Seeking the Enemy,
Guest post by "Dr. D." at The Automatic Earth: The West Is at War with Itself
Russia is not fighting a “war” they are not “fighting” in Ukraine, it’s merely a minor police action, and that’s the first of things the West doesn’t understand. They think all Russian attention is on Kiev. They wanted all Russian attention and invasion locked in Kiev, and the West was depending on all the camera shots of destruction and dead civilians. I don’t think Russia even wants Kiev, or they would make at least some attempt to approach it. 500 civilians killed I’m hearing? THAT’S NOT A WAR. It’s hardly a police action. Maybe they don’t understand war material in the 21st century, but Russia could have leveled Kiev an the other cities in under 30 minutes including all their 5 million people if they wanted. Russia’s attention is on the real war.
As the WHOLE WEST, that is, the Anglos running NATO, are fully engaged in attacking Russia and economically conquering it, as Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi say daily “Our War”, to safely stop the war Russia can only attack and disable the WHOLE WEST and NATO in return. Nothing else will do. It’s possible to detente at some point, freeze the conflict, but if the West does not fall, Russia is in danger and will be overrun. So they have to attack the West, a combined UK, Germany, Europe, and America. It appears they do not intend to do this using sabotage, attacks on rails and substations, EMPs. That would merely anger the U.S. for instance and galvanize a deeply reluctant population to support the war no one wants. It’s off the table. Instead, they are merely going around the whole West, in Eastern style.
What is the West? As Gore says, it’s a CONSUMER. Of everything. They print debt and consume things, net producing nothing. So Russia is passively embargoing them. That’s it. And with some help from China, that’s the whole plan. And it’s worse than that, Russia isn’t even trying to embargo the West. There is no need; the West is using the war to embargo themselves.
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2022/03/the-west-is-at-war-with-itself/
Diana Johnstone looks in detail at what has shaped Russia's national perception of war, including the death of Vladimir Putin's older brother under Nazi siege, before Vlad the lad was born.
For Washington, War Never Ends
"War" to a Russian, happens in Russia. "War" is real and personal.
She closes with this.
The American war aim is not to spare Ukraine, but to ruin Russia. That takes time.
The danger is that the Russians won’t be able to end this war, and the Americans will do all they can to keep it going. https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/16/diana-johnstone-for-washington-war-never-ends/
More important perspective on how an effective Russian head of state must approach war with the west, by John Helmer. Putin has to be as effective as Stalin was.What Joseph Stalin Said To Himself When Russia's Survival Was At Stake: By comparison with Lenin, though, and the rest of the original Bolsheviks including Leon Trotsky, Stalin’s originality was in his grasp of the military requirements for Russia’s defence... By the start of the second world war, he had come to the certainty that “under conditions of capitalist encirclement, the Soviet Union needed a strong state apparatus to defend itself against external threats and internal subversion”. In Roberts’ review of the evidence of what Stalin said, what he read and scribbled inside his books, Stalin’s innovation on Lenin was as a warfighter...
It’s a point which most Russians at the moment believe Putin reached in the nick of time, compared to Stalin on June 22, 1941.
http://johnhelmer.net/what-joseph-stalin-said-to-himself-when-russias-survival-was-at-stake/
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said this in an interview yesterday:
"One of the underlying trends is the United States’ desire – which has been much more manifested by the Biden administration – to come back to a unipolar world. And, if you wish, they are trying to take the melting pot concept from the United States soil and make a melting pot from the entire world, and they would be the smelters. The European Union already, I think 99 percent, stopped trying to be independent. President Macron, of course, keeps repeating that strategic autonomy for the European Union is his goal and he would be fighting for it, but my guess is that he would not succeed. Germany is already absolutely ready to obey instructions from the United State. The situation with North Stream 2 clearly indicated what exact place in world politics Germany occupies now, when the Americans in fact have “persuaded” the Germans and others that they, the Americans, know much better what Europe needs for its energy security than Europeans themselves. And there are many examples like this. So the sanctions drive is going to continue, they are threatening the fifth wave, maybe there would be another wave, but we’re used to it. I will recall that, long before the Ukrainian crisis erupted because of the illegal anti-constitutional coup d’etat, the sanctions were already imposed on us." ...
"This is only the beginning of our economy getting adjusted to the new situation. After 2014, as I started to say, we did gain experience to rely upon ourselves. And the biggest lesson from this particular historical period is, unlike what we saw after 2014, that now,
We will have to rely only on ourselves and on our allies who would stay with us. This is the main conclusion for Russia in the context of geopolitics." ...
"We are not closing the door on the West. They are doing so. But when they come back to their senses and when this door is reopened, we will be looking at proposed projects of cooperation with a very important thing in mind to which I alluded to already – that we will be going into cooperation with them knowing very well that we cannot be sure that they are reliable and that they are credible as long-term partners." ...
"The efforts were taken systemically to train military officers on the basis of radical Bandera and Shukhevich-style methodology. The purpose being – to make sure that they would not become friendly to Russia again and that they would build their nationalism, nationalistic feelings as the means to strengthen the statehood of their country."
"The purpose was always to make sure that Russia does not have Ukraine as a friend. It’s like Zbigniew Brzezinski in the late 1990s said, “Russia with Ukraine, a friendly Ukraine next to it, is a superpower. Russia with Ukraine which is not friendly to Russia, is just a regional player.” This concept is very deeply rooted in the minds of American policymakers, and it will take time to get rid of these negative legacies.
Even now, when the armed forces of Ukraine are fighting, trying to procrastinate the crisis. The leaders of Ukraine with the help of American and other Western advisors have reformed the army in the way which puts these radicals, Bandera-like trained officers, to lead all more or less meaningful units in the Ukrainian army."
https://thesaker.is/foreign-minister-sergey-lavrovs-interview-with-rt-moscow-march-18-2022/
“I want ordinary Western people hear me, too,” Putin said. “You are being persistently told that your current difficulties are the result of Russia’s hostile actions and that you have to pay for the efforts to counter the alleged Russian threat from your own pockets. All of that is a lie.”
“The truth is that the problems faced by millions of people in the West are the result of many years of actions by the ruling elite of your respective countries, their mistakes, and short-sighted policies and ambitions. This elite is not thinking about how to improve the lives of their citizens in Western countries. They are obsessed with their own self-serving interests and super profits.”
No doubt that very same elite will now cite Putin’s criticism of them as reason to assert they have the moral high ground...
https://summit.news/2022/03/18/putin-blames-western-ruling-elite-for-global-problems/
"Young Global Leader" Zelensky has just signed into law the first steps of Schwab’s Great Reset. He announced he is introducing a Social Credit Application combining Universal Basic Income (UBI), a Digital Identity & a Vaccine Passport all within their Diia app. He also says that because so much money is coming into Ukraine as he has become an international celebrity, he has legalized cryptocurrencies in Ukraine. https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/war/ukraine-adopts-wef-proposals/
NATO Calls Up Hundreds Of Thousands Of Troops, Ready To Begin WW-III
The pressure to start World War III is on. NATO now expects that there will be a major war with Russia and the confrontation may come even in a few weeks. The NATO Secretary-General announced an increased war alert for hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Stoltenberg issued a joint statement with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, stating that hundreds of thousands of NATO troops were placed on high alert along with 100,000 US troops.
The problem with war is that BOTH sides lie and twist the facts to support their own agenda. They paint their adversary as evil to stir up the troops to go fight and risk their lives typically for fake stories and agendas. [examples of current war propaganda, using old archived pictures follow] https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/war/nato-calls-up-hundreds-of-thousands-of-troops-ready-to-begin-wwiii/
SouthFront has the Ukraine War Update from last evening. Mariupol mop-up operations by Donetsk People's Republic and Russian forces continue against dug-in Azov Battalion and Ukrainian Army. Russian DPR and LPR forces continue measured advances and seek to remove Ukrainian and nationalist militia forces from Donetsk/Luhansk, where they continue to shell civilians of the separatist republics. https://southfront.org/war-in-ukraine-day-23/
The global oil supply shock predicted for 2023 has been moved forward to 2022 byt eht "WAR!" narrative, and is being managed with supply shortages and high prices, which will create economic recession and lower demand for oil. There are a lot of mismatches. Shale oil cannot ramp up until late this year and cannot replace heavy crude, as Russia exports, because shale oil is light and you cannot get diesel out of it. Thanks Archie.
The World Could See A Record-Breaking Oil Supply Shock https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/03/the-world-could-see-a-record-breaking-oil-supply-shock.html
Pepe Escobar: All That Glitters Is Not Necessarily Russian Gold"Almost ready to finalize" would better describe the current point in this process, which has gone on over 8 years already. The Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and China are starting to design a new monetary and financial system bypassing the U.S. dollar, supervised by Sergei Glazyev and intended to compete with the Bretton Woods system.
http://thesaker.is/all-that-glitters-is-not-necessarily-russian-gold/
Everything else is suddenly negotiable, just like the blockade of Venezuela. Hell, if CUBA had oil...
Biden Poised To Remove Iran's IRGC From Terror List To Wrap Up Nuke Deal
Jessica Rose Ph.D. What is killing the millenials?
The Millennials, about ages 25 to 40, experienced an 84% increase in excess mortality in the fall, he said, describing it as the “worst-ever excess mortality, I think, in history.” It was the highest increase in excess deaths of any age group last year, seven times higher than the Silent Generation, those who are older than 85.
And the increase coincided with the vaccine mandates and the approval of the booster shots.
“Basically, Millennials experienced a Vietnam War in the second half of 2021,” Dowd said, noting 58,000 people died in the conflict...
This (millennial mortality increase 30 or more days after COVID vaccination) is interesting because it coincides with the same time that we see the excess mortality in the CDC data. This becomes clearer when we the data is superimposed. There is a peak in deaths in this age group at the same time as the peak in deaths overall for this age group as per the CDC excess mortality data...
The question remains, what is killing the millenials? The timing fits for the delayed entries and there’s also a peak in August/September for entries arising within 30 days of the injections.
UK will HIDE Vaccinated Cases and Deaths
For the vulnerable 60-69 year old category, the boosted 60-69 year olds get sick 4.25 TIMES as much as unvaccinated 60-69 year olds.
Take a minute to let that sink in. Far from being protective, boosters make 60-69 year olds four times more vulnerable to infections!
The "New Economy" takes shape, Wolf Richter (Chip shortages mean a shortage of new cars, so they are marked up to high prices and people pay them, and even order-ahead with cash down. There are used cars, plenty, at double the price they were before COVID, so they are not selling fast at these prices.)
How the Vehicle Production Nightmare Upended Everything and Why Automakers & Dealers Don’t Want the Old Ways Back
But There’s No Shortage of Used Vehicles.
Ordering Replacement Parts
(pictured shoveling clay mud out of driveway trench, containing new gas line to house, where it needs gravel again, so it won't be a mud-trap for wheels)
