Has There Been A Major WW3 Escalation?

Before I get to the important topic in the title, let’s start with some more general updates.

Here’s the president of Poland:

What the media hides.

@narrative_hole

“We know that when Russians come they, they rapе women, they kill people, they deport people to the East (…) Russians must be stopped” - President of Poland

This is the President of a f**king EU country, describing the people of Russia today

8:59 AM · Aug 11, 2023

Clever. He’s speaking for a Western audience. He doesn’t mention what happens when the Germans or Ukrainians come—but Poles know only too well, in their historical memory, what happens. That’s why support for the war is dropping in Poland. In the last few days, all Ukrainian flags in Warsaw have been taken down—a sign that Poland is unhappy about Ukraine openly saying, ‘We’re only friends with Poland until the war ends.’ Here’s a comment from an American living in Poland right now, a comment to this tweet:

The Polish right wing parties have an obsession with history. Just turn on TVP (Polish state TV once) virtually ALL the tv shows they make are set during the period from WW1 to the fall of communism. Sadly only “Wojenne Dziewczyny” (Girls of War) following Polish WW2 resistance girls was remotely watchable. All others are so fake, didactic and full of propaganda you have to be 70+ to enjoy them.

Where does Duda get the cue for this kind of reckless, misleading hate-speech? From the US. If you follow the link below you’ll find the video of Morrell talking to Charlie Rose:

Scott Ritter

@RealScottRitter

The poster-child of CIA insanity. This organization has no legitimate reason to exist, and Morrell makes my case. If you’re watching this and nodding in agreement with what this lunatic is saying, you’re the problem, not the solution.

Quote Tweet

Glenn Diesen

@Glenn_Diesen

Former CIA director Mike Morell speaking like a gangster - imagine the outrage if the intelligence agencies of other states spoke in this manner

[video]

3:44 AM · Aug 11, 2023

Here’s a transcript. The punchline, of course, is the final line:

MM: We need to make the Iranians pay a price in Syria.

MM: We need to make the Russians pay a price.

CR: We make them pay the price by ... killing Russians?

MM: Yes.

CR: And killing Iranians?

MM: Yes. Covertly. So you don't tell the world about it, right. You don't stand up at the Pentagon and say, 'We did this.' But you make sure they know it in Moscow and Teheran.

MM: And here's the other thing I wanna do. I wanna go after those things that Assad sees as his personal power base. I wanna scare Assad. So I wanna go after his presidential guard. I wanna bomb his offices in the middle of the night.

CR: Well, that happened about two years ago, as you remember, when his brother in law was ...

MM: I want to destroy his presidential aircraft on the ground.

MM: I wanna destroy his presidential helicopters.

MM: I wanna make him think we're coming after him.

MM: I'm not advocating assassinating him, I'm not advocating that. I'm advocating going after what he thinks is his power base, right, and what he needs to survive. I want him to think about, 'This is not gonna end well for me.'

MM: I wanna put pressure on him, I wanna put pressure on the Iranians, I wanna put pressure on the Russians, to come to that diplomatic settlement.

So, in the American Empire “diplomacy” is about … killing people, engaging in terroristic acts, to force them to submit. Winning hearts and minds, or maybe not—as we see increasingly around the world. Duda in Poland wants to be able to talk like that.

Jim Rickards is on fire today, and he offers a good lead in toward the main topic:

U.S. has spent over $200 billion in Ukraine. Russians winning decisively as Ukrainians are slaughtered in a meat grinder strategy. Americans clueless since U.S. media is all lies. Now Joe wants another $40 billion. Killing Ukrainians to win reelection.

When left-wing DC mouthpieces like @thehill tell you the Ukrainian offensive is failing you know it's actually worse than that. And it is. Washington's getting ready to pull the plug on this bloody fiasco. Let the finger pointing begin.

I follow the war in Ukraine closely. I've developed sourcing from London, Switz., Central Europe and Moscow. U.S. media are a steady diet of lies; most Americans are badly misled. Yet, this source is the saddest, most sobering piece I've read. Peace Now.

Here’s that piece:

NATO/EU THROW 300,000 UKRAINIANS TO THEIR DEATHS: “LIKE GERMANY IN 1945”: WESTERN SUPPORT EBBING AWAY

This is why Poland’s Duda says “we” can win the war on the cheap because Americans aren’t fighting. I can’t quote the whole article but …

Yeah, that’s some parents’ little Mykola—didn’t make it to 17 years of age. The line under the dates reads: Vichnaya Pamyat—everlasting memory. That’s from the Orthodox funeral liturgy. Give him rest with your saints, Christ, and everlasting memory. While they remember Mykola, his parents can give thanks to Zhou, Sullivan, Blinken, Nuland, and all the rest of the corrupt American imperialist establishment who hoodwinked their corrupt regime into being our proxy against Russia. That doesn’t absolve Ukrainians—they were living in a national psychosis. Still, it’s a steep price to pay for your craziness. While your “leaders” become billionaires.

While some estimates of Ukrainian dead vary between 300,000 and 400,000 Ukrainian sources admit to 310,000 deaths and the Wall Street Journal estimates between 20,000 and 50,000 have lost one or more limbs. Other estimates are that several hundred thousand are severely wounded.

This horrendous death total … is the result of the West’s genocidal exploitation of Ukraine as a battering ram for American neocon attempts to destroy Russia …

To the question “What is it like on the front lines now? At the zero line?

A mercenary replied: “At “zero” – horror. Just awful. It’s just genocide. It’s creepy there. Dead people everywhere. Corpses of Ukrainian soldiers. They were just left there. Just left there and I don’t know why.”

Ukraine is also losing its youth. This young man was not even 17. The post was followed by over 700 angry comments filled with pain and denial.

“The West knew that Kiev would not have enough weapons for the offensive, … The Wall Street Journal reported.

Those who threw these troops into a battle they knew they could not win but were trying to make some meagre gains “in order to better negotiate” are guilty of genocide of Ukrainians.

The extent to which the western press, especially in the USA, are at last awakening to the pointless slaughter is this report of the New York Times about the full cemeteries in Lviv:

“The old, unmarked graves of those who died in past wars will be dug up to make way for a seemingly endless stream of the dead.”

The tensions within the western alliance are growing, with Germany unable to supply more tanks, the USA refusing to supply the latest Abrams tanks and Germany terminating an agreement with the Polish authorities on the repair of Leopard 2 tanks transferred to the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the territory of Poland (Handelsblatt) because Poland was asking 10 times the reasonable price for repairs!

Lots more at the link.

Now we get to the main topic, which focuses on the recent maritime drone attacks. This came up in the second half of a Judge Napolitano interview with Alistair Crooke. I’ve done an edited transcript of that portion, but first just a brief quote from Bloomberg about the potential significance of these attacks:

… the attacks put at risk Russia’s commodity exports via the Black Sea, a route that accounts for most of the grain and 15% to 20% of the oil that Russia sells daily on global markets. Significantly higher insurance and shipping costs are likely to follow for Moscow, but there are risks to European and global markets, too.

In other words, this is a big deal. A very big deal. It’s crazy stuff that we’re doing without any declaration of war, without—seemingly—any public discussion in Congress.

Ukraine War - Is the Black Sea ‘War’- the Real War? w/ Alastair Crooke

So has the failed spring offensive been translated to the Black Sea about which you have recently written?

Russia withdrew from the grain deal and, to make it clear that they were resolved in this matter, they bombed one of those Danube ports. Then there's been a tit for tat which ultimately ended in the attack on Novorossiysk, which is Russia's major Black Sea commercial port. Large quantities of oil pass through it, goods pass through it, 400 million tons a year. This has been a major port for a long time and so the attack on a civilian tanker and the military landing craft [leads to the] question: Was NATO behind this? I mean, not just facilitating it but furnished and supported with NATO intelligence?

Is this another Nordstream pipeline?

Well, if it gets out of hand it's dangerous because an attack like this on Russia's main trading port on is no small matter. These attacks by what we call maritime drones are sophisticated. It's very unlikely in my view that Ukraine would have either had them or managed them without either the Americans or British being directly involved in giving the guidance.

So if this was NATO paid for, NATO facilitated, and maybe NATO carried out, wouldn't Russian intelligence know that?

Yes, I think this is what's going on. They're investigating where did it come from, was there a mothership, who was controlling this thing? These are not easy weapons to use. Very few nation states have this expertise.

What does it mean for Russia? Does this mean that as the war fails on the ground in Ukraine that the West is sort of pivoting towards a new form of a longer term attrition against Russia by striking at its ability to function in trading terms? Are we seeing a new war that also might involve longer-range cruise missiles?

So what does Russia do? Does it hit back hard both on the ground in Ukraine and does it hit back against NATO in some calibrated way to send a message to NATO: 'No, we are not going to play this game. If you want to, you risk going to full real war. In which case, who's more vulnerable, our supply lines or your supply lines, because it would be your tankers as well that would be attacked?' Think what that would do to your rate of inflation in the United States in an election year?'

Many things are suddenly touching the European consciousness. I'm not saying that there's a transformation. and I think it's deeper in the United States in many ways than it is in Europe, because our press paradoxically is more controlled than you have in the U.S. But the way of living is collapsing for many. Many Italians are on the poverty line. They're looking at the United States and they see the United States in this sort of political unraveling, and wondering and fearing how this is going to impact on Europe both politically and in terms of the wider changes that are taking place. But at the same time I just don't see the means to bring about a change so much in Europe. I think people are looking to America, to some trends in America, actually, to help bring Europe out of the hole that it's dug for itself.

Last question. Do you see an off-ramp for Joe Biden, some way to get out of this?

I think it's going to be very hard for him to get out of this mess without humiliation. That's why I think this Black Sea thing deserves to be watched, because they may try to sort of shift it and say, 'Well, we're going to weaken Russia by these periodic attacks on its shipping, cruise missile attacks on bridges.’ This sort of remote Cold War. First of all, I don't think it's going to work. The Russians will retaliate and the Russians will escalate if they do this. This is the big thing we have to watch, both with regard to the ground in Ukraine and in terms of what's happening with these cruise missiles and in the Black Sea. All of this poses a question to Russia: 'Is this time we stop being cautious and incrementalist and we move to something much more direct and send a message to the West: If you go any further it's real war.'