feelin it
Deception, manipulation, sabotage: How the UK works to keep the Ukraine war going
Leaked papers expose a secret military operation that includes planning attacks, suppressing media and brainwashing the British public
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Unless you want to be blind, it is obvious that Ukraine under the Zelensky regime is not remotely a free country. In politics, after massive repression, there are only remnants of an opposition, which face continuing oppression and harassment by the government, as even the French newspaper Le Monde, generally naïve about the Zelensky regime, has reported.
Ukraine’s public sphere is stifled by nationalist propaganda, pressure, and demonstrative, intimidating terror. Before the escalation of 2022, even a robustly propagandistic tool of Western information warfare such as Freedom House could still acknowledge that much: its 2018 report, authored by Ukrainian researcher Vyacheslav Likhachev, identified Ukraine’s Far Right organizations as “a threat to democracy” and “aggressively trying to impose their agenda on Ukrainian society, including by using force against those with opposite political and cultural views.”
Regarding Ukraine’s media, expect not much resistance from there. They are tightly controlled and, often, pro-actively obedient, whether out of misguided conviction, fear, or careerism. Even Ukraine’s Western supporters, as well as some courageous critics in Ukraine, have voiced criticism of the crude propaganda habits of the Zelensky regime.
Make no mistake: The authoritarian features of the rule of Vladimir Zelensky – formerly the object of a veritable Western personality cult that, by now, at least some devotees must feel embarrassed about – are not the result of the large-scale war. The politics of Zelenskyism, to coin an ugly but handy term, were always unusually deceitful and manipulative and, by 2021 at the latest, openly bending toward authoritarianism, as many Ukrainian critics pointed out at the time.
And yet: Imagine a future trial, maybe to be held in Ukraine, of Zelensky and his team. The defense would not be able to do much about their record of corruption, but it would certainly at least try to blame some of the former leader’s underhanded and tyrannical tendencies on the war. It would be a stretch, but lawyers have to do their best, even for the worst of clients.
In the case of the Western users of the Zelensky regime, though, such a defense would not be merely far-fetched but completely absurd. Yet a defense some of them at least might come to need. Take for instance the case of Britain’s Lieutenant General Charlie Stickland and his shadowy but numerous associates.
The unfortunately important general – boasting of his pirate ancestors and in charge of “UK-led joint and multinational overseas military operations” – and his motley crew have just been the object of an investigative exposé by Grayzone reporter Kit Klarenberg. In, for now, two articles, the Grayzone has detailed how, in 2022, Stickland set up a below-the-radar network of “an assortment of leading academics, authors, strategists, planners, pollsters, comms, data scientists and tech.” Under the name Project Alchemy and overlapping and liaising with another group of wannabe keyboard Ninjas calling themselves – I kid you not – “the Elders,” this conspiratorial group has worked on, in essence, keeping the Ukraine war going at any price and by means foul and fouler.
Based on leaked documents, the Grayzone’s reporting is revealing in more ways than can be discussed here. Yet, as we are dealing with prose authored by militant bureaucrats and self-weaponizing intellectuals in the land of George Orwell, that old stickler for the English language, we would be remiss not to appreciate their bizarre lingo. It brings together a certain jejune rugby field boyishness – “mischief” is proudly being made – with a militarized sociolect of corporatese: “fusion players” and “sideways thinkers” get “badged” and “meshed in” to “move at pace,” and – greatest pride of the eminent executive – stand ready to work over the weekend!
Doing what exactly? All kinds of things, really, and all based on one stupid yet once immensely popular assumption: that the proxy war in Ukraine could be leveraged to defeat Russia, reduce it to geopolitical insignificance, impose regime change on it, and even break it up. Some, including the new de facto foreign minister of the EU, Estonia’s Kaja Kallas – imagine Annalena Baerbock, but without the brilliant intellect – still seem to be on that political equivalent of an LSD trip gone terribly wrong. What a hangover it will be one day, probably soon.
https://www.rt.com/news/608453-uk-ukraine-project-alchemy/
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In Britain, highlights of Project Alchemy groupthink included hatching plans for stay-behind sabotage networks and recommending the example of the underground “Gladio” operations that NATO ran in Western – not, please note, Eastern – Europe during the Cold War. Strictly speaking, Gladio was an Italian label, while the same bad idea had different names in other countries. By now, though, Gladio stands for a whole plethora of clandestine organizations set up, ostentatiously, to engage in partisan resistance in case of a Soviet attack and occupation.
You may feel that, in principle at least, for generals, preparing for the possibility of future partisan warfare is not an objectionable activity. Yet the issue is that, in reality, the Gladio operations were not only extremely dubious in constitutional and legal terms, as being entirely beyond democratic control and oversight, as well as tied to foreign intelligence services. In addition, these networks served to fight a dirty war against the domestic left, including by terrorism, false-flag attacks, the systematic use of far-right conspirators and terrorists, and support for military coups.
An influential, black-ops-connected British general and his chums wanting to learn lessons from Gladio for underground networks in Ukraine? The country with the best-armed (compliments of the West), most whitewashed and naively underestimated (compliments of the Western media and self-weaponizing intellectuals of the Anne Applebaum/Tim Snyder variety), most aggressive, and most militarized far right in the world? Swimming in arms right next to an EU-NATO Europe they will soon feel bitterly disappointed by? What could possibly go wrong? But maybe Charlie 'Pirate' Stickland is “fusion”-”thinking” “sideways” in Churchillian terms: “Set Europe Ablaze!” Yet Stickland seems to have overlooked that Churchill wanted to set it ablaze against the Nazis, not with them.
All of this is, in and of itself, very bad, if unsurprising, news. But Project Alchemy has been prolific, producing lousy ideas the way Russian industry is churning out artillery shells and missiles. There also were: a frank emphasis on “creatively using” – let’s be honest: breaking – the law so as to get silly violent things done, including “deniable ops”; a daft idea to attack the Kerch Bridge, as if Russia would not strike back (both have by now happened, the militarily useless attack and the painful payback); an anticipatory strategy of how to manipulate the British public in case it should get tired of pumping money into the proxy war; attempts to undermine BRICS-plus (thinking big and bigger); plans to shut down Russian media in the West, obviously; and, last but not least, an aggressive strategy to use covert lawfare and deliberate financial pressure to bring down Western critical media as well, including, as it happens, the Grayzone. Say what you will, but Stickland and company seem to have had a foreboding from where exactly they would get their richly deserved come-uppance.
It would be tempting to think of this wave of disinformation and manipulation in the West as a kind of “Ukrainization.” As if the West had caught the contagion of the Zelensky regime’s very bad habits. But to be fair, the West has its own, well-established tradition of waging war by massive lying on the home front. In 2019, it was the Washington Post, usually hewing close to the American government line, that ran a series of in-depth stories detailing how, during the West’s long war in Afghanistan, started almost two decades before, the US had been “at war with the truth.” Suddenly, clearly in preparation of the impending Western retreat, readers were allowed to learn that while “officials constantly said they were making progress,” they “were not, and they knew it.”
And the name of that Washington Post series? The Afghanistan Papers. That, of course, was a reference to the famous Pentagon Papers, an internal and classified Defense Department review of US policy and warfare in Vietnam that was leaked to the New York Times by the historic – and heroic – whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who suffered severe, criminal attempts to silence, and in effect, destroy him. The long American intervention, begun indirectly in the 1940s and escalating into one of the most brutal US campaigns of the twentieth century in the 1960s, only ended with the total defeat of both Washington and its South Vietnamese proxy in 1975.
3 of 2 (kek)"body too long"
The New York Times began to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Once again, as with the later bloody Western fiasco in Afghanistan, the moment of truth – some truth – came late, only toward the end of a policy catastrophe that had long been supported by compliant mainstream media. The Grayzone is considered alternative media, and its reporters are doing a much better job at real journalism than their competition in the mainstream version. As to them, they clearly have not yet reached the stage of always-too-late revelation that, during the proxy wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan, was marked by 1971 and 2019, respectively.
How do we know? They are ignoring the Grayzone’s sensational revelations about a military-think-tank-industry conspiracy to undermine the law, deliberately manipulate the public, and wage proxy war in a way that is both dirty and bound to backfire very badly on the West itself. One more sign that all too many in the West are not yet ready to face reality, even while the Ukrainians they claim to help but only use keep dying.
Starbucks opens cafe overlooking North Korea
Visitors to the chain’s latest outlet must undergo an identity check before getting their venti frappuccinos
Starbucks has opened a cafe atop a lookout point on the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), allowing curious patrons to sip pumpkin spice lattes while gazing into the nuclear-armed North.
The cafe, which opened on Friday, is located in the Aegibong Peace Ecopark in Gimpo city, about 32km north of Seoul, South Korea. From its terrace, visitors can look across a section of the Han River that is considered neutral waters and into the North Korean town of Kaephung, just over a kilometer away.
On a clear day, Reuters reported, visitors can use telescopes to observe North Korean villagers going about their day across the world’s most heavily militarized border.
The Korean War was halted by an armistice agreement in 1953, but never formally ended. The armistice left the Korean Peninsula divided along the 38th parallel, with the communist North and capitalist South separated by the 4km-wide DMZ. Both sides maintain warrens of fortifications and lookout posts along the DMZ, and North Korea is believed to have more than 10,000 artillery pieces dug in along its side of the border, including in the mountains behind Kaephung.
Some 6,000 of these guns are in range of major South Korean population centers, according to a 2020 report by the RAND Corporation, a think tank funded by the US military. If a war broke out between the two Koreas, more than 205,000 people could be killed in Seoul, Incheon, Gimpo, and other South Korean cities within an hour, the RAND report estimated.
The Aegibong Peace Ecopark sits on the site of ‘Hill 154’, which was fiercely contested during the Korean War and changed hands multiple times throughout the three-year conflict. Owing to its proximity to the DMZ, visitors to the park must fill out an entry form and submit to a background check by the Korean Marine Corps.
According to the mayor of Gimpo, bringing Starbucks to the DMZ is a show of strength for the South, demonstrating the “robust security on the Korean Peninsula through the presence of this iconic capitalist brand.”
The cafe opened at a time of heightened tensions between the two Koreas. Earlier this year, Pyongyang began launching balloons filled with trash and excrement south over Gimpo and Seoul, in response to the South dropping propaganda leaflets into Northern territory. North Korea then announced that artillery units along the border had been placed on standby to “open fire,” before blowing up sections of road leading to South Korea last month.
READ MORE: Korean Peninsula facing nuclear destruction – Pyongyang
Pyongyang claims to have severed the roads in response to repeated South Korean drone flights through its airspace, and overt joint US-South Korean military exercises earlier in the month. North Korea considers these exercises “provocative war drills for aggression,” the country’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
https://www.rt.com/news/608461-starbucks-dmz-north-korea/
Zelensky demands Western officials avoid contact with Putin
The Ukrainian leader has cited ‘EU unity’ as a reason to bow to his demands
Western politicians should not communicate with Russian President Vladimir Putin because it could open Pandora’s box, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has told British TV.
In an interview with Sky News on Friday, Zelensky said he is worried that Putin’s rhetoric could undermine unity in the West regarding support for Ukraine.
“If we will lose this [unity], I am afraid that we can lose everything,” the Ukrainian leader said.
When the Russian president “speaks about something, some leaders in the world are afraid,” he stated. “When they are afraid, they begin to communicate with their societies… they divide their societies. Then they communicate with other leaders and divide the unity in Europe.”
According to Zelensky, this leads to more pressure from Moscow through actions such as Oreshnik missile strikes or updates to its nuclear doctrine. The recently approved document allows for a nuclear response by Russia to a conventional attack from a non-nuclear state backed by a power that possesses weapons of mass destruction.
Zelensky said he was not surprised when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reached out to Putin for the first time in nearly two years in mid-November, noting that Scholz later explained to him that “he wants to speak and to understand what Putin is thinking about.” Zelensky responded that he “cannot support this as it opens this new page – this Pandora’s box,” meaning that other Western officials will begin to talk to the Russian president as well.
There are politicians who would like to communicate with the Russian president simply because they are looking to be “on the first page of newspapers” and for “everybody [to] speak about them that they can communicate with Putin,” Zelensky claimed.
Putin commented on his phone call with Scholz during a press conference in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana on Thursday, saying their conversation mainly focused on Ukraine.
“There was nothing unusual about it, I think, either for him, or for me. He laid out his position, I laid out mine, and each of us has remained of the same mind on this matter,” the Russian president said.
“Strange as it may seem, we stay in communication with many countries with which we have very strained relations. Indeed, I did not have direct contacts with the leaders of these countries. But I am aware that some of them are also willing to resume contacts with us, and to discuss the ongoing developments in Ukraine bilaterally and in the pan-European context.”
READ MORE: Zelensky has failed his country – Ukrainian-born US lawmaker
Putin stressed that Moscow remains open to contact with these countries. “We, including me, have never turned down such contacts and will never turn them down in the future. If anyone is willing to talk, they are welcome to do so,” he said.
https://www.rt.com/news/608458-zelensky-putin-scholz-ukraine/
Top Russian official proposes potential targets for Oreshnik missiles
Moscow’s new weapon could be used to hit Vladimir Zelensky’s HQ in Kiev, Aleksey Zhuravlyov has said
Moscow could use its new Oreshnik ballistic missile to strike Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s office in Kiev, senior Russian MP Aleksey Zhuravlyov has said.
Russia revealed the Oreshnik to the world on November 21, when it was used to hit a weapons factory in the Ukrainian city of Dnepr. President Vladimir Putin said the strike was a response to Ukrainian attacks deep inside Russia with Western-supplied missiles, including the ATACMS and Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG.
“I’m confident that the Russian Defense Ministry has already compiled a list of worthy targets on the territory of Ukraine,” Zhuravlyov, the first deputy chair of the parliamentary defense committee, wrote on Telegram on Thursday.
“There is the presidential office on Bankovaya Street [in Kiev], where Zelensky was hiding in a bunker during the first days [of the conflict]. I’m curious whether the Oreshnik can destroy this impenetrable bunker,” he wrote.
Zhuravlyov said the headquarters of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Army in Kiev could be a suitable target.
He added that Russia should strike “logistics hubs for Western weapons in Lviv Region, the Yavorov Military Base, where Western mercenaries are being trained, the bridges across the Dnieper used to transport equipment to the front line.”
Putin said this week that potential Oreshnik targets include military sites, defense factories, and “decision-making centers in Kiev.”
At a press conference during his trip to Kazakhstan on Thursday, Putin described the missile as an extraordinarily powerful weapon, comparing its effects to the impact of a large meteorite. “Anything located in the epicenter is reduced to dust,” he said.
Outgoing US President Joe Biden officially lifted the restrictions on the use of ATACMS by Ukraine earlier this month. Putin described the move as a dangerous escalation that “changes the nature” of the conflict. He has argued that sophisticated missiles such as ATACMS cannot be fired without the involvement of Western personnel, which is tantamount to NATO’s direct participation in the conflict.
https://www.rt.com/russia/608435-russia-potenatial-oreshnik-targets/
Gojira Pepe
anyanon know is that the Syrian Armed Forces shooting the Free Syrian Army or vice versa?
I can't find anything about the yellow arm bands.
Thanks
I see tha US and NATO are backing the "People's Army" rebels, so I guessed they are prolly the main problem.
Don't know about Assad but it looks like he was democratically elected before this arab spring, color revolution started. If there is a color revolution happening, it sort of narrows down the good from the bad.