Onwards the Counter Revolution?

Good morning! A number of things are going on in my life for the next two weeks that will likely limit the number and length of my posts and at times will not permit me to get into the details of situations like, right now, the invasion of Kursk.

Speaking of which, we should all be aware that putting the complacency of many pro-Russian analysts to one side, the fighting in Kursk continues to be intense and is still not fully predictable.

However I do tend to agree with those who consider that the two main features that work to Russian advantage here, namely their superiority in terms of men and weapons, and the fundamental weaknesses of the Ukrainian army, will prevail and probably quite soon.

I also take serious note of Putin’s recent statement that there will not now be any negotiations. Perhaps there would not have been negotiations anyway, but the Kursk invasion, backed as it must have been, by NATO, has put paid to any chance of such.

This now allows Putin to revisit his earlier clarification of the conditions for a ceasefire. I don’t think Russia will limit itself any more to the four oblasts plus Crimea. It’s own security requires it to take Kharkiv and Odessa and, quite likely, to decapitate Kiev.

Just in the last day or so there has been a concentration of Belarusian and, very likely, Russian troops north of Kiev above the Belarusian border. This has already required Ukraine to redeploy scarce and poorly trained forces from the Sumy area to the Belarusian border.

The need to distract global attention from the ultimate failure of Kursk may help explain Zelenskiy’s extraordinarily reckless and foolish drone strike yesterday on the Zapporizhzhia nuclear power plant which set one of its coolers on fire. Reject Zel’s lunatic claim that this was another instance of Russia bombing themselves. The plant’s reactors are still engaged, even though the plant is not fully operational.

What is at stake here? The integrity of the Russian Federation for a start, since, as we have long known, Washington and its puppies want free rein over the RF. But why? Because the financial underpinnings of the collective West are fragile, especially since the financial crisis of the 2000’s, and the West has allowed an accumulation of debt that is totally and dangerously disproportionate to the real value of its assets. Putting it bluntly, the collective West needs more things of real value to cover its debts. Since it doesn’t have them, it will steal them from whatever sources it can find: Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela come to mind.

Secondly, of course, Washington is seeking to correct the trajectory of its own globalization policies of the 1980s and 1990s which produced the surprising emergence of a newly reconstructed Chinese communism with a capitalist face and a B&R program that has prised the Global South away from the clammy hands of the imperialist club.

Hence, in response to the revolution of globalization, a project designed to increase western hegemony under the twin flags of the free flow of capitalism and western-style corporatized democracy, Washington has launched a counter revolution against the values of multipolarity that undermine the West, starting with the conjured pretexts of Ukraine, Iran and Taiwan.

Note the coincidence in timing between the financial crisis of the 2000s and the western insistence on the expansion of NATO to Russian boundaries.

As for Iran it is now certain that Netanyahu wants war with Iran, has secured Washington consent to that war, that he does not want a ceasefire with Gaza, does not care about the hostages, does not care that the rest of the world does not want Israel, does not want continuation of genocide of the indigenous - the Palestinians whose lands Israel long ago seized.

Will Iran retaliate against Israel? Yes, but it knows that it needs to inflict real pain on Israel, to exact a far higher price for continuing Israeli escalation and existential enmity. For that reason a great deal of careful forging of alliances, concentrations of weapons and of (mobile) missile launch positions, and electronic warfare tactics need to be in place.