Ukraine readies spring offensive expected to be largest mobilization since war with Russia began

Europe’s greatest armed conflict since World War II is poised to see the largest mobilized effort since the war in Ukraine began as Kyiv prepares for an anticipated spring offensive. 

Analysts from the Institute for the Study of War believe that based on information released from Russia and Ukraine, previous war movements and historical patterns of ground warfare, Kyiv is readying its troops for another significant offensive push. 

“We are now on the eve of a Ukrainian counteroffensive,” George Barros, a Russia analyst and leader of the Geospatial Intelligence Team for the Institute for the Study of War told Fox News Digital.

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I hope Poland and the Baltics are smart enough to stay out of this. If they join, the war will engulf Eastern Europe—if not all of Europe. The goal in Ukraine was neocon proxy war against Russia with the aim of also killing as many Ukrainians as possible. If Poland and the Baltics join, this too will be their fate. Judging by what we see and not what people say, the true leaders of this war want to destroy Europe as much as they want to destroy Russia. ABN

Playing ‘Fool’s Mate’ on the Grand Eurasian Chessboard — Ron Unz

For at least a generation or more, America’s international policies have increasingly been governed by our Ministry of Propaganda, and the bill may finally be starting to come due.

Last Wednesday the Wall Street Journal reported that Saudi Arabia was joining China’s Shanghai Cooperative Organization, a decision that came just a few weeks after the announcement that it had reestablished diplomatic relations with arch-enemy Iran following negotiations held in Beijing under Chinese auspices. For three generations, the oil rich kingdom had been America’s most important Arab ally, and the lead sentence of the Journal article emphasized that this dramatic development reflected our waning influence in the Middle East.

That same day, Brazil declared that it was abandoning the use of dollars in its transactions with China, its largest trading partner, following an earlier statement that its president planned to meet with China’s leader in support of that country’s efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war, a diplomatic initiative strongly opposed by our own government. Geopolitical dominoes seem to rapidly falling, taking down American influence with them.

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Francois Hollande admits NATO was strengthening Ukraine

Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus forced Francois Hollande to tell the truth.

Pretending to be the former President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, the pranksters Vovan and Lexus contacted the ex-President of France Francois Hollande. “Poroshenko” discussed with Hollande how together they managed to remove Yanukovych and how the Minsk Agreements were just a way to pump weapons into Ukraine.

“Everyone thought it was Putin who was playing for time. No, we were playing for time to strengthen Ukraine,” Hollande said.

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One more vector proving NATO/US/ neocons planned and executed military preparation for the proxy war against Russia that is now playing out. It is very likely Poland and the Baltics will be sucked into this disaster, eventually to be denuded of their populations as Ukraine has. ABN

Why are so many countries all of a sudden turning to the yuan to buy their essential commodities?

Why is the world de-dollarizing so quickly?

Simple — the Russian sanctions.

Russia is the biggest single commodity producer in the world — they have oil AND gas AND agro AND minerals AND anything else.

But because of the sanctions, Russia CANNOT take dollars (or euros) for sales of their commodities.

First, the sanctions disconnected Russia from SWIFT, meaning Russians can’t pay for things they would want to buy with dollars.

So why would Russia take dollars for their commodities — if they can’t buy stuff with those dollars.

Plus their dollar assets get confiscated in the West. So why hold dollars, and dollar assets to park them in, if they will be stolen?

So because of sanctions, Russia has been FORCED to de-dollarize.

Russia didn’t want to de-dollarize — they were obliged.

By the West.

Continue reading “Why are so many countries all of a sudden turning to the yuan to buy their essential commodities?”

‘We are all Chinese’, former Taiwan president says while visiting China

“People on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are Chinese people, and are both descendants of the Yan and Yellow Emperors,” Ma said, in comments provided by his office.

Ma used wording in Chinese meaning people of Chinese ethnicity, rather than referring to their nationality. Descendants of the Yan and Yellow Emperors is an expression referring to a common ancestor for Chinese people.

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This is good reporting and I am surprised to see it. This what Chinese pretty much always mean when they speak about China/ Chinese—they mean the Chinese race. Westerners have very weak racial ties and only somewhat stronger ethnic ties (nation, province, region, etc). Traditional Chinese, as described by Sun Yat-sen, also had weak racial ties, which is how he characterized them. Part of his Three Principles of the [Chinese] People emphasizes the importance of the racial bond among Chinese. Sun thought this was of central importance because it was only through racial unification that China would be able to become great, he believed. I mention this because it is key to understanding China and Chinese people. All Chinese are taught this in detail as children in school.

For Westerners, this is also key to understanding most of the world since people almost everywhere think the way Sun did then and Ma does today. I am not advocating for strengthening white racial identity except in the sense that it is important to understand that this is how almost everyone else in the world thinks. Anti-white ideologies and emotions should not surprise anyone who has studied China or any other non-white society. If I were a white Sun Yat-sen of today, I would say white people very much need to understand the above and also develop a defensive awareness of the racial/ ethnic origins of white/ Western civilization. If not, you will be overrun by peoples who do not even know of any other way to think. ABN

End of unipolarity w/ Jeffrey Sachs, Alexander Mercouris and Glenn Diesen

Predictable surface generalities only. Mercouris joins Sachs in wondering why neocons simply cannot understand that a mutually cooperating multipolar world is what’s really best for them. I do not know enough about Sachs but suspect he is spending time cleaning up his reputation as he sees it appearing in history books sometime in the future. My sense is Mercouris knows there is more going on with neocons than insularity and failure to adapt. I encourage him to at least hint at the violent ideology that actually enlivens them. ABN

The EU’s censorship regime is about to go global

November 16, 2022 was the day that freedom of speech died on the internet. This was the day the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) came into law. Under the DSA, very large online platforms (VLOPs) with more than 45million monthly active users – like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram – will have to swiftly remove illegal content, hate speech and so-called disinformation from their platforms. Or they will face fines of up to six per cent of their annual global revenue. Larger platforms must be DSA compliant by this summer, while smaller platforms will be obliged to tackle this content from 2024 onwards.

The ramifications of this are immense. Not only will the DSA now enforce the regulation of content on the internet for the first time, but it is also set to become a global standard, not just a European one.

In recent years, the EU has largely realised its ambition to become a global regulatory superpower. The EU can dictate how any company worldwide must behave if it wants to operate in Europe, the world’s second-largest market. As a result, its strict regulatory standards often end up being adopted worldwide by both firms and other regulators, in what is known as the ‘Brussels effect’. 

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Xi Jinping warns China is ready to ‘stand guard over world order’ as he holds four-hour Kremlin talks with ‘dear friend’ Putin who says he is ‘open to negotiations’ over Ukraine

Xi Jinping said he was ready to ‘stand guard over a world order based on international law’ as he met Vladimir Putin in Moscow today.

In his first state visit to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine, the Chinese leader spent more than four hours in talks with his ‘dear friend‘ Putin, discussing proposals to end the war previously outlined in a 12-point peace plan.

‘We are always open to negotiations,’ the Russian leader said, welcoming China’s plan to settle his ‘acute crisis’ in Ukraine. 

Xi meanwhile hailed his ‘close ties’ with Russia as Putin said the two countries had ‘plenty of common objectives and tasks’. 

Presented as a ‘journey of friendship, cooperation and peace’, the summit marks the deepening of ties between China and an increasingly isolated Russia, who have relied on Beijing to soften the impact of western sanctions by buying Russian energy and commodities.

The leaders are set to meet again tomorrow for more formal talks. 

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More consequences of wrong-headed and aggressive US foreign policy with domestic affairs just as bad or worse. Sanctions and NATO/ neocon aggression in Ukraine has succeeded in pushing China and Russia closer together. This is a disaster especially when compared to what might have been if USA & Europe had formed an alliance with Russia, which properly is a major part of the West, or was. ABN

Disaster in Ukraine; 100,000 of Ukraine’s best troops dead

Without saying it, the two Alexes describe an ongoing genocidal massacre, a deliberate policy of denuding Ukraine of Ukrainians. I wonder: 1) does someone plan to take the land Russia does not want and/or 2) are we witnessing the runup for what is being planned for all of Europe? The MO is simple: provoke Russia to fight, then let both sides kill each other, then take even more land. ABN