Why Is Washington So Openly Releasing Details Of Armored Vehicle Shipment To Ukraine?

A US Pentagon agency has released photos and details of the loading and shipment of Bradley Fighting Vehicles to Ukraine for the purpose of fighting Russia. While obviously such shipments can be tracked by governments, including by Russia, does it seem odd that the Biden Administration seems to almost be bragging about the long journey through international waters? Also today, a sad time for the once-neutral Swiss. Finally: a Med Student speaks out against his profession's response to Covid. Watch today's Liberty Report:



from Why Is Washington So Openly Releasing Details Of Armored Vehicle Shipment To Ukraine?

Phantoms of the Eyewash: America Herds NATO’S Paper Tigers Into Oblivion

Within sight of the Stadium Albert Speer built for Hitler’s 1934 Olympics there looms a high hill above the fashionable Grunewald district. A rare sight in flat Berlin, it once had a ski jump on it and is still used by skiers in the winter. It is capped by a deserted NATO listening station used during the Cold War to eavesdrop on Russian forces and their Warsaw Pact allies.

But there is nothing natural about it. It is called “Teufelsberg,” the Devil’s Mountain, for good reason. And it is made of the rubble from the tens of thousands of ruined buildings removed from Hitler’s Berlin as the city was painfully rebuilt.

That was a consequence of the last time Germany sent tanks into Ukraine. And the Russians left a conspicuous reminder across the street from the burn- out Wilhelmine Reichstag building. It holds the functioning German parliament now called the Bundestag, which Olaf Scholz runs as its current Chancellor. Close by stands the massive Russian War Memorial surmounted by two of the T 34 tanks the Soviet Army had driven from Russia to smash into the heart of Germany in 1945.

But that hasn’t affected the massive incompetence of the latest US compelled NATO equipment contribution to the failing Ukrainians, well on their way to defeat. The problem of the American response in general, is the same problem the United States has faced in all its other failed military responses in the last half century. We seem to be able to define our mission, but not our objective.

In this case America sees its mission as responding to the Ukrainian offer to provide the troops to fight the war to victory if the West will supply the equipment. Unfortunately, the American Administration and Defense establishment haven’t taken the trouble to understand much less analyze the military realities facing Ukraine. Despite having US advisors on site in Ukraine, the Ukrainians have run through the almost 2 million shells sent them. Apparently American military planners didn’t do the math in advance and now they have awakened and advised Ukraine it isn’t necessary to answer all the Russian artillery coming in, currently at the rate of ten shells to one Ukrainian.

And instead of planning its objective and evaluating what manpower and equipment would be required to achieve it, the American NATO defense establishment jumped right in and waited until the beginning of 2023 to announce two studies, by CSIS and Rand projecting rough prospects.

This may not be too surprising given the careful avoidance of anything as tacky as actual military service by anyone in the Biden Administration. But they do have strong “national security” opinions none the less. And they overrule any senior military officers who raises glaring military issues that might differ with their PR objective. And that is the only war they and the Zelensky government are really concentrating on.

 Fortunately for the Biden National Security flunkies, today’s American military appears to be commanded by the most astounding assemblage of carefully selected moral cowards in our nation’s history.

So it is also not surprising, if political eyewash, not effectiveness, is the only objective, that numbers to bulk up press releases are more important than battlefield impact. So we reached into our inventory of obsolete equipment and coughed up, for example, 200 M113 armored personnel carriers. These are tinplated Vietnam War era antiques and may be suitable for moving corpses or the wounded, but little else. They might more easily defined as “targets.”

We also threw in 50 or more Bradleys and the Germans contributed 40 Marder Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs)), designed 50 years ago, both undergunned and designed to be used today only in combined arms configurations accompanied by one tank to 3 or more IFVs. Without tanks and the combined arms training, they, like the 113s, are pretty much targets. The French came up with some wheeled armored cars with some nifty little cannon that at least might be useful as an antitank weapon if dug in, but would never survive long on a modern battlefield which is why the French use them in Africa.

There are some MRAPS, and Humvees to bulk up the eyewash numbers with more targets that should burn really well, some under-gunned artillery and obsolete missiles and other filler. The only problem with all this equipment is that a lot of it has to be “reconditioned” and once it all gets working it is a maintenance nightmare of incompatible parts and differing weapons systems. This equipment will arrive in dribs and drabs at yet to be specified times and all require specialized training from the diminishing Ukrainian manpower available.

The problem is Zelensky is howling that if he doesn’t get tanks by August, this is all an academic exercise. And Lt Col Daniel Davis, an armor officer, can’t see any way tanks could be reconditioned, provided and its crews trained minimally before the fall.

None of this interrupts the strong arming by the Biden National Security flunkerati. What counts after all is the PR campaign and making sure the US and NATO can be seen as dedicating all the phantom equipment it can to meet Zelensky’s absurd “needs” in his own PR war to maintain some credibility for his collapsing regime.

So after an absurd shoving match at a meeting at Ramstein, the United States commited 31 of its Abrams M1s (after reconditioning of course) complete with support vehicles and crew training. That’s a whole tank battalion in a war that in 11 months has seen almost 8,000 destroyed Ukrainian armored vehicles alone. And against protest from his own Army, Germany’s Scholz has gallantly agreed to provide 112 of their advanced Leopard 2 tanks in “an unspecified period of time.”

Now everyone has their press releases in order, the phantom equipment that supposedly makes it up will be painfully, and no doubt with considerable uanticipated delays, assembled. Military contracters everywhere will be working up bonuses they got from their local national NATO appropriations for the work it took assembling and reconditioning the largest convoy of obsolete equipment in military history.

And just possibly, as the leaves fall later this year, and Zelensky suns himself at one of his mansions in Florida, there will be the damndest traffic jam ever at the railyards in Eastern Poland.

Most of Ukraine itself will be under a temporary Russian military occupation as the endgame gets sorted out. And the general staffs of several Western countries, including the United States, will be delighted to hear that the tanks their governments had paid to update without affecting their departmental appropriations, somehow never got shipped.

Unfortunately there were unintended consequences. After enduring 30 years of perfidious post Cold War behavior by the United States and the fraud admitted by Angela Merkel in the Minsk Agreement as well as the Istanbul Agreement, the Russians now totally distrust the West.

NATO’s failed and miserably planned effort in support of Ukraine revealed the hollow shell it has become. It is now more an impressive assemblage of flags than a credible military power. And Russia learned its own competitive strength under the pressure of Western sanctions intended to weaken and fragment it.

While loudmouthed American generals blather on publicly about meeting the Chinese challenge over Taiwan, the recent experience of Russian generals make them wonder if the American military could defend Catalina Island off California.

The Russians have learned a lot. What has America and NATO learned?

What will Russia do now?

Reprinted with permission from Sonar21.com.

from Phantoms of the Eyewash: America Herds NATO’S Paper Tigers Into Oblivion

The Border-Industrial Complex Feeding Trough

The border-industrial complex may not do so well at stopping illegal immigrants or illegal drugs from entering America, but it appears to have done an impressive job in jacking up government spending and making sure much of that loot is distributed to select companies.

That should not be surprising. After all, the much larger military-industrial complex, which includes some of the same companies, is behind serial United States military intervening overseas and ongoing building of more weapons — activities that tend not to defend the American people but do advance the bottom lines of military contractors.

In a new article titled “The Border Industrial Complex Goes Big Time,” The Border Chronicle Editor Todd Miller provided some details on the amount of and growth in US government spending on contracts with companies for border related activities. Miller wrote:

It turns out that 2022 was by far the biggest year for [US Customs and Border Protection (CBP)] and [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)] contracts, at $7.5 billion. This was over a billion dollars more than the previous record in 2020 ($6.2 billion) and up from 2021 ($6.02 billion). Generally, this follows a trend of a steady growth of contracts since 2014. Since 2008, CBP and ICE have issued 112,575 contracts for a total of $69.6 billion.

And many companies that have benefited from the payouts, Miller further related in his article, spent much on lobbying and campaign contributions. As with military contractors, such spending by border contractors can produce very good returns.

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2023/january/30/the-border-industrial-complex-feeding-trough/

Who Was Really Behind The 'Russian Disinformation' Hoax?

The latest "Twitter Files" release was a bombshell, detailing how a group of neocons got together to falsify information about "Russian disinformation" in 2016 to demonize Donald Trump and help Hillary Clinton. It turns out there was election interference...but it wasn't the Russians it was the neocons. Also today: warhawks exaggerating the China threat. Finally...a good news story from Gallup. Today on the Liberty Report:



from Who Was Really Behind The 'Russian Disinformation' Hoax?

Air Force General Demands Preparation for War with China

If the conflict in Ukraine does not end in nuclear madness, Taiwan just might.

That very well may be the unintended result if Gen. Mike Minihan, the head of the USG Air Force's Air Mobility Command, has his way.

China could be at war with the U.S. two years from now, according to Gen. Michael A. Minihan, who oversees the Air Force’s fleet of transport and refueling aircraft. He cited the 2024 presidential elections in Taiwan and the U.S. as part of his rationale. https://t.co/HTUm8vdMkP

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 28, 2023

Minihan “has issued an ominous warning about a looming future high-end conflict against China, likely over Taiwan,” writes Joseph Trevithick for The War Zone. Minihan wants to get the USG war machine ready for what he describes as an inevitable conflict.

Minihan’s remarks are part of a two-page internal memo posted on Twitter on January 27.

New window just dropped pic.twitter.com/b8eLOrCY9U

— Mike Black (@MikeBlack114) January 27, 2023

Zachary Boyer, a spokesperson for Air Mobility Command (AMC), confirmed to The War Zone that this document, which is future-dated February 1, is indeed authentic. AMC oversees the bulk of the Air Force's aerial refueling tankers and cargo aircraft, among other responsibilities.

Minihan said he hopes “I am wrong” about China and Taiwan.

“My gut tells me we will fight in 2025. [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] secured his third term and set his war council in October 2022,” Minihan wrote in the memo. “Taiwan's presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a reason. [The] United States’ presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a distracted America. Xi's team, reason, and opportunity are all aligned for 2025.”

According to the General, there is no time to dilly-dally. The USG and its war machine must get up to speed if it is going to stop a PLA amphibious assault on Taiwan. “Drive readiness, integration, and agility for ourselves and the Joint Force to deter, and if required, defeat China.” (Emphasis in the original).

In 2022, the corporate war propaganda media posted warnings about an imminent invasion of Taiwan.

Foreign Affairs, a publication of the globalist Council on Foreign Relations, ran a disturbing headline last August, “America Must Prepare for a War Over Taiwan.” Around the same time, as if on cue, The Wall Street Journal posted “The Coming War Over Taiwan.” In April of the same year, The Economist ran “How to deter China from attacking Taiwan,” and suggested Taiwan could learn a lesson or two from Ukraine as if the corrupt and nazified Zelenskyy regime is winning the war.

All of this is vicious nonsense. China is not actively planning to invade Taiwan.

“The US is running out of time to prevent a cataclysmic war in the Western Pacific,” write Hal Brands and Michael Beckley of The War Street Journal. “While the world has been focused on Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, Xi Jinping appears to be preparing for an even more consequential onslaught against Taiwan.”

All of this chatter is designed to get you prepared for yet another conflict with a thermonuclear dimension.

Biden, his neocons, neolib advisers, generals, pundits, and a warmongering Congress—where there are less than a handful of senators and representatives opposing this metastasic insanity—are wrong about a Chinese invasion.

China realizes an amphibious assault on Taiwan is a recipe for disaster. First, Taiwan possesses weapons systems and technology to effectively defeat an amphibious assault.

“But, second, a determined attack preceded by missile and bomber attacks could destroy Taiwan’s social and physical infrastructure, along with the world’s largest chip production facilities at TSMC. Who would pay for reconstruction? And would it be worth the price?” Harlan Ullman pondered at The Hill last August. The author is a senior adviser at the globalist Atlantic Council.

Ullman wonders why the Taiwanese have not pursued a defensive “porcupine strategy.”

“This strategy relies on heavy investment in defensive capabilities such as anti-air, anti-ship and anti-tank munitions in order to inflict maximum damage on the attacking force,” Daniel Bloom explains.

The Taiwanese have not resorted to such a defense because they do not believe China will invade. The leadership realizes a Normandy-style invasion is all but impossible and would result in catastrophe for China. It would require over 200,000 troops, and they would need to traverse a hundred miles of open ocean to reach the beachheads.

“Unlike Ukraine’s steppe-like fertile plains and plateaus, Taiwan consists of over 100 islands. Taiwan’s outer islands are dotted with missiles, rockets, and artillery guns. In addition, Taiwan’s granite hills are home to tunnels and bunker systems,” notes Hemant Adlakha, a professor of Chinese at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.

The European Union is China’s major trading partner. Running afoul of it, as well as the United States and Japan, would be dangerous for a leader who knows he must raise living standards at home.

A military effort to grab Taiwan would deal a death blow to the Chinese economy. China is in the middle of a real estate crisis. Its export markets are disappearing in America and Europe. General Secretary Xi Jinping understands war is a stupid move now that China’s economic growth has slowed. It would be a stupid move even if the economy was in good shape.

Finally, according to Professor Deng Yuwen, a council member of China’s Reform and Development Institute, China is not interested in a costly invasion.

“China will choose to put pressure on Taiwan using a combination of methods to promote unification… It may launch more preferential policies and try to initiate discussion on a ‘one country, two systems’ framework with Taiwan’s ruling and opposition parties.”

The USG, however, is not interested in reality.

It has but one objective—destroying competitors and retaining the crown of world leader, no matter the death toll. If this requires the mass murder of millions of people, so be it. The USG death machine is responsible for killing four million Muslims since 1990. Combine that total to an estimated 20-30 million people killed in the years after WWII.

“US military forces were directly responsible for about 10 to 15 million deaths during the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the two Iraq Wars,” writes James A. Lucas.

The United States was also responsible for 14 million deaths in Afghanistan, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, Guatemala, Indonesia, Pakistan and Sudan... The United States most likely has been responsible since WWII for the deaths of between 20 and 30 million people in wars and conflicts scattered over the world.

The USG—and its ignorant, propagandized, and entertainment-distracted public—are driving the world toward a thermonuclear disaster. I believe we have turned a corner in world history.

It very well may be the final chapter.

Reprinted with permission from Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics.
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from Air Force General Demands Preparation for War with China

How I tried to prevent the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, and why I failed

In fulfillment of his solemn, constitutionally-enshrined obligation, the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, on January 28, 2003, stood before the rostrum in the chambers of the United States Congress and addressed the American people.

“Mr. Speaker,” the President began, “Vice President Cheney, members of Congress, distinguished citizens and fellow citizens, every year, by law and by custom, we meet here to consider the state of the union. This year,” he intoned gravely, “we gather in this chamber deeply aware of decisive days that lie ahead.” The “decisive days” Bush spoke of dealt with the decision he had already made to invade Iraq, in violation of international law, for the purpose of removing the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, from power.

Regime change had been the cornerstone policy of the United States toward Iraq ever since Bush 43’s father, Bush 41 (George H. W. Bush) compared Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler and demanded Nuremberg-like justice for the crime of invading Kuwait. “Hitler revisited,” the elder Bush told a crowd at a Republican fundraiser in Dallas, Texas. “But remember: When Hitler’s war ended, there were the Nuremberg trials.”

American politicians, especially presidents seeking to take their country into war, cannot simply walk away from such statements. As such, even after driving the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait in February 1991, Bush could not rest so long as Saddam Hussein remained in power–the Middle East equivalent of Adolf Hitler had to go.

The Bush 41 administration put in place UN-backed sanctions on Iraq designed to strangle the nation’s economy and promote regime change from within. These sanctions were linked to Iraq’s obligation to be disarmed of its weapons of mass destruction capabilities, including long-range missiles and chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs. Until Iraq was certified as being disarmed by UN weapons inspectors, the sanctions would remain in place. But as Bush’s Secretary of State, James Baker, made clear, these sanctions would never be lifted until Saddam Hussein was removed from power. “We are not interested,” Baker said on May 20, 1991, “in seeing a relaxation of sanctions as long as Saddam Hussein is in power.”

Despite the sanctions, Saddam Hussein outlasted the administration of Bush 41. Bush’s successor, Bill Clinton, continued the policy of sanctioning Iraq, combining them with UN weapons inspections to undermine Saddam Hussein. In June 1996, the Clinton administration used the UN weapons inspections process as a front to mount a coup against Saddam. The effort failed, but not the policy. In 1998, Clinton signed the Iraqi Liberation Act, making regime change in Iraq an official policy of the United States.

Saddam outlasted the Clinton administration as well. But, when it came to implementing US regime change plans in Iraq, the third time proved to be the charm–Saddam’s fate was sealed when Bush 41’s son, George W. Bush, was elected president in 2001. While Clinton had failed to remove Saddam Hussein from power, he did succeed in killing the UN inspection effort to oversee the disarmament of Iraq, allowing the US to continue to claim Iraq was not complying with its obligation to disarm, and therefore justify the continuation of economic sanctions.

This is where the issue becomes personal. From 1991 until 1998, I served as one of the senior UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, overseeing Iraq’s disarmament. It was my inspection team that the CIA tried to use, in June 1996, to help launch a coup against Saddam, and it was the continued interference of the US in the work of my inspections teams that prompted my resignation from the UN in August 1998. A few months after I departed, the Clinton administration ordered UN weapons inspectors out of Iraq before initiating a bombing campaign, Operation Desert Fox.

“Most of the targets bombed during Operation Desert Fox had nothing to do with weapons manufacturing,” I wrote in my book, Frontier Justice, published in 2003. “Ninety-seven ‘strategic’ targets were struck during the seventy-two hour campaign; eighty-six were solely related to the security of Saddam Hussein–palaces, military barracks, security installations, intelligence schools, and headquarters. Without exception, every one of these sites had been subjected to UNSCOM inspectors (most of these inspections had been led by me), and their activities were well-known and certified as not being related to UNSCOM.”

I concluded by noting that “The purpose of Operation Desert Fox was clear to all familiar with these sites: Saddam Hussein, not Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, was the target.” Following these air strikes, the Iraqis kicked the UN inspectors out for good.

This, of course, was the goal of the US all along. Now, with a new administration in power, the US was seeking to use the uncertainty about the status of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs as leverage with the American people, and the world, in order to justify an invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power once and for all. By the fall of 2002, it was clear we were a nation heading for war.

I took this personally and decided to take action to prevent it. I went to Congress and tried to get the Senate Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committees to hold genuine hearings about Iraq. They refused. The only way to prevent the invasion was to get the inspectors back in to Iraq so they could demonstrate that the country was not a threat worthy of war, but the Iraqis were putting up so many preconditions that it just wasn’t going to happen.

I then decided to intervene as a private citizen. I met with Tariq Aziz, Saddam’s advisor and former Foreign Minister, in South Africa, and told him I needed to speak to Iraq’s National Assembly publicly, without my words being edited or vetted. That was the only way to have them let the inspectors back in. At first, Aziz said I was crazy. After two days of discussion, he agreed.

I spoke to the Iraqi National Assembly. For that alone, people have accused me of treason, even though in that speech, I cut the Iraqis no slack and held them accountable for the crimes they had committed. I warned them that they were about to be invaded and that their only option was to let the inspectors back in.

Having broadcast that, the Iraqi government had to deal with me. I met with the vice president, the foreign minister, the oil minister, and the president’s science advisor. Five days later, they convinced Saddam Hussein to let weapons inspectors back into Iraq without preconditions. I count this as one of the highlights of my life.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. Yes, UN inspectors returned, but their work was undermined at every turn by the US, which sought to discredit their findings. Now, on that fateful evening on January 28, 2003, the President stepped forward to complete the mission–to make a case for war on the basis of the threat posed by Iraq and its unaccounted-for WMD.

This was not a new debate. In fact, I had been trying to debunk this sort of argument ever since the US ordered UN weapons inspectors out of Iraq in December 1998. In June 2000, at the behest of Senator John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, and a critical member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I had put my case down in writing, publishing a long article in Arms Control Today which was then distributed to every member of Congress. In 2001, I had made a documentary film, In Shifting Sands, in an effort to reach out to the American public about the truth regarding Iraqi WMD, the status of their disarmament, and the inadequacy of the US case for war.

Nonetheless, here was the President of the United States, taking advantage of his Constitutional obligation to inform Congress, promulgating a case for war built on a foundation of lies.

“Almost three months ago,” Bush declared, “the United Nations Security Council gave Saddam Hussein his final chance to disarm [note: this is after I helped convince Iraq to allow UN weapons inspectors to return without precondition]. He has shown instead utter contempt for the United Nations and for the opinion of the world.” Bush observed that Iraq had failed to cooperate with UN weapons inspectors, noting that “it was up to Iraq to show exactly where it is hiding its banned weapons, lay those weapons out for the world to see and destroy them as directed. Nothing like this has happened.”

Iraq had declared that it had no WMD left, and as such was in no position to show anyone where it was hiding non-existent weapons. In fact, the UN weapons inspectors, working in full cooperation with the Iraqi government, had debunked the intelligence provided by the US alleging Iraqi non-compliance. The US was operating on principles dating back to James Baker’s May 1991 declaration that sanctions would not be lifted until Saddam Hussein was removed from power.

The President went on to articulate specific claims about unaccounted-for anthrax and botulinum toxin biological agents. He made similar claims about Sarin, mustard and VX chemical weapons. “The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb,” the President said.

This was true – I was one of the inspectors at the center of tracking down Iraq’s nuclear weapons ambition. But then the President went on to utter 16 words that would go down in infamy: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

CIA Director George Tenet was later compelled to admit before Congress that “[t]hese 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president.” As Tenet later noted, while the assertion regarding the existence of British intelligence was correct, the CIA itself did not have confidence in the report. “This [the existence of British intelligence] did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches,” Tenet said, “and the CIA should have ensured that it was removed.”

The fact of the matter is that the entire case made by President Bush about Iraq was a lie, and the CIA was complicit in helping the President promulgate that lie. The sole purpose of this lie was to engender fear among Congress and the American people that Iraq, and especially its leader, Saddam Hussein, was a threat worthy of war.

'Year after year,' Bush intoned, 'Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks to build and keep weapons of mass destruction. But why? The only possible explanation,” Bush said, answering his own question, “the only possible use he could have for those weapons, is to dominate, intimidate or attack.'

'With nuclear arms or a full arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, Saddam Hussein could resume his ambitions of conquest in the Middle East and create deadly havoc in that region.

'And this Congress and the American people must recognize another threat. Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda. Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own.

'Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained.

'Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans, this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known.

We will do everything in our power, to make sure that that day never comes.'

The President then got down to the crux of his presentation on Iraq. “The United States will ask the UN Security Council to convene on February the 5th [2003] to consider the facts of Iraq’s ongoing defiance of the world. Secretary of State [Colin] Powell will present information and intelligence about Iraq’s illegal weapons programs, its attempts to hide those weapons from inspectors and its links to terrorist groups.”

The President stared into the camera, addressing the American people directly. “We will consult,” he said, “but let there be no misunderstanding: If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm for the safety of our people, and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him.”

I stared back at the television screen, sick to my stomach. The President’s speech was composed of lies. All lies.

I had expended every ounce of my energy trying in vain to debunk these lies, but to no avail. My country was on the verge of going to war on the basis of words I knew to be false, and there was nothing more I could do to prevent it.

Reprinted with permission from RT.

from How I tried to prevent the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, and why I failed

Courts Diverge on California Law to Silence Doctors Regarding Coronavirus

In the fall, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law legislation giving medical boards in the state the power to punish — including via revoking state medical licenses — doctors for challenging the orthodoxy regarding coronavirus.

This new law was quickly responded to with lawsuits challenging it.

Judges considering two of those lawsuits, in two different federal district courts in California, have decided whether to grant temporary injunctions against enforcement of the law while the challenges in the courts proceed. And the two judges decided differently on the matter. On December 28, the judge in a Central District of California case rejected ordering a preliminary injunction. Then, this week, the judge in an Eastern District of California case granted a preliminary injunction.

Legal scholar Jonathan Turley provides an informative discussion of the two judges’ opinions in a Thursday article at his website. You can read his article here. The opinions to the district court judges, Turley writes, “now present an excellent foundation for a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and possibly the Supreme Court.”

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2023/january/27/courts-diverge-on-california-law-to-silence-doctors-regarding-coronavirus/

Just Like Herding Leopards

“The worst defect weak republics can have is to be indecisive, so that all their decisions are taken out of necessity, and if any good comes to them, it comes through force of circumstance rather than through their own prudence.”

- Machiavelli [Discourses, I.38]

In a great moment of historic irony, Germany has given into criticisms that it is not sufficiently militaristic. After a large amount of hemming and hawing around the world, where the US refused to send tanks to Ukraine unless Germany would at least allow its Leopard tanks from other countries to be sent to Ukraine, both Germany and the United States have agreed to send modern tanks to Ukraine.

This tank situation is ridiculous for several reasons, most of all that we’ve seen this movie before, where all the pro-Ukraine gear autists on the internet are sure sending Ukraine a charity collection of some equipment will change the course of the war. In my opinion this represents a continuation of what I previously described as a sort of “demented arms control program” whereby NATO sends its equipment to Ukraine to be destroyed, though perhaps it really makes the difference this time.

However, between delivery and training it will be months before this equipment can be deployed, if it ever is.

With these weapons transfers NATO continues to sacrifice its military readiness on Ukraine. Though the ghouls in the scribbling and “national security” classes tell us this is a “cheap” way to counter Russia this could potentially harm NATO’s combat readiness for several years without doing anything meaningful to help Ukraine. [That we must counter Russia is an unquestionable assumption in all these arguments.] The efficacy such tanks will have against the world’s largest tank force and Russia’s massive artillery advantage is questionable at best. Perhaps efficacy is not the point; for dubious advantage to Ukraine, the United States has pressured Germany to escalate and allow Leopard tanks it manufactures to be used against Russia. It is unlikely these tanks will be replaced with other Leopards: they seem more likely to be permanently replaced with American manufactured tanks.

Yet again, it seems as if a main American goal of the Ukraine War is to hollow out Europe’s industrial capacity for its own benefit. Germany had many reasons to decline to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine, and it is probably worse for everyone, most of all Germany, that they gave in. The following is the story of how Olaf Scholz came to go against his better judgement to great public acclaim.

We need to start with some background on what is currently going on in Ukraine. As ever, this is what I like to call “Schrodinger’s War Effort,” in that we’re meant to believe that Ukraine is simultaneously easily winning and also desperately needs gear because it’s on the brink of catastrophic collapse; similarly, Russia is simultaneously comically weak and incompetent and able to conquer Europe if they are not stopped in Ukraine.

It is rare that things the pro-Ukraine people say pass the test of non-contradiction, and this drive for tanks is no different. The timing is also quite interesting, given that Russia has made considerable advances in the “meat grinder” at Bakhmut as well as in Zaporizhia after months of relative stale-mate in terms of land control. Meanwhile Ukraine appears to be undergoing some sort of purge disguised as “fighting corruption” [and a helicopter crash killing the Interior Minister and Deputy Interior Minister, which is surely a tragic coincidence.] Government officials and national police have also been banned from vacationing abroad, a move which can have no possible purpose but to prevent them from fleeing or defecting. In short, creating a mania about new gear and “insufficient” help from Western powers is ideal, in that it takes the focus away from what appears to be a dire military and political situation for the government of Ukraine, despite that it simultaneously draws attention to Ukraine being in a dire military situation.

Props to the PR wizards who successfully spin every Ukraine gov't corruption scandal—from the Central Bank chief scandal a few months ago, to all the ministers this week—as "actually proves Ukraine is getting LESS corrupt". Gogol-esque, you might say.https://t.co/nqD8TmxnTW

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) January 24, 2023

As to the tanks themselves, we are assured they can be a game-changer for Ukraine, and will somehow be near-immune to Russian attacks, who idiot Ukraine supporters on the internet want you to believe are unable to successfully target tanks. They have no answer to what, then, happened to the many tanks Ukraine had before. The situation is apparently dire enough that the US is trying to get Russian-made tanks out of its own enemies in Latin America as a stop-gap effort while waiting for new NATO gear to be delivered. Four Star General of US Southern Command Laura Richardson said in an interview with the Atlantic Council that the US would supply military equipment to Cuba and Venezuela if they were to donate their current Russian equipment to Ukraine. This, you have to see to believe:

The US has asked Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and six other Latin American nations to send their old Russian weapons to Ukraine in exchange for U.S. equipment.

US SOUTHCOM Commander General Laura Richardson discussed the request in a recent interview.pic.twitter.com/7AW2lPrrr1

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) January 23, 2023

This makes Biden turning to Venezuela for oil, hat in hand, look like nothing by comparison. This woman just claimed they are “working with” the communist regime in Cuba, that the United States has spent over 60 years isolating, in an attempt to sell them military equipment if they will betray Russia. This may seem impossible to believe, and it is certainly stranger than fiction, but I found it on the Atlantic Council’s website, you can see it for yourself at the time mark 24:30.

What we can take from this is that the US is extremely desperate to supply Ukraine with weapons which can be deployed immediately. At the same time, as I’ve said before, you should never downplay the possibility that the point of a war is to destroy weapons and equipment which will then be replaced at taxpayer expense [be it ours or another nation’s,] so perhaps they just sniffed an opportunity for profit. Whatever the purpose, they want to get Russian manufactured arms to Ukraine badly enough that they are willing to provide American arms to Cuba.

Regarding the status of Ukraine’s equipment, The incomparable military enthusiast Big Serge reiterated what has been observed by many in a recent article:

- In the opening months of the war, the extant Ukrainian army was mostly wiped out. The Russians destroyed much of Ukraine’s indigenous supplies of heavy weaponry and shattered many cadres at the core of Ukraine’s professional army.

- In the wake of this initial shattering, Ukrainian combat strength was shored up by transferring virtually all of the Soviet vintage weaponry in the stockpiles of former Warsaw Pact countries. This transferred Soviet vehicles and ammunition, compatible with existing Ukrainian capabilities, from countries like Poland and the Czech Republic, and was mostly complete by the end of spring, 2022. In early June, for example, western sources were admitting that Soviet stockpiles were drained.

- With Warsaw Pact stockpiles exhausted, NATO began replacing destroyed Ukrainian capabilities with western equivalents in a process that began during the summer. Of particular note were howitzers like the American M777 and the French Caesar.

[For further reading on this subject, look at “Destroying the Mother of All Proxy Armies in Ukraine” by Will Schryver.]

Ukraine: starts with ~2,000 MBTs.
Also Ukraine: pic.twitter.com/LoAbumLGAN

— Von Clownsewitz's War College (@VonClownsewitz) January 25, 2023

All this fuss was over a single brigade worth of tanks with no spares?

That's how all encompassing the information war is. People legitimately believe that a single brigade, ~5% of what UAF started with, is going to be the tide-turner.

This is obscene.

— Von Clownsewitz's War College (@VonClownsewitz) January 25, 2023

[For the record, I have not seen a single neutral or pro-Russia account express that these tanks will pose a serious threat to Russia’s war effort, these “vatnik tears” are wholly imagined.]

The Ukraine supporters will say anything that portrays Russia as having done well is propaganda but we were all there for the repeated rounds of arms donations. It’s obviously the case that the equipment Ukraine had has been destroyed, or else they would not need more. There is no other explanation, especially given that they started with an army substantially bigger than Russia’s invasion force. I’m left wondering how much less total military equipment there is in the world than when this began 11 months ago. Either way, we’ve reached the time for Abrams and Leopards.

Now for a few words about tanks. I am not a gear autist, and understand, unlike them, that quality soldiers, especially infantry, are what win wars. This is the one thing that allies cannot donate in large, proper formations without wholly entering the war. A brave man with a weapon is like an arm and a hammer or like the baking soda which uses that name: no amount of technology will ever improve upon its reliability and versatility. In Machiavelli’s time gear nerds were already ascendant, with people claiming “in time wars will only be fought with artillery” [ibid.] They also, as now, valued cavalry over infantry, and a tank is simply a kind of heavy ranged cavalry. Machiavelli writes, “it often occurs that a courageous horse is ridden by a cowardly man and a cowardly horse by a courageous man; and whatever form this disparity may take, disadvantage and disorder arise from it” [Discourses, II.18.]

Similarly, a tank requires several men working together and relies on all of those men as well as the tank itself performing the proper functions. This is made worse when Ukraine is receiving multiple kinds of equipment, as neither the parts nor the men are interchangeable. Further, the men will inevitably have the minimum amount of training on this equipment due to desperation, facing an army with decades of experience in its own gear. All-in-all, this combined with the relatively small numbers and wait for deployment gives me every reason to believe these tanks are highly unlikely to change anything on the battlefield- assuming the war is still going on when they are deployed.

As Machiavelli said of artillery, “artillery is useful in an army where ancient excellence has been firmly implanted, but without it, artillery is quite useless against an excellent army” [Discourses, II.17.] We could argue all day about if either army was excellent at the beginning of the war, but the fact is Ukraine has lost its best troops to be replaced with recruits, while though Russia has lost many it maintains the core of a now battle-hardened army and has been able to replace them with other experienced soldiers. If such gear could help Ukraine it wouldn’t be in this situation. None of this is stopping the insane drive to offer up as much gear as possible to Ukraine, with Estonia sending all of its Howitzers to Ukraine. This begs the question of if anyone actually believes the Baltics are threatened by Russia, or if Estonian PM Kaja Kallas is really just that stupid, since her description of NATO’s ability to defend the Baltics was so grim I referred to it as, “The Worst Security Guarantee in the World.”

As to the Leopard itself, there is an overall analysis problem here that no one, least of all the gear obsessives who make up the majority of war nerds, like to admit: the performance of almost all modern weapons in a major conflict is theoretical. The last large-scale symmetrical war using equipment produced by “great powers” was in Korea in the early 1950s. You can test things all day, but you can’t truly know how equipment will fare against other equipment until they come into contact.

The US Abrams tank is known to be a good performer; it is an older model at this point, and has seen a fair amount of combat and thus been upgraded based on various shortcomings which were discovered. However, it has never gone against Soviet or Russian tanks equipped with modern technology, and has only seen a small amount of tank vs tank combat in the Gulf War. It’s a good tank, but there is no reason to believe a single battalion with newly trained crews are going to change the course of the war, when it will inevitably face a larger number of Russian tanks with more experienced crews. As to the Leopard tank, despite being around since the 1970s, its iterations have barely ever seen action, and when it was finally used by the Turks in Syria, the results were not good. The Daily Mail wrote about its poor results in 2018:

While the tank's design dealt capably with conditions during the Cold War against Soviet fighters, the Leopard 2 has proved to be a feeble force in the battle in the Middle East, practically disintegrating under intense fire. 

Given that the tanks are widely operated by NATO members - including Canada, the Netherlands, Denmark, Greece and Norway - it is particularly embarrassing to see them so easily destroyed by Syrian terrorists when they are expected to match the Russian Army.

I’m not sure how, this being the case, it would have performed capably during the Cold War. You would think there is no spinning that result, but I dealt with a NATO gear true believer claiming the issue was that it was deployed alone [which it was.] The argument was that they only got this result due to it lacking infantry cover, when modern warfare is based on combined arms. That has always been true of war, and sending heavy cavalry after irregular light troops is a fairly classic mistake of a man who has contempt for his opponents as a disorganized rabble, but any tank’s armor works fine if you stop the tank from being fired upon. This doesn’t change the fact that it didn’t withstand heavy fire in the way it was believed it would.

Further, this simply demonstrates that quality infantry is the most important component, and good tanks by themselves cannot save an army. The fact is that neither of these tanks represent incredible equipment Russia is unprepared to face, and what will matter the most, besides the support they receive from other types of troops, are the quality of tank crews and overall volume of crewed tanks, areas in which Russia has an enormous advantage.

German Leopard 2 tanks: People are excited about a potential delivery to Ukraine and already announced them as the next invincible game-changer.

So let’s look at the past and project into the future.

Video: ISIS destroyed Leopard 2’s

1/ -> thread with news articles pic.twitter.com/zw1AfSZP9z

— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) January 12, 2023

How, and why, then, did everyone become so obsessed with Germany’s reluctance to allow the provision of Leopard tanks to Ukraine? [Modern military equipment is complex to maintain, and generally comes with extensive contracts detailing when and how it can be used, especially transfers to a third party, and commonly requires employing people from the source country for maintenance.] From the beginning of this conflict, people have heaped blame on Germany for any moderate course that it has striven to take, despite that Germany has been the #3 supporter of Ukraine in terms of total contribution [not counting the EU, which Germany is a part of and the largest economy in.] One reason for Germany’s attempted moderation is that Germany is, or was, heavily dependent on Russian energy; however, the EU is heavily dependent on Germany’s economy, so they all would have been wise to share in that concern about deteriorating relations. Despite this, Germany seems to have accepted, for the time being, not being able to run its factories at affordable energy rates, as Europe switches to American supplied energy, along with scrounging for other sources.

For the first time in recorded history, EU countries now import more energy from the United States than from Russia.

via @JosephPolitano pic.twitter.com/0zIPwU1FtO

— Philipp Heimberger (@heimbergecon) January 12, 2023

The bigger, and substantially more ironical issue here, is that Germany is cautious about it’s military involvement due to a little known historical era where the country was under the control of these people known as the Nazis.

I don’t want to get into a thing about Ukraine’s once widely acknowledged neo-Nazi problem, but basically, most Ukraine supporters and eastern European’s now generally try to avoid talking about Adolf Hitler. Instead, they have developed a deranged obsession with Joseph Stalin, and think he is the framework with which to view everything about Russia and the Russian people- in truth, if anything it’s more informative to view Putin as a sort of petit Peter the Great, and even that is quite the stretch. Russia is legitimately not the USSR in terms of government type or what physical country it is. Further, Stalin was a dictator who never in any way represented the will of the people, and he wasn’t even Russian. Beyond which, even within the Soviet Union they went through a “de-Stalinization” process to try and correct his worst crimes. Stalin is no more of a representation of who the Russians are than Hitler is of who the Germans are, less even, because Hitler was at least initially democratically elected and was a native German speaker.

At this point we need a new “Godwin’s Law,” discouraging referencing Stalin as we once had for Hitler [who now only comes up when the ever clever NPCs call Putin “Putler,” because Putin is somehow both Hitler and Stalin.] It’s especially strange as no one ever defends Stalin besides occasional hardcore Bolsheviks; you mostly just get people like myself arguing that Stalin is irrelevant to the current situation, or that the Holdomor wasn’t really a genocide and was instead a result of communist central planning causing famine, such as The Great Leap Forward in China [which no one claims was a genocide.] It’s gotten so bad that it is now common for people to shamelessly tout their ancestor’s status as Nazi partisans and assume no one will notice or care:

daddy was a nazihttps://t.co/nFSUDAFKaU

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) January 21, 2023

Ames isn’t being hyperbolic here, there is no other way a Ukrainian fought the Soviets for five years. He was sent to prison for being a Nazi partisan. Ukrainian immigrants are why there are Nazi memorials in Canada. The point is, despite this generation trying to “memory-hole” it all the sudden after spending years telling us Trump is “literally Hitler” it’s apparently fine to be proud of your dad or grandpa having fought for literally Hitler, but they hate the people who fought Hitler in eastern Europe.

Germany will eventually relent on tanks. But the German reputation will never recover. This was a bridge too far

— Paul Massaro (@apmassaro3) January 21, 2023

This is how far their irrationality has gone: Germany caused WWII and did the Holocaust, but will never recover its reputation from being slow to gift tanks to Ukraine. The older generation of Germans have shown a better historical memory and somewhat more responsible leadership. However, nuance and responsibility are the biggest sins to internet Ukraine supporters. Hence, the Chancellor of Germany has had his name turned into a verb:

NEW: Why is Germany blocking tanks for Ukraine? I answer: (1) irrational fear of escalation and (2) Russia's long-term capture of the German elite. Watch: https://t.co/XvNpr9sMz5 pic.twitter.com/OcikPPa1QC

— Paul Massaro (@apmassaro3) January 22, 2023

Right, “irrational fear of escalation” with a major nuclear power, and “long-term capture.” The Ukraine supporters and seemingly Ukrainians themselves are identical to our horrible modern Democrats in a stunning number of bizarrely specific ways. The ones which apply here include the belief that since they are inherently morally good they can do and say anything and should not have to care how people may react, believing all that they consider evil in the world is a Putinist plot and that no rational disagreement can exist, extreme entitlement coupled with drastic incompetence, a worldview less complex than the average comic book, and extreme deference to all forms of Western institutional authority. But though the war was “unprovoked,” of course it isn’t entitlement at all, because Ukraine is the one fighting for some vague American interest and is the new west Berlin and we are all in their debt no matter how many billions of dollars their corrupt tinpot regime filches out of us.

I will give just some examples here of how ludicrous Ukraine supporters are before moving on. Bear in mind, these are prominent and influential people:

Olga: "The Ramstein meeting was all about helping Russia. That's the only way to understand this otherwise incomprehensible event." pic.twitter.com/9HpSFCKPFA

— ₦₳V𝚜𝚝é𝚟𝚊 🇷🇺 ᴢ (@Navsteva) January 20, 2023

So Scholz is blackmailing the US government. Only if it allows #Abrams into Ukraine, Germany will allow #Leopard2 into the country.
Scholz knows very well that this won’t make sense for the Americans, but I’m told “a symbolic amount” (5-10) would be enoughhttps://t.co/LybjF1dugR pic.twitter.com/nealj1MbsS

— Julian Röpcke🇺🇦 (@JulianRoepcke) January 18, 2023

What passes as expert analysis. pic.twitter.com/owmka11dw2

— Von Clownsewitz's War College (@VonClownsewitz) January 23, 2023

When do Leopards hunt?

At HIMARS o'clock

— Maria Drutska 🇺🇦 (@maria_drutska) January 24, 2023

As you know, Russia is actively against gender studies, and officially recognizes only two genders.

Here they are - male and female. pic.twitter.com/I8cMmekfoL

— Dimko Zhluktenko 🇺🇦 (@dim0kq) January 22, 2023

It’s beyond distressing knowing whatever mental disorder the modern Democrats have has gone international, taking a whole nation, and dragging us towards a nuclear World War III. I feel very bad for the Ukrainians who have remained sane- they are the true victims here. Anyway, on top of Ukraine’s usual begging for weapons despite everything going completely great, this particular around of madness picked up in advance of and following a meeting at the German Ramstein airbase of what they call the “Ukraine Defence Contact Group.”

Zelensky, being the Sam Bankman-Fried of world leaders, addressed this group of his patrons wearing a sweatshirt, because he still does not respect our largess enough to even wear a suit. This is no different from our pathetic leaders prostrating themselves in front of petulant children like Greta Thunberg. He spewed nonsensical cringe like “it is in your power to make a Ramstein of tanks.” He also went on and on about how Russia is solely motivated by hatred for the Ukrainian people. To anyone who has been following this conflict with clear eyes this is gaslighting of the worst order; Ukraine partisans are extremely open about hating the Russian ethnicity as a whole, as I detailed regarding the Baltic states, listing centuries of grievances and insisting that actions of the Tsarist and Soviet governments are inherent features of the Russian character [so instead they prefer the famously non-imperialist British.]

Meanwhile, even on the pro-Russia Telegram channels, Russians very rarely say anything like that, and seem to think it is sad that it has come to this and Ukrainians are driven by such suicidal hatred they have thrown in with Russia’s enemies. They constantly scream “genocide” and that Russia believes Ukraine and Ukrainians shouldn’t exist, but I follow many pro-Russia people on both Twitter and Telegram, and have never seen a single thing of the sort, whereas the pro-Ukraine people, including Zelensky himself, constantly say that Russia and Russians have no place in the “civilized” world and call them a barbaric people.

I understand that war generates hate, but they are quite clearly the more hateful side. However, I also understand why it’s necessary, because the war has to be explained to the Western public as an “unprovoked” attack by evil Asiatic hordes- the new Mongols at the gates of Europe- held back only by the brave Ukrainians. I’ve long suspected that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is making the public even more stupid, and nothing has convinced me more than this simplistic “good vs evil” understanding of the Ukraine war.

Regardless of what misgivings this would have given any still-rational people in the room, another massive aid package was announced for Ukraine following the conference. Still, they did not come to an agreement on modern tanks. Germany’s position was that it would only send tanks if the US agreed to as well. It speaks volumes of the uneven position the US holds with its “allies” that somehow this was seen as a form of German blackmail. It’s not obvious to me how this made Germany the pro-Russian bad guy, though it’s true that there are a lot of Leopard tanks in Europe near Ukraine, so they can be delivered quite a bit faster than Abrams. According to a questionable source called UkraInska Pravda, the German parliament was hit with “Free the Leopard” protests, because being pro-war is the cool thing on the liberal protest circuit now.

They're literally doing the same thing your government is doing in insisting that the Germans do it first. https://t.co/37tuItwRfN

— Von Clownsewitz's War College (@VonClownsewitz) January 18, 2023

Pressure continued to mount on Germany over the tanks, with one “popular” satirist saying, “Russia’s most advanced anti-tank system is called the Olaf Scholz.” Note once again that Ukraine doesn’t own these tanks, is not paying for them, and Germany did not directly encourage the antagonism that led to this war. [I didn’t bother to look into what repayment plans may exist, we all know at best the money would be repaid by a different generation of humans decades from now.] Poland continued to demand to send German tanks to Ukraine. Germany ultimately decided to allow Poland to send tanks, and then later said it would do the same. With this, the “floodgates,” if you want to call them that, opened and many NATO countries agreed to send some of their own most advanced tanks. Joe Biden announced the United States would be sending 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, which is one Ukrainian battalion.

President Joe Biden announced the U.S. will send 31 M1 Abrams battle tanks to Ukraine. The decision spurred allies to agree to send enough tanks to equip two Ukrainian tank battalions, or a total of about 62 tanks.https://t.co/UsUpm2zELu pic.twitter.com/tPnJJNCR4b

— The Associated Press (@AP) January 25, 2023

It will take “months” for the American tanks to arrive. No word yet on how Ukraine intends to remain afloat in the intervening time, or if they will be able to train on them in advance. An op-ed for The Guardian said this made it clear there is a Western war against Russia, which certainly isn’t news to Russia.

Most European countries are sending a small amount of Leopards, with the United Kingdom sending its Challenger tanks. Of course, militaries thrive on uniformity and interchangeability, which the components and crews of different kinds of tanks are not. All together, it comes out to around 100 Leopards, and around 150 total tanks including Abrams and Challengers. Analysts for the International Institute of Strategic Studies have said that around 100 Leopard tanks are necessary for them to make a “significant” difference, so they are getting the bare minimum to potentially matter. Bear in mind that in technical speak “significant” means “noteworthy,” not “large” and certainly not “game-changing.” It basically means if used together competently their role in a battle may be worth writing about in the newspaper; this is a far cry from rolling into Svestapol.

These tanks will arrive at various times in small batches as Ukraine rushes to train on them. Perhaps sending a fraction of Russia’s tank numbers into Ukraine will change the course of the war, but it is hard for me to see this as anything but a fool’s errand that will reduce the prospects of a settlement while wasting lives and resources. However, Ukraine activism has developed a life of its own, and the Western politicians have made it impossible for themselves to negotiate. Meanwhile, Russia is publicly showing a lack of concern, though Moscow said that “Berlin has abandoned its historic responsibility to Russia” by sending its tanks onto Russian soil. [It needs to be noted, that Zelensky agreed to not send the tanks into pre-war Russia, but Russia now considers four regions of pre-war Ukraine to be Russian soil, so the sides have substantially different maps of what constitutes Russian soil.]

In a way this is a big domestic win for Russia, where memories of the German Blitzkrieg run deep; even some people who opposed Russia starting the war are bound to see this as a real threat where the only choice for their personal well-being is to support their state. Either way, Russia is publicly saying these tanks will “burn like all the rest,” which I don’t take to be bluster being as that is clearly what happened to Ukraine’s previous tanks.

Western Tanks Will "Burn Like All The Rest" In Ukraine, Says Russia https://t.co/fqKigGSOWy pic.twitter.com/XC6Hskz1y8

— NDTV News feed (@ndtvfeed) January 25, 2023

At least some of the Western leaders must know this is a pointless escalation, Scholz certainly seems to. So why are they doing this? I suppose, perhaps, because they want to escalate. Otherwise, here are some thoughts: I’ve written off the Baltic states as having gone crazy and being led by idiots; I still think Poland is being sketchy and wants the rest of Galicia back, and further has a poor record of reading the winds of history; the UK can’t accept it’s role as a reduced power and thus must be involved in games of power; the rest are probably just going along because of public and peer pressure and to look like team players. [France, which manufactures its own main battle tanks, is currently deciding whether or not it will send any; this would represent a fourth kind of tank Ukraine needs to train crews for.] Only the United States stands to benefit, and potentially in a huge way.

It is unlikely that Germany will be able to replace these tanks for a variety of reasons, and a great deal of power comes with being a country’s tank supplier. Further, supplying arms is extremely lucrative to companies with a huge amount of political pull, as Eisenhower famously warned us. Scholz must know Germany’s influence and independence is being reduced in a large and long-lasting way, but simply waffled under pressure. It seems most likely to me that America is angling to fully replace Germany as the tank supplier to these European countries. The German writer Eugyppius, best known for his covid coverage, has proved insightful on this as well. He explained the situation deftly enough that there is no point in me doing it myself.

One should always take a cynical view about how the United States military industrial complex uses its power and controls government actions, and this is the only explanation for this whole thing which makes sense, though one should also always consider that it could just be incompetence. It is highly likely this is the beginning of the end for the once-famous German tank industry- and that’s before we see if Leopards hold up in tank vs tank conflict. If they outperform the Abrams by a substantial degree things could be much different.

Ukraine war fever, like covid mania before it, has taken on a life of its own. Politics has always relied on manipulating the stupid, but with modern social media the stupid have more voice than ever, and can feed on each other in a frenzy. Every government must be seen to do ever more for Ukraine. Perhaps I’m wrong and this isn’t a fool’s errand, perhaps this specific batch of weaponry is the one that makes a difference. I doubt it, though, because if it could make the difference it would not need to. Ukraine cannot produce the quality troops it needs to in the timetable available, assuming it holds out long enough to deploy these tanks at all. Most likely, at best they get destroyed and in no time Ukraine is back asking for another round of costly arms, and we are again told it will make all the difference this time. In fact, the next round of lobbying for arms should start by the end of…this sentence:

No sooner is the latest massive escalation in arms provision authorized than the next frantic round of war lobbying begins pic.twitter.com/fV0oXZdVB9

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) January 26, 2023

One thing is for certain about tank-mania: Germany has made itself look weak and indecisive. To quote Machiavelli again, “the entire matter resulted in their disgrace, had they managed the situation differently, it would have been a minor matter” [Discourses, I.38.] The way this played out means that Germany and Scholz’s government cannot win. If things go well, and the tanks are a “game-changer,” it will be seen that Scholz did not want to make the right decision out of cowardice and corruption; if it goes wrong it will be seen that he knew the right course of action but made the wrong one out of weakness. There is no one who will be left thinking that Scholz considered the situation carefully and made a measured and wise decision, presumably including Scholz himself. As for the sane amongst us, we watch off-ramps fade as the world slides closer to catastrophic war, conventional or nuclear:

My concern is heightening that the only off-ramp to this Ukraine business short of nuclear war may be a stunning setback for US conventional arms, such that saner heads in America "regime change" the US and retreat to reassess (at least temporarily) without blowing up the world.

— Will Schryver (@imetatronink) January 25, 2023

Never forget that peace was, in fact, always an option, but instead our empire-manager class got the war they wanted. C’est la vie.

Reprinted with permission from The Wayward Rabbler.
Subscribe and support the author here.

from Just Like Herding Leopards

This Time It’s Different

Until it decided to confront Moscow with an existential military threat in Ukraine, Washington confined the use of American military power to conflicts that Americans could afford to lose, wars with weak opponents in the developing world from Saigon to Baghdad that did not present an existential threat to US forces or American territory. This time—a proxy war with Russia—is different. 

Contrary to early Beltway hopes and expectations, Russia neither collapsed internally nor capitulated to the collective West’s demands for regime change in Moscow. Washington underestimated Russia’s societal cohesion, its latent military potential, and its relative immunity to Western economic sanctions. 

As a result, Washington’s proxy war against Russia is failing. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was unusually candid about the situation in Ukraine when he told the allies in Germany at Ramstein Air Base on January 20, “We have a window of opportunity here, between now and the spring,” admitting, “That’s not a long time.” 

Alexei Arestovich, President Zelensky’s recently fired advisor and unofficial “Spinmeister,” was more direct. He expressed his own doubts that Ukraine can win its war with Russia and he now questions whether Ukraine will even survive the war. Ukrainian losses—at least 150,000 dead including 35,000 missing in action and presumed dead—have fatally weakened Ukrainian forces resulting in a fragile Ukrainian defensive posture that will likely shatter under the crushing weight of attacking Russian forces in the next few weeks. 

Ukraine’s materiel losses are equally severe. These include thousands of tanks and armored infantry fighting vehicles, artillery systems, air defense platforms, and weapons of all calibers. These totals include the equivalent of seven years of Javelin missile production. In a setting where Russian artillery systems can fire nearly 60,000 rounds of all types—rockets, missiles, drones, and hard-shell ammunition—a day, Ukrainian forces are hard-pressed to answer these Russian salvos with 6,000 rounds daily. New platform and ammunition packages for Ukraine may enrich the Washington community, but they cannot change these conditions.

Predictably, Washington’s frustration with the collective West’s failure to stem the tide of Ukrainian defeat is growing. In fact, the frustration is rapidly giving way to desperation. 

Michael Rubin, a former Bush appointee and avid supporter of America’s permanent conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan, vented his frustration in a 1945 article asserting that, “if the world allows Russia to remain a unitary state, and if it allows Putinism to survive Putin, then, Ukraine should be allowed to maintain its own nuclear deterrence, whether it joins NATO or not.” On its face, the suggestion is reckless, but the statement does accurately reflect the anxiety in Washington circles that Ukrainian defeat is inevitable.

NATO’s members were never strongly united behind Washington’s crusade to fatally weaken Russia. The governments of Hungary and Croatia are simply acknowledging the wider European public’s opposition to war with Russia and lack of support for Washington’s desire to postpone Ukraine’s foreseeable defeat. 

Though sympathetic to the Ukrainian people, Berlin did not support all-out war with Russia on Ukraine’s behalf. Now, Germans are also uneasy with the catastrophic condition of the German armed forces. 

Retired German Air Force General (four-star equivalent) Harald Kujat, former chairman of the NATO Military Committee, severely criticized Berlin for allowing Washington to railroad Germany into conflict with Russia, noting that several decades of German political leaders actively disarmed Germany and thus deprived Berlin of authority or credibility in Europe. Though actively suppressed by the German government and media, his comments are resonating strongly with the German electorate.

The blunt fact is that in its efforts to secure victory in its proxy war with Russia, Washington ignores historical reality. From the 13th century onward, Ukraine was a region dominated by larger, more powerful national powers, whether Lithuanian, Polish, Swedish, Austrian, or Russian. 

In the aftermath of the First World War, abortive Polish designs for an independent Ukrainian State were conceived to weaken Bolshevik Russia. Today, Russia is not communist, nor does Moscow seek the destruction of the Polish State as Trotsky, Lenin, Stalin, and their followers did in 1920. 

So where is Washington headed with its proxy war against Russia? The question deserves an answer.

Read the whole article here.

from This Time It’s Different

Zelensky: 'Thanks For The Tanks...Now GIMME Missiles And F-16s!'

Less than a day after the US and Germany agreed to give heavy tanks, Ukraine's president Zelensky again upped the stakes, demanding F-16s and long-range missiles that can strike deep inside Russia. US officials remain confident that Russia will not respond to the steady escalation. What if they're wrong? Also today: China goes to Africa with briefcases instead of bombs. Finally...another Project Veritas sting shows the truth about Pfizer. Watch today's Liberty Report:



from Zelensky: 'Thanks For The Tanks...Now GIMME Missiles And F-16s!'

The US and NATO Seem Hell-Bent on Starting a Shooting War with Russia

Let me give you a scenario. The United States military occupies Iraq and is trying to quash an Islamic insurgency. We then discover that Iran is providing weapons, vehicles and explosives to those Islamic rebels. Do you think the United States would see that as a casus belli to retaliate against Iran? You bet your ass Washington saw this as an act of war against the United States. The George W. Bush administration started providing funding and support to a terrorist groups in Iran, the MEK, and stepped up its denunciation of Iran as a terrorist state.

So why in the world of the sane does the United States and NATO think that they can send advanced weapons to Ukraine for the purpose of killing Russians. If we use the principle the US followed in Iraq, Russia is fully entitled to treat the US and NATO as supporters of terrorism. This is the principle of “What is good for the goose is good for the gander.”

Today’s media events, with the US and Germany announcing they were going to send tanks — the M1 Abrams and Leopard 2 respectively — to Ukraine. But those tanks will not arrive any time soon. The Germans might be able to deliver the Leopard 2s to Kiev by the end of March, but that does not mean they are ready for the battlefield. The US Army requires a prospective crew member of a tank to undergo 22 weeks of training (that is five and one-half months). Even with that training under one’s belt, the new tank crew needs at least two more months of unit training to learn how to fight with the tank in a company (there are 14 tanks in a US Army company) and in a battalion (there are 3 tank companies in a battalion).

There is no place in Ukraine where the tank training can be done that is beyond the reach of Russia’s missiles. That means the Ukrainian soldiers who will be trained to operate these tanks will be away from Ukraine for at least six months, if not longer. Today’s announcement means that the M1 Abrams and Leopard 2s cannot be used in combat in Ukraine before next September unless they are being staffed by trained NATO soldiers.

Joe Biden insists that this is purely a gesture to help Ukraine defend itself and that it is not a threat to Russia. What delusional nonsense!! Tell that to a Russian soldier or tanker facing off against a NATO supplied tank with a NATO tank team inside.

Apparently the Germans did not get the word that this is not a threat to Russia. Germany’s Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, said that Europe is at war with Russia:

But the most important thing is that we do not play the blame game [in Europe] because we are fighting a war against Russia, and not against each other.

Baerbock’s declaration that “we are fighting a war against Russia,” gives Moscow the legal justification under international law to attack the tank training bases in Poland, Germany and the United States. I do not believe that Russia is going to do anything rash. They have time to plan and weigh options.

What is truly astonishing is that the United States and its NATO allies are talking so openly about what they are doing. Normally, a country contemplating war or escalating a war will hide what they are doing until an attack or a campaign is launched. Ditto for deception and feints. The NATO crowd eschews those principles and is more focused on playing the public relations game — e.g., pretend you are doing something meaningful that can change the strategic picture on the ground for Ukraine. If Las Vegas or the bookies in London are looking for a new bet to attract gamblers they might want to offer a chance to wager how long a M1 Abrams or Leopard 2 will survive on the ground in Ukraine. I will put my money on two days. What do you think?

If we continue on this trajectory the moment will arrive when Russia decides to close its diplomatic missions in the United States and Europe. If that happens, the shooting war in Ukraine will expand to other countries. A horrible prospect.

Brian Berletic provides an excellent discussion of this issue:

The US Army planned to end production at the Lima Army Tank Plant from 2013 to 2016 in an effort to save over $1 billion; it would be restarted in 2017 to upgrade existing tanks. General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS), which operates the factory, opposed the move, arguing that suspension of operations would increase long-term costs and reduce flexibility.[61][62] Specifically, GDLS estimated that closing the plant would cost $380 million and restarting production would cost $1.3 billion.[63]. . . .

In late 2016, tank production and refurbishment had fallen to a rate of one per month with fewer than 100 workers on site. In 2017, the Trump administration ordered military production to increase, including Abrams production and employment. In 2018, it was reported that the Army had ordered 135 tanks re-built to new standards, with employment at over 500 workers and expected to rise to 1,000.[66]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams

Reprinted with permission from Sonar21.

from The US and NATO Seem Hell-Bent on Starting a Shooting War with Russia