CALIBAN

There have been some momentous developments since the year commenced, but these have rarely made it into the minds of North Americans. It has been said that what is happening in Ukraine is a hybrid war being fought on multiple fronts, one of which is the sphere of information:

[Eurasia Economic Union’s Sergey] Glazyev: My book, The Last World War, that I already mentioned, which was published as far back as 2015, argued that the likelihood of this happening eventually is very high. In this hybrid war, economic warfare and informational/cognitive warfare are key theaters of conflict. On both of these fronts, the U.S. and NATO countries have overwhelming superiority and I did not have any doubt that they would take full advantage of this in due course.

As far as this informational/cognitive warfare is concerned, professor of philosophy Peter Ludlow at Northwestern University published an article which appeared in the New York Times nearly a decade ago entitled The Real War on Reality. I'll quote it in part:

This may sound like nothing so much as a “Matrix”-like fantasy, but it is distinctly real, and resembles in some ways the employment of “Psyops” (psychological operations), which as most students of recent American history know, have been part of the nation’s military strategy for decades. The military’s “Unconventional Warfare Training Manual” defines Psyops as “planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.” In other words, it is sometimes more effective to deceive a population into a false reality than it is to impose its will with force or conventional weapons. Of course this could also apply to one’s own population if you chose to view it as an “enemy” whose “motives, reasoning, and behavior” needed to be controlled.

Returning to the Ukraine conflict, it is therefore essential that North Americans be made aware of the mythology they are being handed under the guise of "information" or "news":

As we witness the collapse of various mainstream narratives, especially those surrounding the U.S./NATO war with Russia in Ukraine, Americans should begin to reassess their understanding of U.S. national leadership. Most American citizens have no notion of the great disparity between what their government does overseas and the stories they hear from its mouthpieces. As a result, Americans unwittingly support all sorts of foreign operations with little or no understanding of what is actually going on. For years, they have been misled by a non-stop propaganda campaign that is only now beginning to crumble. We are experiencing the death throes of the United States’ unipolar hegemony over large parts of world. Until citizens begin to realize the magnitude of their government’s policy deceptions, it will become increasingly difficult to understand the United States’ changing global position and adjust to the effects of the growing negative perception of our country held by many people around the world.

...Go read the whole thing, especially if you are North American. Most of the rest of the world doesn't need such deprogramming since it is more or less innoculated against the West's mythical narrative.

While the above article from The American Conservative is much more extensive in its coverage (via the various valuable links included), one mustn't forget the particulars of the Ukraine conflict. Perhaps of greatest importance is to understand that the war didn't start in 2022; it started in 2014 with the Maidan coup. A succinct eleven minute summary is given by Jeffrey Sachs in the following brief video:



So where do things stand today and where are they headed? I was actually correct earlier this year when I contradicted many claims that Russia was preparing a massive military offensive in Ukraine's Donbass that could possibly even make its way to Kiev. Why should Russia change what it has been doing when it has been relatively successful so far?, I asked. Rather than explain my view, you cannot do better than listen to Brian Berletic:



Finally, it is essential to keep one thing in mind: This "war" extends beyond what is happening in Ukraine, Poland and Eastern Europe. Check out what is happening in the Middle East, re-baptized as Western Asia:

...the reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran is also a precursor to their induction as BRICS members in a near future. To be sure, there is a Russian-Chinese understanding already on this score. The BRICS membership for Saudi Arabia and Iran will radically reset the power dynamic in the international system.

Go read the whole thing. And while you're at it, read this, too.

Labels: imperialism, multipolarism

It has been more than one year since Russia initiated its Special Military Operation in Ukraine. Although there are many assessments available online, there is perhaps no better assessment than the following by Robert Freeman:

UKRAINE AND THE TUNNEL AT THE END OF THE LIGHT

Since I really can't add much more to it than what Mr. Freeman has written (except perhaps THIS), I will just end by saying that I am in full agreement with the vast majority of what American author, former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer, and former United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspector, Scott Ritter says HERE.

Labels: Anti-War, Russia