What's Going On?

Wherein I rant a bit and then preview upcoming topics...

OK, so I’ve been silent for a while, as a result of two things:

1. My usual disorganization.

2. My disgust at recent events in the foreign policy sphere.

The former I’m still striving to deal with more proactively. I have a LOT of crap that I’d like to work on and get done, and focusing is an issue (especially with major sleep problems lately.) Nothing to really discuss here, maybe later.

The latter situation is just irritating and has forced me to step away from concerning myself with events in either Ukraine or the Middle East. The reason is simple: I detest incompetence and cowardice (including my own.) And the leaders of the so-called “Axis of Resistance” in the Middle East - Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen - all - except Yemen - folded like a wet paper tiger. And they did so from incompetence and cowardice.

In short, they were scared of the Big Bully America and its lesser bully, Israel.

The “New Narrative”, however, is that it is all “Assad's fault.” This is based on the following notions:

1. Assad refused to allow Russia and Iran to train up his military after the civil war died down.

2. The sanctions imposed by the US - not to mention the US occupation of those areas of Syria with the oil fields and farmland - crushed the Syrian economy so that the army could not be paid a decent wage.

3. Assad decided to make nice with the Gulf States - yeah, those guys - who supported his overthrow in the past.

I call bullshit on how conveniently this lets out any responsibility for the loss of Syria by Russia and Iran in particular.

First, we have nothing but assertions that any of the above is true. The assertions come from people like Alastair Crooke and Pepe Escobar. Most of the time I’m inclined to believe them, as those two in particular have been everywhere and know everyone who might know such things. Nonetheless, I still find it odd that neither are prepared to suggest that Russia and Iran could have done more to offset those asserted reasons.

Looking specifically at Russia, it’s clear that Vladimir Putin is someone who likes to “kick the can down the road.” He’s done it at least three times:

1. In 2015 with the Minsk II Agreement in Ukraine - which he later had to admit that he had been “played” by Germany and France, who never had any intention of enforcing that agreement.

2. At the ceasefire of the Syrian civil war, when he allowed Turkey to take control of Idlib Province and thus allow the remaining jihadist groups to have a safe haven there.

3. At the beginning of the Ukraine war in March-April, 2022, when he attempted to negotiate what was essentially ‘Minsk III” which would have basically restored the status quo in Ukraine, with the exceptions that Ukraine would give up Crimea, reduce its military forces, and guarantee its neutrality and would never join NATO. That “agreement” - which was initialed by the negotiating parties, but never actually signed by the heads of state, and which Putin has waved around on several occasions to establish (correctly) that it was the West that prevented a peaceful settlement to the Ukraine war - would never have worked and would have been abrogated almost immediately by Ukraine and the West, just as Minsk II was.

So now he’s done it again. He took his eye off Syria and focused it on Ukraine, thus missing the development of the jihadist forces eventual “coup d'état” of the Syrian government. No one has asked the question: “Where was Russian military intelligence in Syria during this period?” (Or for that matter, Iranian intelligence?)

No one has asked why Russia did not put pressure on Erdogan in Turkey either during the period when the civil war entered a ceasefire phase, or during the subsequent period when the coup was being prepared, or during the actual coup itself. Russia had options vis-a-vis Turkey: economic threats, actual military threats, as well as dangling BRICS membership (which now appears to be lagging - too late.)

The problem appears to be that Putin, besides being cautious and calculating, is also someone who tries to be, as they say, “too clever by half.” As an aside, this got me banned at Andrei Martyanov’s blog since it upset the Putin fanbois too much.

The situation in Iran is even worse. Despite all of Professor Mohammad Marandi’s constant pronouncements that Iran would indeed retaliate against Israeli aggression, Iran did absolutely nothing. Worse, according to Pepe Escobar, they are actively considering re-opening “negotiations” with the US over a renewed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA AKA “the nuclear deal”) which Obama negotiated, Trump tore up and Biden refused to renew (despite a year or more of pointless “negotiations” never intended to be finalized.)

This is beyond stupid. As ex-Navy SEAL Richard Marcinko likes to quote an ancient Chinese general as saying, “You should always treat the enemy as the enemy because he will invariably treat you that way.” If Iran can’t figure out by now that the US is dead set on destroying Iran, then the Iranian government deserves to be overthrown by the US.

Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei has even issued the stupid statement that the future of Syria will be determined by the “Syrian youth” who will supposedly be the future “resistance” movement - thus conveniently taking Iran out of the picture.

For both Putin and Khamenei, the words of author William S. Burroughs are appropriate: “Battles are fought to be won and this is what happens when you lose.”

And what about the other members of the so-called “Axis of Resistance?”

Hezbollah in Lebanon also folded. It’s unclear to me whether the new leader of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, is just a coward, whether he was pressured by the destruction Israel rained down on the Lebanese population, whether Hezbollah was actually severely damaged by the massive bombardments of Lebanon, or whether Hezbollah never actually had the level of forces everyone - including me - reported they had.

Hezbollah, in my view, “had one job”: bomb the living crap out of Israel. They supposedly had 100,000 troops under arms (official estimates from various sources suggested a much lower 20-40,000) and constantly increasing claims of 100,000, 150,000, 200,000, even 250,000 rockets and missiles in dozens of underground “missile cities” which were supposedly impregnable to Israeli bombing.

So WTF, to coin a phrase? They get a month or so of bombing - then they accept a “one way ceasefire”? Worse, Qassem then declares that the responsibility for dealing with Israeli violations of the “ceasefire” are on the Lebanese army - like that was ever going to happen.

Somehow I doubt that the former Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, would have accepted that deal.

So the only member of the so-called “Axis of Resistance” left standing are Ansarallah - the Houthis - in Yemen. They stood up and said they didn’t care if the US or Israel nuked them - they would still keep fighting. Unfortunately, their ability to influence events is mostly limited to their blockading of the Red Sea. They have little ability to send significant forces elsewhere to attack Israel. Although there is the question of the alleged brigade of Houthis who supposedly infiltrated into Syria with the intent of attacking Israel in the Golan Heights - where did they go? Back to Yemen?

All of this reeks of incompetence and cowardice. The result is the twenty years of work by Major General Qasem Soleimani, who developed the operational plan of the Axis, has been utterly wasted.

With Syria gone, the US and Israel can literally do whatever they want in the Middle East now. They can enlarge existing bases in Syria, and use them for attacks on the other members of the “Axis” - including Iran. They will eventually force the Russians to abandon their naval and air base in Syria, of that there is little doubt, thus hampering the Russian Mediterranean Fleet. The land bridge between Iran and Lebanon is cut (possibly imperfectly - no one can stop all smuggling in the Middle East), hampering resupply of Hezbollah.

Pepe Escobar says that Hezbollah is “rebuilding at breakneck speed” - which implies that Hezbollah never had the arsenal it claimed to have or that the arsenal was mostly destroyed by Israel, even without direct US assistance. What good will that do, if the supposed massive arsenal they had originally proved ineffective, was destroyed, or never used in the first place because of their adherence to the “escalation ladder” (which I never thought was a particularly good idea)? When is Hezbollah going to actually step up if they haven’t already?

All of this could have been avoided. The Axis had options. They didn’t exercise them.

The problem - which this debacle reminded me of forcefully - is simply human nature. As I’ve said before, chimpanzees should not attempt to run countries - they aren’t good at it. The best chimpanzees can do is run a troop of several hundred of their relatives. Anything beyond that and everything becomes chaos.

In Ukraine, it appears that much of what we were told by the pro-Russian “analysts” - including me - is also in doubt. In my reports from 2023, I estimated that Ukraine could not continue the fight much past fall of 2024. Many of the “analysts” agreed with that.

So why is Ukraine “continuing to fail, but never actually failing”?

Well, one ridiculous problem appears to be the notion that “Ukraine is running out of men.” Really? Back in 2023, I estimated that even if Ukraine had raised a “million-man army”, as some had suggested, based on my estimates of casualty rates they could not have more than a couple hundred thousand men left in fall of 2023. Yet somehow they managed to get through all of 2024 despite being opposed by something like 750 thousand Russian troops and overwhelming Russian firepower and suffering by some estimates well over a million casualties.

So what do we hear now? That Ukraine had NEVER CONSCRIPTED 18-TO-24-YEAR-OLD MEN! Again - WTF? Even the US conscripted 18-year-olds during the Vietnam war - and Vietnam was in no way any kind of “existential threat” to the United States! So now we’re told that Ukraine, despite fighting an “existential war” with a vastly more powerful military enemy, never conscripted most of the available fighting age men in the country? Yet they were dragging 45-60-year-olds - and even women - off the street?

What’s wrong with this fucking picture?

Someone is lying.

Recently I heard that Ukraine wanted to raise another 500,000 men this past year but only managed to raise another 200,000. The issue of resisting conscription supposedly remains a major problem, and desertion and surrender of existing troops are also on the increase.

None the less, one wonders why Russia STILL hasn’t “reached the Dnieper” - despite a supposedly overwhelming numerical and firepower advantage.

Someone is lying. Either that or Russia literally has decided not to finish the war until every last Ukrainian male has been sent to the front and killed and the Russian army can then walk to Kiev unmolested. A slow-motion genocide, in effect. While that might be a smart idea (I couldn’t care less about the “moral question”), it does drag the war out to a ridiculous degree.

I criticized Simplicious for saying the war could last another two years. I thought that was absurd. I admit I was wrong and he was right. (Someone tell Simplicious, I don’t have the heart. :-) )

Worse, I now suspect that - based on Putin’s history of “too clever by half” tendency to “kick the can down the road” - that he will now accept a “ceasefire” and stop at the Dnieper. This would be beyond idiotic from the point of view of Russia’s objective security interests - but I can’t shake the suspicion that this will happen. I’ve criticized almost every so-called “analyst” for saying for the last three years that this is how the war will likely end - but now I must consider that they were right and I was wrong on that, too.

So that’s why I no longer care about these conflicts. I will still keep an eye on how close we are getting to World War III, since that is the direct threat to me. But what monkey-ass humans do to each other in foreign places is otherwise of no interest to me, except as it impacts my own government’s stupid actions which may directly impact me.

I still watch videos with Alastair Crooke, Pepe Escobar, Brian Berletic and occasionally Colonel Wilkerson, but otherwise I’m avoiding spending too much time on these issues.

NOTE: I’ve unsubscribed from all Substacks dealing with foreign policy issues. Feel free to unsubscribe from mine if that was your main interest. But do keep in mind that the topics I do cover from here on out are relevant to what’s happening in the world including foreign policy issues. If you want to understand how foreign policy works, you have to understand how the world works.

As an aside, Alastair Crooke has a Substack, but he hasn’t posted anything yet. Pepe Escobar also has one which is also unused yet. I hope they will start doing so soon.

What I am doing is re-focusing my efforts at returning this Substack to its original purpose: an exposition of my opinions on what I call “The Omega Concept”, which is the background to the notion of “The Five Essentials” (which, you may recall, are Philosophy, Attitude, Knowledge, Skills, and Technology.) See my “About page” for my original description of this Substack.

Coming up in the near future (hopefully, despite disorganization and procrastination), will be topics on the use of the excellent note-taking app, Obsidian and it’s use with AI, as well as the excellent front-end AI application MSTY (which can do RAG - Retrieval-Augmented Generation - with an entire Obsidian Vault.) These are tools that anyone can use to enhance their ability to deal with life and definitely belong in the Technology Essential list.

Stay with me - it gets better from here on out.