The UK Prepares For Winter ... With Liz Truss Leading

And Much More

Tom Luongo’s latest blog post is a fascinating rundown of the state of affairs in the UK, now that the transition from Johnson to his designated successor is about to take place. Luongo begins by explaining that Truss is, in fact Johnson’s designee. The significance of Truss’ accession is that in this way the UK continues its alliance with the US Neocons, and maintains a degree of separation from the Continent—avoids, for a bit longer, being swallowed by the French-German combine. Rishi Sunak was the candidate of Davos, and so to this extent Truss’ win is a defeat for Davos:

The Clowns of Winter Harry the UK Down

Truss, by virtue of her full-throated support for Ukraine against Russia, was the choice of those Tories committed to maintaining the UK’s relationship with the US, leaving it nominally more independent from the European Union.

Davos man-child Rishi Sunak, the darling of the Remainers of City of London the true hounds of winter here, failed to overtake Truss in the end. What started as a Davos-style decapitation of Johnson, who rightfully deserves to be jailed for his undermining Russian/Ukrainian peace talks in April, ended with the female version of him in office.

While I’d like to say I’m happy to see Davos lose another major conflict in Europe, empowering the US neoconservatives is not a win here. In the end, the deep ties between the US and UK intelligence and military services won out in the Tory leadership battle.

It seems Luongo has encountered misunderstanding of his positions lately, so he’s at pains to emphasize that there are no white hats here:

The choice between Truss and Sunak was another classic Hobson’s Choice — continued war with Russia across every vector (Truss) or the surrender of the UK to the EU and the reversing of Brexit (Sunak).

Either way there is not much hope this morning if you are a Brit.

If you’re interested in Luongo’s take on UK politics, there’s more at the link. However, what interested me the most was the discussion that follows, centered on the abortive Ukrainian attempt to capture the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), which the Russians seized early on in their Special Military Operation. Without having detailed knowledge, I’ve continued to emphasize that, by all reasonable standards, the US and several other countries (prominently including the UK and Poland) are at war with Russia. The US is providing not only weapons systems but the personnel without which those systems could not be operated. In addition to training, the US is also providing critical targeting information from satellite intelligence. There is no doubt that US personnel is involved in combat operations in Ukraine, and the same goes for the UK and Poland (and other NATO countries, as well).

During the past week or so the Russians have made it clear that they have killed (and possibly captured) “foreign mercenaries” in the course of repulsing Ukrainian attacks along the lower Dnieper River, including near the ZNPP. There are also reports that Ukraine will attempt to renew its failed Kherson offensive in the near future by stripping Odessa of its garrison, as well as with significant help—including personnel—from the US, UK, and Poland.

But back to the ZNPP.

Recall that the Ukrainian side claims to still hold the ZNPP, and has been attacking it with rockets and artillery, claiming that the attacks are being made by the Russians. Luongo quotes Russian sources who claim that the entire operation to capture the ZNPP was an attempt at a false flag operation targeting a UN inspection team that was visiting the plant. The Ukrainian scheme was to capture the inspection team and use them as human bargaining chips, while claiming that the inspection team had actually been captured by the Russians. As it turned out, the inspection team publicly thanked Russia for protecting them.

The Russians have claimed that “foreign mercenaries” were among those killed/captured during their defeat of the Ukrainian assault. Now, however, the sources cited by Luongo go even further, claiming that the assault team

All 64 [team members] have recently completed training in the UK and traveled from Warsaw to Odessa on 29 August.

There can be no doubt that approval for this crazy scheme came from the very highest levels of all three countries—US, UK, Poland. Luongo is stating no more than what should be apparent to any intelligent observer upon reflection:

What this means is that the Johnson and the US Dept. of Defense/National Security Council (all staffed by the move [sic; “most”?] virulent Neocons) have been planning something like this for months which is why they refuse to allow the Ukrainians to surrender.

The dangers in these provocations is obvious. Luongo maintains they are designed to provide a pretext for official NATO involvement in the war. There is certainly a strong argument to be made for that, given the repeated provocations that everyone knows have been Western inspired and led. Russia has shown remarkable restraint, no doubt for its own reasons. However, at some point down the road I suspect there will be a price to be paid. The UK has, in essence, been at war with Russia since mid 19th century, whether in open conflict or through various intel/diplomatic machinations. Putin knows there has to be a reckoning.

Luongo goes even further and argues that this may have been part of a bigger plan:

The Brits under Johnson and Truss have been trying to create a false flag incident to justify official NATO involvement in the Ukraine conflict since the beginning of the war.

The excuse of a multi-country nuclear meltdown incident would more than provide that justification.

…

This may have allowed Neocon-backed Johnson to stay in power through emergency powers and set the precedent for Biden to do the same thing before the mid-terms.

I’m not clear on the Zhou angle. Perhaps Luongo has in mind a move by the Zhou regime to cancel the midterms or invoke some emergency that would enable extraordinary fraud-enabling measures? Perhaps a claim of an imminent Russian attack, enabled by Trump having handed over 48 folders worth of nuclear secrets? Would that explain the timing of the MAL Raid in close timing with the attack on the ZNPP? I’m not sure, but nothing surprises me at this point.

If any of this is true, the results have to be disappointing—the Brits get Liz Truss and Trump has got his special master. Brits and Zhou lose. Trump wins—and maybe some others in the US win, too. Am I the only one who wonders whether that Trump judge down in Florida consulted with higher level members of the judiciary? Whether big money people are, in effect, backing Trump behind the scenes?

At any rate, at this point in his reflections Luongo pivots to what I have called his “theory of everything”—the Fed war on Davos and the EU, and its conflict as well with the DC Establishment to a lesser degree. At this point Luongo is clearly responding to criticism he apparently has received. Once again, I find his reasoning cogent, although presented in very condensed form:

The reason I’m so set on my thesis about the Fed being against Davos is the actions of the UK in this conflict. It was clearly an operation that both the US/UK neocons and the Davos globalists saw common ground in using Ukraine to attack Russia.

Their interests [US/UK on one hand, Davos/EU on the other] aligned all during the eight year lead up to Russia’s invasion.

They really did believe their own clownish stories about the fragility of Putin’s government, Russia’s economy and the depth of the West’s financial and legal power to extract pain from those that defied them.

In this regard—clownish narratives—I recommend Helmholz Smith’s amusing post at Larry Johnson’s blog:

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PLAN B IS JUST MORE OF PLAN A?

Back to Luongo:

Once it became obvious that the economic ‘shock and awe’ campaign to isolate Russia had failed and Putin’s Energy Counter-Offensive began, the cracks in the relationship opened and the power of ‘Outside Money’ — gold, commodities — exposed the weakness of ‘Inside Money.’

Luongo’s argument re “cracks in the relationship” is that at this point the Davos/EU side of the Western relationship or alliance is no longer fully on board with the US/UK war on Russia. In the next paragraph Luongo identifies the Fed with the “US sovereigntist forces”, i.e., the effort to delink US monetary policy from the UK and the EU—the “old money” centers, especially City of London and Amsterdam. This, Luongo has argued, is what the Fed interest rate rises are really about—draining the Offshore Dollar Market and then attempting to enforce a greater measure of fiscal discipline on the US Government:

The failure of the Biden junta to secure the Fed means that not only did the Davos/Neocon alliance crack but US sovereigntist forces saw the opportunity to take out City of London and Amsterdam in the chaos. Now both the UK and the EU are caught between the Fed draining them dry in the capital markets and the Russians refusing them much needed energy.

And here’s where things get really interesting, because Luongo argues that there is, in effect, a de facto alliance between the Fed and Putin’s Russia:

Russia and Putin understand this and all they have to do is continue doing nothing, or more explicitly pumping nothing, and the collapse will finally be complete. All the Fed has to do is stay its course.

So, while City of London thought they were circling the Brexiteers and Russia going for the kill, they were themselves encircled by the real dogs of war.

What happens to Davos/EU?

Yes, they believe they can consolidate their financial problems in the ECB, a European-style Resolution Trust bad bank, then default through George Soros’ idea of Perpetual Bonds and emerge with a clean balance sheet. But who is going to invest in them ever again after the pain they put everyone through?

Not Russia. Not China. Maybe a weakened US. Europe will be a smoking ruin for decades if this happens.

Putin is not only interested in finally besting Russia’s centuries-old enemy, Britain. He’s also no longer smitten with the ideas of old Europe. If there is to be détente between Europe and Russia it will be on Russia’s terms, not Europe’s.

Meanwhile, winter is nearer than we think. And rapidly approaching.