Positioning For Defeat
Observers,
How might one use a pawn on a chessboard to block a knight? "Can't do that", you'll say. Maybe some other positional strategy would be a better analogy, but a western tank in Ukraine might be deprived of armor-piercing uranium ammunition by declaring uranium munitions to be "dirty bombs", which is true. They cause cancer and birth defects. That has been proven for decades. These munitions are already in Ukraine for the Bradley Fighting Vehicles, according to one commenter. Thanks Christine.
Moscow will consider deliveries of Western-made munitions which contain uranium to Kiev as equivalent to the use of dirty nuclear bombs, says Konstantin Gavrilov, head of the Russian Delegation to the Negotiations on Military Security and Arms Control in Vienna.
Project Veritas: Pfizer Exploring “Mutating” Covid-19 Virus Via ‘Directed Evolution’ To Continue Profiting From Vaccines (VIDEO)
Project Veritas on Wednesday night released explosive video of Jordon Trishton Walker, Pfizer Director of Research and Development, Strategic Operations, admitting the pharma giant is exploring ‘mutating’ Covid-19 via ‘directed evolution’ so the company can continue to profit off of vaccines...
..“Don’t tell anyone. Promise you won’t tell anyone. The way it [the experiment] would work is that we put the virus in monkeys, and we successively cause them to keep infecting each other, and we collect serial samples from them". https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/01/breaking-project-veritas-pfizer-exposed-exploring-mutating-covid-19-virus-via-directed-evolution-continue-profiting-vaccines-video/
"Tactics without Strategy is the Noise Before Defeat", Sun Tzu.
Andrei at the Saker blog looks at the phases of supplying and resupplying the Ukrainian military, which have taken place up until now. This is my synopsis.
The Ukrainian army began last February as the largest NATO-standard army in continental Europe, very well equipped, with reserves of all weapons and ammunition, and well dug in after 8 years of build-up by the west, specifically to fight and bleed Russia.
The first phase of the Russian attack sought to block the invasion of the Donbass and destroy the warmaking capability of the Ukrainian armed forces. Most of the planes, tanks, artillery and missiles of the Ukraine were chewed up, and Ukraine went to the negotiating table and came to an agreement. That was the first phase.
The second phase began when Boris Johnson flew to Kiev to prevent the agreement to negotiate peace, and Ukraine was re-supplied with extensive "Warsaw Pact" weapons systems, held by NATO members, and the ammunition to feed them. This equipment directly replaced the systems that had been destroyed, and there were enough trained Ukrainian officers and men to operate the equipment. This was used through the summer, and expended in dramatic counterattacks on Russian positions, forcing Russians to give up land to save soldiers, while Ukraine sacrificed soldiers and equipment for land, gaining good PR in the west. Ukraine sacrificed its remaining and best trained soldiers, its best units. They are gone as cohesive fighting brigades.
The third phase overlapped this, and consisted of the introduction of advanced NATO weapons systems, targeted by NATO, HIMARS and howitzers. These have been in short enough supply, and with limited counter-battery targeting, so they were not so much used against Russian artillery as against Donbass civilians, where casualties were markedly increased. Russian counter-battery targeting has been upgraded with acoustic targeting, passive devices which do not use radar, and are thereby invisible, cannot be targeted themselves.
The fourth phase of this war is now entered. Ukraine has been serving as a NATO proxy, and has exhausted its military ranks and the Soviet era weaponry available in Europe. To use modern weaponry, which is NATO, will require trained personnel. Mercenaries willing to die in Ukraine are in short supply these days.
The fiction has been that NATO is supplying Ukraine, but not at war with Russia. This fiction is rapidly degrading. The tripwire could be for NATO forces on active duty to enter Ukraine as combatants (not just tracking the donated supplies). Another tripwire would be for Russia to attack a NATO staging area in a NATO country, hosting pilots of F-16s in Ukrainian uniforms, for instance. Russia is unlikely to take that bait. Russia would target airplanes and vehicles in the war zone, and might be surprised to discover that they had contained NATO personnel.
Western military can't prevail against Russia in this land war, whether Ukrainian or NATO troops are dying, but they do not have an exit strategy.
This loss of face is expected to accelerate the decay of $US hegemony, which funds the imperial war machine. (A change of management in Washington could facilitate a change in policy, which would be welcomed by realists in the Pentagon.) http://thesaker.is/tactics-without-strategy-is-the-noise-before-defeat/
Not yet specifically addressed, but clearly implied, when talking about "striking Crimea" , especially the port of Sevastopol, are these heavier American intermediate range ballistic missiles, ground to ground, with a range of 190 miles , the MGM140-ATACMS. They are no longer in production. This would use up US supplies. Their main value would probably be to pose a threat, for a more favorable negotiating position in peace talks. If used against Russian military positions, they would cause damage and kill Russians, similarly to the longest range HIMARS missiles, but could not change the outcome of the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM-140_ATACMS
Ukrainian Nationalism as a "Cold War Weapon" is explored here. Galicia, western Ukraine, was long a sovereign entity within the Austro Hungarian Empire, and chafed badly at being suborned to Poland after WW-1. Galicians had a resistance movement, the OUN, which wanted to restore pure-blooded "white-Rus" to power, and which collaborated with the German Nazis, though as second-class citizens. They were instrumental in genocides against Jews, and fought the Red Army, but were not granted statehood. As WW-2 approached German defeat, the Germans released Stepan Bandera and other leaders from their not-as-bad camps. Mykola Lebed, another leader, was initially wanted by the Germans, then collaborated with the Germans, and especially with the CIA, after the war, coordinating the Ukrainian OUN resistance forces for the CIA, which were activated against the USSR in the early 1950s, then purged by the USSR in 1954. https://thesaker.is/ukrainian-nationalism-as-a-cold-war-weapon/
Denmark Plans Mandatory Military Service For Women As NATO Deepens Ukraine Support https://www.zerohedge.com/military/denmark-plans-mandatory-military-service-women-nato-deepens-ukraine-support
Russia fires over 20,000 rounds of heavy artillery per day without running low. How long before 90,000 rounds per month pulls ahead of that?
The Pentagon is planning to boost its production of artillery ammunition by 500% over the next two years as the US is depleting its military stockpiles by sending millions of shells to Ukraine, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, the US has pledged to send Ukraine over one million 155mm artillery shells. Before the US Army began efforts to increase production, it produced 14,400 155mm shells a month, but under the new plans, the number could reach over 90,000 each month. https://news.antiwar.com/2023/01/24/pentagon-to-increase-artillery-ammunition-production-by-500-for-ukraine/
An exploration into "how the other side lives" from Neuroscientist and "Pro-social Psychopath", James Fallon Ph.D. wherein the entertaining former "Hobbit" research-scientist tells how he became involved in PET-scan neuroimaging of mass murderers, for insanity-defenses at his center in Houston. He did find a distinctly identifiable pattern of brain activity, which seemed to exclude the capacity for empathy. Then life got interesting... Thanks Robin.
The Canadian PM may just be a narcissist, but he might be a sociopath too. If he's just a narcissist he might feel less threatened by the hoi-polloi.
Justin Trudeau Called A Tyrant As He Is Swarmed By Angry Mandate Protesters https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/justin-trudeau-called-tyrant-he-swarmed-angry-mandate-protesters
Monday 1/23/23 this geological paper was published, and the wording led to some confusion, and dramatic misinterpretations. Multidecadal variation of the Earth’s inner-core rotation https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-022-01112-z
The confusion arose from the explanation of "rotation" of the core, as a differential to rotation of the crust of the planet. Timing the travel of earthquake shocks across the planet, through the core, was the method of investigation. The nature of the transmission in the 1960s seemed to imply that the core was creeping forward slightly faster than the crust, a miniscule creep. Later, in the 1990s, this seemed to have come to a standstill. the core seemed to be rotating synchronously with the earth's crust. There is speculation that it might be starting to rotate a little more slowly now or soon, might lag a little. There is a big liquid layer between the core and the crust, essentially an ocean of Vaseline. The core and the crust are not friction-coupled, but there is weak coupling through gravity and magnetism.
Cosmos has one of the less confusing accounts: Earth's Core May Have Paused and May Even Be Reversing (You see the problem) https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/inner-core-earth-reversing-paused-decades/
Ben Davidson explains in this video. This is nothing new: Earth's Core Rotation has Changed
Spinning Wheel
You know, now that there is a repeatable method of determining if a "distinctly identifiable pattern of brain activity, which seemed to exclude the capacity for empathy" exists in any human, using the PET-scan neuroimaging, perhaps this is a test that every political leader from State Legislator/Governor level on up should have to pass to be able to even run for office. Everyone in every corporate C-Suite & board of directors in corporations above a certain size too....
Thank You John, you have a blog like no other, getting my feet wetter, politically, more than I ever have. Back in the days of making mixtapes, I put the spinning wheel song on one, but I never realized then the profundity of the words. Maybe all that acid was to prepare us for....!something like this!