19 Comments

Thanks for covering this in depth! I only caught it briefly on the radio at the weekend.

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author

Oh well, it's the Sunday edition, hence that's the point: as little exposure as possible. Close second to Friday evening, I suppose.

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Feb 28, 2023Liked by epimetheus

military taxes imposed on a servile peasantry who was taxed without representation - servile of course, all the more spirited peasants fled that land mass over the last couple of centuries.

Might I remind you of the Twelve Articles. Not that I think similar will happen in Europe, first of all there are hardly any peasants left (those who can take care of themselves) but that its possible most of the rest of the non-peasant servile public in Europe might take a leap of faith and rebel.

Start by planting a garden, the black nobility will certainly cut off the flow of food from their fascist agribusiness machine of the nobility's long-term cut burn and poisoning land investments in response. Actually they are doing this anyway so one might as well get a jump on it.

Here in the USA I would rather term the black nobility warmongering neocons.

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We Germans are like starving inmates of a prison camp, fantasizing about fantastic feasts.

We are fantasizing about having 60 aircraft, 20 ships, 20,000 soldiers, and 7,000 vehicles by 2025.

We are fantasizing about building 4 to 5 onshore wind engines per day until 2030 (https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article243605655/Scholz-kuendigt-Plan-zum-Ausbau-der-Windkraft-an.html), although the net increase has been less than one per day in recent years.

We are fantasizing about 15 million electric cars until 2030, and using them as emergency batteries, but neither have the ressources to build them nor the demand (https://dochdoch.substack.com/p/zeugen-elektros).

Can somebody please free us and give us something nourishing?

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That's smaller than the current strength of the swedish military, without the Hemvärn (Heimat-schutz or Home Guard) included.

And should the Landstorm be called up again as it was in 1914 and 1939, that places almost all swedish men between 21-65 under arms.

How is it Germany with its much larger population has a smaller army (20 000 soldiers) than Sweden has police officers (24 000)?

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Still, that means these numbers should be 'fully operational' (whatever NATO means by that) as part of a NATO Battlegroup or whatever. The way this will be achieved is by depriving more 'regular' units of material and equipment, hence it's a weird way of 'doing' readiness.

Also, these NATO forces are typically quite 'light' in terms of armaments, which makes them very mobile. How much this would 'help', or be of use, vs. a conventional combined arms force such as Russia's is, I'd argue, quite limited in scale and scope.

What this means, in effect, is that military planning will be re-done virtually completely, hence do expect additional hickups on the way…

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You mean for Germany I take it?

We've never ever stopped training for a war with Russia you know, despite what our politicians claim.

Subjugating the corrupt borderline bankupt Ukraine is very much a different affair than taking on the Baltic Nine or the central axis of power (Germany, Italy, France and earlier perfidious Albion) of the EU.

While Russia may have "thousands of tanks", those figures are a) russian claims, b) claims of warmongering journalists and pundits who think anything with armour or on tracks is a "tank", and c) Irak had something to the tune of 20:1 in tanks/armoured vehicles during the first war after the invasion of Kuwait. That the vehicles were soviet T-55, german PzIVs made into tractors and swedish SAAB Scania-trucks made into half-tracks for the SCUDs somehow never made the news before the war...

Problem was the same for Irak as it is for Russia now: obsolete equipment, poorly trained and unmotivated troops.

I would even dare to claim that Sweden, Norway, Finland, the baltic states, Poland and Germany would do better against Russia, defence or offence, without US support than with.

Because when was the last time the US actually /won/ a war? They know how to start them and they know how to destroy, but they don't have what it takes to win. They never did, outside Hollywood.

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Oh, the Germans did: they seem to want to believe the crap they're fed by their politicians, hence--the Bundeswehr is basically far from ready.

As to the hardware, well, sure, point well taken. I'd add that it would be quite a different thing, morale-wise, for, say, Poles, Germans, French etc. to defend their homeland, as opposed to roll into the Donbass to help one's fellow Russians. In addition, the notion of air superiority would be something else, conventionally speaking.

I'd guess that any such fight would quickly escalate to the nuclear level, and then it'd be quite irrelevant who started that.

And, yes, I do think the US wouldn't be able to 'stomach' the scale and intensity of the fighting.

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Mar 1, 2023Liked by epimetheus

To add a little credibility to my claims: the recently published interview in YLE (finnish media channel) with high-echelon officers who are in Ukraine fighting as volunteers, where the finns mercilessly points out that ukrainian troops and command staff are pure rubbish since they still operate on soviet training and ditto tactial dogma might interest you (you'd need to use some traslation software unless you speak/read finnish).

Or you can translate/read a swedish -version summary here:

[https://nyheteridag.se/finsk-officer-totalsagar-ukrainas-arme-ledarskapet-ar-mycket-daligt/]

One officer calls ukrainians motivated but sloppy, untrained and ignorant and also lazy, pointing out that downtime which should be used for training and maintenance is used for loafing about.

And that the tactics are based on first-person shooter games... The finnish officers' conclusions are:

Ukraine has survived due to the russians making enormous mistakes, and due to western logistical support (Musk's satellite surveilance f.e. my note), and that unless the West puts boots on the ground and whips what remains of Ukraine's forces, it won't matter that the russians are running out of equipment - they won't keep making the same mistakes.

Chilling reading, actually.

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I've seen this, too, and it makes for an helpful explanation as to why the Wagner Group appears to do most of the heavy lifting.

As to the Ukrainian forces, what makes you think NATO 'professionals' might be better, esp. without airtight air cover (quite likely in Ukraine) and massive logistical problems due to, you know, lack of roads and the like?

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Gernmany has been invaded. It's done. There is no more Germany.

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These numbers are meant to be incremental to the existing stock. Germany currently has around 180,000 soldiers.

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Aha! Thank you!

It does say something about our time (and/or me) that I didn't even consider that I had misunderstood something.

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Feb 28, 2023·edited Feb 28, 2023

Thought:

Multikulti/mass-migration á la "Wir schaffen das" has become a real threat and the fact that it is has finally percolated through the minds of the overseers.

But they are backbound by generations of decrying minimal or tightly controlled migration as racist and worse, backbound both publicly and self perception-wise.

But if the need to re-arm means resources must be diverted to combat an even greater and more current overt evil - like Russia - then the perfect excuse for stopping (or even reversing) mass-migration appears:

"We need our nation's resources to re-arm to defend peace and freedom and democracy against the Putinist aggressor. We have accepted such-and-such many of people X, Y and Z and tried our best to accomodate and integrate into a united society, to I'm sad to say little to no success through no fault of ours. To assume their parent nations can not stand on their own, can not care for their own people and can not bootstrap into the 20th century is racist and colonialist. We will of course continue to support and work in concert with the UN, just as soon as [list of proof fo corruption] is adressed."

Make it a slow build over half a year, entice some writers and artists to provoke another Bataclan or Charlie Hebdo-attack, tip the media off that they are to stop censuring reporting on crime/ethnicity, and you'll soon see the same fervour as during the height of the Covid-panic: "Ausländer raus!" will suddenly not be hate-speech but mandated opinion, without losing a single voter to AfD or equivalents.

Best of all, none of it requires the people doing it to think about it using meta-cognition: the process is automated if prompted by the correct stimuli.

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Zelensky now demanding that the USA send "their sons and daughters" to war with Russia.

Let that sink in.

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Haven't seen that: care to share a link?

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Now the jewish television actor Zelensky says you will have to send your sons and daughters to fight for him. Are you going to obey him?

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That fuck couldn't find his own asshole with the help of AI. FUCK HIM. FUCK that FUCKING TRAITOR.

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People suspect that one benefit USA gets from giving billions to Israel each year is to allow Israel to field test its kits - and to see what innovations the experienced Israelies could come up with.

There is no substitute for combat experience.

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