dr jeffery sachs is emerging as a real expert on much of what's transpiring in our political/war struggles;

Ukraine can only be saved at the negotiating table, not on the battlefield. Sadly, this point is not understood by Ukrainian politicians such as Oleg Dunda, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, who recently wrote an oped on this site against my repeated call for negotiations.

Dunda believes that the U.S. will save Ukraine from Russia. The opposite is true. Ukraine actually needs to be saved from the U.S.

Ukraine epitomizes Henry Kissinger’s famous aphorism, “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

Thirty years ago, Ukraine was embraced by America’s neoconservatives, who believed that it was the perfect instrument for weakening Russia. The neocons are the ideological believers in American hegemony, that is, the right and responsibility of the U.S. to be the world’s sole superpower and global policeman (as described, for example, in the Project for a New American Century’s 2000 report, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”).

The neocons chose three methods to push U.S. power and influence into Ukraine: first, meddle in Ukraine’s internal politics; second, expand NATO to Ukraine, despite Russia’s red line; and third, arm Ukraine and apply economic sanctions to defeat Russia.

The neocons whispered a sweet fantasy into Ukraine’s ear back in the 1990s: Come with us into the glorious paradise of NATO-land and you’ll be safe ever after. Pro-European Ukrainian politicians, especially in Western Ukraine, loved the story. They believed that Ukraine would join NATO just as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic had in 1999............more.......

 the empire's arrogance has created more problems for them and parts of the world than might be obvious;

Is not President Putin’s purpose in visiting North Korea and Vietnam now clear in the context of the Eurasian security architecture project?

There perhaps was a momentary shrugging-off of slumber in Washington this week as they read the account of Sergei Lavrov’s démarche to the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow: Russia was telling the U.S. – “We are no longer at peace”!

Not just ‘no longer at peace’, Russia was holding the U.S. responsible for the ‘cluster strike’ on a Crimean beach on last Sunday’s Pentecost holiday, killing several (including children) and injuring many more. The U.S. thereby “became party” to the proxy war in Ukraine (it was an American-supplied ATACM; programmed by American specialists; and drawing on U.S. data), Russia’s statement read; “Retaliatory measures will certainly follow”.

Evidently, somewhere an amber light flashed hues of pink and red. The Pentagon grasped that something had happened – ‘No going around it; This could escalate badly’. The U.S. Defence Secretary (after a pause since March 2023) reached for the phone to call his Russian counterpart: ‘The U.S. regretted civilian deaths; the Ukrainians had full targeting discretion’.

The Russian public however, is plain furious.

The diplomatic argot of ‘there now being a state of betweenness; not war and not peace’ is but the ‘half of it’.

The West has ‘lost’ Russia much more profoundly than is understood......more......

 the empire is toast and you can recognize that by 'reading the tea leaves' so here are some of those leaves;

Andrey Sushentsov, the leading professor at the Russian Foreign Ministry’s MGMO University, and one of Russia’s top geostrategists, headlined on June 28th, “Why the Russia-US conflict will outlast the Ukraine crisis: Moscow must look at Washington as a long-term threat”, and he opened:

The desire of the US to dominate and its refusal to see other countries as equals, willing and able to assume equal responsibility for peace and stability, is the short answer to the question of why Moscow-Washington relations cannot get out of the current state of crisis. This attitude also leads the US to the same difficulties in its relations with China, India and even some of its own allies, such as Turkey. 

The Russian and Chinese position is buttressed by the principle that peace is the result of compromise between the major centers of power, and that without their mutual agreement – without equality, mutual respect, a willingness to recognize each other’s interests, and adherence to the principle of non-interference in internal affairs – a stable order is impossible. The US believes, however, that peace is a deterministic given, and that no special effort is needed to maintain it. This leads to paradoxical solutions: the more weapons, the more peace. The West is not yet ready to become just one of the Atlanteans holding up the sky. It still believes it should be in charge. …

All of that is correct, and the reason why it is, is that ever since George W. Bush became America’s President in 2001, the U.S. Government has been ruled not only by neoconservative (i.e., pro-U.S.-imperialistic) Presidents, but by U.S. Congresses whose seats have been filled more than 95% by fellow-neoconservatives; and, as a consequence, America now spends more than $1.5 trillion each year on its military (half of which is funded outside of the U.S. Defense Deprtment so as to fool the world to think that it’s instead only around $900 billion per year), while its federal Government’s debt has risen by $5 trillion in the past four years, which is only $1.25T per year, which is only 83% as much as the nation’s annual military expenses are, which means that all other expenses by the U.S. federal Government will inevitably soon be reduced each year by around $250 billion per year. Those non-military annual expenses constitute $5T ($6.5T minus $1.5T), so that from now on, the non-military part will be reduced by 5% ($.25T/$5T) each year, or else the growth in the federal debt will be $1.5T per year instead of $1.25T per year, or else the current $1.5T U.S. annual spending on its military will be cut down to $1.25T per year, which would mean that the very top priority of the almost 100% neoconservative U.S. Government, which is its military spending, will have to become annually reduced at least by 5%, by that almost 100% neoconservative Government, which won’t happen unless there is a Second American Revolution, which replaces all of these officials by Government officials who will be like what professor Shushentsov says will be needed in order to prevent yet further build-up to a WW3 global nuclear annihilation....more...........

 sometimes you just don't know what is true but even then there are signs;

Yesterday’s assault by the Democratic National Committee on the Joe Biden campaign has failed.

Thursday night, as soon as the Trump-Biden debate had started, anonymous DNC officials contacted their usual ‘liberal media’ contacts and denounced Biden’s performance. Even those media, like CNN and MSNBC, who have for years denied the obvious problems Biden has had, jumped onto the train. Biden, they said, should retreat.

The New York Times mobilized a slew of its opinion writers to convey the message:

• To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race (Editorial)
• Joe Biden Is a Good Man and a Good President. He Must Bow Out of the Race. (Friedman)
• ‘God Help Us’: 12 Writers Rate Biden’s Performance at the First Presidential Debate
• ‘Is It Too Late?’ Four Writers on What Democrats Should Do About Biden.
• Kamala Harris Could Win This Election. Let Her.
• After That Debate, the Risk of Biden Is Clear
• Is Biden Too Old? America Got Its Answer.

But Joe Biden’s wife, Dr. Jill Biden, resisted the move:

President Biden knew immediately after stepping off the stage in Atlanta on Thursday night that the debate had gone wrong. In those first stricken moments after a raspy, rambling and at times incoherent performance, he turned to his wife, Jill Biden.
…
The first lady’s message to him was clear: They’d been counted out before, she was all in, and he — they — would stay in the race. Her thinking, according to people close to her, was that it was a bad night. And bad nights end.........more.....

 

"If you truly seek the Truth, there is one thing you must have above all else:
An unremitting readiness to admit you may be wrong, about everything..." - JSB

the zionists aren't doing as well in gaza as 'our free press' would have you believe; 

Over 500 Israeli armored vehicles have been either damaged or decommissioned since October in the war on Gaza, according to the Israeli paper Maariv, which like all Israeli media outlets needs to run its reports past IDF censors before publication.

From Middle East Monitor, "Over 500 Israeli armoured vehicles in Gaza damaged since last October: Report":

More than 500 Israeli armoured vehicles have incurred damage in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war last October, the Maariv newspaper has reported, Anadolu Agency reports.

The Hebrew-language Israeli daily said dozens of these military vehicles had been completely decommissioned and removed from service.

The military has established two logistics centres within Gaza, where it has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians in nearly nine months, to repair the vehicles damaged in fighting with Hamas, which conducted a cross-border incursion on 7 October.

The troops responsible for transporting the vehicles are said to be physically and mentally fatigued, the report said, adding: "If they are called upon to occupy southern Lebanon, they will be there, but not in their best condition." Border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon have increased over the past few weeks, with fears of an all-out war.........more....

 pcr points out the 'horns' that french nationalism turns on and where it may lead which won't be positive for the empire;

The Resurrection of French Nationalism?

Paul Craig Roberts

France was the last European nation to lose its sovereignty, and France might be the first to recover its sovereignty. In the 1960s France was still a nation of ethnic French as contrasted with the tower of babel and a geographical entity that it is today.

During the ten-year presidency of Charles De Gaulle (1959-69) France’s policy was one of national independence. DeGaulle refused to join NATO, and he opposed a supranational Europe in which nations would subordinate themselves to a European Union.

French independence could be on the point of return judging from the success of Marine Le Pen’s party yesterday in the current French elections. Her nationalist party has in the first round of the parliamentary elections taken 34% of the votes with President Macron’s centrist coalition receiving only 21% support. If the second round produces similar results, a restoration of French independence is possible.

For many years European governments have worked consistently to overwhelm their ethnic populations with third world immigrant-invaders. It has reached the point where ethnic European women raped by immigrant-invaders fear to report the crime as it can result in a charge of racism or worse against the victim. For example, in response to a gang-rape of an ethnic German female, a 20-year old ethnic German female citizen called one of the gang rapists a “disgraceful rapist pig.” The German citizen was sentenced to jail for defaming an immigrant-invader, a protected species under German law, while the rapist was given a suspended sentence and served no jail time.........more.........