Category Archives: Military

Bakhmut, Strategic Or Not, Is Falling, by Moon of Alabama

Bakhmut is at the conjunction of three major train lines and four major roads. Although official propaganda downgrades its importance now that Ukraine is about to lose it, the city has obvious strategic value. From Moon of Alabama at moonofalabama.org:

‘Western’ media can not decide if Bakhmut is a strategic city or has little strategic value. They claim both is the case.

Bakhmut is of course of strategic value. It is covering the crossing of three major train lines and four major roads (M-03, M-32, T-13-02, T-05-13). As such it is the linchpin of the whole Donbas region. Besides that it also has some valuable mineral mines.


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That is why the Ukrainian government has send ten thousands of its troops to fight and die for that city.

People who claim otherwise are simply coping.

Some examples:

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NBC Reporter Goes to Crimea, Shocks Viewers by Telling The Truth, by Tyler Durden

Imagine a reporter reporting the news the old-fashioned way: from where it actually happens. From Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge via lewrockwell.com

Mainstream media correspondents for major US networks rarely, if ever, report from inside Crimea and certainly are nowhere near Russian-held territory in eastern Ukraine. However, this week NBC News chief international correspondent Keir Simmons went to Sevastopol, surrounded by a significant Russian military presence given it is home to the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet, and in a live segment admitted that it’s not at all realistic Zelensky and Ukrainian forces can ever hope to take Crimea.

This is especially as the “the people there… view themselves as Russian.” Simmons noted that “This is the closest that any US news crew has got to the Russian Black Sea Fleet in many many years.” He explained that “Vladimir Putin will be determined to defend that port – to not have it take it away from him – he may well do pretty much anything to try to achieve that.”

“It is a very, very dangerous standoff.. it’s hard to see how you reach a negotiation over that. There’s military absolutely everywhere, it is a military town,” he continued, before saying…

“When for example Victoria Nuland talks about that at the very least we [the US] want Crimea to be demilitarized, I find myself standing there and wondering, how on earth does that happen?

Ukrainian officials and pro-Kyiv media pundits are said to be outraged at the segment, given it repeatedly and bluntly referenced that Crimeans see themselves as Russians. Even a separate write-up filed days earlier from inside Crimea and posted to NBC’s website included the following:

This is not Russia, according to Kyiv, its Western allies and the United Nations. It was annexed by the Kremlin in 2014, with the U.N. calling on Russia to return to its “internationally recognized borders.” And following Moscow’s broader invasion launched a year ago, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed Ukraine will take Crimea back.

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China’s Turn, by Mike Whitney

The U.S. may go to war to prevent the Chinese economy’s emergence as the world’s largest. From Mike Whitney at unz.com:

Ukraine is the first flashpoint in a great power struggle between the United States and China. After years of shifting its industries to low-wage locations around the world, the US finds itself steadliy losing market-share to a faster-growing and more resourceful China. By most estimates, China’s economy will overtake the United States by 2035 at which point, Beijing will be in a much better position to shape international trade relations in a way that promotes its own interests. With growth, comes power, and that rule will certainly apply to China as well. China has emerged as an industrial powerhouse that sits at the very epicenter of the most populous and fastest growing region in the world. It is for that reason that the United States has initiated a series of provocations on the island of Taiwan and in the South China Sea. The US has abandoned all hope of prevailing over China through conventional free market competition. Instead, the US plans to engage China militarily in a desperate attempt to drain its resources, garner broader support for economic sanctions and isolate isolate China from its regional trading partners. It is a risky and disruptive plan that could backfire spectacularly, but Washington is moving forward regardless. US foreign policy mandarins and their globalist allies will not accept an outcome in which China is the world’s biggest and most powerful economy. This is from an article at China Macro Economy:

Although the pace of China’s economic rise has slowed in recent years, it appears on track to end the United States’ lengthy run as the world’s largest economy by around 2035, according to the latest projection by economists at Goldman Sachs.

The new estimate is 10 years later than the investment bank had predicted in 2011. But economists Kevin Daly and Tadas Gedminas said that potential growth in China still remains significantly higher than in the US.

“China has already closed most of the gap with US GDP,” they said in a report published on Tuesday, adding that China’s gross domestic product has risen from 12 per cent of the US’ in 2000 to a little under 80 per cent.

China’s annual economic growth will be around 4 per cent from 2024 to 2029, compared with 1.9 per cent in the US, according to the report, which projects what the global economy will look like through 2075….

The US dollar’s exceptional strength over the past 10 years is another reason for the 10-year revision in when China’s economy will become No 1, Daly added… But the US dollar’s strength versus the Chinese yuan is likely to diminish over the coming decade, providing more ground for China to overtake the US, according to the report.

The report also projected that the weight of global GDP will shift more towards Asia over the next 30 years, and that the world’s five largest economies in 2050 will be China, the United States, India, Indonesia and Germany.” (“China GDP to surpass US around 2035, years later than previously expected, Goldman Sachs predicts”, China Macro Economy)

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How This US Lie Will Likely Lead to War, by Dr. Joseph Mercola

The Nordstream sabotage may lead the U.S. not only into war with Russia, but also into a war with Germany, an ally of the U.S. From Dr. Joseph Mercola at theburningplatform.com:

Story at-a-glance

  • September 26, 2022, Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 — Russian pipelines that deliver natural gas from Russia to Europe underneath the Baltic Sea — were blown up
  • Months before the sabotage, President Biden publicly announced that “if Russia invades Ukraine, there will be no Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” Undersecretary Victoria Nuland also delivered a near-identical message, saying, “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward”
  • February 8, 2023, legendary investigative journalist Seymore Hersh published a shocking article based on whistleblower testimony claiming the sabotage was carried out by U.S. Navy divers during BALTOPS 22, a NATO exercise that took place in the Baltic Sea in June 2022. Three months later, the planted explosives were remotely detonated, destroying the two pipelines
  • According to the whistleblower, Norway was in on the plan, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz OK’d the operation
  • According to Hersh, the “why” behind Biden’s decision to blow up the pipelines was threefold. First, it would massively impact Russia’s economy. Second, eliminating Germany’s and Western Europe’s ability to buy low-cost gas from Russia would force them to buy U.S. gas. And third, he feared Europe would be reluctant to supply Ukraine with money and weapons if they were reliant on Russian gas

September 26, 2022, massive leaks were detected in two Russian pipelines — Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 — that deliver natural gas from Russia to Europe underneath the Baltic Sea. Within a couple of days, several countries, including Russia, agreed the leaks were the result of intentional sabotage.

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US Ambassador To China: “We’re The Leader” Of The Indo-Pacific, by Caitlin Johnstone

There are probably a few Asians that don’t cotton to the U.S. ambassador’s claim. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

A recent US Chamber of Commerce InSTEP program hosted three empire managers to talk about Washington’s top three enemies, with the US ambassador to China Nicholas Burns discussing the PRC, the odious Victoria Nuland discussing Russia, and the US ambassador to Israel Tom Nides talking about Iran.

Toward the end of the hour-long discussion, Burns made the very interesting comment that Beijing must accept that the United States is “the leader” in the region and isn’t going anywhere.

“From my perspective sitting here in China looking out at the Indo-Pacific, our American position is stronger than it was five or ten years ago,” Burns said, citing the strength of US alliances, its private sector and its research institutions and big tech companies.

“And I do think that the Chinese now understand that the United States is staying in this region — we’re the leader in this region in many ways,” Burns added emphatically.

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The Military-Industrial Complex and American Fascism, by William J. Astore

The MIC is the embodiment of fascism. From William J. Astore at antiwar.com:

Since Ike’s warning more than 60 years ago, the MIC has only grown stronger and more anti-democratic

President Dwight D. Eisenhower (Ike) had it right. The military-industrial complex (MIC) is fundamentally antidemocratic The national security state has become the fourth branch of government and arguably the most powerful one. It gets the most money, more than half of the federal discretionary budget, even as the military remains America’s most trusted institution, despite a woeful record in wars since 1945.

A colleague, Christian Sorensen, says that when we look closely at the MIC we see something akin to American fascism. As he put it to me: “Our fascism certainly doesn’t look like past European movements, but it is far more durable, has killed millions and millions (SE Asia, Indonesia, Central America, Middle East), and has manifold expressions: wars abroad, wars at home, surveillance state, digital border, militarized law enforcement, economic warfare in the form of sanctions, militarization of space.”

It’s hard not to agree with him, not in the sense of Hitler’s Germany or Mussolini’s Italy but in the sense of concentrated government/corporate power that draws sustenance from nationalism at home and imperialism abroad. It’s true that America doesn’t have goose-stepping soldiers in the street. There are no big military parades (though Donald Trump once wanted one). It still seems like we have contending political parties. But when we look deeper, a militant nationalism and aggressive imperialism powered by corporations and enforced by government, including notably the Supreme Court, is the salient feature of this American moment.

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Washington Post Lets Hersh’s Dangerous Cat Out of the Bag, by Ray McGovern

Seymour Hersh’s story was just too big to ignore. From Ray McGovern at antiwar.com:

Bombshell No. 1: Seymour Hersh’s Feb. 8 report that President Joe Biden authorized the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines built to carry cheap Russian gas to Europe.

Bombshell No. 2: The Washington Post today ended the Establishment media embargo on Hersh’s damning report, mentioning its findings and even including a link to his article.

The Post’s article by Karen DeYoung, no rogue reporter, bore the headline, “Russia, blaming US sabotage, calls for UN probe of Nord Stream.” DeYoung reported on the UN Security Council meeting yesterday at which Russia called for a special United Nations commission to investigate the explosions that blew up the Nord Stream undersea pipelines. DeYoung also noted that Professor Jeffrey Sachs and I gave short briefings at the beginning of the Security Council session.

Here’s an edited summary account by the UN of our testimony at the Security Council session:

SACHS: As the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines on 26 September 2022 constitutes an act of international terrorism and represents a threat to peace, it is the Council’s responsibility to take up the question of who might have carried out the act, help bring the perpetrator to justice, pursue compensation for the damaged parties and prevent such actions from recurring in the future. Countries need full confidence that their infrastructure will not be destroyed by third parties.

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Ukraine: The Tunnel at the End of the Light, by Robert Freeman

You almost have to post this one just for the title, but the article itself is excellent as well. From Robert Freeman at consortiumnews.com:

The U.S. abused its providential anointment as the exceptional nation, writes Robert Freeman. That abuse has been recognized, called out and is now being acted against by most of the other nations of the world.  

Jan. 16, 2017: U.S. Vice President Joe Biden traveling to Kiev. (U.S. Embassy Kyiv, Flickr)

“Light at the end of the tunnel” was an iconic phrase used by the warmongers who kept the U.S. in Vietnam long after the War had been lost.

The implication was that insiders could see through the fog of war and know that things were getting better. It was a lie.

In January 1966, long before the military height of the war, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told President Lyndon Johnson that the U.S. had a one-out-of-three chance of winning on the battlefield.

But Johnson, like Eisenhower and Kennedy before him, and Nixon after him, didn’t want to be the first American president to lose a war. So, he ginned up a simplistic lie and “soldiered on.” 

The lie was blown by the Tet Offensive in January 1968. More than 100 U.S. military installations were attacked in a simultaneous nationwide assault that stunned the U.S.

The broadcaster, Walter Cronkite, then “the most trusted man in America,” bellowed on national television, “I thought we were supposed to be winning this damned thing.” It was the beginning of the end of the U.S.’ murderous and failed occupation. 

We’re now facing another light-and-tunnel event, this time in Ukraine. Only now, it’s not the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s the tunnel at the end of the light. What do we mean by that? 

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It Is The Mass Media’s Job To Help Suppress Anti-War Movements, by Caitlin Johnstone

It becomes easier to understand when you remember that the mass media is a wholly subsidiary of the military-industrial complex. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

In a new article titled “European antiwar protests gain strength as NATO’s Ukraine proxy war escalates,” The Grayzone’s Stavroula Pabst and Max Blumenthal document the many large demonstrations that have been occurring in France, the UK, Germany, Greece, Spain, the Czech Republic, Austria, Belgium and elsewhere opposing the western empire’s brinkmanship with Russia and proxy warfare in Ukraine.

Pabst and Blumenthal conclude their report with a denouncement of the way the western media have either been ignoring or sneering at these protests while actively cheerleading smaller demonstrations in support of arming Ukraine.

“When Western media has not ignored Europe’s antiwar protest wave altogether, its coverage has alternated between dismissive and contemptuous,” they write. “German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle sneeringly characterized the February 25 demonstration in Berlin as ‘naive’ while providing glowing coverage to smaller shows of support for the war by the Ukrainian diaspora. The New York Times, for its part, mentioned the European protests in just a single generic line buried in an article on minuscule anti-Putin protests held by Russian emigres.”

This bias is of course blatantly propagandistic, which won’t surprise anyone who understands that the mainstream western media exist first and foremost to administer propaganda on behalf of the US-centralized empire. And chief among their propaganda duties is to suppress the emergence of a genuine peace movement.

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Quoth the Vultures “Evermore”, by Edward Curtin

The U.S.’s many wars since World War II have not been “mistakes.” They’ve been quite deliberate. From Edward Curtin at lewrockwell.com:

On the short roof outside the bedroom window, two black vultures sit, staring in.  They have come to remind me of something.  I put my book down and peer back at these strange looking creatures. The book: Our War: What We Did in Vietnam And What It Did to Us by David Harris.  I had read it when it was first published in 1996 and it has stuck with me, as has the utterly savage U.S. war against Vietnam that killed so many millions, what the Vietnamese call The American War.

I am of the same generation as Harris, the courageous draft resister and anti-war campaigner who died on February 6.  Like him, many of us who were of draft age then have never been able to extricate the horror of that war from our minds.  Most, I suppose, but surely not those who went to Vietnam to fight, just moved on and allowed the war to disappear from their consciousness as they perhaps tried to think of it as a “mistake” and to live as if all the constant American wars since weren’t happening.  As for the young, the war against Vietnam is ancient history, and if they learned anything about it in school, it was erroneous for sure, a continuation of the lie.

But it was no mistake; it was an intentional genocidal war waged to torture, kill, and maim as many Vietnamese as possible and to use drafted (enslaved) American boys to do the killing and suffer the consequences.  It’s Phoenix Program, the CIA’s assassination and torture operation, became the template for Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, CIA black sites, hybrid wars, terrorist actions, etc. up to today.  Harris writes:

[that] . . . . “calling the war a mistake is the fundamental equivalent of calling water wet or dirt dirty. . . . Let us not lose sight of what really happened.  In this particular ‘mistake,’ at least 3 million people died, only 58,000 of whom were Americans.  These 3 million people died crushed in the mud, riddled with shrapnel, hurled out of helicopters, impaled on sharpened bamboo, obliterated in carpets of explosives dropped from bombers flying so high they could only be heard and never seen; they died reduced to chunks by one or more land mines, finished off by a round through the temple or a bayonet through the throat, consumed by sizzling phosphorous, burned alive by jellied gasoline, strung up by their thumps, starved in cages, executed after watching their babies die, trapped on the barbed wire calling for their mothers.  They died while trying to kill, they died while trying to kill no one, they died heroes, they died villains, they died at random, they died most often when someone who had no idea who they were killed them under the orders of who had even less idea than that.

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