Calibrating the Response to Genocidal War
Smoking and Vaping Worse than Killing Children?
As Britain continues its support for Israel’s policy of genocide against Palestinians, one that has so far killed over 5,000 children (curiously, I note in recent Internet searches, the top results are significantly out of date on such matters), its Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, is investing his energy in defending a silly policy of prohibiting tobacco smoking, in yet another demonstration of Europe’s preference for goody-goody posturing over meaningful concern for its own people and intelligent foreign policy. No help, for example, for the 4.3 million British children living in poverty (of whom 300,000 live in absolute poverty)
Attack on Crimea
Dima of the Military Summary channel reports that during the night of April 16th to April 17th Ukraine launched a massive ATACMS 12-missile strike with cluster warheads on targets in Crimea. Many (possibly six) were shot down by Russia. They hit an air field in Dzharikoy, destroying, according to some sources, S-300 and S-400 air defense systems, and warehouses storing missiles for these. The business about air defense systems is under dispute. Dima is doubtful.
Given the degradation of air defense in this area, if this is true, we must expect that Ukraine will follow up, possibly with another attempt on the Kerch bridge which, while it may not be the most important link to the mainland any more, still has enormous symbolic value. A follow-up attack by Ukraine should be expected very soon (although Russian defense missile hits on Ukrainian projectiles would also improve with every further Ukrainian attack). Obviously, the more time that passes between attacks of this kind the more time an opponent has to rearrange and redeploy for their own missile launch and air defense systems.
In Parenthesis, Iran
I would also say in passing that Iran is possibly missing an opportunity, in this respect, vis-a-vis Israel.
In the event that Israel does retaliate for last weekend’s Iranian bombing, then, unless we are once again talking about a theatrically choreographed event between Iran, Israel and the USA, I would not expect Iran simply to strike back one more time and leave it at that. The next exchange will very likely be the beginning of a full-scale war. Iran does have the capability of damaging international trade by closing the Straits of Hormuz, and this would add to the damage to such trade by the Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, something that the US Navy has been unable to stop. But such damage would also presumably impact Iran’s own trade in oil and gas, a significant contribution to its current 7% rate of growth. Iran would need to consider alternative routes (e.g. from its Chabahar port in the south or from its Caspian sea ports, some of which already transport oil) but this could take time. The various parties, including Russia and China, have now had some good few days to think through the imminent implications of all this and have their war strategies in place.
Iran is estimated by the Financial Times today to have at its disposal tens of thousands of drones and missiles, enough to overwhelm Israeli defenses until such point that Israel resorted to nuclear devices or its efforts were joined by the US, Britain and France (or even by retrograde regional countries such as Jordan, which helped intercept Iranian missiles the other night). One night of defense cost Israel it $1.3 billion (the equivalent of 50% of its readied defense missiles), so the financial incentive to end an Iranian cycle of nightly missile attacks would be extremely high. In brief, an attiritional war is not a viable option for Israel.
What a pity that the collective West could not bring itself to condemn Israel’s reckless murders over many years of Iranian scientists, Iranian commanders, and Iranian property (as in Damascus a couple of weeks ago), not to mention its callous disregard for the murders, in horrible circumstances, of 14,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the disappearance of anothe 7,000 and the wounding of many more. The collective West cannot even begin to articulate why this is so important to it, perhaps because it no longer really knows, or because greed and laziness has left it prone to the designs of an evil cabal of Zionists who control Congress through AIPAAC, or because the Empire of the collective West - whose accomplishments at best, bought at the sacrifice of many tens of millions, and of a secure planetary future for our children, are mediocre - is rapidly dying.
Ukrainian Assassinations
The Ukrainian attacks on Crimea highlight an insufficiency in Russian air defenses for this important zone, for which I would expect internal recriminations. They come on the heels of public admissions on Monday from Ukraine’s SBU chief, Vasyl Malyuk that the SBU has assassinated many Ukrainian citizens (does Ukraine not have a functioning legal system?) they considered to be on the wrong side, including Tatarsky, Kyva, Prelepin, Gorenko, Kornet, and Dugin. He talked of Ukrainian acts of sabotage on Russian territory - referring to 15 hits on Russial oil refineriest (leading, he claims, to a Russian stoppage of gas products and 15% reduction in production - both claims unlikey to be true, so far as I can tell but, if they were, would have the effect of raising prices worldwide and increasing revenues for Russia). He did not, of course, mention the Corcus City Hall massacre but, according to Russian investigators, could have done.
The Battlefields
Overnight Russia struck the north Ukrainian town of Chernihiv, in particular targeting a hotel which it destroyed. We dont know, yet, about the significance of this hotel. Very likely, in my view, it was being used to host Ukrainian and/or foreign mercenary forces, including French. But that is pure speculation on my part. Ukraine apparently admits to a loss of at least 40 Ukrainian soldiers; Dima considers that the number was likely much greater and included senior officers. Russia also struck at Ukrainian MLRS positions and ammo depots around Kharkiv, including an Iskander missile attack on nearby Liptsi.
Along the combat lines the most recent reports suggest that Russian forces are pretty much on the banks of the Kanal in the micro district but that there are still Ukrainian positions here, so that it is not correct to say that Russia controls the eastern district yet. We also know that Ukrainian forces are being redeployed to this area from Kupyansk, but that the 3rd Assault (Azov) brigade, having fought recently in Krasnohorivka and Avdiivka, have refused Syrskyi’s order to redeploy to Chasiv Yar, presumably because they know already that it is a lost cause.
Russian forces are attacking Novoselinska, close to Siversk.
North of Avdiivka, Russian forces have entered the eastern part of Ocheretyne and are likely to move south to the settelments of Novobakmudivka and Soloviove in a bid to encircle Ukrainian forces in the rest of Ocheretyne. South of Natailove, the Russians had earlier secured Pervomaiske, and are now moving south towards (Russian held) Nevolske and, further south still into the industrial settlement of Krasnohorivka where fierce clashes have taken place steadily over recent weeks. Here Russia is firmly in control of the south but has not yet established control over the center even though it certainly looks like they will have accomplished this pretty soon. In Novomykhailivka it appears that only the very western-most edge of the settlement remains under the control of a small detachment of Ukrainian soldiers, perhaps only 15. Further south, Russian forces are edging towards Vodiane, which lies north east of the main target, Vuhledar.
There have been reports, yet to be confirmed, that GUR chief Budanov was killed in a missile strike in Zaporizhzhia in recent days.
NATO chief Stoltenberg has announced an upcoming NATO meeting at which Zelinsky will attend, and which according to Dima, will take Zelenskiy out of Ukraine at a sensitive time when a Ukrainian attack on the Kerch bridge, and retaliatory attacks by Russisa on Ukraine, can be anticipated.
Johnson’s Dilemma
In Washington, Republican House leader Mike Johnson appears to have rolled over - at risk to his own job - before the Democratically-allied Republican majority with plans to give $48 billion to Ukraine, of which $8 billion would go for salaries for politicians and administrators, plus $14 billion in the form of a loan. The expectation of course is that the money will do some good on the battlefield, but it cannot, because first of all the weapons have to be produced (by US manufacturers), which will take time, and, because this is a oligopolistic supplier-determined market, enormously expensive and because what will be produced still needs shells and the US and Europe together appear to be incapable of producing these at anywhere near a rate that is comparable to what Russia is already producing and which would also be enough to feed to the USA’s other conflicts. This is in additon to the $120 billion already spent by the US on Ukraine - money effectively stolen from the people of the USA. A sum of $13 billion would go to Israel, and much smaller amounts to the anti-China alliance and other destabilization zones. There may be a separate package that will deal with US border security management. For Ukraine the money, as we have seen, will have no significant impact in any case, it will not compete with Russian production, and it will almost certainly come too late because Ukrainian forces are on the verge of collapse.
Western Mainstream Media
Listening to Jimmy Dore on The Duran about the horrible performance of the Western mainstream media I am reminded first, of the inevitable loss of nuance in times of crisis. It is hardly surprising, after all - given the extraordinary stream of lies and omissions in media coverage of the collective West’s brazen evil and stupidity in its foreign polices (going back at least as far as the lies surrounding the 1989 invasion of Panama and the 1991 invasion of Iraq, followed by the Western-instigated dissolution of Yugoslavia, NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, the multiple levels of cowardice of 9/1l, the false pretexts for the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, followed by the crazed destabilizations, essentially in the name of CIA-created jihadist extremist movements of Libya and of Syria, the silence over the US role in the Maidan coup d’etat in Ukraine in 2014 and its Right Sektor atrocities, the fairytale of MH17, Western culpability for the failure of the Minsk agreements, the stoking of war against the independent republics of the Donbass, atrocity fabrications following the 2022 SMO, the wilful turning away from US responsibility for the Nord Stream sabotage, etc., etc. - that just in order to be able to communicate effectively on a day to day basis one must choose as one’s starting point that the Western mainstream media are hopelessly corrupted, deeply embedded in the pockets of an unseemly gangs of oligarchs, corporations, intelligence operatives, and elite politicians and subservient intellectuals.
Are there still some positive things to say about the mainstream media? Of course there are, but we dont have time for that any more. The challenge to save the major truths is now so overwhelmingly urgent. Our heroic networks of professional, alternative media, on many of whom we remain dependent for insightful analyses of what are currently the major axes of the collective West’s counterrevolution against the rise of multipolarity in Ukraine, the Middle East and the South China Sea, don’t yet seem to grasp the pressing need to take into account other sinister and worrying crises of a different hue in their (mainly absent) coverage of such matters as the lies of 9/11, Covid, the machinations of the WEF and WHO, the Great Reset and the Great Dispossession, not to mention universal political inability to satisfactorily confront the threats of climate change, and other dimensions of out-of-the-ball-park institutional corruption worldwide.