Let’s start with Big Picture stuff from a European observer and geopolitics professor. There’s a bit of a common theme here, like: When are the Euros gonna catch on to where they’ve landed themselves. But, then, why should they be any quicker on the uptake than Americans? This is some real “no sh*t” stuff:
Glenn Diesen @Glenn_Diesen
Return of common sense?
- US worried China, Russia, Iran and North Korea team up as US attempts to destroy them all
- Next, Europeans discover that outsourcing their foreign policy to Washington is not wise as interests differ and US will prioritie itself?
You still see articles like Diesen is describing, really quite regularly. In the past perhaps you could have written it off as too juvenile to bother with. But now?
Glenn Diesen @Glenn_Diesen
Our horrible media imposed a losing strategy by making it compulsory to underestimate Russia:
- For years, anyone cautioning against reckless policies as Russia is a great power has been denounced as "pro-Russian"
- It has been obligatory to suggest Russia is backwards and fights with shovels to steal toilets
- The superior-inferior framing is an important component of propaganda to mobilise public support for war and fuel contempt for the other side. The unfortunate side effect is self-delusion and the subsequent losing strategies
- The people we generously refer to as journalists consistently defend the war narrative from reality. Key facts are not reported, everything is dumbed down to a struggle of good versus evil, and any dissent is attacked with ruthless smears
The good cop/bad cop routine is getting old. The US supplies the weapons and could impose a cease fire today. The US gets to carry out its genocide in Palestine and simultaneously play a humanitarian.
This next has a video of a Polish MEP, Grzegosz Braun, presenting a very reasonable argument—the war on Russia isn’t helping Ukrainians. His mic is cut off. Saving “our democracy”! But what a disgrace in “the land of the free” that Trump is promising to “crush anti-semites” and few are brave enough among Conservatives to call him out. They’ve mostly been bought off.
Glenn Diesen @Glenn_Diesen
This sums up the quality of our discourse:
- A reasonable argument is made: We are not helping Ukraine by prolonging an unwinnable war
- The response: Turn off his microphone and assert it is a struggle of good vs evil
- As we celebrate ourselves, our values and our unity, it should be noted that our consensus relies on relentless war propaganda and crushing dissent with smears, censorship and cancellation
- If the warmongers had convincing arguments, they would have allowed debates and not desperately defended the war narrative from uncomfortable facts
0:00
3:18 AM · Sep 21, 2024
This story may explain why, if what we’re hearing from Larry Wilkerson and others, the Pentagon is in what amounts to revolt—possibly demanding face time with Zhou rather than accepting assurances from his minders—Zients, Blinken, Sullivan—that Zhou has, with full information, signed on to policies that the Pentagon disagrees with. We’re in the waning days of this regime, and the Pentagon is not going to want to take responsibility for reckless Neocon gambles:
The Russian strategy is paying off. The Ukrainian defenses are buckling and they’re starting to shift troops around to plug holes. Very dangerous, especially—be it noted—when they draw down troop strength from the Zaporozhye front, which happens to face the largest concentration of Russian forces anywhere on the various fronts. Fact. Russians take advantage to advance against weakened Ukrainian lines.
SIMPLICIUS Ѱ @simpatico771 
Very interesting. Today was one of the largest advancement days in weeks/months. Russian forces advanced in virtually every front. Some advancements in:
1. Robotino
2. Urozhayne below
3. Up north in Kupyansk
4. Major advances in Toretsk and Nelipovka area
5. Ukrainsk - Kurakhove area
One of the reasons for the below was reported by me in the last Sitrep: Syrsky began to desperately pull forces from Zaporozhye to reinforce crumbling lines in Pokrovsk and Kursk.
Now Russians are taking advantage in Zaporozhye and apparently beginning to make moves which could be precursors to larger attacks there soon.
1:30 AM · Sep 22, 2024
Just the other day Danny Davis took the bull[sh*t] by the horns, so to speak, and ran an interview with retired general and paid shill Ben Hodges. I didn’t have the stomach to watch, but apparently Andrei Martyanov did, and added some observations which are pertinent both to the war on Russia as well as to US involvement in a Middle Eastern regional conflict:
Larry wrote a good piece on Daniel Davis interviewing Ben Hodges. Enough to read that Ben Hodges calls Russians "animals" to understand that this general suffers with debilitating case of both exceptionalism having a cognitive fight with a severe complex of inferiority, ... But here is one point (correct one) Larry makes:
Scott Ritter, Doug MacGregor, Ray McGovern and I (along with a few others), wrote and spoke widely at the time that the counter offensive would fail because, as Hodges conceded, Ukraine had no air power to provide close air support. ...
But there is more to it than just that. I wrote about it before, but it becomes clear that most US top brass has no understanding of modern air defense. It is not surprising for the military force which is being shaped by largely confabulated US military history and never conducting SEAD operations against REAL modern air defense. Here is Yuri Selivanov noting a few days ago, what I wrote four books about:
Translation:You just need to be a little bit aware of what the so-called "US air force glory" consists of. And it consists of such specific "feats" that completely explain all the current troubles with the training of Ukrainian pilots on the F-16. The fact is that the US Air Force, as well as all other NATO countries, fought all their previous wars at the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st centuries in such fabulously comfortable conditions that they could even fly there on brooms, with a good chance of completing a combat mission. All those countries that they designated as targets for their bombing in the last thirty years were very different. But in one thing they all look the same. All these countries either did not have any air defense at all, or even had it, but in such a quantitative and qualitative state that it was enough for a very short time. And then, after the suppression of this almost symbolic air defense, a real massacre of the innocents began. This happened twice in Iraq, once in Yugoslavia, and finally in the most defenseless Afghanistan. In the latter case, there was absolutely no air defense, which, firstly, allowed bombing this country with absolute impunity. And secondly, sending the newest F-35B carrier-based strike fighters there to test their combat capabilities.
The problem with the US CAS (Close Air Support) on the modern battlefield of the 21st century is that it is not survivable against immediate frontline distributed AD based on a staggering plethora of advanced and networked hardware such as S1 Pantsir, Tor M2, Buk-M2-3 and AD artillery systems such as Tunguska et al. It will also be severely jammed and denied accurate approach in the absence of GPS. The whole idea that the USAF will be defeated even before it even takes off and then defeated before completion of the mission doesn't sit well with US generals whose combat record even against supremely inferior enemy is dismal.
Actually, I think there are people in the Pentagon who do understand these problems, and this understanding is increasingly driving their pushback against the Neocons.
Shifting to the Middle East, this YNET article tends to confirm what people like Larry Johnson have predicted. Hezbollah is unlikely to take the gloves off, even under serious provocation. “Taking the gloves off” would mean launching ballistic missiles at Israeli urban centers, inflicting the mass deaths of Jews that Netanyahu desperately wants—he needs “another holocaust” to try to shift US public opinion toward participation in a war on Iran (which is how he describes the attacks on Lebanon). Instead, as LJ and others have predicted—and despite reports of Hezbollah “missile” strikes—Hezbollah has responded with unguided rockets. Modern artillery rockets are much better than the older Katyushas, but these are a far cry from the missiles in Hezbollah’s arsenal:
Despite heavy damage to residential areas in 3 different locations across northern Israel, terror group claims targeted military sites, using Fadi-1 and Fadi-2 rockets, with range of up to 65 miles
The group said it used new long-range Fadi-1 and Fadi-2 rockets, along with Katyusha rockets. The Beirut-based Al Mayadeen news channel reported that the Fadi-1 rocket has a 220 mm caliber and an 80-kilometer (37-mile) range, while the Fadi-2 has a 302 mm caliber and a 105-kilometer (65-mile) range.
According to sources quoted by Al Mayadeen, "this is the first time these rockets have been used since October 8," when fighting on the northern front began. The sources said that in this attack, Hezbollah did not use precision-guided missiles. The rockets originated from one of the group's underground Imad facilities used for storing precision missiles and heavy rockets, which were reportedly unaffected by Israeli attacks.
Firing these inexpensive rockets—which, nevertheless, can defeat the so-called Iron Dome—and hitting targets far beyond the previous ranges will have the effect of forcing greater evacuations and greater economic disruption. With the ever present threat of much more to come. If Israel tries to escalate, Hezbollah can easily strike at Israel’s infrastructure, especially the energy sector—as Danny Davis warned, air power won’t solve a dug in enemy, and Hezbollah is nothing if not dug in. This leaves Netanyahu with the choice of standing down and allowing the war of attrition to continue, or launching a ground invasion of Lebanon—the last thing the IDF command would advise:
Will Schryver @imetatronink
 Unless the IDF has somehow been hiding a massive, well-armed, well-disciplined army somewhere, I can't see any ground incursion into Lebanon continuing more than a fortnight before severe losses, logistical breakdowns, and Israeli public outcry bring it to a grinding halt.
Thanks for reading Meaning In History! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Go figure.
Gerald Celente @geraldcelente
Israel can blow up pagers across Lebanon but had no idea that Hamas was planning the Oct. 7 attack
This. It has to mean they know the US isn't coming in. And they know their army isn't up to Hezbollah.
Megatron @Megatron_ron
Israeli Channel 12 regarding Lebanon:
"Netanyahu, Galant, and Halevi reached a decision to gradually escalate without entering into a full-scale war."
**So they give up on invading Lebanon...**
3:55 PM · Sep 22, 2024
·