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| AS GOES SYRIA, SO GOES DONBASS. AS GOES DONBASS, SO GOES THE WORLD. |
When Recep Erdogan recently met with Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev, aping the words of Ukraine's nazi collaborators, with a shout of "Slava Ukraine!", it may well have seemed just another dog and clown show, put on by two US/NATO lackeys who are among the least trusted or respected national leaders on Earth. But this political theater may well have some serious and unpleasant portents for the near future.
Erdogan's recent criminal foray into Syria marks a major escalation as well as a further betrayal of treaty agreements he made with Russia. After 36 Turkish soldiers were "inadvertently" killed by airstrikes (while the Turks were traveling with terrorists inside Syria) Russia called a unilateral ceasefire in order to de-escalate the situation and attempt to calm Turkish anger. Unfortunately, this was a serious tactical mistake, and the Turks used the ceasefire to launch a major attack against Syrian and Iranian/Hezbollah targets, killing up to 200 soldiers. Russia had grossly underestimated Erdogan's recklessness and willingness to escalate the situation. The war in Syria currently stands at one of the highest crisis points in its almost 10 year history. And this escalation should be viewed in relation to other contemporaneous escalations, provocations, and developments around the world.
Escalations by the US-backed regime in Kiev against the Donbass Republics have recently been described as "the worst in years", and are ongoing. Just as Erdogan has moved major convoys of military equipment and personnel into the combat zone in Syria, Ukraine is continuing to move more and more military assets into the Donbass area of operations. And this is happening at the exact same time, and in conjunction with, the movement of 20,000 US military personnel from the USA into Europe for the Defender Europe 2020 "exercise", which will see war games, including the "rehearsal" of combined arms and airborne assaults, offensive operations, involving up to 60,000 NATO troops in total. This does not include the 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers that are already on the front lines in Donbass.
So while the Turks (NATO) are moving forward in Syria, the ukrops are moving forward in Donbass, and the US/NATO is on the move eastward in Europe with the biggest mobilization in over 25 years. And while Russia is besieged on all sides; in Syria, Ukraine and even on its own European borders, its main ally in the world, China, just so happens to be under economic and biological pressure (and perhaps under actual attack) on a scale it has never experienced before. And Iran, Syria and Russia's most important regional ally, is behind only South Korea as the nation outside China hardest hit by this new and novel virus. So let's talk about the coronavirus a bit more...
As noted in my previous article on the subject, while the virus has had a major medical, social and economic impact on China itself, in the West, and especially in the USA, the fear of the virus, and the population's reactions, are in fact much more significant than the actual physical or medical consequences themselves. There have been 321 reported cases of coronavirus in the USA since the "pandemic" (or, rather, "panic-epidemic") began in December, 2019, and so far there have been a total of fifteen deaths. And yet the fear-mongering, panic inducing sensationalism of the MSM has gotten people "panic buying" basic staples and stockpiling goods at a rate never seen on such a nationwide scale before. There are talks of quarantine and closing borders, martial law "if needed", and other "emergency measures" to be enacted by Presidential decree. Now, wait a minute. Think about that.
Suppose you were planning to start, or at least risk, a full scale multi-front war between superpowers, and you wanted to prepare your domestic situation as much as possible beforehand, without exposing or admitting your plan ahead of time. You'd need to prepare the population, not particularly for their own good, of course, but just so there would be less civil unrest for the regime to deal with. You'd want your peasants to have as much food and supplies at home as possible, to reduce the panic buying that would inevitably occur at the outbreak of major hostilities, and to prevent them from the need to break curfew or move about in search of food. As long as they have food, they'll stay home, you can make them stay at home. Once they run out of food and start getting hungry, nothing can make them stay at home and just sit there and starve. They will start to move and need to be dealt with. And as Bob Marley sagely noted, "A hungry mob is an angry mob."
Under a phony "pandemic", you could start opening up and preparing those famous FEMA camps for "quarantine", you could practice shutting down borders, "filtering" people, controlling information on the internet and in the media, and you'd have a populace already conditioned to being whipped into a frenzy or terrified into submission at a moment's notice, without the need for any actual evidence or logical reasons. You could even shut down the stock markets and banks, maybe even suspend the elections. Or the Constitution. And you know what? You could do all that, prepare the population and domestic situation for a major war without saying it, or making it obvious, under the excuse of a phony pandemic.
Do you remember the fact that on September 10th, 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced that $2.3 Trillion was "missing" from the Pentagon budget? The next day was 9/11, and the wars that were started by that have never stopped. The bullshit national debt number put out by the US government today is $23.4 Trillion, but only an idiot could believe that. The truth is that the real number is about ten times higher than they're telling you. Not twice as high, or four or five or six times as high, but ten times as high, between $210 Trillion and $230 Trillion. These are the real, no bullshit numbers. And that puts every American man woman and child, every elderly, every invalid, every baby, on the hook for well over a half million dollars each, money that's already been spent, that they already owe. And what do they have to show for it? Nothing. Like the Pentagon auditor said of the measly $2.3 Trillion, "We know they spent it, we just don't know where it went". A Trillion is a million million, and a Trillion dollars is about what the US owes China, and if it defaults, there will be a war. Or the US can start a war and then use the war as an excuse to default. One Trillion out of 230 Trillion might not seem significant, but a Trillion here, a Trillion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.
Of course, the biggest holder of worthless paper and unpayable US debt are the US citizens themselves. Unfunded Social Security and Medicaid debt is estimated at $82 Trillion over the next 30 years. (Which is obviously not counted in the bullshit $23 Trillion official number.) That's the money they've been taking out of your paycheck your whole working life, and again, "we know it's gone, we just don't know where it went." But you can bet your life that you won't be seeing it again. And when that debt does comes due, as it must, and probably sooner than later, there will be hell to pay, and hell is all there will be to pay it with. But if all the people who are owed money, who were robbed, if they happen to die from, or at least be distracted, confused, terrorized and repressed by an apocalyptic social breakdown brought on by the Third World War, while the thieves themselves sit out the war in the luxury bunkers they built with their looted Trillions, well, that wouldn't be so bad, for the looters.
The Capitalist Class, the Ruling Class, the Parasite Class has just about sucked the Earth dry. Humanity, the environment, the social web of the human community, the world economy, evolution itself, all are on their last legs, disintegrating before our eyes. And this criminal class would like nothing more than to overturn the table, cry "Havoc", and go into hiding in their billion dollar super bunkers for a few generations while the Earth depopulates, and regenerates if it can. Then, in 100 years or so, they can emerge as if from a chrysalis, reborn as Gods, with all the Earth as their domain and whatever is left of Humanity as slaves to serve them. They've been planning this for quite a while. And I think they're getting ready to pull the trigger. In the next couple of months.
Here's what else I think - I think the current Turkish and Ukrainian provocations in Syria and Donbass are preparations for real major offensives in both places, and are engineered to gauge Russian reactions, to call Russia's bluff, to see whether Russia is willing to risk open warfare, Russian treasure and Russian blood, to defend land and people that are not Russian. I think Ukraine will withdraw from the Minsk II agreement at or before the next scheduled meeting in April, blaming Russia for not allowing Ukraine to totally misinterpret and/or re-negotiate the entire document. I think Ukraine will then request US assistance for military "anti-terror" operations in Donbass, and the 20,000 US troops in Europe for the Euro Defender 2020 operation will be moved into Ukraine to assist and "motivate" the Ukrainian Army in a major offensive against the Donbass Republics. At the same time, Turkey, with NATO backing, will begin an all-out war against Syria and its Lebanese and Iranian allies. This would be an opportune time for Israel to attack Southern Lebanon as well, which would divert Hezbollah assets from reinforcing the Syrian Army, and might allow for Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon for the 30 miles or so from the current border to the long-coveted Litani River. Remember, along with Syria, Iraq and Iran, Lebanon was/is also on General Westley Clark's famous List of Seven Countries. It's been more than five years, but while the timetable has changed, the targets have not.
If my hypothesis is correct, the US will be able to use proxy troops (Turkish and Ukrainian) to do the hard fighting while maintaining some political distance, but still dealing multiple major political and military blows to Russia. In both Donbass and Syria, Russia would be faced with the dilemma of either abandoning her allies, principles and political standing, or engaging in full scale war on two fronts with two major US/NATO backed military powers, while her main allies, China and Iran are both seriously distracted by biological concerns.
If Turkey were to use its full military power against the Syrian Army, one on one, it would be a rout. Turkey's combined military strength is about four times that of Syria. The odds are equally stacked in Ukraine's favor against the armed forces of the Donbass Republics. Without Russian support and actual military intervention, the Republics would have little if any chance against the US-backed Ukrainian Army. If Russia uses full force against Turkey in Syria, if a Russian/Turkish military conflict spilled out into the Mediterranian, for example, NATO's Article 5 could be invoked. If Russia uses full force against Ukraine in Donbass while US troops are there, it would be a direct attack on US troops invited into Ukraine by the "legitimate" government, and again Article 5 applies.
So either Russia must face a multi-front war with her allies hobbled if not crippled, against multiple interlocking adversaries, or submissively retreat within its own borders and abandon Donbass and Syria to the depredations of 21st Century fascists, and isolated, sanctioned and alone, await its own day of reckoning. Even with the technological excellence of Russia's new weapons, which are an effective defense against direct attacks on the Russian homeland itself, if Russia retreats from Syria and/or Donbass, she will be effectively neutralized in the arena of world politics. No matter how amazing her weapons are, they are not much use without the will to use them when needed. And if Russia were to fail to use them to enforce their explicit and oft-stated red lines in Syria and Donbass, her enemies would know they had carte blanche to do as they please around the world, save a direct assault on the Russian homeland itself. Crimea and Kaliningrad would soon be in the crosshairs.
As I write, Erdogan has just met with Putin. The infinitely patient Russian President will do well to remember that nothing that Erdogan says or signs has the least bit of veracity. The same can be said for Zelensky, if and when the next Minsk Agreement meetings are held in April. I understand that Putin plays the long game, and his primary goal is to protect Russia, and his strategy is to do so by avoiding war. I believe he strives to follow Sun Tzu's maxim that the most excellent warrior is he who wins without fighting. That is true, and indeed it is possible to win without fighting. But it must never be forgotten that it is also quite possible to lose without fighting. Appeasement did not work with the German nazis, and it will not work with the nazis of the 21st century. As for me and my family, friends and comrades here in Donetsk, we expect the attack to come in April or May, and we are preparing to fight. Putin and Russia should do the same.