As I’m certainly not a military strategist but I wonder if Russia hasn’t considered Mearsheimer guessing. Break the Ukraine military now and end all this political posturing and money for AFU defeat of Russia.
Duly considering Free French’s comment below, I think Luongo is on to something when he writes:
“If one was cynical, which I am, one would suspect that the EU’s support for the war in Ukraine was mostly driven by this desire to centralize power in Brussels. You start a war in Ukraine by purposefully crossing Russia’s red lines, drive inflation up locally, and empty the military coffers of all the post-WWII weapons and ammunition that is now outdated. If you win the war it’s great. Russia’s been subjugated and a new colonial frontier opens up for Europe to grab the collateral needed for the next iteration of Imperial Europe.“
Bingo! Just a fly named Trump in the ointment…
Brilliant post Mark. Mercouris too spoke forcefully and convincingly about what he knows about the pie-in-the-sky Euro dreams of a wartime industrial economy by “unserious” people who are not politicians, he says, just Davos bought and paid for empty ciphers looking to prolong their brazen, evil schemes to enslave their citizens and confiscate their earnings and stamp out their well-being. The Duran also did a video on the now official recession hitting the UK…
Don't know if you saw it, but the UK tried to do a test launch of a Trident that was a dud. Not sure if it's operator error, manufacturer, or age of the device, but they seriously have a long way to go if they want to ramp up their MIC.
In their missile destroyers the Brit’s removed the missile stored in the fore magazines and put in exercise equipment. If they went to war their fat sailors wouldn’t have any missiles to shoot.
LOL! I DID see that, but was too wrapped up with other things to use it. That's not much of a deterrent is it? We've had some dud tests, too, from land based missiles.
This is all fantasy…stuck in the old TELEVISION/Globalism Paradigm fantasy. Globalism is obsolete. No more One government world. No reversing the decline of the West.
From the people I talk to that have gone to DAVOS, they describe it as a Goat Rodeo. Done. No coherent anything. No leading. Nothing. Just another sex party. Nothing to see here. Not going back. It’s just a superficial television show.
We are DIGITAL now: artificial minds and souls. What are we going to do about that? No plans.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for the US/West is that there are NO elites! Having money or being elected does not make one an elite, as understood throughout history. We haver ZERO of them and have not since, say at least 1970s. Participatory “democracy” did not require them, they were the enemy, so we stopped creating them.
The rest of the world - China, Russia, India and Islam all recognize this. They fully recognize that this leads to a kind of chaos that interferes with what they want to accomplish for their own civilizations. So they are building their own elites and institutions to find, train and bring them up over the years. They are dealing with DIGITAL tech in their own ways, to help them get to where they want to he in the coming generations. Most of the world thinks of history in terms of cycles and they are aiming for their high points in the coming 100+ years.
The West is going to go through a full rebuild (no, whoever “wins” the presidency does not matter, BUT the political process does matter and can hasten the decline). New moral superstructure will have to be pit in place and built up from there.
Imagine 20 and more years from now when all world elites are not in the US and West (except perhaps the Catholic Church?) and the young around the world are looking to them for answers about how to live in the Robot world?
The underlying brewing question is: what does it mean to be human? Much as it was in the Medieval. DIGITAL is destroying everything we have taken to be “facts.” To the extent that we continue to look backwards and complain, we get set back further.
"No elites" I decided to call it quits without going there. My argument would be that the "can't legislate morality" nonsense is classical liberalism through and through, which is our public ideology. But it's radical skepticism means that an elite in any meaningful sense--outside of an oligarchical power clique--is impossible in principle. Elites in the traditional sense were precisely the target of the new ideologues, the philosophes.
Good thoughts Mark. It’s “impossible” in the Modern and Post Modern (PRINT) and Post Modern (ELECTRIC) Paradigms. BUT, we don’t live there anymore! We “lost” that culture war, but it’s obsolete and dying now, so we can look elsewhere and through the windshield at what is coming at us, rather than rearview mirror.
This is not going to happen overnight in the West. Realistically, it’s going to be Gen Z and, Gen Alpha and Beta. They will not tolerate the perpetuation of fantasies about humans: imagine lawsuits Nuremburg style against their elders. It will happen.
But we have to start the “organizing” now for the Robot world and how we want elites to be educated (morality and techno realism) to be able to deal with it in the future.
Everything is being destroyed - politely everything is being questioned, thus no trust and questions about identity and agency.
Digital is the driver. Anyone in the West taking this seriously? Maybe.
What I/we are experiencing is more people saying to us: ok, what if you are right about DIGITAL, so what does that look like/what do we do? More people are going to ask this, just see how fast ChatGPT and AI got onto everyone’s annual meeting agenda in the last two years!
And the NeoCons are part of the Goat Rodeo…
The “problem” of today is what remains of TELEVISION and what it does in its death throes…it was the driver of Globalism and Post Modernity: fantasy. It cannot do anything else. Massive psychological war. It will continue to distract…but there are no groups of people conspiring. It is simply the mass effects of how we have been formed, or “carefully taught” since the end of WWII.
Perhaps the most dangerous aspect is that we are oblivious to how “spiritual” the rest of the world has become in the last 30 years.
The old DS “patriot” wing I talk to are very aware of the lack of elites, but they can’t do anything about it (think “guardians” mentality).
Tom doesn’t think Europe is monolithic. He continually talks about how Europe and the vandals in the US seem to be monolithic but are actually multiple groups headed in the general same direction. Tom is the antithesis of overly simplistic analysis.
Fair point that the distinction isn't in the article posted, but pulling out the French and the German faction as the ones pushing for this "War Economy" I have discussed in a lot of both public and patron-only interviews/screeds.
So, I think overall this is an unfair take on my Europe=Davos position (which is mostly correct)... as in the EU exists to serve Davos... and until I see a moment where EU, led by French and German actors, don't win every major political battle internally, I will continue to, effectively, lump them all together. Hungary proved they couldn't stand up to the pressure... Orban admitted it and half the people called him a 'cuck' because he didn't commit national hari kiri for it.
Moreover, if Alex M. is talking about this in terms of a War Economy,he's also way off base, because that isn't the goal at all... the goal is to wrest control over defense spending for Europe from the US and bring that spending/production home.
The French and Germans want a seat at the arms dealer table... I know Europeans like to believe they are the US's colony, but when you really trace the money flows... it's clearly the other way around. We finally declare real independence after 250 years and all I hear is wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Trump is telling y'all you can have that future if you want it... but Europe still wants us to fight their battles for them, while simultaneously taking control over NATO.
The Taurus is a keystone German weapons system, intended to remain their primary deep striking weapon for decades. Very different from the Storm Shadow, for example, which already has a replacement in the pipeline. Not irrational that Germany wants to keep some powder dry.
As I’m certainly not a military strategist but I wonder if Russia hasn’t considered Mearsheimer guessing. Break the Ukraine military now and end all this political posturing and money for AFU defeat of Russia.
Duly considering Free French’s comment below, I think Luongo is on to something when he writes:
“If one was cynical, which I am, one would suspect that the EU’s support for the war in Ukraine was mostly driven by this desire to centralize power in Brussels. You start a war in Ukraine by purposefully crossing Russia’s red lines, drive inflation up locally, and empty the military coffers of all the post-WWII weapons and ammunition that is now outdated. If you win the war it’s great. Russia’s been subjugated and a new colonial frontier opens up for Europe to grab the collateral needed for the next iteration of Imperial Europe.“
Bingo! Just a fly named Trump in the ointment…
Brilliant post Mark. Mercouris too spoke forcefully and convincingly about what he knows about the pie-in-the-sky Euro dreams of a wartime industrial economy by “unserious” people who are not politicians, he says, just Davos bought and paid for empty ciphers looking to prolong their brazen, evil schemes to enslave their citizens and confiscate their earnings and stamp out their well-being. The Duran also did a video on the now official recession hitting the UK…
I wonder if a Euro bond is being floated as a transnational currency to replace the US, with the war angle being used as a cover?
“Low information crowd” perfectly describes my wife and how she selectively gets her MSM news and follows the government directions. Oy vey.
Don't know if you saw it, but the UK tried to do a test launch of a Trident that was a dud. Not sure if it's operator error, manufacturer, or age of the device, but they seriously have a long way to go if they want to ramp up their MIC.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/26070479/trident-nuke-sub-missile-launch-fails/
Only about $21 million per unit. Maybe they should call Acme???
https://makeagif.com/i/lRSZS1
In their missile destroyers the Brit’s removed the missile stored in the fore magazines and put in exercise equipment. If they went to war their fat sailors wouldn’t have any missiles to shoot.
No surprise there - the UK is all bark and no bite - it has for all intents and purposes, no military.
LOL! I DID see that, but was too wrapped up with other things to use it. That's not much of a deterrent is it? We've had some dud tests, too, from land based missiles.
This is all fantasy…stuck in the old TELEVISION/Globalism Paradigm fantasy. Globalism is obsolete. No more One government world. No reversing the decline of the West.
From the people I talk to that have gone to DAVOS, they describe it as a Goat Rodeo. Done. No coherent anything. No leading. Nothing. Just another sex party. Nothing to see here. Not going back. It’s just a superficial television show.
We are DIGITAL now: artificial minds and souls. What are we going to do about that? No plans.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for the US/West is that there are NO elites! Having money or being elected does not make one an elite, as understood throughout history. We haver ZERO of them and have not since, say at least 1970s. Participatory “democracy” did not require them, they were the enemy, so we stopped creating them.
The rest of the world - China, Russia, India and Islam all recognize this. They fully recognize that this leads to a kind of chaos that interferes with what they want to accomplish for their own civilizations. So they are building their own elites and institutions to find, train and bring them up over the years. They are dealing with DIGITAL tech in their own ways, to help them get to where they want to he in the coming generations. Most of the world thinks of history in terms of cycles and they are aiming for their high points in the coming 100+ years.
The West is going to go through a full rebuild (no, whoever “wins” the presidency does not matter, BUT the political process does matter and can hasten the decline). New moral superstructure will have to be pit in place and built up from there.
Imagine 20 and more years from now when all world elites are not in the US and West (except perhaps the Catholic Church?) and the young around the world are looking to them for answers about how to live in the Robot world?
The underlying brewing question is: what does it mean to be human? Much as it was in the Medieval. DIGITAL is destroying everything we have taken to be “facts.” To the extent that we continue to look backwards and complain, we get set back further.
"Goat rodeo" I like it!
"No elites" I decided to call it quits without going there. My argument would be that the "can't legislate morality" nonsense is classical liberalism through and through, which is our public ideology. But it's radical skepticism means that an elite in any meaningful sense--outside of an oligarchical power clique--is impossible in principle. Elites in the traditional sense were precisely the target of the new ideologues, the philosophes.
Good thoughts Mark. It’s “impossible” in the Modern and Post Modern (PRINT) and Post Modern (ELECTRIC) Paradigms. BUT, we don’t live there anymore! We “lost” that culture war, but it’s obsolete and dying now, so we can look elsewhere and through the windshield at what is coming at us, rather than rearview mirror.
This is not going to happen overnight in the West. Realistically, it’s going to be Gen Z and, Gen Alpha and Beta. They will not tolerate the perpetuation of fantasies about humans: imagine lawsuits Nuremburg style against their elders. It will happen.
But we have to start the “organizing” now for the Robot world and how we want elites to be educated (morality and techno realism) to be able to deal with it in the future.
Everything is being destroyed - politely everything is being questioned, thus no trust and questions about identity and agency.
Digital is the driver. Anyone in the West taking this seriously? Maybe.
What I/we are experiencing is more people saying to us: ok, what if you are right about DIGITAL, so what does that look like/what do we do? More people are going to ask this, just see how fast ChatGPT and AI got onto everyone’s annual meeting agenda in the last two years!
And the NeoCons are part of the Goat Rodeo…
The “problem” of today is what remains of TELEVISION and what it does in its death throes…it was the driver of Globalism and Post Modernity: fantasy. It cannot do anything else. Massive psychological war. It will continue to distract…but there are no groups of people conspiring. It is simply the mass effects of how we have been formed, or “carefully taught” since the end of WWII.
Perhaps the most dangerous aspect is that we are oblivious to how “spiritual” the rest of the world has become in the last 30 years.
The old DS “patriot” wing I talk to are very aware of the lack of elites, but they can’t do anything about it (think “guardians” mentality).
Tom doesn’t think Europe is monolithic. He continually talks about how Europe and the vandals in the US seem to be monolithic but are actually multiple groups headed in the general same direction. Tom is the antithesis of overly simplistic analysis.
Fair point that the distinction isn't in the article posted, but pulling out the French and the German faction as the ones pushing for this "War Economy" I have discussed in a lot of both public and patron-only interviews/screeds.
So, I think overall this is an unfair take on my Europe=Davos position (which is mostly correct)... as in the EU exists to serve Davos... and until I see a moment where EU, led by French and German actors, don't win every major political battle internally, I will continue to, effectively, lump them all together. Hungary proved they couldn't stand up to the pressure... Orban admitted it and half the people called him a 'cuck' because he didn't commit national hari kiri for it.
Moreover, if Alex M. is talking about this in terms of a War Economy,he's also way off base, because that isn't the goal at all... the goal is to wrest control over defense spending for Europe from the US and bring that spending/production home.
The French and Germans want a seat at the arms dealer table... I know Europeans like to believe they are the US's colony, but when you really trace the money flows... it's clearly the other way around. We finally declare real independence after 250 years and all I hear is wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Trump is telling y'all you can have that future if you want it... but Europe still wants us to fight their battles for them, while simultaneously taking control over NATO.
Sorry, no.
This today may be relevant:
Big Serge 
@witte_sergei
The Taurus is a keystone German weapons system, intended to remain their primary deep striking weapon for decades. Very different from the Storm Shadow, for example, which already has a replacement in the pipeline. Not irrational that Germany wants to keep some powder dry.
Quote

Disclose.tv
@disclosetv
·
Feb 22
JUST IN - German Bundestag rejects the delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine; 182 voted in favor, and 480 against.