ALEKS—I think first there were considerations to intervene directly in Western Ukraine through Poland. Not to fight the Russians, but to secure territory. And I also think that President Putin made it crystal clear in one of his early speeches during the war that such actions would trigger lightning responses. Most likely he was talking about a hypersonic rain over Poland. These intentions died down afterwards. Nevertheless, it seems that Poland is still eager to seize some parts of Ukraine that Poland considers former Polish territories. This, of course, is an interesting fact.
CRIMINAL FOREIGN POLICY
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SPENGLER—Fertility doesn’t explain everything; both Russia and Ukraine had very low fertility when the 2015 Gallup Survey was taken, but relatively high willingness to fight.
The Ukraine war engages a few hundred thousand combat troops on the same land where millions fought during World War II. When the Soviets recaptured Kharkov in 1943, they threw 1.2 million men at the city and lost 200,000 of them. Russia has perhaps a hundredth of that number around the city today.
For all the demands on America’s NATO allies to bulk up their armies, the opposite is happening. Japan and Germany, the American allies with economies big enough to make a difference in defense spending, are quietly abandoning their commitments to higher defense outlays.
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PEPE ESCOBAR—Michael Hudson once again has reminded everyone with a brain that the running NATO warmongering show has nothing to do with peaceful internationalism. It’s rather about “a unipolar U.S. military alliance leading toward military aggression and economic sanctions to isolate Russia and China. Or more to the point, to isolate European and other allies from its former trade and investment with Russia and China, making those allies more dependent on the United States.”
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PAUL EDWARDS—What he can and must be blamed for is his long, disgraceful, and devious career as a phony, smarmy, glad-handing flack for Big Money as the Senator from MBNA, his vulgarly cynical two-faced record on race relations, his Chickenhawk cheerleading for every military crime and folly, his rah-rahing for our fubar debacles in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and finally, now, in his dotage, funding and embracing mass murder by Nazi Israel in Gaza and a grossly evil proxy war in Ukraine that bids fair to trigger World War III.
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MAIN DESK—BIDEN’S BIG BOY SUMMIT—The roundtable discusses Biden’s carefully scripted but underwhelming “Big Boy” press conference, which, to no one’s surprise, turned out much more an electoral campaign speech—often mumbled—than a presidential presser, the whole concoction punctuated by hilarious gaffes that Biden’s mental deterioration now make almost inevitable (like confusing Zelensky with Putin—of all people). In addition, guest Jeff Brown paints a comprehensive picture of the global strategic situation, with a focus on Asia, where America’s futile attempts to surround China with military bases and alliances in order to stop its rise to global prominence, (already a fait accompli), is opening yet another front for a major kinetic war threatening humanity with nuclear Armageddon. A SECOND VIDEO-THE WEAPONISATION OF IGNORANCE—is also part of this outstanding package.