Ukraine: A Window into the Crumbling Foundations of Full Spectrum Dominance
A Window into the Crumbling Foundations of Full Spectrum Dominance
[Image: an extract from the Military Summary channel, showing the fortified positions west of Donetsk City, formerly of Ukraine, are placed over the pentagon from the title image of Caitlin Johnstone’s article discussing the elements of narrative control.]
Publication date: 2022-07-04
Update 2022-07-05: A sentence was added to include a reference to Jonathan Cook’s just published brilliant article on the relationship between military intelligence and establishment media. Cook’s article is added to Sources also. Other sources are include an article from MoonOfAlabama and the latest from The Duran, an interview with Larry Johnston. An update has also been added covering a masterful trolling and an imbecilic provocation.
Update 2022-07-12: Added a video source by Kevork Almassian, who reads and analyzes an excellent article by Jeffrey Sachs. Also, the South China Post intervies John Pilger, who needs no honorifics.
An Observation
Russia has a standing army of a million with 2.5 million in reserve. A very large percentage of her standing army have been rotated into and out of Ukraine. This means that Russia currently has the best equipped, very well trained, and now most active combat experienced army in the world. The west's failure to employ diplomatic means to resolve the Ukrainian conflict but rather to fuel it results in two outcomes: even more of former Ukrainian territory will join Russia either directly or in alliance, and Russia will have the best military anywhere. They have trialed and demonstrated their hyper-sonic precision missiles, their front line forces of infantry, armoured formations and artillery are practiced and their logistics are honed.
Ukraine is phase 3. In Georgia during the 2008 provocation Russia learned that she needed to evolve her tactics. Her victory came at terrible cost to local populations and infrastructure. In Syria she learned of NATO’s proxy war methods of placing military formations in civilian areas to generate media outrage against attacks, and how to counter these laws of war violating tactics.
In Ukraine she is demonstrating her learning. Her combined arms based on detailed intelligence are showing a purposeful, horrifying grind. Russia controls the “battlespace” and the tempo of operations. The twice demonstrated lesson of not fighting Russia in a “land war in Asia” is repeating before our eyes.
Ukraine Conflict Update
In recent weeks various political statements by Ukraine office holders and supporters in the "west" stridently emphasized the importance of the Lysychansk Agglomeration and the city of Severdonentsk. Note that not only has that city fallen under Russian/DPR/LPR control but the main City of Lysychansk itself. Within the larger city, one small pocket of completely surrounded resistance is negotiating their terms of surrender.
Russia and the local LPR/DPR forces have already moved on to the next major town of Siversk. From there, they will be able to move west and gain fire control over the key road, M103, which links the next two key objectives of Slavyansk and Bakhmut.
[Image: a screenshot from the excellent Military Summary’s analysis of the conflict in Ukraine for 2022-07-03. The circle highlights the town of Siversk which is the current focus of the conflict as it moves from Lugansk into the Donetsk oblast. To the east is the newly “liberated” Lysichansk.]
Despite the continued shelling of civilian targets in Donetsk city from heavily fortified positions on its west, the Russian tactical approach is clear. This heavily fortified line will not be attacked frontally, but encircled from the rear. This tactic of the "cauldron" has become a theme of Russia's military doctrine during the campaign. With this tactic and the quality of her soldiers and supply lines, Russia is winning. She is methodically moving towards her objectives. Lugansk now controls all of its oblast. The taking of the two towns connected by the M103 will largely secure the Donetsk oblast and encircle the fortified positions to the west of the capital city.
This outcome is a foregone conclusion and will occur during the northern summer. The result will be the completion of the recapture of both the Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts and another serious defeat for the already depleted Ukrainian forces.
Scott Ritter reports the current death/injury ratios for Ukraine and Russia are 10 to 1 in Russia’s favour. Ukraine has reported numbers in the range of 500 casualties a day. She cannot sustain this fight. Sending poorly trained territorial defence unit personnel into the range of Russian artillery is self defeating and criminal. The western politicians, primarily Sleepy Joe and Boris the Belligerent, have the blood of Ukrainian youth on their hands.
They are doubly guilty. The USA and NATO’s refusal to take into account Russia’s security concerns and using the Minsk Accords as a political tool to delay and enable Ukraine to dig in fortified positions has left Russia firmly in the belief that the “west” is agreement incapable. Russia has no desire to negotiate a settlement with these duplicitous fools. Biden and Boris’ deceit dooms more youths to their deaths.
G7 and NATO vs. BRICS+, SCO and the Global "South"
Two recent meetings, those of the G7 in the Bavarian Alps and NATO politicians in the Spanish capital, Madrid, highlight a glaring lack of understanding by these leaders of the times in which they live.
The G7 meeting of leading western economies produced a communiqué which blathered about gender inequality and set its sights on capping global oil prices by denying insurance to companies (largely Greek and Cypriot) which transport Russian oil. While gender inequality is an important issue, perhaps best solved by wage equality, no mechanisms are specified. The methods to implement an oil cap are plainly stupid and ineffective. The G7 are tilting at windmills.
The NATO summit seemed more like an expo for weapons sales, with Turkey obtaining approval for some F-16 fighter jets and Greece some F-35's. The formal signing of Sweden and Finland into the NATO embrace was made, though it still depends on the signing of all member parliaments. This may be difficult because Turkey's price is the extradition of some 70 odd individuals, many of whom are nationals, from the two aspirant nations. NATO finally declared itself a "defensive" alliance of globe spanning ambition by setting China in their crosshairs. This too is blather as the G7 economies cannot sustain a war against both Russia and China, as their economies are heavily dependent upon both. While these clowns stride the stage of political theatre more serious developments are happening outside of their fantasy club.
BRICS+, the new G8, and de-dollarization
The BRICS group (Brazil, Russian, India, China and South Africa) have received applications from Iran and Argentina to form an expanded "BRICS+". This BRICS expansion follows that of the international group, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), supporting China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which Iran recently joined as a full member.
Other structures are being considered too. The Speaker of the Russian Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, floated the idea of a "new G8" which is a new grouping replacing South Africa of BRICS with Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey and Iran. While no commitments have been made towards this idea, the nations named possess just under 25% more economic clout than the G7 in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP) calculations.
Much more serious are the continued efforts by both Russia and China to create non-USD international trade mechanisms. Russia's Mir credit card payment system has already been adopted by Venezuela and is soon to be linked into Turkey. China's Union Pay has also been connected. Economic scholars in Russia, with no doubt Chinese input, are proposing a new resource backed international trade currency basket which can then be used in the non-SWIFT parallel systems developed in both Russia and China. This would circumvent the use of the USD for a very large percentage of international trade and would undermine the USD as a default international trade currency, greatly weakening the USA. Russia and China are not the only proponents of creating non-USD international trade currencies. Recently, "Lula" de Silva, proposed the "Sur" (meaning 'south' in Spanish) as a currency for intra Latin American international trade. Lula is likely to win the Brazilian presidential election to be held later this year. Under his likely presidency, and with the BRICS+ expansion including Iran and Argentina, the BRICS+ group will be further empowered.
The recent revolt by numerous Latin American and Caribbean States against the USA's exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from the "Summit of the Americas" shows elements of strength in solidarity, and a weakness of the USA in enforcing its imperial western hemisphere "Monroe Doctrine". That Mexico's president "AMLO" Obrador did not attend is in itself a serious political snub.
USA objections to Russia attending the upcoming G20 meeting in Bali, Indonesia on July 7th and 8th were ignored by the hosting country. Indonesia has invited both presidents from Russia and Ukraine sidestepping the political divides which NATO countries are trying to reinforce. Indonesia has long been a member of the “non-aligned” movement, hosting its first conference in Bandung, April 1955.
[Image: Gamelan is a traditional music of Indonesia. This image is from a performance included below in the Culture section. Indonesia has a rich cultural history, from rebuffing attacks by decendents of Ghengis Khan to maintaining its cultural heritage during the era of European colonial expansion and spice trading. She is the most populated nation of followers of the religion of Islam. Her people celebrate the gifts of their warm climate, fertile soils and rich fisheries with the vibrant colours and voices of their culture.]
A Fragmented Shell of Full Spectrum Dominance
That USA/NATO backed forces in Ukraine would lose against Russia on her doorstep was obvious from the outset. Its all about supply lines. That the "west's" sanctions against Russia have backfired on them due to national economies further interlinked by globalization is also unsurprising. To add to these military and economic defeats for the global hegemon, and the EU in particular, are the shifting political alliances of the "non-aligned" countries.
In which element of the spectrum does the hegemon believe it still retains dominance? Saudi Arabia is selling oil to China in Yuan, as are Iran and Russia. China has secured supply outside of the USD from almost all of the largest oil producers. These supply contracts are the graffiti on the wall.
If the EU technocrats believe that imposing sanctions on Greek and Cypriot shipper's insurance companies is a way to influence or cap global oil prices they have rocks in their heads. The ship has sailed.
There remains one area of "Full Spectrum Dominance", the use of media to control thought and narrative. It too is breaking due to the establishment media's repeated abuse by lying to their audiences. Jonathan Cook is less optimistic of the breakdown in effectiveness of the establishment media.
Professor Emeritus Chomsky recently observed of the Ukraine conflict that:
You’re not allowed to know what they [Russians] are saying. I have never seen a level of censorship like this.
He strengthens his point by reminding us this he is old enough to remember the censorship and propaganda of WWII.
This desperate struggle to avoid reality by hiding commentary upon it has been realized in grotesque forms like the USA Department of Homeland Security's "Disinformation Governance Board". If the empire managers are actually in control of their faculties one must conclude that they are engineering the implosion of western economies, which necessitates a reduction in military capacity. At the same time they are undermining political influence by the stupidity of their policies and their vehicle to voice those policies by undermining the integrity of the established media.
I call incompetence over deliberate suicide. History will be the judge.
Update
Alex Christoforou has been covering a masterful piece of trolling by His Excellency Mr. Mayor Sergey Sobyanin of Moscow. Moscow's city administration renamed the square on which the USA's Embassy is located. The new name renders the USA Embassy's address as:
1 Donetsk Peoples' Republic Square
It took a week for the USA government to choose how to respond to this tar brush being slopped over their address. Instead of just sucking it up and ignoring it, the USA government has decided to change their address to the geographic coordinates of the location.
The address of the USA's embassy in Moscow is now officially listed on the embassy's website in latitude and longitude. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see the address details:
[Image: the footer of the official website of the USA Embassy in Moscow showing its address as 55.75566° N, 38.58028° E. A.K.A, you got trolled. Of note is that they have removed the “Russian Federation” from their address too. Some of us know what international telephony code +7 means, or even for which nation Moscow serves as the capital. “moscow” is in the page url, for crying out loud, and the domain is ru.usembassy.gov. This is pathetic. ]
Thanks to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine we can see the address from a week previously on 2022-06-27:
[Image: when the USA Embassy in Moscow had a street address.]
Trouble in Lithuania
Meanwhile, some group within the USA/NATO/EU apparatus has pressured Lithuania to deny transit of some goods, included in the raft of economic sanctions against Russia, between Russia's mainland and the Russian sovereign territory of the enclave of Kaliningrad. Germany are desperately trying to resolve this idiotic provocation, but had to delay that being known until after the recent NATO sales expo summit, in Madrid to not draw attention away from the spectacle. Needless to say, the partial blockade contravenes decades old treaties between Lithuania and the Russian Federation.
I tip my hat to His Excellency Mr. Mayor Sobyanin for a far more subtle and stylish poke at the USA than this imbecilic provocation of Russia by Lithuania on behalf of their USA/NATO/EU puppet masters.
Sources
'Western' Media Spread Copium To Prolong The War In Ukraine, b., MoonOfAlabama, 2022-07-05
G7 Leaders’ Communiqué, The Press and Information Office of the Federal Government of Germany, 2022-06-28
Control freaks: G7 leaders push to cap oil prices, David M. Herszenhorn and Florian Eder, Politico, 2022-06-28
Russia sanctions, energy, food - what the G7 agreed, Reuters, 2022-06-28
Madrid Summit Declaration, NATO, 2022-06-29
Thousands protest in Madrid against NATO summit, Elena Rodriguez and Michael Francis Gore, Reuters, 2022-06-26
Biden, 'Putin wants Finlandization of NATO'. China slams NATO. Turkey F16s, Greece F35s Update 1, Alex Christoforou, his Rumble channel, 2022-07-01
NATO Steps Up to China Challenge, Robbie Gramer, Clara Gutman, and Jack Detsch, Foreign Policy, 2022-07-01
Behind the Tin Curtain: BRICS+ vs NATO/G7, Pepe Escobar, Unz Review, 2022-06-28
The New G8, Martin Armstrong, HoweStreet.com, 2022-06-15
Brazil’s Lula proposes creating Latin American currency to ‘be freed of US dollar’ dependency, Ben Norton, Multipolarista, 2022-05-04
‘Not G19’: Why Indonesia won’t bar Russia from the G20, Aisyah Llewellyn, Al Jazeera, 2022-04-22
How Spooks and Establishment Journalists are Circling the Wagons, Jonathan Cook, SheerPost, 2022-07-04
‘Not a Justification but a Provocation’: Chomsky on the Root Causes of the Russia Ukraine War, Ramzy Baroud, Antiwar, 2022-07-01
Imperial Narrative Control Has Five Distinct Elements, Caitlin Johnstone, her newsletter, 2022-06-24
Germany Outraged by Lithuania's Blockade of Russian Shipments to Kaliningrad, Reports Suggest, Sputnik, 2022-07-01
Ukraine. Military Summary And Analysis 03.07.2022, Military Summary, their youtube channel, 2022-07-03
Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern: Update on Ukraine, Regis Tremblay interviews Ray McGovern and Scott Ritter, Global Conversations, 2022-06-01
Luhansk, another narrative bites the dust w/Larry Johnson (Live), Alexander Mercouris interviews Larry Johnston, The Duran, 2022-07-05
Larry Johnston is a new guest for The Duran. A most illuminating discussion is held. This reinforces observations made in the “From Archipelagoes to Networks” article.
NATO escalates and edges toward world war, Max Blumenthal interviews Michael Tracey and Aaron Maté, The Grayzone, 2022-07-02
Ukraine Is the Latest Neocon Disaster - Jeffrey Sachs, Kevork Almassian, Syriana Analysis, 2022-07-07
‘This is a war of propaganda’: John Pilger on Ukraine and Assange | Talking Post with Yonden Lhatoo, Yonden Lhatoo interviews John Pilger, South China Morning Post, 2022-07-09
Culture
Sound Tracker - Gamelan (Indonesia), Genelec Music Channel, youtube, uploaded 2017-07-17
The ensemble is Gamelan Semara Ratih of Ubud. Ubud is a small island a few hours ferry ride to the east of Bali, Indonesia: a lesser traveled path.
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