The Russians Are Coming! Quick, Give Us Your Money!
Off to Steal Nukes
Belgorod 22 is an unofficial name for the nuclear weapons facility that Stephen Bryant suggests in Asia Times today, that Ukraine’s “anti-Putin Russian” militia were aiming for in their recent escapade into Russian Bryansk and Belgorod regions. Perhaps we should be grateful that Ukraine has yet to adopt Israel’s practice since October 7, reported today by Al Jazeera, of dropping white phosphorus over Southern Lebanon, This can burst into flame even after rainfall and causes immense environmental damage.
Bryant suggests that Ukraine’s escapade in search of nuclear weapons to steal is a sign of the increasing desperation of Ukraine in the face of intensifying defeat. We would be well advised to regard the latest “ISIS” attack in Moscow in the same light, notwithstanding, or perhaps because of Washington and western media insistence, without evidence, that it wasn’t Ukraine that was responsible for last Friday’s attack.
ISIS Connection
The concept of ISIS today is something of a terror franchise that anyone with means and motivation can buy out. Michel Chossudovsky simply calls ISIS a CIA creation; Alastair Crooke sees ISIS-K as an unreal invention of western intelligence. ISIS-K was set up to infiltrate sabotage groups into Iran and Syria. Would the CIA and MI6 be associated with something like this? How did Washington decide within 50 minutes of the attack that the culprit was not Ukraine? How did they know, and if they knew that it wasn’t Ukraine, what did they know about who it really was?
The captured four terrorists (mercenaries, not jihadists, says Crooke) - two others were shot on site, and the total terror cell comprised 11 persons - were manifestly not your usual aspiring Salafist martyrs. They did not sacrifice their own lives - authentic jihadists go on shooting until they are killed - and they launched their attack in the holy month of Ramadan, and on a day notorious as the date of other significant Western interventions. There is both a major US and a Ukrainian embassy in Tajikastan, and the Ukrainian ambassador there is the former head of intelligence in Kiev, according to Alaistair Crooke. Dima of the Military Summary Channel at midday today says that following information gleaned from the terrorists, Moscow investigators are talking to Turkey about an ISIS cell in Istanbul that was engaged in preparation for these kinds of operations. Terrorist cells have now been liquidated and 40 ISIS terrorists have been arrested.
And the terrorists chose to flee towards Ukraine where they clearly believed they could expect sanctuary. They had conveniently chosen to drive in a white car with a black roof, making surveillance very easy. Whose idea was that? A carefully preplanned but badly executed operation, concludes Crooke.
On the day after the attacks, Ukraine’s Secretary of National Security Danilov asked rhetorically “is it fun in Moscow today…..we ought to have this fun more often.” One of the terrorists, but we don’t know for sure, may have had experience in the Ukrainian military. More details will emerge.
In my 2017 book, Western Mainstream Media and the Ukraine Crisis, I noted that Ukrainian battalions drew stength from Islamist jihadists, some of them ISIS-linked, using Ukraine as a staging post where they could buy Ukrainian citizenship, passports and weapons before seeking entry to Europe or linking up with Ukrainian volunteers who had supported them in the Chechen wars. In 2015 there were several volunteer Islamic battalions, mainly from Chechya, fighting on the Ukrainian side. One of their motivations was to use Ukraine as a base for reigniting a new fron the Caucasus.
What wold Ukraine gain from this simulated ISIS attack? Larry Johnson opines that Ukraine wants to embarrass Putin, to undermine confidence in him, to create a rift between him and his security forces, and as a way of provoking Russia into an overreaction that might compel the US establishment to release more funding for Ukraine. Johnson is skeptical that the USA provided an advance warning of the ISIS attack to Russia. Russia denies that it received any such warning. US intelligence aoppears to have been in possession of a photo of one of the terrorists on reconnaissance at Crocus Hall on March 7.
Nuland’s Nasty
Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, in interview with Napolitano today, dismisses as utter nonsense speculation that last Friday’s events constituted a Russian false flag attack (on a par, I would say, with the US claims that Russia blew up its own Nord Stream pipeline). He speculates that people like Budanov and Nuland would likely have known in advance (not to say they actually engaged in planning) about a conspiracy of this kind (recall Nuland’s “nasty surprises” coming warning a few weeks ago). The CIA and MI6, says McGovern, are out of control; even Burns, CIA Director, may not have complete control. And certainly the President doesn’t.
Johnson is skeptical about the media attempts to shift the narrative to ISIS-K (based in Afghanistan, “under the protection of the Taliban” - a continuing pretext for a future return to US meddling in Afghanistan), which would not exist, he notes, were it not for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and subsequent US brutalization of Iraqis. In Syria, it is the Russians who are fighting ISIS, not the US.
What is really happening here, in the light of a statement out of the EU over the weekend, is that NATO wants to pretend that it is at war with Russia on the false pretext, no evidence whatsoever, that Russia will not stop at Ukraine but will head next for Sainsburys in Bletchley or Formule 1 in Limoges. In other words, there is no ceiling to the fear-mongering that West European politicians will engage in so as to avoid exposure as the incompetent lunatics they clearly are. And why? Eurobonds! (See below).
The Coming Recession
I’ll add that it’s all great for the arms industry. Of Biden’s $60bn gift that he would love to hand over to Ukraine, over $45bn would go to the arms industry. And it is great for stock market manipulators.
Meantime, average real term US purchasing power has declined 24% since Covid in 2020, and a 2% inflation rate is welcomed by Jerome Powell because it will slow down the rate of debt accumulation. An economic crisis is on the cards, Kevein DeMeritt tells Napolitano today, and will include an employment crisis. Money supply is shrinking by over 2%, a sign of double digit inflation ahead. Commercial lending has shrunk by over 2%, another harbinger of recession. The economy will start rolling over by the summer, another nail in the coffin of the Biden presidency.
Biden’s money to armaments is an unproductive investment that violently destroys the economies of other countries (which the US can later rebuild at great expense to the US taxpayer) and does nothing for the US.
France and other European countries are looking for ways of raising their own Eurobonds to fund the war with debt and compensate for the withdrawal of the US from the “lets give away all our wealth to Ukraine” gang, with a view to getting reelected within the window of increasing expenditure before the debts come due. The aim is to recreate the EU as a superstate with the power to raise taxes and armies.
Alastair Crooke talks of the Eurobond as the way that Europe’s leadership is attempting to bamboozle (his word) the European public by crying out from the rooftops that the Russians are Coming!!
The possibility that all this nonsense will ignite World War Three and nuclear annihilation is not an economic plus.
Missile Strikes
In the meantime Russian Kinzhal (air-launched), Zircon (ship or submarine launched) and Onyx (anti-ship) missiles have earlier today and yesterday hit very important targets from 700 kilometers away (possibly Crimea) likely including two anti-aircraft Patriot defense systems at an airfield near Kiev (newer Patriot systems are anti-missile), the largest,European gas storage facility near Lviv, and an F16 airfield elsewhere in western Ukraine. The Russian Zircon attacks on Kiev occurred after the arrest and interrogation of the Crocus Hall terrorists, and may therefore be a result of information gleaned from interrogations.
There are severe energy blackouts in many parts of Ukraine, including in Kharkiv and in Odessa.
Russia’s latest battlefield successes appear to include taking most of Robotyne; destroying the headquarters of Ukraine intelligence. SBU, in Kiev (SBU is for internal intelligence; GUR is military); taking most of Novomykhailivka: taking much of Krasnohorivka and Ivanivske. Ukrainian air defense is extremely diminished.
Russia today has intensified its efforts on Bohdanivka, taking control of the forest to the south and probably forcing Ukrainians to abandon their positions in the north and to flee towards Chasiv Yar and Kalynivka. Russia has control over Ivanivska but is still receiving counterattacks from Ukrainian forces from the west, all of which the Russians say they successfully repelled. Russia is improving its position between Ivanivska and Kleshchiivka. Some way north Russia is again attempting to clear Bilohorivka of Ukrainian positions in the village and hilltop and the landfill to the south. In Terny, in the direction of Lyman, a second Ukrainian battalion has lost operational capability and is being withdrawn to Slavyansk. Near Avdiivka, Russia now controls Orlivka, Tonenke and Sieverne and is moving westwards in the direction of Pervomaiskae (which it will secure very soon) and Yasnobrodivka and Netailove. Russia is increasing pressure on Robotyne, Malynivka and Huliaipole.
Poland is introducing new limitations on the transport of Ukrainian produce into Ukraine. Moldova is offering to send back Ukrainian men of conscription age, the first European country to take this measure. Ukrainian men may find a stronger welcome in Russian Transnistria. On the Kiev-Chop highway in Transcarpathia, women have protested press-ganging conscription of men.
Palestine Ramadan Ceasefire
Ceasefire
The UN Security Council today demanded an "immediate" ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. The United States was the only member to abstain. All 14 other members voted in favor of the resolution which "demands an immediate ceasefire" for the ongoing Islamic holy month of Ramadan. US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield says she abstained because the resolution did not include an explicit condemnation of Hamas.
The resolution calls for the truce to lead to a "lasting, sustainable ceasefire" and demands that Hamas and other militants free hostages seized on 7 October and stresses the "urgent need to expand the flow of humanitarian assistance to and reinforce the protection of civilians in the entire Gaza Strip". Hamas has “affirmed our readiness” to engage in an immediate prisoner exchange process that leads to the release of prisoners on both sides.
Larry Johnson explains that the UNSC resolution today does not have any legal force, but it provides cover for countries like Turkey who so far have taken no real action against Israel despite a lot of hot air. Turkey may now cut of the supply of oil to Israel if it does not comply. Israel has already had to lay off 50% of the staff of the port of Eliat, in combination with the shutdown of shipping traffic through the Red Sea on account of Houthi missile attacks both on Red Sea shipping and on Israel itself.
Reform Jews
Netanyahu, in a huff about the UNSC ceasefire call, cancelled the trip of an Israeli delegation to Washington that was to discuss alternatives to a looming attack on Rafah. Alastair Crooke critiques the idea of a divorce between Netanyahu and the US. Netanyahu, he says, divorced the Democratic Party and its Liberal Jew supporters ten years ago, at a time when Likud was moving far to the right and the Democrats were going “woke” (i.e. identity politics, which would not have fit very well with Likud’s attitude to the Palestinians). Many “reform Jews” in the US are now becoming supporters of the Palestine cause. These were the ones who supported US action against Iraq in 2003, who thought it would bring peace to Israel and make Palestinians docile. So a community that was crucial to the New American Century crowd of neocons is now embarrassed by the desertion of a majority of young Jewish Americans to the Palestinian cause (quite the opposite in Israel where young people grow more eschatological).
IDF Out of Control
Ray McGovern today tells Napolitano that the IDF will not be ready to enter Rafah for several months. The IDF has been bloodied, down from 20 to 3 brigades. Crooke notes that the IDF doesnt have a NCO class that can exert discipline, and that consequently its young people are out of control, setting up pretend settlements in Gaza and that kind of thing. Hamas is much more powerful that Israel thought.
The IDF has murdered a lot of innocent people but not so many Hamas fighters. We have a war betweeen absolutist religious ideologies, one of them representing a people who have been oppressed and abused by the other for 70 years. Crooke proposes that this kind of apopylyctic conflict, the product of “meta-histories,” is not well understood in the West.
Meantime, 25,000 women and children have been murdered, and 90 children continue to die each day. And the US has given 21,000 precision guided munitions to Israel since the beginning of the war in violation of international law. The Biden Administration is growing more concerned about the impact for the Democrats’ electoral prospects. The arrogance of Israeli leaders, says Larry Johnson to Napolitano today, is insufferable and getting to be insufferably annoying to US voters.