ANDREI RAEVSKY—This “news” was weeks in the making, but this time it is official: the city of Soledar has been liberated by the Wagner PMC (with Russian Airborne Forces blocking the city from the North and South). Why did it take so much time?
First, just as the regular Russian armed forces, the Wagner PMC engages in economy of force tactics, meaning that they try to keep their own casualties to the absolute minimum while trying to degrade the enemy forces. In this case, the Ukronazis threw battalion after battalion into the Russian meat grinder with the hope of being able to maintain their control over Soledar. It is quite clear that the Wagner PMC and the Russian military were more than happy to keep that going on.
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DEBORAH ARMSTRONG—Few things in our world are so horrifying as human trafficking. It’s a worldwide scourge, and according to some reports, Ukraine is one of the worst hot spots for the abduction/kidnapping of people for use in the sex trade or for illegal organ harvest. Even the US State Department admits that “The Government of Ukraine does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking” though it claims that Kiev is “making significant efforts to do so.” Wikipedia even states that “Ukraine is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked transnationally for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor,” though it does not delve into the terrifying world of black-market organ harvesting.
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“The FBI’s penetration of Twitter constituted just one part of a much larger intelligence operation—one in which the bureau offshored the machinery it used to interfere in the 2016 election and embedded it within the private sector. The resulting behemoth, still being built today, is a public-private consortium made up of U.S. intelligence agencies, Big Tech companies, civil society institutions, and major media organizations that has become the world’s most powerful spy service—one that was powerful enough to disappear the former president of the United States from public life, and that is now powerful enough to do the same or worse to anyone else it chooses…”
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Garland examines the many vectors indicating that US foreign policy is doomed to a huge failure in the near future, not just a defeat, as in Vietnam or Afghanistan, but a rank-systemic setback liable to trigger a much-awaited global realignment and the dethroning of the current Hegemon. Referring to the fallout from the revelations about the Minsk agreements, whereby the West, as admitted by Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko himself, lied to Russia to gain time to arm Ukraine to the hilt and, despite the promises, prosecute a genocidal war against the Donbas, with the ultimate goal of regime change in Moscow, Russia is in no mood to negotiate a cease-fire or any peace accord proposed by the West.
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STEVEN SAHIOUNIE—Sanctions against Syria were imposed by the European Union, the United States, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, the Arab League, as well as other countries beginning in 2011. The sanctions were aimed at overthrowing the Syrian government, by depriving it of its resources. U.S.-sponsored ‘regime change’ has failed but the sanctions were never lifted. For 12 years the U.S. and EU have been imposing economic sanctions on Syria which have deprived the Syrians of their dignity and human rights.
