War Roundup, Multiple Fronts

I’ll start with a thought that occurred to me about the Home Front. Over the last few days we’ve taken note of what seem to be clear preparations of the Deep State and the Political Establishment to thwart a Trump return to the White House—and possibly to remove him immediately if he succeeds in spite of their machinations. These preparations include hints of implementing a Covid Regime 2.0 as well as the CIA prepping Russia Hoax 2.0 and legal maneuvering to prevent Trump from appearing on the ballot of certain states. What occurred to me, listening to the pushback, especially, to the idea of Covide Regime 2.0—clearly intended to scramble electoral procedures and enable fraud, just as in 2020—is that this attempt at a repeat of 2020 could prove to be far more difficult than the Ruling Class imagines.

Beyond the fact that the country as a whole has learned a lot over the past few years, learned a lot about its Ruling Class, it seems to me that the Judicial Branch may be willing this time around to become involved. In 2020 local election laws were ignored, willy nilly, and the SCOTUS stood apart. I don’t discount the possibility that the Chief Justice was in the tank for the Never Trumpsters, but it does occur to me that allowing this to happen for the second election in a row could be a bridge too far for Roberts. With up to half the states actively taking various measures to thwart at least some aspects of what’s being planned, for the SCOTUS to step aside a second time would amount to renouncing the Court’s duty to defend the Constitution.

Just my thought. I guess I’m feeling optimistic today.

This morning I did a bit of a transcript of Judge Napolitano and Alastair Crooke—perhaps the last quarter of the video. The entire video is interesting. It starts out with Crooke’s views on the Prigozhin assassination, some of which I agree with, some of which I disagree with. I’ll be addressing that topic below. Crooke also discusses the misperceptions of Russian military competence that led the Neocons to take the US down the slippery slope toward a disastrous defeat. Losing to Afghan goat herders is one thing, but suffering a defeat at the hands of Russia, and a defeat that involves the entire collective West is quite another matter. However, I’ll present the Bigger Picture part of Crooke’s remarks, which begin at the 19:00 minute mark. Crooke addresses, once again, the culture front of the war, as well as the monetary front:

Ukraine's Dire Situation

Why is Alastair Crooke weeping for the West?

I don't think many people will join in weeping for the West, outside of Europe and the West itself. They're weeping for the West because they see the West's complete dysfunctionality. They see that politics [in the West] doesn't go anywhere. Politics is caught up in the absurdities of discussing abstract propositions about 'What is a woman?' and other things like this. We're becoming less and less functional, less and less capable, and they're realizing that the causes of this are deep and profound. [These root causes] need to be addressed but no one is addressing them. And if they don't deal with this cultural war that is ongoing they will find there is very little of Europe left at the end of this, on which to have a sense of European identity. European identity has been gradually strangled in terms of its nation states over this period, and now there's no real sense of what is a European. So Europe is in a dire problem and this is going to get so much worse as the standard of living collapses, and at the same time Europeans find that they're only one minority amongst other minorities. Their identity is really just withering away, so they feel they've got to do something now to try and preserve that identity. So we are seeing a very strong pushback in the west, as you are having in the United States, [among those who realize] that we're engaged in a cultural War which is existential for Europe.

As a matter of historical fact, Christianity is Europe’s identity. But the EU has renounced that identity. Please, before anyone comments on this, read these two articles:

Pope criticises EU for excluding God

“Does not this unique form of apostasy of itself, even before God, lead it (Europe) to doubt its very identity?”

One of the Pope’s compatriots, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, aims to relaunch the EU constitution and last month made a plea for the bloc to include references to Christian roots.

Pope Benedict warned the bloc was headed up a slippery slope of indifference and said it could not deny its “historical, cultural and moral identity” that Christianity helped forge.

“A community that builds itself without respecting the true dignity of the human being, forgetting that each person is created in the image of God, ends up doing good for no one,” he said.

How the EU Betrayed its Christian Founding Principles

Alcide de Gasperi knew that the Christian heritage was what united all Europeans. What’s more, de Gasperi realized that forgiveness is a key Christian teaching. Indeed, that Western Europe, destroyed by fratricidal war just a few years earlier, was able to reconcile was a true miracle. De Gasperi believed that a return to Christian ideals was the best protection against World War III.

Back to Crooke. Here I think he explains quite lucidly why the Sanctions War was such a huge mistake:

Are NATO's now manifest weaknesses and absurd political and military calculations making BRICS more attractive to more nations, and as BRICS grows and maybe adopts a currency based in gold, what will that do to the American dollar? I know there's a lot to unpack there ...

To put it simply, this is a huge shift that has taken place and it derives from two great errors that have been perpetuated. The first error was to start the financial war against Russia and against other states through sanctions and through other means. The second error was to lose Saudi Arabia--because that means you've lost China and Saudi Arabia, which were the main buyers of U.S treasuries. Without having buyers of U.S treasuries it's inevitable that the problems of the debt are going to become really serious. It's also the case that this huge gathering of the BRICS that have come together in these last few days--which includes Saudi Arabia and Iran, it includes all the six main energy producers and consumers--and it is now going to trade without using the dollar. There was a sort of false demand for the dollar which was owed only and exclusively to the Bretton Woods agreement and the petrodollar agreement. As that fades away and large proportions of the world shift to trading in their own currencies the dollar will get weaker. Inflation, therefore, will go up as the dollar devalues and therefore interest rates will go up and this will put great stress on European and American Banks and the financial system. This is the result of some very bad strategic mistakes that were made earlier.

It's clear, is it not, that the American imposed sanctions have hurt the West far more than they have hurt the target of the sanctions, which is the Russian economy?

Yes, but it did provoke this [BRICS] backlash, and you see it particularly in Africa. But in the Middle East they no longer want the binary American - European ‘you're either with us or against us’ formula any longer. 'We are our own people, we make our own decisions, and we don't care about you anymore.' The feeling is very profound and quite hostile. Listen to what they're saying in West Africa about Europe and about colonialism and the French and things like this. It's gathering steam, it's not running out of momentum. Most of the world is coming together in this form. It will have monetary [consequences]. I'm not talking about a reserve currency--it's not like that. It's simply that the system which was imposed on so many countries [in which they had] to buy and keep dollars is gone, and as it sort of deflates and goes away the dollar is going to inevitably lose that demand. Therefore [it will] become weaker and therefore inflation will go up, and as inflation goes up interest rates go up, putting great stress on the economy.

Now I’ll return to the Prigozhin affair. The importance of this matter really, IMO, lies in the fact that it represents another step in Putin taking control over the full scope of Russia’s foreign policy, military, and economy. I don’t mean this in a dictatorial sense. What I mean is that this represents one more step in Putin’s drive—on behalf of Russia’s elected government—to wrest control of Russia away from the oligarchs who had divided the country up and looted it during the West’s Rape of Russia during the Yeltsin years. For a good account of how Prigozhin set himself up for elimination, this article linked by commenter Ray So-Cal is excellent. It shows how—exactly as Ramzan Kadyrov stated—Prigozhin just didn’t get that his warlord/oligarch antics would no longer be tolerated, especially during Russia’s existential struggle against the American Empire:

The Last Days of Wagner’s Prigozhin

On the run, the paramilitary chief crisscrossed his global business empire, desperate to show he was still in control; ‘I need more gold’

I really believe that this article provides a powerful case for why the Russian state had to take Prigozhin out in these circumstances and couldn’t spend time on legal niceties, judging that Prigozhin had already condemned himself.

Now, another word. Tomorrow I believe I’ll be part of a Michael Savage podcast. For those who wish to match a voice to the printed word, this may interest you. I don’t know the time.

This morning, in preparation for a similar possible matter, I prepared some notes on this Prigozhin matter. I tried to keep it general, big picture in nature. Here’s what I wrote:

---

I need to preface what I'm about to say with a few preliminary observations.

First, what I have to say is necessarily speculative, based on the few solid facts that we think we know at this point.

Second, I find the analysis of those who maintain that Prigozhin's plane was downed by an act of sabotage--most likely by explosives placed in the wing landing gear wells--to be persuasive.

Lastly, I've been a critic of US and NATO policy towards Russia for many years--at least since 2008. I've also been open to the arguments of those who have maintained that the attacks on certain Russian figures living in the West have actually been conducted by Western intelligence services rather than by Russia. If true, the motive would have been obvious--to paint Putin's government as essentially an unreconstructed Stalinist style of government that is a threat to the rest of the world.

Because of these positions that I've taken in the past some of my readers assumed that I would reflexively take the view that Prigozhin was targeted and killed by opponents of Putin--whether in the West (the US or UK), Ukraine, elsewhere in the world, or even Russian rivals.

Nevertheless, by applying the standard tests of means, motive, opportunity I believe that the most plausible--not certain, simply plausible--explanation is that Prigozhin was killed in the sabotage attack on his private jet as the result of a decision taken by the Russian state.

So, first looking at the means and opportunity, I believe this is a powerful argument in favor of the theory of Russian state actors being behind the assassination of Prigozhin. While other actors might certainly have been technically capable of such an attack, it would have been far easier for Russian state actors in their national security apparatus to do so. To carry off this attack it would have been necessary to obtain access to flight information, ground crew personnel, and the aircraft itself. This would have been relatively easy for the Russian security services to do using established sources, but would likely have raised alarms if attempted by Western agents--for example.

As for the motive, that's clear enough. Prigozhin himself had a criminal past and Wagner was at least a semi-criminal organization, operating outside the normal rules, dealing in gold and precious stones in troubled parts of the world. As such Wagner's existence as a semi-independent power base, while it may have been useful to the Russian state in some situations, was nevertheless problematic for the Russian state and a thorn in the side for the Russian military establishment.

However, Prigozhin's mutiny raised these issues to an entirely unprecedented level--arguably to the level of an actual coup attempt. There are still aspects of the coup or mutiny that we can't be sure about, such as claims that Prigozhin had been recruited by Western intelligence in Africa. What is true for sure is that Prigozhin had taken to attacking not only the competence of the Russian military but, shortly before the coup attempt, had actually challenged the validity of the SMO itself and had called it a failure. He followed that up with his abortive march on Moscow, in which Russian military personnel were killed by Wagner forces. All that during a time of war.

In the wake of that coup attempt, while Prigozhin was treated leniently, Putin labeled the actions in grave terms: "betrayal" of the nation--and he had in the past stated that betrayal is for him the unforgivable sin; a "stab in the back"; and he also stated that those behind the coup attempt, which would certainly have included Prigozhin, would "pay the price." It's impossible to argue with Putin's assessment. Over the following weeks Putin has appeared to have conducted a purge of Prigozhin supporters and to have clipped the wings of Wagner. What I believe may have tipped the tables decisively is that Prigozhin has recently attempted to reassert Wagner's business interests in Africa, in defiance of the wishes of the Russian state.

My theory is that, rather than put Russia through a trial that could have turned into a divisive circus for the nation at a time when Russia is engaged in an existential struggle against the collective West, a decision was made at the highest levels of the Russian government--probably in a consultative manner--that the whole Prigozhin matter had to be brought to a decisive end. Thus the sabotage of Prigozhin's jet. The calculation behind this move was probably that, since Prigozhin's public standing had suffered greatly after his coup attempt and he was regarded as a criminal in the West, any interest in the affair would soon be over. Prigozhin's betrayal had been conducted in public view and he paid the standard price for his betrayal of Russia.

In the aftermath of the plane's downing, it seems noteworthy that Putin expressed condolences to the families of the victims, but expressed no particular regrets--except, perhaps in a perfunctory way--for the deaths on the plane. And he made a point of stating that Prigozhin "made many mistakes", while very briefly acknowledging that Prigozhin had also acted for Russia in the past. There were no vows of revenge, no statements that whoever was behind the sabotage of the jet would "pay the price."

All in all, I think this is the most plausible view. Subject to revision or correction, but the most plausible for now.