Sinking Russian Ships, Propping Up Bankrupt Losers and Supporting Genocide. Your West This Christmas.
New readers should know that my Substack posts are dedicated to surveillance of matters related to a central premise, and that premise, put at its simplest, is that the collective West, made ever more desperate and ruthless because of its unsustainable debt load, is attempting to beat back the multiple forces of multipolarity. It is currently doing this on three main fronts: against Russia over the proxy excuse of defending Ukraine; against Iran over the proxy excuse of defending Israel; against China over the proxy excuse of defending Taiwan. But there is no limit to the number of fronts that the West will entertain.
Reuters reported yesterday that a Russian cargo ship called Ursa Major sank in the Mediterranean Sea overnight after an explosion ripped through its engine room and two of its crew are still missing. According to Reuters, based on information from the Russian MOD, the vessel, built in 2009, was controlled by Oboronlogistika, a company that is part of the Russian Defence Ministry's military construction operations, which had previously said it was en route to the Russian far eastern port of Vladivostok with two giant port cranes lashed to its deck.
Dima of the Military Summary Channel in his latest available broadcast, also from yesterday, December 24, links this to a number of other recent accidents and sinkings involving Russian cargo ships in the Black Sea and Meditererranean, and raises the possibility that we are witnessing some kind of concerted camaign against Russia’s so-called “shawow fleet,” that is to say the ships that Russia uses to export its oil and gas, but which do not insure with the London-based shipping insurance industry so as to avoid sanctions.
As I noted yesterday there is another ongoing story concerning Russian oil and gas which is Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico’s recent visit to Putin, doubtless to discuss the implications of the ending by Ukraine of Slovakian access to the pipeline across Ukraine that has still been carrying oil and gas to Hungary, Slovakia and some other European destinations. These destinatins have been exempted from European restrictions on account of the difficulties they face in securing alternative supplies. The contract with Slovakia ends in a week’s time. Hungary’s contract is still on-going. There is some uncertainty as to the accuracy of claims that Fico has said that Slovakia has been offered a $500 million bribe that would keep Slovakia connected to the pipeline flow provided that Slovakia would life its oppositition to Ukrainian membership of NATO. It appears that, if true, Fico rejected the offer.
Even had he accepted it, I don’t think that NATO would have been given Ukraine membership as there are other members of NATO, not just Slovakia or Hungary, who would be horrified by the thought of extending membership to a country that is busily losing a war and, to all intents and purposes, bankrupt, not to add deeply corrupt, contaminated by a vile ideology, and too frequently brainless. The Fico bribe incident also suggests that were it not for bribes there would be more outspoken European opposition to NATO’s continuing commitment to war even beyond American participation in that war, assuming that there is anything that Donald Trump says that carries any substantial weight whatsoever. (I doubt it, given the circus of clowns, mainly, with which he surrounds himself and his dependence on a deeply compromised intelligence system).
Ukraine has taken as much from NATO as NATO will ever be able to give and both Ukraine and NATO are still losing the war. Worse than losing, they want to lose even more. Dima of the Military Summary Channel yesterday reported that the Ukrainian RADA is all ready to sign a bill that would reduce the age of Ukrainian conscription to 18. The RADA is under pressure from the West to sacrifice the lives of tens of thousands of more Ukrainians at the service of NATO’s ignoble, proxy war against Russia so that the West, as per its best wet dream, can split up the Russian Federation into many small, defenseless parts and then proceed to grab its mineral wealth and in that way enable the West to surmouunt the burden of its staggering debts.
Dima adds that in the past few days as many as 150,000 people have left or have tried to leave Ukraine, mainly into Poland (which a while back, if I remember correctly, vowed that it would begin to collaborate with Ukrainian authorities in returning Ukrainian immigrants of military age back to Ukraine).
In the Middle East, and indeed in the entire world, the one principal source of courage in the struggle against the overwhelming awfulness and ugliness of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians (pursuing a Zionist dream of a “greater Israel” that will also give Israel direct control over more coastal territory and make it better able to exploit oil and gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean), has been Yemen. Yemen’s rocket attacks against Israel-bound shipping on the Red Sea and against the territory of Israel itself, all in the name of putting pressure on Israel to end its genocide, have been increasing. This therefore guarantees massive, disproportionate Israeli attacks on Yemen. And there can be no doubt at this point in time that the Zionist dream of extending Israel into Lebanon, Syria and Iraq (in addition to the influence that Israel exerts over Jordan and Egypt), and establishing regional geopolitical dominance over Iran, mainly, but also, perhaps, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, is closer to reality than at any previous time of the nation’s formation.