November 4, 2023 | by Eriс
Another day and another war. And more.
People, we got World War III in the making. It flared up in the Holy Land, as Hamas killers attacked Israel and murdered its citizens. The carnage was unbelievable and retribution is a must. Supplied, trained and guided by Iran, Hamas must be no more, now or ever. But all sorts of players are now jumping into the ring, some directly and some through proxies. Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen are being drawn in on the side of Hamas; China and Russia will surely take part for their own vile political reasons. North Korea will, without doubt, supply weapons to the parties wanting to hurt Israel. Some countries, like Turkey, are casting an angry eye at the “Zionist entity” and will probably jump in when the time comes. On the other side – the USA, Britain, France and several other European nations are likely to lend military support and intelligence to Israel. In for a dime you’re in for a dollar. They will all be rapidly drawn deeper into the bigger war that is about to break out. No one will stay put or at arms length.
Iran has opened up a website where it invites individuals from all over to sign up as volunteers, to fight the Zionist enemy. In a few short days over 4 million militant individuals, most of them from the Muslim world no doubt, had expressed desire to attack a country they hate with a passion. Even the Taliban, the entity that rules Afghanistan these days, had expressed desire to join in. This doesn’t look good and the big war hasn’t even started. Russia surely has a hand in all of this. It has always openly supported Hamas and can now reap some dividends by diverting attention from itself in the war it wages in Ukraine. China is testing the waters of the Western resolve, in case Taiwan becomes its future target.
Instead of quickly bringing war in Ukraine to the end, defeating Russia, the collective timid West now has two wars on its hands, splitting attention and material resources it must divide between Ukraine and Israel when this moves further. Iran issued a statement that it will partake in the action of its proxies against Israel. The shadow war between them would soon become an open one.
(more…)
September 8, 2023 | by Eriс
The Hand that Giveth
The Russian-Ukrainian war drags on for the second year. It could have been over by now, if it wasn’t for the infinitely cautious, weighted, measured approach by some countries that support Ukraine. We can’t say we have a deep understanding of how it all works. Yet, if our judgment is to be based on how it all unfolds, we can say this: while Ukraine is getting significant military support, it is not getting military aid in the volume that would permit it to win.
We are past the cautious “lets see how it all unfolds before we commit” stage, of February-March 2022, when Russia invaded. Ukraine and its people proved themselves to be very capable of defending and winning back their country, slowly but surely. Despite significant military losses they don’t talk about and with civilian losses they do inform the world about.
(more…)February 27, 2023 | by Eriс
War and Peace. Misunderstood
“A bad peace is better than a good war,” a bit of old wisdom.
The war between Ukraine and Russia is a year old. It started when Russia invaded its neighbor back on Feb 24, 2022. Since that time, it has committed nothing but the most despicable destruction of cities and villages, murdered thousands of people, arrested, tortured and executed anyone it deemed a threat; sent millions into exile – they left the country just to stay alive. Russia brought destruction and ruthless plundering and annexed large chunks of its Ukraine territory. Russia kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian children to be adopted by Russian families, so eliminate any claim to being Ukrainians. Uncounted thousands were forced-moved from their homeland into Russia, for involuntary resettlement there, without much in the way of state support. Ukraine citizens were moved to the Russian Far East, where desperate people find themselves thousands of kilometers away from their motherland. Russia and its army are guilty of every imaginable war crime and then some. They leave complete and utter destruction in their wake, with dead cities and farmlands, decimated and demolished in trash-like conditions. Its armed forces leave behind mines and booby traps of every imaginable kind, so civilians would be killed long after the battles move elsewhere. Russia aims at and attacks multi-story city building, to inflict maximum damage on civilians with drones and rockets they launch from far away. They do the same against infrastructure elements (power stations, water supply and heat-supplying municipal installations), to create greater suffering for the Ukrainian population in the winter. In the captured areas they force people to accept Russian citizenship, and once this is complete, they draft them into the army, advanced age notwithstanding.
December 16, 2022 | by Eriс
Other People Thoughts
You probably have heard this all before in loose tidbits, here and there.
Much is being said about the war in Ukraine these days. So much thinking and re-thinking is going on into what takes place it is hard to come up with something original. Yet people do. A good portion of what is being described below was collected on Twitter, so some of the original thoughts are not our own. But we found it fascinating enough to mesh it with our own thinking on the subject.
The war is a litmus test of a kind. It is revealing what was hiding in plain view. It is as if a cover was removed from an old mirror in the far corner of a house we live in, and we get a good look at ourselves. This careful examination of the world’s face was long overdue. It is quite revealing.
What we once considered solid turned out to be rotten to the core (Russia). Where we expected to see weakness we found fortitude and strength (Ukraine). In place of unquestionable unity, the European Union, there exists a bunch of states, driven by their individual agendas, some good and some not so honorable. We learn that rigid neutrality can be as bad as evil itself (Switzerland). State-level duplicity is something that lives everywhere (Turkey, India, Germany, Hungary, Israel, China, even in the U.S.A.)
We learned that President Biden and his administration are totally unwilling to take any political risks to end the war sooner. They help Ukraine, yet deny it the kind of weapons that will tip the scale, afraid to get involved beyond carefully measured participation. It’s cowardice. History shall reveal if it was political caution or something more sinister.
The UN continues to be impotent. When it needs to be powerful it is not, and this isn’t about to change.
That “Amnesty International” organization must live on subsistence from Russia, else it would not be saying what it does. The self-serving weak “International Red Cross” is concerned with its own viability only; and the funds it collects in the name of good causes are mostly spent on itself. The support it lends to the people in need is incidental and rare.
November 17, 2022 | by Eriс
Mid-Term Fraud
Our country just had its mid-term elections, which precede the general elections in 2024.
There isn’t much to say, except that they were fraudulent, again.
We are not basing this statement on any specific knowledge, except, perhaps, understanding on how this all went down. What took place during the previous Presidential elections, is being re-played. Unsuspecting public is expected to imbibe at all.
August 18, 2022 | by Eriс
Breaking Up the Bad. Part II
Continued. Read Part I here
Too many countries of South America, Asia and Africa continue to be the “clients” of that nation. They carry on with trade and nourish political connections for their own reasons. Turkey is making billions of dollars by openly breaking the embargoes. Countries of the Middle East are happy to receive stolen Ukrainian wheat transported to them by the Russian ships. China and India are buying Russian oil and gas in huge quantities. Among Russia’s “friends” these days are Iran, Syria, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan and Eritrea. Mexico is calling for the ceasefire in Ukraine, preserving land-grabbing status-quo for Russia. Russia belongs to a BRIC trade group of nations. Instead of kicking Russia out, several nations are looking to join that body right now. Even the EU can’t stop buying Russia’s gas just yet. Isolating Russia is hard. There is no unity among the nations when it comes to the Russian Federation. Perhaps in time, the USA and the wiser Europeans would apply enough pressure to close these gashing spigots, yet they remain open as the war perpetrated by that country is going on.
There is a layer of population over there that would be mostly immune to any western sanctions. These are the people who live “hand to mouth” in small villages and towns all over the country. To them heat comes from wood, cooking – from coal and wood-fired ovens – but not gas. Toilet facilities are outhouses. They have no running water. Food is what you forage in the forest or gather from your own garden plot. They earn little money. Western sanctions mean nothing to them. They have no or limited access to the internet, TV is their primary source of information. A lot of Russians live like that.
(more…)August 13, 2022 | by Eriс
Breaking Up the Bad. Part I
What do we, people of the Western world, do when the war in Ukraine is over?
It’s not an easy matter to tackle. We were contemplating to write about this subject for some time. The war is still very much going on in Ukraine. People die and homes are destroyed. Mayhem, murder, massacres. It’s a horror movie. One day it will be over and, barring other conflicts flaring up, we can bring ourselves to start living with post-war realities. Many changes are coming: new political and economic alliances; trade agreements; recognition of who are “friends or foes”, shifts of world economies to alternate energy sources and suppliers and many more.
We don’t go back to the way life was before. We must accept that it would be different in many ways. Any war is akin the loss of innocence. It’s still you, but a more mature, sans illusions; perhaps a wiser person and the rose-colored glasses are gone.
(more…)June 13, 2022 | by Eriс
German Tank
Latest news out of Germany makes us feel very angry.
The leadership of that country is playing every game to preclude heavy weaponry from being delivered where is needed the most – Ukraine. They pledged to supply the armaments that can turn the tide of war. Yet, none had been delivered in 100 days, none. We wrote about it before.
Germany prohibits other NATO members from transferring German-made tanks and howitzers to Ukraine. Several have tried and failed. “German Tank” is becoming a meme, as something promised but unobtainable.
(more…)June 7, 2022 | by Eriс
A Divided Europe
Europe is one, and yet it is divided in more ways than we care to count.
The countries of the European Union share common currency, common trade space that implies free flow of goods and services as well as commons bureaucracy. They share common political views and aspirations, at least on paper.
But reality is quite different
Not all is well there. The war in Ukraine has revealed fissures and how ill prepared and partitioned the countries are in the face of a common enemy. Each nation has their own political agenda and in many case it is different from others.
(more…)May 4, 2022 | by Eriс
The Dirty Business of War. Part III
Continued. Read Part I here and Part II here
There comes, slowly but surely, this late understanding that Putin’s Russia must be dismantled. Its injurious policies cannot go on. And as long as Vladimir Putin is in power, the world is in peril. Not just Ukraine – the entire world. Today there is no universal view how this is to be dealt with, except sanctions; they should choke the economy of that country, limit its ability to wage wars, propagate harmful agendas everywhere it gets a foothold – Middle East and Africa; or in faraway lands like Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The Russian Federation spawns wars, political instability, and along with oil and gas exports political pressure; it introduces corruption into local scenes and bribes politicians to accept its view of the world. But they have nothing to offer, except killing, robbing and pilfering. Supporting local dictators is as far as it gets. It has plans for other countries and we should have our own plans, to make sure Russia has no plans for us. No country in the world wants to confront Russia militarily on its own territory and we don’t think it is needed at this time. But it is not out of the realm of possibility with demented man at the helm over there. The world should be involved. This cancer must be removed, once and for all. It cannot be left alone, because in several years it will start another war.
