don’t apply.” Clearly, Soros considers himself to be someone who is able to determine when the “normal rules” should and shouldn’t apply.

He who buys the most DAs, makes the rules (or sows enough chaos to reflexively create new rules).

Democracy as Mob Rule

Corruption in America – An Old Way of Life

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Authored by Eric Felten via RealClear Wire,

It was 100 years ago today – August 2, 1923 – when President Warren G. Harding suddenly died. He was in San Francisco, on the tail end of a cross-country promotional tour that had taken him as far as Alaska. It would have been an exhausting trip even for a younger man without a bum ticker. Then Harding contracted pneumonia along the way and, if that wasn’t enough, was laid low by some tainted seafood.

Any or all of these may have contributed to Harding’s demise. But no one knows exactly why or how Harding died when he did. The New York Times attributed the president’s sudden expiration to a “stroke of apoplexy.” Some have suggested heart failure. Others have joked that – battered by a landslide of scandal and humiliated by the corrupt schemes launched by the old friends he had raised to positions of power – Harding simply died of shame.

An autopsy might have helped quell rumors of foul play, but first lady Florence Harding refused to allow one.

There was one character in the mix who claimed he knew how Harding died. His name was Gaston B. Means and he claimed not only to know that the president was murdered, but also who did it. His assertions, to put it mildly, were suspect. But Means could spin a compelling yarn. And he was at one time credentialed. He not only had the badge of a special agent of the Justice Department, he had an office in the department.

Means persuaded no small number of Americans that Florence Harding was the killer. He claimed that she confided in him, confessing that she had poisoned her husband.

According to Means’ account (and it should be noted he was an inveterate liar), while he was a special agent for the federal government, Florence Harding tasked him with investigating her husband’s dalliances. Means claimed to have compiled a dossier detailing Warren’s affair with Nan Britton, a young Ohio woman. The Hardings had a knock-down, drag-out row over the child the president had fathered with Britton, Means claimed, adding that not long after that, the first lady took charge of giving her husband his meds.

Means would peddle the story for years, claiming the first lady was enraged that Harding fathered a child by a young woman, Nan Britton, smitten with the president. A notorious con-man, hustler and trickster, Means was also a special agent in the investigative agency that would morph into the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For those shocked that today’s FBI plays politics and seems to struggle to shoot straight, it’s worth remembering that the agency is in some part a legacy of Gaston B. Means. Which is to say, misinformation and disinformation are nothing new. A fabulist of the first order, Means’ fabrications were interlaced with enough detail drawn from actual events that he managed to convince many that his tales were true. Books such as Will Durant’s “The Story of Philosophy” and H.G. Wells’ “The Outline of History” were among the best-selling nonfiction books of 1930, but they didn’t come close to selling as many copies as Means’ memoir, “The Strange Death of President Harding.”

While Harding was still alive, Means became his own one-man crime wave. With the help of his badge, Means managed to have a hand in just about every crime common in the era: fraud, theft, blackmail, espionage, bootlegging, bribery, grift, graft, even murder. Gaston indulged in all these moral hazards and others, too. And he did so brazenly, with an indelible smirk on his pudgy face. Late in his epic career of flim-flammery, he even made a cameo in the Crime of the Century, the 1932 kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby. Means absconded with $100,000 he promised to use in ransoming the doomed child.

As one writer put it, Gaston B. Means was “the symbol of American criminality and corruption in the gaudiest and most lawless era in the nation’s history.”

According to Means, Mrs. Harding was alone with the president for about ten minutes, at which point “It was time for his medicine.” Gaston claimed the widow confided in him: “I gave it to him … he drank it. He lay back on the pillows a moment,” closed his eyes and rested. But then the president bolted awake and looked straight into his wife’s face. He sighed and was dead.

Gaston asked her if she thought her husband knew in his last fleeting moments that she had poisoned him. “Yes,” Mrs. Harding replied, “I think he knew.” Means said he was the one who advised her to refuse permission for an autopsy on the president’s corpse.

This febrile tale of mariticide was quaint compared to the killing Gaston proved willing to commit himself. One of Gaston’s early scams: He fashioned himself a money manager and got his hands on the fortune of a widow foolish enough to entrust him with investing her fortune. When her money had all been siphoned away and spent, she was nearing the moment when her checks would bounce and Means’ theft would be exposed. He convinced her that some dangerous characters were out to steal her money and would kill her to get it. He had her hide in his hometown in North Carolina. He took her into the woods at twilight one evening, ostensibly to teach her to defend herself with a pistol. Alas, there was an accident. She was shot in the back of the head.

In 1917 Means was tried for the killing. He maintained the wealthy widow had stumbled and shot herself as he was kneeling to get a sip of cool water from a spring. Despite the preposterous story of what happened in the woods, Gaston was acquitted. He went to work for a private detective agency run by William J. Burns, for whom he had done some work before the U.S. finally entered the Great War. Well, the work wasn’t so much for Burns as it was for a German spy ring operating in New York. When Harding won the 1920 presidential election, he made Burns head of the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation, and Burns brought Gaston along with him. Which is how Means became a special agent.

1921 was a good time to be a grifter. Prohibition was the law of the land, and Means quickly put his position to profitable use, taking payoffs from bootleggers in an elaborate protection racket. He would later say that he kept two adjacent rooms at the Vanderbilt Hotel in New York. In one room was a large goldfish bowl. Gaston would sit in the other; he would watch through a peephole as bootleggers delivered their graft, dropping $500 bills in the goldfish bowl, each at an appointed time.

In a scheme worthy of Watergate, Gaston arranged for henchmen to “go through” the office of Wisconsin Sen. Robert La Follette in search of something that could be used to blackmail him. Asked by a congressional committee what it meant to “go through” an office, Means said they would “find all the mail that comes in, all the papers, anything that he has got lying around.”

Harding’s old cronies had been known as the “Ohio Gang.” In the years after Harding died, their elaborate self-dealing was exposed. Most famous was the “Teapot Dome” scandal in which Harding’s secretary of the interior sold federal oil reserves to petroleum companies at a discount in exchange for kickbacks.

As Means’ schemes were exposed, he tried to protect himself by giving frequent testimony to congressional investigators probing the Ohio Gang. He would then recant his testimony and denounce the hearings as shams. Although these shenanigans didn’t keep him out of jail, they did set dubious precedents.

For example, current FBI director Christopher Wray is hardly the first to stonewall Congress. Mally Daugherty – brother of Harry Daugherty, Harding’s attorney general and a leader of the Ohio Gang – refused to appear before Congress on Capitol Hill even though he had been served with a subpoena. The Supreme Court waded into the controversy and affirmed Congress’ power to command testimony.

As ugly as our politics may be, we do not live in a uniquely deranged age. Political prosecutions and contrived investigations have been all too common in our country’s history.

“The Strange Death of President Harding” was a notorious hoax. Yet it paid handsomely to the hoax artist. That’s what misinformation looks like.

With his death, 100 years ago today, Harding didn’t hide the misdeeds of his administration nor that of his friends. Many of the “Ohio Gang” ended up dead, some perhaps by suicide, some perhaps not.

As for Gaston B. Means, he spent his last years in the federal prison at Fort Leavenworth in western Kansas. The crime that finally caught up with him was particularly callous. When the Lindberghs’ infant was kidnapped, Means went to one of Mrs. Lindbergh’s rich friends and told her that he could rescue the baby if only he had $100,000 with which to pay off the kidnappers. She gave him the money and then some. He pocketed it. Convicted of embezzlement and grand larceny, he was sentenced to 15 years in Leavenworth Penitentiary. He served only five years of that time, dying behind bars in 1938, eventually to be forgotten by a nation that fears the depravity of its generation is unique.

Eric Felten is an investigative correspondent for RealClearInvestigations, reporting on government corruption. He is a former columnist for the Wall Street Journal and previously a Kennedy Fellow at Harvard University. Felten has been published in Washingtonian, People, National Geographic Traveler, The Weekly Standard, Daily Beast, National Review, Spectator USA, and Reader’s Digest.

Economics/Statistics

Sanctions? Russia Joins World’s Top 5 Economies by PPP

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via Sputnik International

The Russian economy exceeded $5 trillion in terms of purchasing power parity for the first time in late 2022, and stayed in fifth place in the world in this indicator, according to the World Bank

China became the world’s largest economy by PPP with $30 trillion, followed by the United States with $25.5 trillion. India closes the top three with $11.9 trillion, and Japan is in fourth place with $5.7 trillion.

In general, the world economy in terms of purchasing power parity grew by 11% – to $164.2 trillion, while 20 years ago it was a third as big: $54.1 trillion.

Energy Wars

China’s Weapon in the Global Fight for Resorces

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The Belt and Road Initiative is proclaimed to be an act of solidarity with developing nations. It is, but it is also so much more

by Timur Fomenko, via RT

“China’s overseas investment in metals and mining set to hit record,” declared an article in the Financial Times. The piece analyzes how China’s investments in the Belt and Road Initiative, a massive global infrastructure program, have become more “strategic.”

While the FT is notoriously negative about China and spares no opportunity to rush into narratives pertaining to ‘debt traps,’ claims of corruption, and how ‘dozens’ of countries are reviewing them (only citing US-pressured Italy as an example), it nonetheless makes a key point here. The BRI is strategic. But it was never anything else.

While China has framed the massive investment scheme as an act of solidarity with developing countries, pledging economic integration and mutual gains, the colossal creation of infrastructure by Beijing in other countries has never been random, discrete or disorganized. The goodwill gained of course matters, but there was always a plan, and that plan was not only to keep China’s exports rolling, but to also to secure energy and resources in an international environment that is increasingly uncertain, and in anticipation of what the US was about to do.

China is the world’s largest consumer of energy and natural resources, but has a strategic Achilles heel in that, beyond critical rare earth elements, it doesn’t have as many resources as it needs. As an industrial giant, China cannot satisfy its own needs for energy whether it be to power its factories or to fuel its cars. This has resulted in Beijing forming increasingly lucrative and close partnerships with the nations of the Middle East, which have tilted away from their traditional patrons in the West accordingly.

At the same time, a global competition for natural resources is picking up pace. The US, using the language of ‘supply chain resilience’ and ‘diversification,’ is seeking to gain control over resources it deems strategically critical, such as lithium and many other metals and minerals. The US wants to dominate all of these global supply chains, and eventually isolate China from them, leading to a competition regarding investments throughout the world. Supply chains are no longer globalized but are being carved up to fit the strategic needs of individual countries that want to be self-sufficient, should a military crisis emerge.

Consequently, this military factor is a huge dynamic in China’s strategic thinking, given that its imports of materials and energy have been reliant on crossing through areas which are now being contested by the US, including the South China Sea, East China Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Washington is attempting to comprehensively encircle China’s periphery. The BBC applauded this as an “arc of bases around China,” with the US having recently gained access to even more military sites in the Philippines. It then received a military access deal with Papua New Guinea, while backing the full rearmament of Japan and placing more weapons on the Korean Peninsula.

In the event of any conflict, the US would like to seek military dominance over China’s surroundings (as unfeasible as that is) and attempt to embargo its foreign trade and energy imports. How did the British Empire triumph over Germany twice? The answer is through naval supremacy, by blocking Berlin’s access to the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and crippling it with attrition in the long run.

China’s Eastern periphery is similarly vulnerable. This is why China is using the Belt and Road initiative to connect Eurasia by land in ways which allow it to bypass these contested areas and create new routes for energy and materials.

This, in turn, is why China’s most critical strategic partner in the entire Belt and Road project is Pakistan, a country that not only connects to China by land, but extends southwards to the sea bypassing the whole Indian subcontinent and offering a free route to the Middle East. Pakistan is also a formidable military power with nuclear capabilities, discouraging any potential attack by the US and its allies in any potential conflict with China. Through Gwadar Port, China intends for Pakistan to be its primary maritime gateway concerning the Middle East and Africa, marking a safe passage for oil and natural gas.

This is also why China’s partnerships with Russia and states in Central Asia matter. Beijing has invested overwhelmingly in creating transcontinental railway freight routes, and hosted its first ever Central Asian leaders summit this year. It’s also one reason why, despite the upheaval in Afghanistan, China seeks to have a close relationship with the Taliban and procure access to that country’s natural resources.

In conclusion, the BRI is a master chess game by China, because it embodies diplomatic, trade and strategic priorities. Look, for example, at how the new China-Laos railway has established an additional commercial route into the country for the landlocked Laos, which will soon be connected all the way down to Thailand and its ports. China is actively diversifying its logistical routes while keeping other countries on board. It’s about breaking US attempts to dominate China by militarizing the area around it, cutting off access to goods and preventing a return to the “gunboat diplomacy” of the 19th century.

Anti-White Racism

Immigration Increasingly Squeezing Whites Out of College, Even If Affirmative Action Ends

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By Robert Weissberg via VDare

The Supreme Court’s recent Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision striking down racial preferences at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, exposed how the admission process has become politicized. But will the Court’s decision end the role of politics in college admissions? The answer is “no” even if Affirmative Action vanishes. Affirmative Action is only one of many political factors influencing college acceptances and rejections. Equally important, though rarely acknowledged: the federal government’s immigration policies—since they determine the overall pool of college applicants, and this pool can be just as important as the applicant’s record or racial/ethnic identity.

The quality of the competition dictates how applicants play the college admissions “game.” Entering Harvard would be far easier if, for example, the deteriorating schools dumbed down most of your fellow applicants. Within a weak field, middling SAT scores and a so-so class rank would suffice. If the opposite were true, however, admission might require hiring tutors and working harder. So the stiffer the competition, the more effort necessary. At some point, even the very bright might skip applying to an Ivy League school as too much of a long shot.

The applicant pool has special significance for white applicants who face tough competition from groups who scarcely entered college back in the 1970s, namely blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. Until quite recently, whites almost entirely competed with other whites. In fact, the previous pool of rivals was even smaller for men since they often competed exclusively against other males to enter male-only schools, while females often only competed against females to enter female-only schools.

The expansion of the applicant pool, absent a corresponding increase in slots, is highly consequential. While brains were always necessary to be admitted to a top school, a smaller pool of brainy rivals also increased the number of “safe” school slots. You took their shot at Harvard, but simultaneously hedged bets by applying to Boston University. Back then it was unthinkable for parents to pay huge sums to “counselors” get to Junior admitted to a second-tier school like the University of Southern California.

Matters changed with the 1965 Immigration Act that opened the door for millions of Asians. The impact of this influx has been enormous. In 1960, for example, there were less than a million Asians in America but by 2000, this figure had reached 11.9 million, 22.4 million in 2019. The predicted number will reach 34.8 million by 2040.

Key facts about Asian Americans, a diverse and growing population, by Abby Budiman and Neil G. Ruiz, Pew Research, April 29, 2021

These Asian immigrant children have done exceptionally well in American schools. Recall that Asian students were the ones who challenged Harvard’s race-based admissions policy, with Harvard openly admitting that absent Affirmative Action, Harvard would become a predominantly Asian.

Derb: If Harvard were to select from just the top one-tenth of applicants—which is in fact what Harvard most likely would do—then Asian Americans would be 51.52 percent, Whites 36.54, Hispanics 2.69 percent, blacks 0.76 percent. https://t.co/AzKVxjG5cD

— VDARE (@vdare) July 1, 2023

The numbers are astounding despite efforts to keep them out, At the merit-only Cal Tech, the proportion of Asians is 39.9%, 35,1% at University of California, Berkeley, 27.6% at MIT and at the University of Texas, Austin 21.9% and so on. This domination would undoubtedly be even greater if one disregarded fluff majors such as Gender Studies.

At the other end of the intellectual ability continuum are blacks and Hispanics who owe their campus presence to Affirmative Action, not immigration or brain power. While this black influx has ebbed and flowed over time, blacks have become a sizeable presence on campus [Black Collegiate Education in the United States (1828-2019), by Christina Hudson, BlackPast.org, January 25, 2022]The heavy thumb on the scale in their favor is particularly noteworthy at Ivy League schools. Blacks are typically around 7 % to 8% of all undergraduate students [The Demographics of the Ivy League, CollegeVine.com, July 9, 2023] (However, these proportions still fall below blacks’ overall proportion in the population.

Meanwhile the Hispanics presence in the US population has dramatically risen from 9,6 million in 1970 to 62.5 million in 2021 thanks to both legal and illegal immigration. This has brought a corresponding increase in college enrollment from 1.5 million in 2000 to 3.8 million in 2019 [Hispanic enrollment reaches new high at four-year colleges in the U.S., but affordability remains an obstacle, by Lauren Maura, Pew Research, October 7, 2022 ]

Like African Americans, Hispanics now even have a sizeable presence at Ivy League schools, averaging between 10% and 16% of all undergraduates—well below their population percentages, but still notable.

Put concretely, a recent Yale undergraduate class was about 37% white, so if you removed all Asians (24%), all Hispanics (15%), all African Americans (8%) and the tiny miscellaneous racial/ethnic admits, the white percentage would almost triple, Moreover, in 2022 the number of females slightly outnumbered males (3160 men, 3315 women), so if Yale restored its earlier male-only rule—its abolition was not government-mandated but nevertheless reflected public pressure—white males would double their odds of admission.

The endlessly-expanding pool of applicants has, naturally, shrunk the acceptance rates at top schools, Yale, for example, in 2007 accepted 11.4% of applicants and by 2017 the percentage had fallen to 6,7%. In 2022, it was 6.3%. [Ivy League Acceptance Rates and Admissions Statistics, IvyCoach.com, 2023 ]

Particularly revealing is that the same pattern holds at very good but non-elite schools that were once the “safe” schools for those rejected by the Ivy League.. New York University, for instance, has gone from a 36,7% acceptance rate in 2007 to 12.8% in 2021.

Prior to the Fair Admissions decision, native-born whites were trapped by a pincer movement. On the one side: less academically-qualified blacks and Hispanics who benefited from Affirmative Action. On the other side: Asians, typically from immigrant families, who out-performed whites academically.

White applicants thus experienced two distinct biological disadvantages. First, their race allowed them to be passed over in favor of less qualified blacks and Hispanics, Second, they simultaneously were passed over in favor of smarter Asians.

In both instances, the source of this twin genetic liability was political.

But will the Court’s ban on racial preferences “free up” space for white applicants? Conceivably, but as per Professor Peter Arcidiacono’s analysis, probably not, since most of these new beneficiaries will be Asian males.

More generally, however, there will be an uptick in white females to replace blacks and Hispanics. This change is just an ongoing trend in which the proportion of males on campus has been dropping. Schools regularly demonize men for “toxic masculinity” [The war on men continues on campus, The College Fix, July 7, 2023]. So college-age men shun higher education and become an endangered species on campus.

Affirmative Action may wither away, but immigration policy will continue to shape college admissions. As a veteran academic, I have argued elsewhere that American college students are growing dumber—see my American Students—Dumber and More Woke, American Thinker, February 4, 2023. My prediction: at some point, desperate schools will target smart youngsters from abroad for admission to US colleges.

Importing intellectual talent has long existed for graduate students, particularly in the hard sciences. The same policy could easily be extended for undergraduate admissions. In fact, 31% black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean now have a BA or higher [One-in-Ten Black People Living in the U.S. Are Immigrants, Pew Research, January 20, 2022]. Higher education is directly or indirectly subsidized in many ways, So the American taxpayer will now help educate the world.

Result: American universities may soon be peculiar institutions, with the hard sciences and engineering disproportionately dominated by Asians, Indians, and Eastern Europeans males, while the “soft” side will be overwhelmingly female, probably disproportionately feminists.

Many campuses will thus resemble collections of apartheid-like ethnic/gender enclaves.

One can only imagine how the mandarin social engineers will try to fix this alleged imbalance.

Robert Weissberg [email him] is Professor of Political Science, Emeritus, University of Illinois, Urbana and formerly Adjunct Professor of Politics (Graduate), New York University. He is author of Bad Students, Not Bad Schools (for Steve Sailer’s review, click here). His Unz.com archive is here; his American Thinker archive here.

Energy Wars

More Energy Resources Added to Russia’s Control

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Rapprochement between Russia and Niger makes the West dependent on Moscow

According to Bloomberg, if Niger falls into Russian orbit, the world will become even more dependent on Moscow for nuclear energy.

It is specified that Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are among the world’s leading producers of uranium, which account for about half of the reserves mined in the world. If we add Russia and Niger to this, then the share will jump to 60% and above.

In addition, Russia has uranium deposits, and the country itself controls almost 50% of the world’s enrichment capacity.

via https://t.me/+fZp0Os56l5ZkMzdi

Saving Ukrainians from Themselves

Ukraine Offensive – More of the Same, More Ukrainian Losses

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via  https://t.me/resident_ua/19048⚡️⚡️⚡️#InsideOur source at the OP said that the Biden administration is rushing Zelensky with a second stage of the counteroffensive, which should begin with crossing the Dnieper. In the West, they are not satisfied with the positional warfare in the Zaporozhye direction and want to see a full-scale offensive with all types of equipment, and not operations at the company or battalion level.

⚡️⚡️⚡️#Inside
Our source in the OP said that Yermak promised the Biden administration to launch the second stage of the counteroffensive within a month, the date and place of the D-Day operation have not yet been agreed, but everything is ready to begin the formation of the Dnieper.

Kyiv’s decision to fight for Bakhmut “caused consternation in the United States” due to losses in manpower and the expenditure of artillery ammunition.

The American CNBC publishes material about the disagreements between Ukraine and its Western partners.

“Ukraine’s current needs and demands and the military and political considerations of its allies clash from time to time, causing unpleasant encounters,” the channel writes.

In particular, one recalls Zelensky’s angry post during the NATO summit, in which he was outraged that Ukraine was not given an invitation to the Alliance. According to CNBC, the announcement “angered some allies” and was “too big a move.”

“The comments Zelenskiy made before the last summit didn’t resonate very well in Washington… the US administration was very annoyed,” the source told CNBC.

He noted that Washington was irritated by other episodes of the war, in which Ukraine “ignored” the advice of the West.

“The US strongly advises Ukraine not to do certain things, but Kyiv does them anyway, brushing aside or ignoring US concerns. And they are turning to the United States, or Washington, or the Biden administration, complaining that they are not involved in negotiations with NATO, ”the source said.
It is worth recalling the requests of the Pentagon to withdraw troops from Bakhmut in February, but then they made a different decision and throw further reserves into the meat grinder.

“Ukraine irritates its allies not only at the diplomatic level. Ukraine’s military strategy – and the symbolic meaning it attached to the struggle for every part of Ukrainian territory – sometimes clashed with the military perspective and pragmatism of its allies,” the newspaper writes.

According to him, Kyiv’s decision to fight for Bakhmut “caused horror in the United States” due to losses in manpower and the expenditure of artillery ammunition.

Our source reported that the General Staff changed tactics in the Azov operation, now the Western media are writing about it.

After the first attempts at a counter-offensive in the south, the UAF changed tactics, discarding what they were taught in the West, writes the New York Times.

Ukrainian commanders focused on wearing down Russian forces with artillery and long-range missiles. There are also small-scale infantry attacks.

But in the West they are skeptical about this.

The British intelligence company Janes said the small-unit attack strategy is “very likely to result in mass casualties, loss of equipment and minimal territorial gains” for Ukraine.

And US officials are concerned that a return to their old shelling tactics would deprive them of scarce munitions, “which could put Ukraine at a disadvantage in a war of attrition.”

However, the publication states that Western offensive tactics have not had an effect in Ukraine.

“Western-trained brigades went through only four to six weeks of combined arms training, and the units made several mistakes at the beginning of the counter-offensive in early June,” experts say.

This raises questions about the quality of the training Ukrainians have received in the West and whether the tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons are successful. The newspaper recalls that in the first two weeks of the counteroffensive, up to 20% of Western weapons were damaged or destroyed.

As a result, “NATO’s hopes for great successes of Ukrainian formations, equipped with new weapons, ammunition and re-trained, did not come true, at least for the moment.”

EuroSlavia, Remember?

Updated: After Libya, Now African Energy Supplies to Europe are Blocked

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Who was there yelling about canceling Africa’s debts and how bad and unnecessary it is?

Here is a plan to build a gas pipeline to the EU that would have provided 30 billion cubic meters of gas annually to the misfortune of Russia.

A good plan, but now unrealizable.

Conspiracy theory? Yes. Europe is the victim of a 30-year energy resource starvation plan. It started with the closure of German coal mines. Then the closure of the nuclear plants. Then the shut down of imports from Iran, followed by imports from Iraq. Venezuela was no longer available due to Europe’s self-imposed embargo. Libya’s gas and oil were shuttered for no apparent gain.

And then the Gazprom pipelines were blown up.

In the Eastern Mediterranean the large deposits of gas are inaccessible due to ongoing quarrels between Israel and its neighbors, followed up by a devastating quasi-civil war in Israel itself.

And let’s not forget Ukraine. It has plenty of coal to supply Europe, but nothing is available on the market. No gas, no coal, no oil, no uranium from Ukraine. Not even lithium.

And now we have the oil and gas pipeline projects from Nigeria, going through Niger, rendered impossible. But that’s nothing compared to the imminent termination of France’s supply of nuclear energy – 40 percent of which was fueled by the uranium from Niger.

Europe is a dead man walking. Warmongering? But how do you build a war economy without energy resources?

Conspiracy theory? Yes. This is how Europe is being passed on in vassalage to Russia. At the end of the day, Europe has no choice but to starve or to accept Russia’s suzerainty. And that’s how Russia becomes a real rival to China. The white European man against the Chinaman.

But that’s for the next generation.

Update: 

USA vs France in Niger. France is trying to organize a military invasion of Niger, organizing a coalition for this, where the main role should be played by the army of France and the army of Nigeria.

But the United States is against France’s military intervention in Niger. Because the US has an important military base in Niger [oh, really?!] and they don’t want to risk it. And if the French nuclear power industry will have problems due to a change of government in Niger, then the United States will only benefit from this.

The United States offers France not military intervention, but simply to buy the new authorities.

Also against French intervention in Niger and is the EU. The Italian Defense Minister has already openly spoken out against intervention. The EU is afraid of the revival of the anti-colonial discourse of Africa against Europe.

So the military invasion and the war in Niger seems to be cancelled. 
*************************

It turns out that the leader of the coup in Niger is Orthodox Christian. General Abdurakhman Tchiani (sometimes read Chiani) converted to Christian Orthodoxy in the early 1980s under the influence of the singer Vasilyeva.

Vasilyeva’s husband is the brother of the wife of the then, in the 1980s, USSR Ambassador to Niger.

General Tchiani has been Russia’s man for a long time.

 

Saving Ukrainians from Themselves

Ukrainian Soldiers Tell Of High Losses For Little Gains

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via Moon of AlabamaExcerpt

After two months of ‘counter offensive’ the frontline south of Velyka Novosilka has moved only some six kilometers south of the original frontline. Starmajorske consist of about 200 houses. Like the other four small villages along the way it has largely been destroyed.

This was not a ‘counter offensive’ but a bloody slog with mediocre results.

The NY Times piece is by Charlotta Gall who at times writes realistic reports from the ground in Ukraine.

After the uplifting start of her piece the reporting becomes grim:

As officials celebrated Ukraine’s progress in Staromaiorske, troops elsewhere on the ground said that Russian defenses and firepower remained formidable and in places impassable.A soldier at a medical post, awaiting evacuation for a concussion, recently described how his battalion had been decimated when it came under Russian artillery and tank fire. His brigade, the 23rd, was one of nine newly formed, Western-trained units prepared and equipped for the counteroffensive. But the brigade, he said, had been thrown into the fight without sufficient artillery support and had been unable to defend themselves against Russian firepower.

In one battle in which his unit took part, Ukrainian soldiers attacked in 10 American-made MaxxPro armored vehicles, but only one came back, he said. He showed photographs of the damaged vehicles, ripped open and burned out, which he said had been hauled back to a repair base. The soldier declined to give his name for fear of getting into trouble with his superiors.
…
The soldier lost a 22-year-old friend, Stas, in the shelling the day before, he said, adding that in just over a month, his battalion had suffered so many dead and wounded that only 10 men remained at the front line.

Previously that battalion has had some 400 to 500 men.

Next Gall speaks to a soldier from a different unit:

Another soldier, who joined up last year and asked to be identified only by his first name, Oleksiy, said that his unit had taken heavy losses as Russian troops directed artillery fire and aerial bombs onto their positions.“We were shot like on a shooting range,” he said. “A drone was flying above us and correcting the artillery fire.” Their positions were in former Russian positions, hemmed in by minefields, he said, and the Russian forces were able to keep them pinned down and under constant drone surveillance.

Soldiers were running out of ammunition and water but could only sneak in and out of their positions in ones or twos, on foot, when the light was poor just before dawn and at dusk, he said.

And a third case:

Interviews with Ukrainian soldiers and a review of military surveillance footage from a recent attack indicate that many Ukrainian units are sustaining heavy losses.A group with special operations training, deployed last month to storm Russian positions in a village on the western part of the front, took such heavy casualties in four days of assaults that they had to pull out without success.

After their armored vehicles were largely destroyed by artillery strikes on the first day, they revised their plan to approach the village on foot through a tree line that had been mined. The Ukrainians cleared a narrow path with demining explosives and the first soldiers reached the Russian positions and dropped down into a trench.

Drone footage of the event showed what happened next. Explosions suddenly detonated inside the trenches and other strikes hit soldiers on the edge of the tree line. The video footage has been verified by The New York Times.

“The trenches were mined,” said the assault commander, who uses the call sign Voskres, short for Resurrection. “Our guys started jumping in the trenches and blowing up,” he added. The Russian forces were watching, and they remotely detonated the mines, he said.

Those who managed to avoid the mines came under attack from multiple Russian kamikaze drones. “It seemed like they had a drone for each person,” he said. “The amount of equipment the Russians have, had we known, it was like mission impossible.”

Several weeks later, the village remains in Russian hands.

Since the Ukrainian ‘counter-offensive’ was launched the Russian Defense Ministry has reported on average 710 Ukrainian casualties per day.

The U.S., and its Ukrainian proxy, have sent these soldiers into battle knowing well that the ‘counter offensive’ would have no chance to win anything.

As the Wall Street Journal wrote a week ago:

When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons—from shells to warplanes—that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day.They haven’t. …

Largely untrained draftees with mediocre equipment and without sufficient artillery and air-support were willfully pushed into a fight they had no chance to win or even survive.

It was a cruel policy. Those who pushed them, and in fact anyone with military training and knowledge of military history, had known that all along.