Monday, May 23, 2022

"A Primer For The Propagandized: Fear Is The Mind-Killer"

"A Primer For The Propagandized:
Fear Is The Mind-Killer"
by Margaret Anna Alice 

“Totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere.”
- George Orwell

"The noose is dangling gently around our necks. Every day, they cinch it tighter. By the time we realize it’s strangling us, it will be too late. Those who – gradually and gleefully – sacrifice their freedoms, their autonomy, their individuality, their livelihoods, and their relationships on the altar of the “common good” have forgotten this is the pattern followed by every totalitarian regime in history.

Everyone wonders how ordinary Germans could have been manipulated to participate or stand dumbstruck while their government was transformed into a genocidal juggernaut. This is how. Read Sebastian Haffner’"Defying Hitler" memoir to see how this can happen anywhere - including here.

Everyone wonders how Russians could have permitted and even zealously reported fellow citizens for imprisonment and execution under "Article 58", the penal code invented to incarcerate anyone who dared express the slightest whisper of noncompliance under Stalin’s homicidal state. This is how. Read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s meticulously documented "The Gulag Archipelago" to witness this progression of authoritarian lunacy.

Everyone wonders how Hutus could have suddenly started axing their Tutsi neighbors to death after being inundated with waves of anti-Tutsi propaganda from "Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines." Read Philip Gourevitch’"We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda."

The list goes on. And on. And on. From Machiavelli’"The Prince" to Étienne de la Boetie’s "The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude" to Edward Herman’s and Noam Chomsky’s "Manufacturing Consent" (and accompanying documentary) to BBC’s "The Century of the Self," mechanisms of mass control have been chronicled for millennia.

George Orwell wrote, "As far as the mass of the people go, the extraordinary swings of opinion which occur nowadays, the emotions which can be turned on and off like a tap, are the result of newspaper and radio hypnosis.”

Can you imagine what master propagandist Edward Bernays would have done with access to today’s mainstream media conglomerate combined with the global surveillance infrastructure of Big Tech? And you really think that’s not happening now - with another century of psychological, neurological, and technological research under their belts?

The present ability to curate reality and coerce obedience is unprecedented, far beyond what Orwell envisioned in "1984", Bradbury in "Fahrenheit 451", Huxley in "Brave New World," and Burgess in "A Clockwork Orange."

A textbook example of "Problem Reaction Solution", the current tsunami of worldwide hysteria is the latest and potentially most threatening example of mass control in history.

The recipe is simple. Take a naturally occurring phenomenon, say a seasonal virus, and exaggerate its threat far beyond every imagining - despite exhaustive evidence to the contrary. Suppress, silence, ostracize, and demonize every individual who dares present facts that expose the false mono-narrative.

Whip up a witches’ brew of anger, envy, and, most importantly, fear, escalating emotions to a boil so as to short-circuit our faculties of reason and logic.

Isolate us from one another, supplant real-world interactions with virtual feuds, label nonconformists as a threat to the group, and pump the public with a disinformation campaign designed to confuse and atomize. In essence, foster a cultlike mentality that shuts down thought to guarantee assent.

Cultivate and wield our cognitive biases - especially ingroup biasconformity bias, and authority bias - against us in a comprehensive divide-and-conquer policy that keeps us too busy squabbling amongst each other to recognize and unite against those corralling us into a Matrix-like collective delusion that enables the powerful to extract our resources for their own gain.

This ideological mass psychosis is religion - not science. If this were about science, the Media–Pharmaceutical–Big-Tech complex would not be memory-holing every dissenting voice, vilifying every thought criminal, and censoring every legitimate inquiry in quest of the truth.

Mark Twain said, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” He also said: “In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”

The next time you’re watching the news, reading a social media post, listening to a friend repeat a scripted talking point, pay attention. Learn to identify the earmarks of propaganda, the clickbait used to trigger your emotions, the mechanisms employed to engineer your cognitive biases.

Don’t let your pride prevent you from seeing - and admitting - the Emperor is naked. We are losing our last sliver of opportunity to resist authoritarianism. This is not a partisan issue. Those who wish to control us have made it such because disunited lemmings are easier to steer than independent, critical thinkers.

This is a human issue. This is about crushing the middle class - the backbone of a democratic republic - and transferring trillions from the middle and lower classes to the ruling plutocracy. This is about demolishing the foundations of a free society and building it back - not better, but better-controlled.

I will close by recommending a series of illuminating videos on menticide (“the systematic effort to undermine and destroy a person’s values and beliefs … to induce radically different ideas”) throughout history by "Academy of Ideas." This analysis of mass psychosis is nonpartisan and of value to every thinking human being.

"Dare to question. Dare to disbelieve. 
Dare to defy ideology in favor of science while you still can."

"Mattias Desmet on Our Grave Situation"

 

Full screen recommended.
"Mattias Desmet on Our Grave Situation"
by Peak Prosperity

"Professor Mattias Desmet talks about his work that connects past historical episodes of what is called “Mass Formation” (aka Mass Psychosis) and current events. The risks are as grave as they come. Unless a few brave and courageous people are willing to stand up and say “I don’t agree!” history suggests that we will end up with a fully totalitarian outcome.

That is a dark path. It inevitably leads to mass casualties and atrocities. Eventually all totalitarian systems end in their own destruction.

My position is “it doesn’t have to be this way.” We can do better. Let’s avoid a future of atrocities and the complete destruction of our way of life. Unfortunately, those caught up in the Mass Formation event cannot see the larger or wider implications of their actions. They are very much like a hypnotized person with their field of view narrowed down to a singular threat or risk they have been told is the one-and-only threat they must conquer.

So all of their attention goes there. It focusses down. Nothing else matters. Eventually they transfer their anger and rage at that enemy – which is Covid today – upon a more relatable a nearby object. Perhaps their neighbor. Perhaps the unvaccinated. Perhaps immigrants who are stealing their jobs, or those who aren’t taking Climate Change seriously enough.

With that transference, the path has been laid to re-trod some of the most awful and inhumane periods of history. We’re there again and our own integrity demands that we do what we can to avoid going any further down that path.

In this episode Mattias tells us what can be done. We must never resort to violence. We must be courageous and speak up. We must hold everyone with compassion. But most of all, we must speak up."

"The Free and the Brave"

"The Free and the Brave"
by Todd Hayen

"Whatever happened to that (the free and the brave)? Whatever happened to the attitude that had Patrick Henry at the Virginia convention in 1775 say “give me liberty, or give me death”?

Whatever happened to the patriotic fervour and the uncanny commitment to face suffering and death that resulted in over two million young men volunteering for service in World War I, and five times that number volunteering to serve in World War II?

Whatever happened to the ability to conquer fear and ride on the excitement for adventure and potential for immeasurable success that drove hundreds of thousands of men and women into the wild, and dangerous, frontiers of the American West?

Whatever happened to the spirit that filled the souls of those that faced stark adversity, danger to life and limb, that lead over 50,000 hapless men and women (mostly men) into the jungles of Central America to build the Panama Canal? - ultimately killing over 5,000 of them as a result of accidents, all manner of diseases including malaria and dysentery?

What happened?

Yeah, this is about us, guys (me included!) Sure, women can be brave - any biological sexual orientation can activate the warrior archetype - but more commonly it is the gendered male that falls into this archetypal constellation. Bravery - a compulsion to protect those he loves, have a critical and logical assessment of a difficult situation, and the force and power, at the very least a potential force and power, ready to inflict whatever necessary to protect partner and family, community and nation. We, us men, have seemed to have lost much of that. Have we become a bunch of puss-balls?

Dr Mark McDonald, a prominent medical doctor with a speciality in psychiatry, doesn’t mince words when he says while describing the psychological state of men and women during this crises: "We essentially have men with no balls, and then we have histrionics, women who have no emotional containment, because there are no men to contain them anymore.”

Sexist? Maybe some will think so, but McDonald is not putting all the blame on one sex, or exclusively on the masculine or feminine archetypes, the responsibility here is rather well balanced.

What does this mean? Very basically it means we have created a culture that has done a pretty good job of emasculating men - the radical feminist movement, as well as a general lack of situations where men can express their “man-ness” in a healthy way, has been a big part of the problem.

“Toxic Masculinity” is a phrase and concept that has taken the world by storm, and contributes quite a bit to the confusion that men are experiencing while trying to ascertain what a “real man” is in today’s “anti male” culture. “Oh boo hoo” some of you may be saying. “Men, through their powerful patriarchal history of abusing women and treating them as inferior partners in relationships deserve a little pull back!” There certainly is truth to that, but two wrongs don’t make a right. You can’t carve out an essential part of being a “man” without some collateral damage, all the way around.

So what does being a “real man” have to do with bravery? A lot, actually. Facing adversity and danger, primarily in order to protect the physically weaker, is a very important attribute of the masculine archetype of warrior, or even king if you want to get more detailed about it. Historically and traditionally the man has been the protector, the physical, and sometimes intellectual (intelligence that is present in logic reasoning and critical thinking) found in masculine archetypes (again, archetypes both men and women have access to).

These attributes are primarily directed toward protection and outwardly projected as strength and resolve. This often stabilizes the more emotional feminine archetypal factors that again, typically, are activated by the female, or woman, in a relationship.

As a psychotherapist, and an archetypal psychologist at that, I see these archetypal powers and influences playing out in my clients every day. Most of the problems I find in a couple’s therapy stems from an imbalance, or a dysfunction, in these energies of masculine and feminine. Again, the “man” in a couple can be activating both masculine and feminine archetypes, as well as the “woman.” The problem comes in if the archetypes activated are inappropriate, out of balance, and create a result that is unexpected, undesired, or not beneficial. Most of these influences run in the unconscious, so very seldom are they consciously manipulated.

It wasn’t until I met Dr McDonald that I connected some very important dots. McDonald recently wrote and released a book titled "United States of Fear." The subtitle of the book, “How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis” is the primary focus.

McDonald holds nothing back when he addresses what he believes to be a fundamental cause of this mass psychosis. He believes that women (feminine archetypes driving the woman’s behaviour) need a strong, and masculine man, to contain her emotionality (due to the unfettered expression of her feminine archetypes.) McDonald, in an interview given on Jerm Warfare, said:

"Do you think men with masks on make women feel safe? It only shows they have no balls. I’ve spoken with female police officers who see men in camouflage, tattooed, driving around in trucks with gun racks - wearing masks. They tell me, ‘this does not make me feel safe. This makes me afraid. If they are this scared of a virus, how will they react to a real threat - what’s going to happen when the bear comes out of the woods? What’s going to happen when a rapist tries to attack me? What’s going to happen when my children are going to be kidnapped by the man in the park, what are they going to do? With their mask on are they going to say, “Please stop. Please. Please.” They’re not going to put their lives on the line. They won’t even put their mouth on the line.’”

Harsh words, my brothers. Harsh words, but I think quite on the money. Is this the only thing that is driving the collapse we are seeing in those that cannot stand up to this current tyranny, and say “enough is enough, step back!” No, of course not, but, in my opinion, it is a large part of the problem.

Our culture, at least in the West, has been set up for this to happen. We have become more and more dependent on government taking care of us, thus losing our own personal drive to develop character and strength. We depend on government and authority to think for us, and tell us what is best for us, to, in a word, parent us. We comply, we stay children, and we ultimately suffer.

The brave hold onto what makes them free and are willing to fight for it. Freedom is a God given right, not one bestowed upon us by any other authority. The healthy masculine archetypes of warrior and king have at their side the symbolic sword representing their power over adversity and danger.

There is a time for the warrior to pull the sword from its scabbard just a few inches to allow the sun to glint off of its polished surface, flashing in the eyes of a potential enemy, letting them know who they are dealing with. And then there is the time to pull the sword completely free from its confines and slash what is seriously threatening the warrior and those he loves. Now is the time to fight."
“You cannot kill me here. Bring your soldiers, your death, your disease, your collapsed economy because it doesn’t matter, I have nothing left to lose and you cannot kill me here. Bring the tears of orphans and the wails of a mother’s loss, bring your God damn air force and Jesus on a cross, bring your hate and bitterness and long working hours, bring your empty wallets and love long since gone but you cannot kill me here. Bring your sneers, your snide remarks and friendships never felt, your letters never sent, your kisses never kissed, cigarettes smoked to the bone and cancer killing fears but you cannot kill me here. For I may fall and I may fail but I will stand again each time and you will find no satisfaction. Because you cannot kill me here.”
- Iain S. Thomas

"Mass Psychosis - How An Entire Population Becomes Mentally Ill"

 

Full screen recommended.
"Mass Psychosis -
How An Entire Population Becomes Mentally Ill"
by After Skool

"In this video we are going to explore the most dangerous of all psychic epidemics, the mass psychosis. A mass psychosis is an epidemic of madness and it occurs when a large portion of a society loses touch with reality and descends into delusions. Such a phenomenon is not a thing of fiction. Two examples of mass psychoses are the American and European witch hunts 16th and 17th centuries and the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century. This video will aim to answer questions surrounding mass psychosis: What is it? How does is start? Has it happened before? Are we experiencing one right now? And if so, how can the stages of a mass psychosis be reversed?"
Related:

Jim Kunstler, "We’re in It Now for Sure"

"We’re in It Now for Sure"
by Jim Kunstler

"When I wrote 'The Long Emergenc' nearly twenty years ago, I never thought that, once it got going, our government would work so hard to make it worse. My theory then was just that government would become increasingly bloated, ineffectual, impotent, and uncomprehending of the forces converging to undermine our advanced techno-industrial societies. What I didn’t imagine was that government would bring such ostentatious stupidity to all that.

Obviously, there was some recognition that ominous changes are coming down. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have heard so much chatter about alt energy, “sustainable growth,” “green” this-and-that. But the chatter was more symptomatic of wishful thinking for at least a couple of reasons: 1) mostly it ignored the laws of physics, despite the fact that so many people involved in enterprises such as wind and solar energy were science-and-tech mavens; and 2) there was a dumb assumption that the general shape and scale of daily life would remain as it had been - in other words, that we could still run suburbia, the giant cities, Disney World, WalMart, the US military, and the Interstate highway system just the way they were already set-up, only by other means than oil and gas.

Now, we’re finding out the hard way how much daily life must change, and is changing, and how disorderly that process is in every way from the imperative personal adjustments to our spiritual attitudes about them. As with so many things in history, this disorder expresses itself strangely, even prankishly, as if God were a practical joker. Who would’ve imagined that our politics would become so deranged? That there would be battles over teaching oral sex in the fifth-grade? That the CDC would keep pushing vaccines that obviously don’t work (and that so many people would still take them)? That stealing stuff under a thousand dollars in value wouldn’t merit prosecution? That riots featuring arson and looting are “mostly peaceful?” That we’d send $50-billion halfway around the world to defend the borders of another country while ignoring the defense of our own borders? That financially beset Americans would spend their dwindling spare cash on… tattoos?

Notice that all of these strange behaviors have really nothing to do with making practical adjustments to the way we live. The collective psychology of all this is bizarre. Of course, mass formation psychosis accounts for a lot of it. Groups of people under duress, suffering from loneliness, purposelessness, helplessness, and anxiety will fall into coordinated thought-and-action if presented with some object or someone to fixate their ill feelings upon.

Donald Trump was such an object. He galvanized about half the country into an intoxicated fury aimed at destroying him. It actually managed to drive him off the scene via a fraud-laced election which many in-power (local officials, judges) deemed a means justifying the desired end. That success reinforced their mass formation psychosis. Alas, having succeeded against Mr. Trump, they were left without a galvanizing object to focus on. So, they adopted one of the devices of Trump-riddance, Covid-19, as the next object of all their distress and anxiety, adopting the mRNA vaccinations as their next savior du jour.

Unfortunately, the vaccination scheme has gone very much awry, and now millions face a future with damaged immune systems. The horror of that is too awful to comprehend, especially by government, which caused the problem in the first place and can’t possibly admit it without demolishing its legitimacy… so it presses on stupidly and heinously with the vaccine program. Already all-causes deaths are substantially up, and in time the recognition of how-and-why this happened will reach a point of criticality.

It will be too obvious to ignore. But by that time (probably not far away), the economy will be so wrecked, the people of America so deranged, and our circumstances so desperate, that the government will resort to a supremely stupid act of national suicide, say, starting a nuclear war. The government under “Joe Biden” seems perfectly disposed to that possible outcome. Which brings us to the spiritual part of the story: those unused to consorting with alleged “higher powers” might consider getting used to prayer.

Lately, a new derangement is overtaking Western Civ, for the excellent reason that Western Civ gave birth to techno industrial societies and is now first to undergo the alarming demise of that system. I speak of the World Economic Forum (under one Klaus Schwab) and its stated ambition to Build Back Better - based on its unstated premise that the current system must be nudged to its death sooner rather than later, and on-purpose. All the governments of Western Civ nations seem coordinated on this.

But it’s not going to happen as Mr. Schwab and his followers hoped, for at least a couple of reasons. First, as already stated, God is a prankster and likes to throw knuckleballs at the human race. Anyway, the “better” that Mr. Schwab expects is an ultra-techno-industrial “trans-human” scheme that is unlikely to come about if the support system of the older techno-industrial system is no longer available to support it. As currently conceived, BBB depends on electric power, and that is one of the major sub-systems of our system that already looks like it’s going janky.

You get the idea, I’m sure, so I’ll cut to the chase for now. About a year ago I had my French easel set up on a country road nearby and was busy painting a motif at-hand when along came a horse-drawn wagon filled with four men in severe black-and-white clothing, wearing beards. They were apparently a bit surprised by the strange sight of me painting a picture and they stopped to chat. They were Amish and had lately moved to the county from down in Pennsylvania, which was running out of farmland for their fruitful people. Not a half-hour later a second horse-drawn wagon passed by. I admit, the incident gave me a thrill - not just the sensory pleasure of the horses’ ripe animal smell, and the gentle rhythm of their clip-clopping along. But since I had lately been writing a bunch of novels about life in a post-economic collapse town like my own (the World Made by Hand series), I enjoyed the strange delight of being transported briefly into a scene of my own imagining - the prequel of my own books.

Many more Amish are landing in the county these days. I hear they go around to the failing or inactive farms with bundles of cash and make an offer, just like that. Evidently the method works. It’s given me a business idea: to start an Amish skills school, buy a few acres with a barn and hire some Amish men to teach all us non-Amish how to do a few things that might be good to know in the years ahead, like how to harness horses to a cart or a mule to a plow. (The Amish like to make a bit of cash-money when they can.) That’s my idea of how to build back better. What do you think?"

"The Fed Has No Idea How Bad it is Out There"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 5/23/22:
"The Fed Has No Idea How Bad it is Out There"
"'The Fed has no idea what we’re going through and how bad the economy really is.' There was a great statement made by Jim Kramer where he absolutely loses it that the Fed is clueless. This statement was made in 2007 and is more relevant today as things get worse before our eyes."

Gregory Mannarino, "IMF Warns: "Confluence Of Calamities"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 5/23/22:
"IMF Warns: "Confluence Of Calamities."
 Expanding Wars, Food & Energy Shortages"

"How It Really Is"

 

Greg Hunter, "CV19 Vax Causing Extreme Disease – Dr. Betsy Eads"

"CV19 Vax Causing Extreme Disease – Dr. Betsy Eads"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Dr. Elizabeth (Betsy) Eads is back to update us from the frontlines of medicine and the growing problems of CV19 vax induced AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome). Dr. Eads is treating patients who have been injected with the experimental CV19 so-called “vaccines,” and new data is showing the injections are causing the explosion of many types of extreme disease. We start with a recent patient Dr. Eads has that got her CV19 booster, and not long after that got cancer. Dr. Eads says, “I basically told her this is most likely vaccine induced cancer. We know cancers are up, according to Dr. Ryan Cole and several other pathologists. They are up close to 2,000%. I told her to find an oncologist who is awake to those types of aggressive cancers. I am seeing a lot of unusual cancers, and so is Dr. Ryan Cole.”

Dr. Eads says the CV19 vaccines are causing a form of AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome). Dr. Eads explains, “It’s a common misconception that acquired immune deficiency is only caused by HIV. It’s simply not true. There are other secondary reasons for AIDS. I am going to read a few to you: Radiation and chemotherapy, of course, HIV, Leukemia, malnutrition, drugs, medications and now vaccines are included.”

The DOD is also seeing exploding illness in the military population that started after our service men and women were coerced to be injected. Dr. Eads says, “Let me read you the latest Department of Defense numbers, and these just came out: “Myocarditis is up 2,800%, cancer is up 900%, infertility both genders is up 500%, miscarriage is up 300%, neurological disorders are up over 1,000%, demyelinating disorders are up over 1,000%, Multiple Sclerosis is up 600%, Guillain-Barré, which is a progressive paralysis, that’s up 500%, HIV is up 500%, pulmonary embolism, which are blood clots in the lungs, are up over 400%. Those are the equivalent of the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) for the Department of Defense.”

Dr. Eads says there are treatments for vax injury, but Dr. Eads says totally stopping the ill effects from the CV19 injections are not known. Dr. Eads says, “We don’t know what the mechanism is to turn this off. Right now, there is no way documented to turn that off. So, if you got the Pfizer or the Moderna, that mRNA is going to continue to make spike protein. We do not know the endpoint. We need to study this, and we are in the process of doing that, but we know the effect of the spike protein on the immune system and the fact it is dysregulating and causing cancers. We are two years out, and my feeling is we are going to continue to have spike proteins made over the next x-number of years until we figure a way to turn off the lipid nano mRNA envelope.” (There is much more cutting edge, frontline medical information in the nearly 58 min interview.)

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks to 25-year veteran Dr. Elizabeth Eads, DO, as she continues to highlight the real unreported effects of the CV19 bioweapons."

"We Often Learn..."

“We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success.
We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do;
and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.”
- Samuel Smiles

"More Empty Shelves At Meijer! This Is Getting Crazy! What Now?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 5/23/22:
"More Empty Shelves At Meijer! This Is Getting Crazy! What Now?"
"In today's vlog we are at Meijer with empty shelves everywhere! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and some food shortages! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Sunday, May 22, 2022

"Panic Sweeps Across Supply Chains As Disruptions Push Container Shipping To Massive Crisis"

Full screen recommended.
"Panic Sweeps Across Supply Chains As 
Disruptions Push Container Shipping To Massive Crisis"
by Epic Economist

"A sense of desperation is fast spreading across global supply chains. On Friday, one of the most notable executives of the industry has warned that supply chains will never return to normal, disruptions and threats will extend well beyond 2023, and the next wave of bottlenecks is going to be far worse than anything we’ve ever seen. At the same time, as Shanghai has begun to emerge from a lockdown that has constrained the global economy and created even more turmoil for the system over the past two months, U.S. ports are set to face record congestion this summer given that an unprecedented number of containerships are being sent to the U.S. coast. And if you thought that things were already chaotic in our domestic supply chains, by now there’s no doubt that more unrest is coming as 7 in 10 U.S. supply chain workers are threatening to quit their jobs this year.

The world’s largest port and one of China’s main financial hubs has opened today after two months of continued lockdowns. However, as port operations resume in Shanghai, Maersk and Goldman Sachs are sounding the alarm about the ripple effect the reopening will have all over the world in the coming weeks and months.

For over seven weeks, a massive parking lot of vessels has been building outside Shanghai ports as operations came to a halt. China’s zero-tolerance policies have hit businesses in the manufacturing and commercial hub of Shanghai, as well as the broader global economy, with thousands of factories being shuttered and millions of workers being required to stay confined to their homes. Truckers have also struggled to move goods in and out of the city's huge port due to restrictions on movement. But authorities announced last week that lockdowns would finally be lifted in the megacity this Sunday, and public transportation networks are scheduled to reopen on Monday.

Goldman alerted last week, that “a resurgence of ship bottlenecks” is likely as China suddenly “restarts sailings all at once." Meanwhile, Maersk released new data indicating that container rates have already rebounded. Container freight rates on the Shanghai-Los Angeles shipping lane have already gone up by 30% and are set to increase more as shipping volumes surge. The giant logistics company also noted that this will result in a new wave of supply chain congestion in the U.S. by the summer.

And with no structural changes at US ports expected in terms of truckers, workers, and port facilities, those ports won't have the capacity to deal with the sudden and unprecedented rise in ships arriving, experts highlighted. The shortage of qualified labor at U.S. ports has dramatically aggravated over the past two years. The lack of enough dock workers, truckers, warehouse workers, and many other professionals across the system have contributed to prolonged congestion, extensive delivery delays, and shortages all across the country.

To make things even worse, over one in seven, or about 77% of U.S. professionals working in supply chain and logistics, are threatening to quit their jobs this year. The absence of these essential workers can lead to the collapse of domestic supply chains this year as it becomes virtually impossible to process the huge amount of cargo headed to U.S. ports. In fact, according to FreightWaves CEO Craig Fuller, one of the most important executives of the industry, supply chains will continue to deal with a long list of threats over the long term.

For smaller retailers, who often count on speed, nimbleness, and agility for an edge over larger competitors, current supply chain disruptions are proving to be a high hurdle. A survey from Software Advice exposed that 91 percent of small businesses and retailers believe larger companies have an advantage over them in the current supply chain crisis. Small businesses and retailers account for 47% of U.S. consumer demand, and as these companies are being forced to reformulate, downsize, and find alternate sources, out-of-stock rates are expected to soar this year. In other words, the nightmare has only just begun."
Related:

Musical Interlude: Kevin Kern, "Another Realm"

Kevin Kern, "Another Realm"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"It may look like a huge cosmic question mark, but the big question really is how does the bright gas and dark dust tell this nebula's history of star formation. At the edge of a giant molecular cloud toward the northern constellation Cepheus, the glowing star forming region NGC 7822 lies about 3,000 light-years away. Within the nebula, bright edges and dark shapes stand out in this colorful and detailed skyscape.
The 9-panel mosaic, taken over 28 nights with a small telescope in Texas, includes data from narrowband filters, mapping emission from atomic oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur into blue, green, and red hues. The emission line and color combination has become well-known as the Hubble palette. The atomic emission is powered by energetic radiation from the central hot stars. Their powerful winds and radiation sculpt and erode the denser pillar shapes and clear out a characteristic cavity light-years across the center of the natal cloud. Stars could still be forming inside the pillars by gravitational collapse but as the pillars are eroded away, any forming stars will ultimately be cut off from their reservoir of star stuff. This field of view spans over 40 light-years across at the estimated distance of NGC 7822."

"What Can We Know?"

What can we know? What are we all?
Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite,
with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

"Homo sapiens is a spider trying to crawl out of a basin. The higher he crawls, the steeper the hill. Sooner or later, down he goes. So long as he's on the bottom, he can get along quite nicely, but as soon as he starts climbing, he begins to slip. And the higher he climbs the farther he falls. It doesn't matter which direction he tries. He can make civilization after civilization, but every time, long before he begins to be really civilized, skid!"
 - Olaf Stapledon, "Odd John"

"A Chime Of Words..."

"Yes, there is a meaning; at least for me, there is one thing that matters -
to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people."
- Logan Pearsall Smith

The Daily "Near You?"

Phoenix, Arizona, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Rising to the Bait – Again"

"Rising to the Bait – Again"
by Eric Peters

"$40 billion is still a great deal of money – even in the Biden Thing’s America. Except it’s not going to help Americans. Rather, the Biden Thing has taken $40 billion out of the pockets of Americans, to finance all-but-war with nuclear-armed Russia by arming and abetting Ukraine. When the government – and the corporations that own the government – want war, they usually get what they want.

Some 108 years ago, the government of Woodrow Wilson and the arms peddlers and financial interests behind Wilson wanted war with Germany – something few if any Americans wanted as they’d be the ones paying for it, in blood and treasure. To drag them into what was then styled the “war to end all wars,” Wilson’s government colluded with Britain’s government and the interests that owned both of them to arrange a pretext. A passenger liner called the Lusitania was loaded with war materiel and provocatively sailed into the war zone. The Germans rose to the bait. A submarine fired a couple or more torpedoes into the Lusitania’s flanks and she quickly sank – resulting in the drowning of about 1,198 “innocent civilians,” which they were.

But the governments of America and Britain weren’t done. They knew that, by goading the Germans into sinking Lusitania, they could feign outrage and cause Americans to actually be outraged. Sufficiently so as to drown out any voices who might raise a hand and ask why Lusitania, a passenger liner (loaded with war material from America meant to help Germany’s foe in the war) was sailed into the war zone, right in front of German subs. Instead, Americans were roused to blood lust over “the hun” and sent to die (and kill) in a war that was as relevant to them as a wall phone is a to a Millennial.

Some twenty years after the “war to end all wars,” another war began. The government – and corporate interests – of the United States were, once again, extremely interested in getting Americans to fight in it. But – chastened by the carnage of the prior war – few Americans were interested. How to fix that?

First, the same method was tried. All-but-declare war on Germany, by all-but-formally-allying America with Britain. Well, ally America’s munitions industry and so on with Britain. Destroyers and other war materiel financed by Americans to protect America were “lend-leased” to Britain, a very provocative act, as far as the Germans were concerned. American naval vessels helped British vessels track and hunt down German vessels, including the famous German battleship, Bismarck – whose position during the course of its one and only sortie was relayed to the British, who had lost track of her – helping to enable them to eventually find and sink her. This time, however, the Germans did not rise to the bait.

The government and corporate interests of the United States were stymied. The war – with Germany – would have to wait. But not for long. The government and corporate interests of America were able to get Japan to rise to the bait. Cut off her oil supply and present her with a fait accompli. Japan decided to attack – and it wasn’t a “sneak” one, either. Abundant evidence suggests the American government and the interests that owned it then – and own it still – knew what the Japanese were going to do. In any event, it was predictable what they would do. And here we are, again.

The interests that run things want another war – possibly, a nuclear one – for reasons that aren’t fully known but which can be broadly understood, because they are always the same. A war would do what wars always do – in addition to killing people. It silences them. Particularly as regards impolitic questions about what the government has been doing to them.

Here are the post-war words of Germany’s former Reichsmarschall, Herman Goering: “Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America nor, for that matter, in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. … Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” And it works very well.

It appears to be working, again. But, appearances can be deceiving. While there is revelatory unanimity on the Left and the Right for risking nuclear war war over Ukraine – in terms of the punditry apparat of Left and Right – do the people who will die as a result of this war, if it comes, agree? It doesn’t appear to be so, for now. But what if the interests that control the government manage to get the Russians to rise to the bait?

How much more baiting will the Russians abide? And will Americans tolerate it? Will they be fooled by it, if the bear takes the bait? They will certainly be the ones paying for it, if he does."
Hat tip to "The Burning Platform" for this material.

"Be Open Minded..."

 

"Ms. Jankowicz, We Hardly Knew Ye"

"Ms. Jankowicz, We Hardly Knew Ye"
The Ministry of Truth is "on pause" as your
trusty overlords manufacture a new narrative.
by Joel Bowman

"And just like that, your friendly neighborhood Ministry of Truth is no more. So sad. Barely a month old, the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board was “put on pause” this week after its Truth Knower in Chief, Nina Jankowicz, resigned her post. You’ll recall Ms. Jankowicz as the totally hinged, 33-year old Mary Poppins of Disinformation. Here she is, completely sane and in firm command of her faculties, doing her thing on the Chinese Communist Party’s preferred social media network, TikTok...
Now just hold your horses there, we hear you saying... isn’t Ms. Jankowicz the very same person who assured us the Hunter Biden laptop story – now known to be true, but buried at the time by those “in the know” – was just more “Russian influence?”
“We should view it as a Trump campaign product,” Jankowicz told the Associated Press at the time. When the New York Post first broke the “Laptop from Hell” story, the (then) 219 year old paper, founded by Alexander Hamilton, was censored by Twitter for its troubles. Users were forbidden from sharing any link to the story... until April of 2021, that is, when the election was already in the bag and Jill Biden was picking out drapes for her comfy new residence.

But wait! How could 50 national security officials... and five CIA spooks... get something so material and so damning so wrong, and right before a presidential election, in which the guy’s dad was on the ticket!, no less? Never mind all that, says your trusty Truth Czar. When it comes to disinformation – concocting, spreading, proliferating – you can rest assured that your government is on the case!

As for free speech “absolutists” (read: people who believe in it)... Here’s Ms. Poppins Jankowicz commenting on Elon Musk’s plan to purchase the little blue bird and to let people – trigger warning – say what they want, “I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities.”

Ah yes, the “marginalized communities”... like government agencies with multi-billion dollar budgets (the DHS burns through a casual billion dollars per week according to its 2022 budget) staffed with platoons of omniscient “fact checkers” like Ms. Jankowicz, who stand poised to edit your posts the moment you dare stray from the Official Party Line.

Whether it’s the origins of covid... the efficacy of novel “vaccines”... the scientific “consensus” regarding lockdowns... the “transitory” nature of inflation... “peaceful protests”... Joe Rogan’s “horse dewormer”... “two weeks to flatten the curve”... this person as “Woman of the Year”... capital “T” Truth sure is hard to come by these days.

For we mere proles, far from the central nervous system of enlightened savants that is the Ministry of Truth, a lot of what we’re told to believe sounds awfully like... well... not the truth.

One man who knew a thing or two about the importance of “messaging” was Mr. Joseph Goebbels, the fellow who had Jankowicz’s job back when Sieg Heils and toothbrush mustaches were all the rage in Germany. Here he is, pulling the curtain back for us... “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” (NB: He was actually talking about the English at the time, but the point stands. Just remember what Abraham Lincoln said: don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.)

And here we found a handy pictorial guide – not yet deleted from Twitter – to help you actualize, rationalize and even internalize their truth and make it your truth. All it takes is a little cerebral contortion, a broken moral compass and a healthy dollop of good ol’ fashioned credulity. We’ll start with an easy one: inflation is good for you... and sending more stimulus checks certainly won’t make it worse (if it were bad... which, remember, it’s not)...
You can even hum Ms. Poppins’s catchy tune while repeating the mantra. Anything to help the disinformation go down the hatch."
Freely download "1984", by George Orwell, here:

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets A Look Ahead: Where Does The Market Go From Here? This Is The Key"

Gregory Mannarino, 5/22/22:
"Markets A Look Ahead: Where Does The 
Market Go From Here? This Is The Key"

"Ten Commandments For Living From Philosopher Bertrand Russell"

"Ten Commandments For Living From 
Philosopher Bertrand Russell"

"The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:

1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.

2. Do not think it worthwhile to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.

3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.

4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.

5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.

6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.

7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.

9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.

10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness."
"Three Passions" 
 "Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of humankind.
Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of people.
I have wished to know why the stars shine.
Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart,
Of children in famine, of victims tortured,
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.
This has been my life; I found it worth living. 
- Bertrand Russell

"Have You Noticed..."

 

"How It Really Is"

 

“My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and 
dumping ground by a superior civilization, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. 
I can't prove it, but you can’t disprove it either.”
- Christopher Hitchens

"The Truth..."

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
- Oscar Wilde
"People can be incredibly stubborn about what they choose to believe and by refusing to accept the truth, they are under the impression that their opinion is relevant. The more you argue with those people, the more you are playing into their hands, because they believe that you are arguing with them since they have a decent point to make.

It is futile to argue with people like these because they do not even remain consistent with their own arguments. They purposefully distort the truth, misinterpret facts in order to avoid admitting the truth. Deep in their minds, they are highly insecure people. Their entire world is built on a mountain of lies, half-truths, outright denial and whatnot. To go against that is a tall order and accepting the truth would be to deny that very existence. Now where’s the fun in that?"
"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you." 
– Oscar Wilde

"Monkey Pox: Truth Versus Fearporn"

"Monkey Pox: Truth Versus Fearporn"
By Robert W Malone MD, MS

"I keep getting asked the same question again and again; is this outbreak of monkey pox a real threat, or is this another case of overstated and weaponized public health messaging? I am going to save my answer to this question for the end of this article and instead focus on what monkey pox is, the nature and characteristics of the associated disease, what we know and don’t know.

The monkeypox virus, which originates in various regions of Africa, is related to SmallPox (Variola), which are both members of the genus Orthopoxvirus. However, it is important to understand that Variola (major or minor) is the species of virus which is responsible for the worst human disease caused by the Orthopox viruses. For example, Cowpox, Horsepox, and Camelpox are also members of this genus, none of which are a major health threat to humans, and one of which (Cowpox) has even been (historically) used as a Smallpox vaccine. My point is that just because Monkeypox is related to Smallpox, this does not in any way mean that it represents a similar public health threat. Anyone who implies otherwise is basically engaged in or otherwise supporting weaponized public health-related propaganda. In other words, spreading public health fearporn.

Monkeypox was first identified in 1958 in colonies of monkeys, and the first human case of the virus was identified in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Most likely this was just the first case identified, as people living in Africa have been in contact with monkeys and the other Monkeypox animal hosts for millennia. The “West African” monkeypox clade (clade = variant) circulating outside of Africa at this time causes a milder disease compared to the closely related virus found found in other regions of Africa (Congo clade).

The symptoms of monkeypox are somewhat similar to, but much milder than smallpox disease. The general clinical presentation of the disease caused by the West African monkey pox clade virus involves Influenza-like symptoms - fever, body aches, chills - together with swollen lymph nodes. A rash on the palm of the hand is often observed. In the latter stage of the disease, which may last for up to a month or more in some cases, may involve small lesions which develop a crust, and which can result in a small depigmented scar. There is no evidence of asymptomatic transmission. In other words, current medical knowledge indicates that it is only spread by person to person contact between an uninfected individual and someone who already has symptoms of the disease. Therefore, disease spread can be readily controlled by classical public health interventions such as contact tracing, temporary quarantine of those who have had physical contact with someone who is infected, and longer term quarantine of those who develop symptoms. Essentially all of the current cases in the west which we are seeing in the news are among men who have sex with men, and appear to be due to close physical contact.

Monkeypox is endemic in many parts of Africa, and is a “zoonotic” virus, meaning it can be transmitted from a variety of animals (not just monkeys) to humans. Initial animal to human transmission followed by limited human to human transmission is probably the cause of the sporadic cases typically observed in Africa. Chicken pox, which is highly transmissible, is not part of the genus Orthopoxvirus, despite that name “pox.” Once again for emphasis, Cowpox and Camelpox are also in the genus Orthopoxvirus, and they are not particularly pathogenic when contracted by humans; just because Monkeypox is a “pox” virus in the genus Orthopoxvirus, does not mean it is particularly deadly."
Related, highly recommended:
Very highest recommendation:
What "they" want...
Be afraid, be very afraid... Damn them! NO!
And here it comes:

"Russia Rewrites The Art Of (Hybrid) War"

"Russia Rewrites The Art Of (Hybrid) War"
by Pepe Escobar

"Hybrid War is being fought predominantly in the economic/financial battleground – and the pain dial for the collective West will only go up...

The ironclad fictional “narrative” imposed all across NATOstan is that Ukraine is “winning”. So why would weapons peddler retrofitted as Pentagon head Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin literally beg since late February to have his phone calls answered by Russian Defense Minister Shoigu, only to have his wish finally granted?

It’s now confirmed by one of my top intel sources. The call was a direct consequence of panic. The United States Government (USG) by all means wants to scotch the detailed Russian investigation – and accumulation of evidence – on the US bioweapon labs in Ukraine, as I outlined in a previous column.

This phone call happened exactly after an official Russian statement to the UN Security Council on May 13: we will use articles 5 and 6 of the Convention on the Prohibition of Bioweapons to investigate the Pentagon’s biological “experiments” in Ukraine. That was reiterated by Under Secretary-General of the UN in charge of disarmament, Thomas Markram, even as all ambassadors of NATO member countries predictably denied the collected evidence as “Russian disinformation”.

Shoigu could see the call coming eons away. Reuters, merely quoting the proverbial “Pentagon official”, spun that the allegedly one-hour-long call led to nothing. Nonsense. Austin, according to the Americans, demanded a “ceasefire” – which must have originated a Siberian cat smirk on Shoigu’s face.

Shoigu knows exactly which way the wind is blowing on the ground – for Ukrainian Armed Forces and UkroNazis alike. It’s not only the Azovstal debacle – and Kiev’s all-around army breakdown. After the fall of Popasnaya – the crucial, most fortified Ukrainian stronghold in Donbass – the Russians and Donetsk/Luhansk forces have breached defenses along four different vectors to north, northwest, west and south. What’s left of the Ukrainian front is crumbling – fast, with a massive cauldron subdivided in a maze of mini-cauldrons: a military disaster the USG cannot possibly spin.

Now, in parallel, we can also expect full exposure – on overdrive – of the Pentagon bioweapons racket. The only “offer you can’t refuse” left to the USG would be to present something tangible to the Russians to avoid a full investigation. That’s not gonna happen. Moscow is fully aware that going public with illegal work on banned biological weapons is an existential threat to the US Deep State. Especially when documents seized by the Russians show that Big Pharma – via Pfizer, Moderna, Merck and Gilead – was involved in several “experiments”. Fully exposing the whole maze, from the start, was one of Putin’s stated objectives.

More “military-technical measures”? Three days after the UN presentation, the board of the Russian Foreign Ministry held a special session to discuss “the radically changed geopolitical realities that have developed as a result of the hybrid war against our country unleashed by the West – under the pretext of the situation in Ukraine – unprecedented in scale and ferocity, including the revival in Europe of a racist worldview in the form of cave Russophobia, an open course for the ‘abolition’ of Russia and everything Russian.”

So it’s no wonder “the aggressive revisionist course of the West requires a radical revision of Russia’s relations with unfriendly states.” We should expect “a new edition of the Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation” coming out soon. This new Foreign Policy Concept will elaborate on what Foreign Minister Lavrov once again stressed at a meeting honoring the 30th Assembly of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy: the US has declared an all-round Hybrid War on Russia. The only thing lacking, as it stands, is a formal declaration of war.

Beyond the disinformation fog veiling the application of Finland and Sweden – call them the Dumb and Dumber Nordics – to join NATO, what really matters is another instance of declaration of war: the prospect of missiles with nuclear warheads stationed really close to Russian borders. Moscow already warned the Finns and Swedes, politely, that this would be dealt with it via “military-technical measures”. That’s exactly what Washington – and NATO minions – were told would happen before the start of Operation Z.

And of course this goes much deeper, involving Romania and Poland as well. Bucharest already has Aegis Ashore missile launchers capable of sending Tomahawks with nuclear warheads at Russia, while Warsaw is receiving the same systems. To cut to the chase, if there’s no de-escalation, they will all eventually end up receiving Mr. Khinzal’s hypersonic business card.

NATO member Turkey, meanwhile, plays a deft game, issuing its own list of demands before even considering the Nordics’ gamble. Ankara wants no more sanctions on its purchase of S-400s and on top if be re-included in the F-35 program. It will be fascinating to watch what His Master’s Voice will come up with to seduce the Sultan. The Nordics engaged in a self-correcting “clear unequivocal stance” against the PKK and the PYD is clearly not enough for the Sultan, who relished muddying the waters even more as he stressed that buying Russian energy is a “strategic” issue for Turkey.

Counteracting financial Shock’n Awe: By now it’s evidently clear that open-ended Operation Z targets unipolar Hegemon power, the infinite expansion of vassalized NATO, and the world’s financial architecture – an intertwined combo that largely transcends the Ukraine battleground.

Serial Western sanctions package hysteria ended up triggering Russia’s so far quite successful counter-financial moves. Hybrid War is being fought predominantly in the economic/financial battleground – and the pain dial for the collective West will only go up: inflation, higher commodity prices, breakdown of supply chains, exploding cost of living, impoverishment of the middle classes, and unfortunately for great swathes of the Global South, outright poverty and starvation.

In the near future, as insider evidence surfaces, a convincing case will be made that the Russian leadership even gamed the Western financial gamble/blatant robbery of over $300 billion in Russian reserves. This implies that already years ago – let’s say, at least from 2016, based on analyses by Sergey Glazyev – the Kremlin knew this would inevitably happen. As trust remains a rigid foundation of a monetary system, the Russian leadership may have calculated that the Americans and their vassals, driven by blind Russophobia, would play all their cards at once when push came to shove – utterly demolishing global trust on “their” system.

Because of Russia’s infinite natural resources, the Kremlin may have factored that the nation would eventually survive the financial Shock’n Awe – and even profit from it (ruble appreciation included). The reward is just too sweet: opening the way to The Doomed Dollar – without having to ask Mr. Sarmat to present his nuclear business card. Russia could even entertain the hypothesis of getting a mighty return on those stolen funds. A great deal of Western assets – totaling as much as $500 billion – may be nationalized if the Kremlin so chooses.

So Russia is winning not only militarily but also to a large extent geopolitically – 88% of the planet does not align with NATOstan hysteria – and of course in the economic/financial sphere. This in fact is the key Hybrid War battleground where the collective West is being checkmated. One of the next key steps will be an expanded BRICS coordinating their dollar-bypassing strategy.

None of the above should overshadow the still to be measured interconnected repercussions of the mass surrender of Azov neo-Nazis at UkroNazistan Central in Azovstal. The mythical Western “narrative” about freedom-fighting heroes imposed since February by NATOstan media collapsed with a single blow. Cue to the thunderous silence all over the Western infowar front, where no mutts even attempted to sing that crappy, “winning” Eurovision song.

What happened, in essence, is that the creme de la creme of NATO-trained neo-Nazis, “advised” by top Western experts, weaponized to death, entrenched in deep concrete anti-nuclear bunkers in the bowels of Azovstal, was either pulverized or forced to surrender like cornered rats.

Novorossiya as a game-changer: The Russian General Staff will be adjusting their tactics for the major follow-up in Donbass – as the best Russian analysts and war correspondents incessantly debate. They will have to face an inescapable problem: as much as the Russian methodically grind down the – disaggregated – Ukrainian Army in Donbass, a new NATO army is being trained and weaponized in western Ukraine.

So there is a real danger that depending on the ultimate long-term aims of Operation Z – which are only shared by the Russian military leadership – Moscow runs the risk of encountering, in a few months, a mobile and better weaponized incarnation of the demoralized army it is now destroying. And this is exactly what the Americans mean by “weakening” Russia.

As it stands, there are several reasons why a new Novorossiya reality may turn out to be a positive game-changer for Russia. Among them: The economic/logistics complex from Kharkov to Odessa – along Donetsk, Luhansk, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, Kherson, Nikolaev – is intimately linked with Russian industry. By controlling the Sea of Azov – already a de facto “Russian lake” – and subsequently the Black Sea, Russia will have total control of export routes for the region’s world-class grain production. Extra bonus: total exclusion of NATO. All of the above suggests a concerted drive for the development of an integrated agro-heavy industry complex – with the extra bonus of serious tourism potential.

Under this scenario, a remaining Kiev-Lviv rump Ukraine, not incorporated to Russia, and of course not rebuilt, would be at best subjected to a no-fly zone plus selected artillery/missile/drone strikes in case NATO continues to entertain funny ideas.

This would be a logical conclusion for a Special Military Operation focused on precision strikes and a deliberate emphasis on sparing civilian lives and infrastructure while methodically disabling the Ukrainian military/logistics spectrum. All of that takes time. Yet Russia may have all the time in the world, as we all keep listening to the sound of the collective West spiraling down."