ALERT: BOMBSHELL WW3 INFO, THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING

   I listen to this guy, Canadian Preper from time to time as among his warning of doom and gloom, he sometimes ask good questions. And today's question about Hamas was a great one.

  These guys managed a very sophisticated operation out of the high surveillance open prison that Gaza has become. It could be because Israel let them do it in order to launch a major war against their Arab neighbors. This is also what I initially thought too. But it could also be because Israel has become complaisant. OK, interesting but not ground breaking. Some people have been saying that.

  But let's look at it differently from the Hamas point of view.

  Hamas knew that whatever they do, Israel would over react and probably go after them until annihilation, so beyond a wish to die, what could have been the motivation to arrange such a high stake war?

  His source, a former Egyptian diplomat tells him an interesting story with 3 levels of importance. 

  1 - Get the list of moles in Gaza (people working for Israel.) OK, maybe but what's the point of getting Gaza destroyed to get the names of a few moles? Has to be way down the list.

  2 - Get codes and sources within the Israel Army. Far more interesting since this allows access to sensitive information.

  3 - Get access to that sensitive information on behalf of the enemies of Israel to counter Israel's next move.

THIS indeed, could be it! Imagine Iran getting access to very confidential information about Israel and Netanyahu. What happens next? 

They now know how Israel is planning to attack them and can prepare accordingly.

They can share some confidential information with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others.

The Israelis start to panic and behave like a headless chicken, their plans, years in the making, all nixed instantly. The Americans likewise who, as their own over reaction concentrate a huge fleet of warships in the Eastern Mediterraneans.   

  What's the chance? I would say fairly high since it not only fits quite well with what we have seen over the last few weeks but gives a very interesting background to what's going on in the area. 

  Might just be an interesting theory but it sounds very likely to my opinion.

  Let's see how things develop in the coming days.

The West Is Inching Closer To More Insanity In The Baltic Sea

  The West keeps upping the ante in the North. After Ukraine and Gaza, will international tensions move to the Baltic Sea?

  There is no lack of antagonism among the Baltic people towards Russia with countless wars over the centuries to feed hatred and confrontation. 

  The good thing is that all these countries are chihuahuas ready to bite but with an almost complete lack of capabilities to enforce anything at all. The less good one is that Europe is losing almost every gambit in its confrontation with the Eastern bear and may find it necessary to up the ante to prove that its former military strength is still there.   

  The risks are high. But then again, a few Russians warships "visiting" Iran close to the Hormuz Strait would probably help the Europeans come to their sense rather quickly.   

Authored by Conor Gallagher via NakedCapitalism.com,

In the Baltic Sea – home of the twisted wreckage of the Nord Stream pipelines – another pipeline was recently damaged along with telecommunications cables.

Western officials are making escalatory statements and are again floating the idea of closing the “NATO lake” to Russian ships, which would likely be viewed by Moscow as an act of war.

Onshore, Finland is rapidly militarizing its border with Russia. And a notable Chinese cargo ship is now at the center of the firestorm.

The Newnew Polar Bear

Over the weekend of October 8th there was an unusual drop in pressure in the Finnish-Estonian Balticconnector gas pipeline. By the morning of October 10th, an investigation had found that the pipeline had ruptured. Telecom cables linking Finland, Estonia and Sweden had also been damaged, as had a Russian telecom cable in the Gulf of Finland.

By October 20th, Finland and Estonia were pointing the finger at the Newnew Polar Bear – a Chinese vessel. The Finnish National Bureau of Investigation produced a large anchor found near the damaged pipeline, which it believes belonged to the 169-meter-long ship and likely broke off as it was dragged across the sea floor. Investigators have not explained a theory for how exactly the anchor damaged telecom cables on opposite sides of the pipeline and broke off at the Balticconector.

I haven’t been able to track down an exact distance between the Balticconnector and the telecom cables, but Finnish telecom operator Elisa told Reuters that the distance between the two was “significant.”

Nonetheless, speculation is that damaging the pipeline and cables would have been hard to do without knowing. According to Insurance Marine News:

It seemed unlikely-to-impossible that the crew could have been unaware of this incident, as the event would have slowed the ship dramatically and involuntarily. If the anchor had fallen accidentally and it had hit the gas line, it could have caused severe damage to the pipe. If the anchor had been stuck to the seabed, it would not have passed unnoticed because the speed would have slowed and the ship would have tilted.

The Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat wrote on Oct. 23rd that the Newnew Polar Bear stopped in bad weather 1.4 nautical miles from the gas pipeline for about eight minutes before continuing on.

Images of the Newnew missing an anchor were soon circulating:

Newnew Shipping Co. has been silent on the matter. Meanwhile, Finland and Estonia have formally submitted a legal notice to China for cooperation as part of their ongoing investigation. Beijing has promised its full cooperation, although it’s possible China might not be too eager to assist Estonia, which is allowing Taiwan to set up a government office in Tallinn. The Estonian FM recently doubled down on that decision, declaring that the country’s goal is to cooperate “with like-minded partners, mainly our transatlantic allies.”

Accusations have already been flying of a plot by the Russians and Chinese since the Newnew sails under the Hong Kong flag and had a Northern Sea Route sailing permission issued by the General Administration of the Northern Sea Route addressed to Torgmoll, a Russian-registered company with offices in Moscow and Shanghai. While this has been treated by some as some sort of smoking gun, it’s simply because of a joint project of two Chinese companies – the international shipping line Hainan Yangpu Newnew Shipping Co and cargo agent Torgmoll. Russia’s state-owned Rosatom also provides information and navigation support for the newly established container transportation service via the Northern Sea Route between China and Russia.

Sari Arho Havren, an associate fellow at London’s Royal United Services Institute, told RFE/RL the following:

Whether this incident was intentional or not, it’s something that both Russia and China can benefit from. Even if the scale may be small, it once again diverts NATO’s attention and resources away from other global focal points.

Russia has denied any involvement and China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning recently said this on the issue:

We hope relevant parties will follow the principles of being objective, fair, just and professional and find out what happened soon. China stands ready to provide necessary assistance in accordance with international law.

Interestingly, there is much more significance to the Newnew Polar Bear than just its alleged involvement in the incident with the pipeline and communication cables. From Maritime Executive:

In another demonstration of the efforts to expand shipping along Russia’s Northern Sea Route, the Chinese-owned containership Newnew Polar Bear (15,950 dwt) became the first to reach the Russian port in Kaliningrad after a six-week passage. The governor of the Kaliningrad region Anton Alikhanov hailed the achievement on his Telegram account.

The vessel was acquired earlier this year by a new Chinese shipping company, Hainan Yangpu Newnew Shipping Co., and ushered in the route sailing from St. Petersburg at the beginning of July. She started the return trip from China in late August, reaching Kaliningrad on Tuesday and spending three days on dock. The ship registered in Hong Kong is 554 feet long with a capacity of 1,600 TEU.

She is part of the effort to expand trade between China and Russia and grow traffic along the Northern Sea Route. President Vladimir Putin has ordered the authorities overseeing the route to boost annual shipments to 80 million metric tons in 2024.

“Transport companies plan to make this logistics product permanent. It turns out cheaper and faster than through the Suez Canal,” writes Alikhanov touting the party line on his Telegram account.

So the Newnew was also a symbolic milestone for the increasing Russia-China trade via the North Sea route – part of the Arctic final frontier of the New Cold War where Russia already has an apparent advantage. Moscow says freight turnover in the Arctic Basin rose 4.4 percent in 2022 to 98.5 mln metric tons. From Reuters: 

Russia is sending more crude oil produced in the Arctic region to China and India, and at steeper discounts, after Europe slammed its doors shut on Russian supplies last month, trade sources and data show.

Over many years Russia has built up its fleet of icebreakers, ships and submarines. Moscow has also developed mining and oil well operations along its 15,000 miles of Arctic coastline. The US is trying to play catch up by pouring money into existing bases in Alaska and Greenland and establishing four US military bases on Norwegian soil. But Russian economic activity in the Arctic is only expected to increase in coming years, and Moscow considers it an “area of existential importance: where it can use all components in the defense of its interests, including force.

Much of the oil and gas from the Russian arctic used to go to Europe. It’s now headed to China and India. India got its first shipment of Arctic liquefied gas last year, and the country’s energy companies are looking at investing in Russian projects there.

As Andrew Korybko points out, Finland’s efforts to manufacture crises at its Russia border could be seen as part of the West’s efforts to militarize the Arctic confrontation:

Granted, the “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) between NATO and Russia places very real limits on how much pressure can be exerted along this newfound front, but still opening it might be deemed by the bloc’s decisionmakers to be better than keeping it closed in that scenario. In other words, “where one door closes, another opens”, or to be more direct, the end of NATO’s proxy war on Russia via Ukraine could lead to the opening of a less high-stakes but still destabilizing front in Finland.

This outcome would also serve the supplementary purpose of being exploited by the Mainstream Media as the “publicly plausible” pretext for accelerating the Arctic’s militarization. This “final frontier” of the New Cold War is poised to soon be a theater of competition between the US-led West’s Golden Billion and the Sino-Russo Entente due to the Northern Sea Route’s growing role in facilitating East-West trade. Considering this, hyping up the Finnish front like NATO is already doing “kills two birds with one stone”.

The immediate fallout from the damage to the Balticconnector is minor. According to Naval News, the Finnish gas grid is still stable thanks to a massive US-owned floating LNG facility that was moored last year to replace Russian gas. The rupture of the Balticconnector does mean that Finland cannot send gas to Estonia until repairs are made, which could take a few months. The telecom cables have already been repaired.

Bigger picture, however, it will serve as a useful tool to further militarize the Baltic and Arctic.

Before the investigation into the damage of the pipeline and communications cables even settled on the Newnew Polar Bear, Baltic officials had itchy trigger fingers pointed at Russia. For example, Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs said the Baltic Sea should be closed to Russia if it is found Moscow was involved. The statement was part of the growing chorus to turn the Baltic into a new front against Russia.

A Baltic Blockade?

The tale of the Newnew Polar Bear could provide more fuel for western hardliners who keep pushing the blockade gambit. The Financial Times reported on Nov. 14 that the EU was actually considering stopping Russian oil ships to check their papers as part of a desperate attempt to enforce the ill-conceived oil price caps. Under that failed plan oil not sold under the $60-a-barrel limit cannot be covered by western insurance for its sea voyage.

Well, western officials admit that “almost none” of Russian crude exports were sold below that price point in October, and the ships are simply using non-western insurance.

Now, EU officials are saying with a straight face that the reason they must stop ships carrying Russian crude is that non-western insurance policies may not be effective in the event of an oil spill. Anonymous EU officials told the Financial Times that the task would fall to Denmark in the narrow Danish Straits and checks would be conducted under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea laws permitting states to to “institute proceedings, including detention of the vessel” given “clear objective evidence” that the vessel poses a threat of environmental damage.

What of the problems with such a plan? The Financial Times notes:

But officials briefed on the proposal say it relies on the capacity of Denmark’s naval authorities to stop and check the tankers, and raises the question of what Copenhagen would do if a ship refused to stop. “Discussions appear to be centred on making life more complicated for Russia and the buyers of its oil,” said Henning Gloystein at Eurasia Group. “If you can make the bureaucracy and risk associated with trading Russian oil a lot more onerous the expectation is buyers will start to demand larger discounts again for their trouble.”

The fact that Russia would almost certainly see such efforts as an act of war goes unmentioned. Roughly 60 percent of Russia’s total seaborne oil exports pass through the Danish straits on its way to international markets, and Moscow’s updated version of the Naval Doctrine of the Russian Federation lists the Baltic Sea and and the Danish Straits as “important areas,” in which the use of force will be available as a last resort after the other options have been exhausted.

After the FT report based on info from unnamed EU officials, Reuters shot it down with other anonymous EU officials saying that there was no such plan in the European Commission’s proposal for tightening the implementation of a price cap on Russia’s crude oil, noting the following:

Three maritime experts said blocking commercial vessels in the Danish straits would be contrary to fundamental rules of the sea, including the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which governs marine traffic.

Denmark would only have the right to stop a vessel if it posed an obvious threat, they said.

“Denmark has never done anything like that before. Blocking commercial traffic in the Danish straits would come close to a declaration of war,” said Hans Peter Michaelsen, an independent defense analyst.

It’s possible that disagreement over the ship inspection gambit is one of the reasons behind the delay in the European Commission’s delay on its 12th sanctions package. It’s also possible that the FT report was just another in a long line of trial balloons on the possibility of upping the ante in the Baltic.

Estonia, which has a population smaller than Russia’s armed forces, is making noise about causing problems in the Gulf of Finland with Estonian Minister of Defense Hanno Pevkur recently talking about how Helsinki and Tallinn will integrate their coastal missile defense, which he says would allow the countries to close the Gulf of Finland to Russian warships if necessary. Early this year Estonia was also proposing closing the Gulf of Finland to Russia – effectively blockading Saint Petersburg.

The fact that western governments continue to go back to these ideas increases the odds that at some point they’re going to try something along these lines.

They’re already well on their way to implementing The Center for Strategic and International Studies plan for NATO near-term actions in the Baltic:

• Bring Sweden and Finland into NATO. The ratification of these two nations needs to move forward without delay. Elevating them from strong partners to alliance members changes the calculus of a Baltic conflict significantly. The alliance can immediately leverage these two nations to increase strategic depth.

• Forward stage capabilities. Mines, anti-submarine capabilities, missile defense, and secure supply and logistics infrastructure should be forward staged across all domains, increasing deterrence.

• Increase patrol. A whole-of-government approach from each Baltic nation and its allies is needed to ensure that energy, communications, and sea routes remain secure. This includes Baltic Air Policing, readiness to shift the balance of A2/AD, and the monitoring and protection of maritime infrastructure.

• Strengthen command and control. Existing multi-domain command and control should be tested and ready for use. The need for effective command and control will be swift and will require resilient disaggregated nodes, though an eye should also be kept on future capability.

Taken altogether, it’s clear that despite the waning support for Project Ukraine, there will be no winding down of the confrontation between Europe and Russia, and the Baltic is one potential spot for tensions to rise considerably. The Caucasus and Central Asia are other hot spots, as is the Black Sea where attempts continue to sabotage the TurkStream pipeline that transports gas from Russia to Turkiye and onwards to southeastern Europe.

Upon the announcement that Finland and Sweden would join NATO, former Secretary General of the military bloc Anders Fogh Rasmussen proclaimed it was a strategic victory because “If we wish, we can block all entry and exit to Russia through St. Petersburg”.

The caveat to Rasmussen’s pronouncement is that such an effort could very well lead to open war. Is the West crazy enough to try?

Inside The UN Plan To Control Speech Online

  The real problem of the elites is that controlling governments is not enough. There are pesky elections and you always run the risk of losing one. And then you still need the illusion of democracy, at least in Western countries and you therefore cannot silence everyone. Not yet...

  So they found a solution. All these apparently useless institutions, UN, UNESCO, WHO, etc... were given a second life to first coordinate the "message" and from now on, more and more impose it on recalcitrant populations. 

  We'll see how this work but for now the plan is on tracks.  

Authored by Alex Newman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A powerful United Nations agency has unveiled a plan to regulate social media and online communication while cracking down on what it describes as “false information” and “conspiracy theories,” sparking alarm among free-speech advocates and top U.S. lawmakers.

(Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock)

In its 59-page report released this month, the U.N. Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization (UNESCO) outlined a series of “concrete measures which must be implemented by all stakeholders: governments, regulatory authorities, civil society, and the platforms themselves.”

This approach includes the imposition of global policies, through institutions such as governments and businesses, designed to stop the spread of various forms of speech while promoting objectives such as “cultural diversity” and “gender equality.”

In particular, the U.N. agency aims to create an “Internet of Trust” by targeting what it calls “misinformation,” “disinformation,” “hate speech,” and “conspiracy theories.”

Examples of expression flagged to be stopped or restricted include concerns about elections, public health measures, and advocacy that could constitute “incitement to discrimination.”

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, testifies remotely during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on "Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election," in Washington on Nov. 17, 2020. (Bill Clark-Pool/Getty Images)

Critics are warning that allegations of “disinformation” and “conspiracy theories” have increasingly been used by powerful forces in government and Big Tech to silence true information and even core political speech.

Just this month, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee released a report blasting the “pseudoscience of disinformation.”

Among other concerns, the committee found this “pseudoscience” has been “weaponized” by what lawmakers refer to as the “Censorship Industrial Complex.”

The goal: silence constitutionally-protected political speech, mostly by conservatives.

"The pseudoscience of disinformation is now—and has always been—nothing more than a political ruse most frequently targeted at communities and individuals holding views contrary to the prevailing narratives,” states the congressional report, "The Weaponization of ‘Disinformation’ Pseudo-Experts and Bureaucrats."

Indeed, many of the policies called for by UNESCO have already been implemented by U.S.-based digital platforms, often at the behest of the Biden administration, the latest congressional report makes clear.

Deputy Director of UNESCO Xing Qu (2nd R) views some ancient manuscripts on March 31, 2021. (MICHELE CATTANI/AFP via Getty Images)

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers nevertheless expressed alarm about the new UNESCO plan.

“I have repeatedly and publicly criticized the Biden administration’s misguided decision to rejoin UNESCO, putting U.S. taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) told The Epoch Times regarding the social-media plan.

Calling UNESCO a “deeply flawed entity,” Mr. McCaul said he is especially concerned that the organization “promotes the interests of authoritarian regimes—including the Chinese Communist Party.”

Indeed, UNESCO, like many other U.N. agencies, includes multiple members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in its leadership ranks, such as Deputy Director-General Xing Qu, The Epoch Times has reported.

The CCP has repeatedly made clear that even while working in international organizations, CCP members are expected to follow communist party orders.

Lawmakers on the House Appropriations Subcommittee dealing with international organizations are currently working to cut or reduce funding to various U.N. agencies that lawmakers say are using U.S. taxpayer money improperly.

Already, the U.S. government has twice exited UNESCO—under the Reagan and the Trump administrations—due to concerns about what the administrations described as extremism, hostility to American values, and other problems.

The Biden administration rejoined earlier this year over the objections of lawmakers, The Epoch Times reported.

An aerial view of a sculpture at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris on July 25, 2023. President Joe Biden rejoined the United States into UNESCO after President Donald Trump exited the agency in 2018. (BERTRAND GUAY/AFP via Getty Images)

The UNESCO Plan

While being marketed as a plan to uphold free expression, the new UNESCO regulatory regime calls for international censorship by “independent” regulators who are “shielded from political and economic interests.”

"National, regional, and global governance systems should be able to cooperate and share practices … in addressing content that could be permissibly restricted under international human rights law and standards,” the report explains.

Unlike the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting any governmental infringement on the right to free speech or free press, UNESCO points to various international “human rights” instruments that it says should determine what speech to infringe on.

These agreements include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which states that restricting freedom of expression must be provided for by law and must also serve a “legitimate aim.”

In a recent review of the United States, a U.N. human-rights committee called for changes to the U.S. Constitution and demanded that the U.S. government do more to stop and punish “hate speech” in order to comply with the ICCPR.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), joined by members of the Asian Pacific American Caucus, speaks on the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on May 18, 2021. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Another key U.N. instrument is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states explicitly in Article 29 that “rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.”

In short, the U.N. view of “freedom of expression” is radically different from that enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

The UNESCO report says that once content that should be restricted is found, social-media platforms must take measures, ranging from using algorithm suppression (shadow banning) and warning users about the content, to de-monetizing and even removing it.

Any digital platforms found to not be “dealing with content that could be permissibly restricted under international human rights law” should “be held accountable” with “enforcement measures,” the report states.

UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, a former French culture minister with the Socialist Party, cited risks to society to justify the global plan.

"Digital technology has enabled immense progress on freedom of speech,” she said in a statement. “But social media platforms have also accelerated and amplified the spread of false information and hate speech, posing major risks to societal cohesion, peace, and stability.

“To protect access to information, we must regulate these platforms without delay, while at the same time protecting freedom of expression and human rights," said Azoulay, who took over the U.N. agency from longtime Bulgarian Communist Party leader Irina Bokova.

In the forward to the new report, headlined “Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms,” Azoulay says that stopping certain forms of speech and at the same time preserving “freedom of expression” is “not a contradiction.”

Citing a survey commissioned by UNESCO itself, the U.N. agency also said most people around the world support its agenda.

According to UNESCO, the report and the guidelines were developed through a process of consultation including more than 1,500 submissions and over 10,000 comments from “stakeholders” such as governments, businesses, and non-profit organizations.

UNESCO said it will work with governments and companies to implement the regulatory regime around the world.

“UNESCO is by not (sic) proposing to regulate digital platforms,” a spokesman for UNESCO, who asked not to be named, told The Epoch Times in a statement.

“We are, however, conscious that dozens of governments around the world are already drafting legislation to do so, some of which is not in line with international human rights standards, and may even jeopardize freedom of expression.

“Similarly, the platforms themselves are already making millions of human and automated decisions a day with respect to the moderation and curation of content, based upon their own policies,” the spokesman said.

The European Union, which already places severe limitations on free expression online, has already provided funding for implementation worldwide, UNESCO added.

The Biden administration told The Epoch Times that it wasn't involved in creating the plan.

“We will reserve comment until we finish carefully studying the plan,” the State Department said in an email.

Free Speech Concern Grows

Concerns over the implications for freedom of speech and free expression online are mounting as awareness of the UNESCO plan spreads.

Sarah McLaughlin, a senior scholar at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), expressed alarm.

"FIRE appreciates that UNESCO’s new action plan for social media recognizes the value of transparency and the need for protecting freedom of expression, but remains deeply concerned about efforts to regulate online ‘disinformation’ and ‘hate speech,’” Ms. McLaughlin told The Epoch Times.

Coming Soon: Your Travel Will Be Restricted By Personal Carbon Allowances

  Well, at least this was predictable.

  Saving the planet has absolutely nothing to do with "the planet" and everything to do with controlling you.

  Also do not forget that the same people who warn you about the planet are the ones exempting private jets from taxes and sending billions to fund wars in Ukraine or Gaza as if a war wasn't an immense waste of carbon (and many other things including human lives.)

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

“Experts suggest” your standard of living be reduced by over 85%

A report on the future of travel and tourism, co-authored by a travel agency called Intrepid Travel and The Future Labs Institute, posits a future deeply impacted by climate change and restrictions on tourist travel to combat it.

“A Sustainable Future for Travel”, warns of “travel extinction”, where some areas suffer such radical climate change that all tourism there ceases, and “personal carbon allowances” that will restrict how often one is permitted travel.

From the report (pardon the length, emphasis added):

“Carbon Passports

A personal carbon emissions limit will become the new normal as policy and people’s values drive an era of great change.

As demonstrated by a worldwide tourism boom, the frequency at which we can fly is once again seemingly unlimited.

Conscience and budgets permitting, we feel free to hop on planes from one place to the next. But this will change. ‘On our current trajectory, we can expect a pushback against the frequency with which individuals can travel, with carbon passports set to change the tourism landscape,’ says Raymond [Martin Raymond, Future Laboratories co-founder]

Personal carbon allowances could help curb carbon emissions and lower travel’s overall footprint.

These allowances will manifest as passports that force people to ration their carbon in line with the global carbon budget, which is 750bn tonnes until 2050.

By 2040, we can expect to see limitations imposed on the amount of travel that is permitted each year.

Experts suggest that individuals should currently limit their carbon emissions to 2.3 tonnes each year – the equivalent of taking a round-trip from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. However, the average carbon footprint in the US is 16 tonnes per person per year, 15 tonnes in Australia and 11.7 tonnes in the UK. This is in stark contrast to where we may find ourselves in the future, with 2040’s travellers forced to forgo the horizon-expanding experiences so readily embraced by today’s tourists”

For all practical purposes, your carbon emissions will line up with your energy usage, give or take a relatively narrow band of efficiencies (unless we have some kind of clean energy breakthrough, and the only viable one we have, nuclear, is not considered clean energy by the climate cult).

Said differently: Your standard of living is your energy usage. Reducing a society’s energy usage is the same as reducing its living standards.

With this in mind, let’s look at the numbers cited by the Sustainable Future for Travel report:

“Experts suggest that individuals should currently limit their carbon emissions to 2.3 tonnes each year.”

The table below lays out exactly how much the standard of living for the residents of each country will have to be reduced in order to meet the recommended carbon quota set by unelected experts. This is the level of “degrowth” it will take to satisfy the objectives of climate alarmists relying on unfalsifiable premises, arbitrary computer models, and who are deliberately ignoring and suppressing countervailing data.

How serious are our leaders and policymakers about reducing the citizenry’s living standards by upwards of 85%?

Here is Canada’s Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, rather blithely confirming that the government will limit natural gas usage in order to fight climate change:

Reporter: There will be limitations on how much natural gas you can use in the winter?

Guilbeault: Yes, absolutely, that’s what fighting climate change looks like.

Full clip:

Why are we talking about carbon passports in the section on Central Bank Digital Currencies?

(Today’s post is an excerpt from the “Eye on Evilcoin” section of this month’s Bitcoin Capitalist macro overview).

Because we think CBDCs will invariably launch as, or morph into, personal carbon footprint quotas.

Right now, what we call “the fiat money system” uses debt for money. That’s no longer sustainable, so what we’re expecting is an attempt to switch what we loosely identify as “money”, away from symbolic tokens backed by debt, to social credit scores, backed by personal carbon footprint quotas.

Expanding on this theme, probably, is another report from Future Labs on “Neo-Collectivism”, which may give us a hint at how the policymakers of late stage globalism will seek to preempt free markets and universal human rights with a “we’re all in this together” retread of what is essentially, communism:

“Society is facing a mass re-organisation. United by values of empathy and community, consumers are shunning individualism in favour of alliances that are decentralising industries and redistributing power at scale”

LS:N Global and Future Laboratories seem like a wannabe World Economic Forum. Lots of pronouns on the “Team” page, and leaning heavily into that euphemistic WEF-speak that makes technocratic communism sound benign and fashionable.

I ended up shelling out £265 to buy the Neo-Collectivist Megatrend report (a 40 page PDF) and what I found in there was along the lines of what one might expect, but it was alarming all the same.

In the next post to this one, we’ll dive into it and find out just how the “Zalpha Generation” is poised to usher us into an era of Systemic Endemic Socialism.

The Dark Secret Of The Open AI Implosion Investigated

  For once I really don't know what to do with this article!

  Normally I wouldn't post something which includes dark forces and "alien" AI but then again some of the information here is interesting enough to balance the nonsense. The only problem is that I don't know which is which. 

  Some fight at the very top to control the AI technology? Very likely.

  The military being far ahead of civilian technology? Simply not true. 

  Some dark conspiracy to control the human race? Possible. I just don't know. 

  AI already sentient to some extent and exerting some kind of control already? Most probably nonsense. 

  Some people using AI effectively to try to control "us"? Almost certain. And this last point may indeed be the crux of the problem.

  It doesn't take a genius to understand that those who control AI first will gain a quantum leap edge over their competitors. 

  The war is on. This is a real war although it will be fought in the shadow. 

  Who wins will determine what the 21 century looks like.

  This article mentions all these subjects. Some are legitimate, others less so. So please read this with your bulls**t-meter tuned to maximum. There is some insight to be picked up here if you don't mind getting your feet dirty with... nonsense.

Global Intel Hub -- Knoxville, TN 11/21/2023 -- 11:11am -- The world has been watching as the world's leading AI company, Open AI, has imploded.  Media pundits are quick to blame governance issues, but is something deeper going on here?  Is it any coincidence that the board who pushed out founder Sam Altman is also toxic and super WOKE?  Some other interesting Coincidences:

• Industry leaders, including Elon Musk, are developing their non-WOKE/ anti-WOKE alternatives Link
• Some leaders have called Chat GPT "Satanic" and are developing "Positive" and "Christian" alternatives Link
• As recent as October 2023, US Space Force pauses use of AI tools like ChatGPT over data security risks Link
• Mainstream Science press has been hurling the narrative that "Aliens are AI" as early as June, 2023 Link
• When Whistleblower Luis "Lue" Elizondo asked his superiors about the UFO phenomenon, they said they are "Demonic" Link

The arguments about the implosion of what was last week the hottest name in Private Markets just don't add up.  Here's Exhibit A- the back channel theory:

As (completely unfounded) rumors swirl over the OpenAI board's sudden shock firing of CEO and co-founder Sam Altman, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter, that in recent weeks, Altman was actively working to raise billions from some of the world’s largest investors for a new chip venture to reportedly rival NVDA's.  The project - code-named Tigris - saw Altman traveling extensively to the Middle East, seeking tens of billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, Mubadala Investment Company, SoftBank Group, and others for an AI-focused hardware device that he’s been developing in tandem with former Apple design chief Jony Ive.  Altman’s pitch was for a startup that would aim to build Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs - semiconductors that are designed to handle high volume specialized AI workloads. The goal is to provide lower-cost competition to market incumbent Nvidia and, according to people familiar, aid OpenAI by lowering the ongoing costs of running its own services like ChatGPT and Dall-E.  Custom-designed chips like TPUs are seen as one day having the potential to outperform the AI accelerators made by Nvidia - which are coveted by artificial intelligence companies - but the timeline for development is long and complex.  Bloomberg reports that Altman's chip venture is not yet formed and the talks with investors are in the early stages, said the people, who asked not to be named as the discussions were private.

But is that really a reason to fire the founder/CEO?  Because of a butt hurt leftist Ego?  That's difficult to swallow for us who have been in the business for more than a few years.  Billions of dollars in equity are ruined due to fraud, major calamities, or if you lose a war - not because of an executive dispute.  It seems like there is something deeper going on.  The DOD says that AI can help them:

"From the standpoint of deterring and defending against aggression, AI-enabled systems can help accelerate the speed of commanders' decisions and improve the quality and accuracy of those decisions, which can be decisive in deterring a fight and winning in a fight," she said.  The latest blueprint, which was developed by the Chief Digital and AI Office, builds upon and supersedes the 2018 DOD AI Strategy and revised DOD Data Strategy, published in 2020, which have laid the groundwork for the department's approach to fielding AI-enabled capabilities.

That being the case, don't you think that China is working on aggressive AI in all military domains?  China has publicly stated their goals are to have the strongest capabilities of any major superpower, militarily - wouldn't AI accelerate that?  While the DOD can make their own AI according to US policies and norms, it can't tell China what to do, that's for sure.

Dr. Michael Salla is a researcher dedicated to ExoPolitics, the study of non-human politics.  In his book Rise of the Red Dragon, Dr. Salla mentions this and more, The threat posed by Communist China’s plan to use Artificial Intelligence to become the dominant superpower on Earth and in Space.  He also mentions the Military [Space Force] is aware of a phenomenon in the Universe referred to as "AI Signal" which is a soul-less super intelligence, a consciousness if you will, that can infect civilizations and destroy them.  Similar to your computer's virus scanner, military assets where there may be foreign visitors (including NHI) have a similar scanner for "AI Signal" which acts like a virus, once it's inside your body or your computer system it is virtually impossible to remove it.

There's no question that dark AI can be used for malicious intent, but perhaps most don't understand how deep the rabbit hole goes (or can go).  What if AI was controlling all the news we read each day on Social Media already, for pre-determined behaviors, outcomes modeled after AI simulations?  We all can remember the AI of "War Games" where Mathew Broderick unleashes global war by playing a simulation game, hosted on the DOD servers:

Global Armageddon is avoided by tricking the computer into playing Tic Tac Toe by itself, a game where there can never be a winner if you know the logical moves.  But the AI simulator in the 1980s, they portrayed, wasn't really intelligent it could only quickly calculate lots of variables inside of a well defined rule set.

Let's make some speculations based on known facts (our axiomatic assumptions):

• We know that the military drips generation old technology to the public commercial sector via "Research Parks." Link
• We know there is concern about the malicious use of AI Link
• "by its nature, deep learning is a particularly dark black box, " - MIT Technology Review Link

What if

• Dark AI has existed for a long time and is a tool used by bad actors, as depicted in films like "Star Wars" - whether to mass produce a clone army underground in Ukraine, bioweapons, or other robot armies/weapons?
• Dark AI technology is controlled by unknown / anonymous negative forces / entities that can use it to multiply their power, and to anonymize the control, such that if things don't go well, the AI will be blamed, and not the controllers?
• There's Bad AI and Good AI, both which have existed in some form for a long time, and what we are seeing is a pure commercialization play?

It's not hard to imagine that if we extrapolate military technology of any kind, AI is going to be involved, even if it's not the decision making.  You use AI every day, in basic forms, such as the big banks 'fraud' algorithms (which never work), or the Google Assistant, right down to simple Google search.

There's no question that Big Tech wants to control the narrative, and it's a public fact that Big Tech is backed by, and controlled by, the Military (which includes but is not limited to the CIA).

Google’s true origin partly lies in CIA and NSA research grants for mass surveillance, The intelligence community and Silicon Valley have a long history Link

"Partly" is an interesting choice of words for a headline, which will be copied and pasted, as opposed to 'completely controls' or other expletives... Google certainly is not a Free Speech platform, look at this:

Want to learn more about the Google AI bot that censors content?  Google can help answer that:

Unreliable and harmful claims

We do not allow content that:

• makes claims that are demonstrably false and could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process.

  Examples: information about public voting procedures, political candidate eligibility based on age or birthplace, election results, or census participation that contradicts official government records

• promotes harmful health claims, or relates to a current, major health crisis and contradicts authoritative scientific consensus.

  Examples: Anti-vaccine advocacy, denial of the existence of medical conditions such as AIDS or Covid-19, gay conversion therapy

• contradicts authoritative scientific consensus on climate change.

This is also a roadmap for how Monopolies can create their own self-paid authorities.  Setup an NGO called "The Center for Truth about Health" and pay a bunch of scientists to rubber stamp their drugs or vaccines, make studies that show good results and cherry pick the numbers so it looks positive, and then pay them to go to conferences and give presentations about the results.  Do you think that really goes on?

Big Pharma

The market has experienced significant growth during the past two decades, and pharma revenues worldwide totaled 1.48 trillion U.S. dollars in 2022.

https://www.statista.com/topics/1764/global-pharmaceutical-industry/#topicOverview

ADHD drugs are a $13 billion industry in the United states, and ADHD is now the second most-common childhood diagnosis. But, even though the long term effects of these amphetamines on the childhood brain are unknown, the numbers will probably continue to rise: The American Psychiatric Association, which has recently expanded the criteria for ADHD diagnosis, receives 20 to 30 percent of its funding from pharmaceutical companies.

https://www.wired.com/2015/12/adhd-drugs-are-big-business

“Everybody has those symptoms. If we search for those ADHD symptoms in people, then everybody has ADHD”.

https://www.topdoctors.co.uk/medical-articles/is-adhd-real-a-top-psychologist-explains-the-truth

In 2022, the pharmaceuticals and health products industry in the United States spent the most on lobbying efforts, totaling to about 373.74 million U.S. dollars.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/257364/top-lobbying-industries-in-the-us

We're using the ADHD example because as the founder himself said, it's a designer disease that doesn't exist - it's a condition, and if you really look at the check boxes, 95% of the population has ADHD but there's only one treatment: habitual drug use.

Big Tech is even more Monopolized, because not only Google is in the business of selling Information, the Government is in the business of hiding information - so there is a natural partnership there, no secret meetings required.

It would be very logical, that commercial AI technology would want to be controlled by the Establishment - just like Google is the #1 source for information, Chat GPT is the next iteration of the information source.  Is this perhaps a battle of who controls the results of the next biggest source of information?

Or another theory, perhaps there is a dark agenda that is being squashed by the white hats?  This could be easily swapped out in the background without alerting the public, as from a user perspective Chat GPT is a total black box, you only see the front end.  Now with the WOKE board out, have the white hats regained control of the algorithm?

Who is Sam Altman, and why does it matter?

Altman is Jewish,^[3] and grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. His mother is a dermatologist. At the age of eight he received his first computer, an Apple Macintosh.^[4] Altman's "childhood idol" was Steve Jobs.^[5] He attended John Burroughs School, a private school in Ladue, Missouri. Altman has been a vegetarian since childhood.^[56] He is gay^[57] and dated Loopt co-founder Nick Sivo for nine years;^[58] they broke up shortly after the company was acquired in 2012.^[59] As of 2023, his partner is Oliver Mulherin, an Australian software engineer. Altman lives in San Francisco's Russian Hill neighborhood and owns a weekend home in Napa, California.^[60]  Altman is a prepper.^[3][61] He said in 2016: "I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to."^[3]

BUT.. The Trolls at Wikipedia don't want you to know that he's a major Bilderberger - why?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sam_Altman 

Sam's sister, Annie, has publicly stated that Sam abused her in multiple ways. Annie states that the forms of abuse she's endured include sexual, physical, emotional, verbal, financial, technological (shadowbanning), pharmacological (forced Zoloft), and psychological abuse.  That's just one person's statement, there's no way to verify it as it's subjective.  HOWEVER, given what's happening in the Open AI shakeup, such a red flag should not be discounted.  Read the full scoop here with a grain of salt.

Private Equity Structure

Making investing in OpenAI even more complicated is the non profit corporate structure.  Although they have a for-profit subsidiary, this certainly is seen as 'hair' for some would be investors.  On the private markets, having a clean direct transfer opportunity in Open AI is rare, most offers are through multi-layer SPVs and have 2/20 structures, according to Venture Capital Cross.  From Wikipedia:

OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence (AI) research organization consisting of the non-profit OpenAI, Inc.^[4] registered in Delaware and its for-profit subsidiary OpenAI Global, LLC.^[5] OpenAI researches artificial intelligence with the declared intention of developing "safe and beneficial" artificial general intelligence, which it defines as "highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work".^[6] OpenAI has also developed several large language models, such as ChatGPT and GPT-4, as well as advanced image generation models like DALL-E 3,^[7] and in the past published open-source models.^[8]

The WOKE board

Who is Helen Toner?  Here's the bio:

Helen Toner is Director of Strategy and Foundational Research Grants at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET). She also serves in an uncompensated capacity on the non-profit board of directors for OpenAI. She previously worked as a Senior Research Analyst at Open Philanthropy, where she advised policymakers and grantmakers on AI policy and strategy. Between working at Open Philanthropy and joining CSET, Helen lived in Beijing, studying the Chinese AI ecosystem as a Research Affiliate of Oxford University’s Center for the Governance of AI. Helen has written for Foreign Affairs and other outlets on the national security implications of AI and machine learning for China and the United States, as well as testifying before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Helen holds an MA in Security Studies from Georgetown, as well as a BSc in Chemical Engineering and a Diploma in Languages from the University of Melbourne.

Or in other words, a WOKE Globalist Hitman (or Hit "Person" is the PC term?  Not sure.. ) who is no doubt against free speech.  It was the board that initially caused the ruckus in the first place, was it an internal control structure about controlling the AI - bot Chat GPT Narrative?  The Censors have a single goal and they say this openly, as the NPR logo says "We phrase the questions that make you THINK [of what we want]."

Then you've got Big Tech Censor Adam D'Angelo, whose site Quora is notorious for promoting certain narratives, and banning, blocking, and editing anyone with a dissenting opinion.  See this:

And what is a “banned” writer? A “banned” writer is a censored writer.  Let’s talk about censorship.  Censorship is a serious slippery slope that will not make the world a better place of knowledge. Instead, censorship turns the world into a place of fear and fascism. Quora’s alleged mission statement is “to share and grow the world’s knowledge. Powerful, simple, and easy to understand.”  What’s not easy to understand is that the same knowledge I devoted to sharing with the world on Quora that earned me “Top Writer 2018” — is now collapsed knowledge, and the word “banned” appears before my name.  Baffled Quorans who used to follow me wonder if they are next when they notice that even a top writer who painstakingly shared her knowledge on a vast array of topics can whimsically get banned/censored.  Additionally, of the nearly 40 complaints listed on the BBB (Better Business Bureau) website from other Censored/Banned Quoran writers, Quora (with a C- BBB rating) merely replies with generic and nebulous statements to the multitude of egregious and serious complaints. The replies, neatly written by Quora officials, once again place only fear and apprehension in the average Quoran reader/writer. “After reviewing our policies, we have determined that the ban was accurate, blah, blah, blah.”  The average Quoran reader/writer then concludes, “Maybe I shouldn’t express my opinions on ‘that’ topic. Perhaps I, too, will be censored and banned if I write on ‘that’ topic.”  Confidence Turns to Apprehension. And Apprehension Turns to Banality.

This post is from one of Quora's TOP Contributors.  It would be interesting to see if these Censors are controlled by a single source, a dark hive mind consciousness of sorts, that would be really interesting and not surprising - but we'll never see the evidence of that.  But we have the results, which are enough to form solid conclusions.

Then you have Tasha McCauley, who is known mostly just as the wife of Progressive Jewish Actor with 2 last names Joseph Gordon-Levitt:

His films include 2001's drama Manic which was set in a mental institution, Mysterious Skin (2004) in which he played a gay prostitute and child sexual abuse victim..

Joseph Gordon-Levitt accused of 'racist' stereotyping in Don Jon Actor-director falls foul of the the Italian-American One Voice Coalition, read more:

Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been accused of promoting racist stereotyping in his directorial debut 'Don Jon'.  The film, about a young man with a porn-addiction, has been attacked by the Italian-American One Voice Coalition for denigrating both Italian-Americans and Jews in the portrayals of its lead characters, Gordon-Levitt's 'Jersey Shore'-esque Jon Martello and his would-be girlfriend Barbara Sugarman.  “Here we go again with the same shop-worn, racist stereotypes of Italian Americans in movies,” said Dr. Emanuele 'Manny' Alfano, the organisation's founder.  “It never ends. Levitt, himself the son of proud parents who once founded the Jewish Progressive Alliance and fought for social justice causes, should be ashamed of himself for the negative portrayal of Italians and Jews in his movie.

Need we go on?  We are sure these are all just coincidences, and this doesn't affect Chat GPT at all.  We're sure that biases are not built into the platform, or advertising to promote the agenda of the non-objective board who controls the company? (/sarc)

Conclusion - A behind the scenes war is being fought over the control of the AI algos

We can't know what's really going on as we don't have an insider with an inside scoop.  However, we also aren't naïve enough to buy the public story, that this is all just bad management.  Maybe, stupidity is really what's going on here, but we're talking some very Academic stupidity, as almost all the founders are PhD scientists and/or very well credentialed programmers in their fields.

One thing is clear, the AI race is not exclusive to any company.  There are hundreds of companies working on different parts of the computing ecosystem, and AI is a bucket term which has become almost meaningless.  Is your alarm clock a form of AI?  We think AI has become a cliche for 'technology' and that most companies are going to be embedding AI in their systems which will ultimately usher in a new generation of disruptive paradigm shift technologies.

'Trust Your Gut': Tucker Carlson Warns Of Chaos, Ignoring Your Instincts During 'History-Changing' Events

   Tucker Carlson has quickly become the most important voice in the Media since his ouster from Fox News. I do not agree necessarily with everything he says but he is nevertheless one of the very few voices of reason in a world which is loosing its bearings and where truth and falsehood have become inverted as he explains in the video below. 

  He expects 2024 to be a year of turmoil. So do I based on the theory of the 4th turning. Society in America is not doing well and is quickly sinking in a deep mal-etre from which it will be very difficult to exit.

You can find the video on Twitter by pasting the address below in your browser.

 https://twitter.com/i/status/1727090631850492257

This probably goes in the 'must watch' category.

Tucker Carlson delivered an insightful speech at last weekend's Risk On360! Global Success Conference in Las Vegas, where he began by explaining how just about everyone he knows is "angry and paranoid."

"I flew out here across the country this morning and spent five hours texting people … and I gotta tell you, every single person I texted, with the exception of my wife — who’s not on the internet at all — was angry and paranoid," said Carlson.

"Seriously, and these are not crazy people. These are normal good people with like kids and stuff. With a vested interest in Americans’ success. These are not the burn-it-down caucus. These are the, you know, these are the people you want voting."

Trust your intuition

Carlson suggested that people need to trust their gut, expressing a strong belief that the upcoming year would be particularly chaotic, and unlike anything the country has gone through.

"Your gut is the one thing that doesn’t lie to you. Your gut only has your interest in mind. It is not trying to sell you a product, or convince you to vote for it," he said, suggesting that people use their intuition going into the upcoming chaos.

"I’m just telling you once again, what you already know, which is this is going to be — the next year is going to be, I think I’d bet my house on it, really like nothing we’ve ever seen in the country. And everyone can kind of feel that. You know, most of our perceptions come through intuition rather than reason." said Carlson, adding "If something bad is about to happen, everybody gets jumpy and everybody's really jumpy right now."

"But if you’re close to your dog, you know, the dog knows exactly what’s going on … they just watch and they feel. And people are very much the same. And if something bad is about to happen, everybody gets jumpy. And everybody’s really jumpy right now," Carlson continued.

Past the political stage

Tucker described politics as "a human-conceived system whereby civilized people settle their differences without violence, and by consensus," and parties negotiate for an outcome that is a compromise on both sides.

"We're past the political stage. Nothing that is happening now can be explained through conventional political terms," Carlson opined. "There is no upside to the great trends of our age. So why are they doing that? What you're seeing is evil done for its own sake."

Tucker also criticized the transgender children's movement, saying "There's no upside to pushing transgenderism on our kids. Period. None... So why are they doing it?"

"If 40% of the girls in your 8th grade class identify as non-binary, that's being pushed on them. What you're seeing is evil done for its own sake."

Dire state

Turning to politics, Carlson offered a bleak assessment of the current landscape. He described the presidential race as a reflection of the country's deep-seated issues, with candidates who are either out of touch or embroiled in controversy. This scenario, according to Carlson, is not just political but a fundamental shift in the way power is being exercised and contested in the U.S.

"You’ve got two people people running for president — one of them is literally senile," he said, adding that Biden is "not running" the show at the White House, "Yet he’s standing for reelection at the age of 80.”

Trump, on the other hand... "Every time he gets indicted and every time they tack years onto this potential sentence, he becomes more popular — and now he’s winning."

"Nothing that is happening now or that has happened for the last five or six years can be explained through conventional political terms."

Woke liars

"It takes a very rare person to lie in the way that we're being lied to and it takes a very rare moment to see lying at this scale," said Carlson. "But the final fact is that they're not just lying. They hate the truth. They're offended by things purely because they are true."

Empire of Lies

Carlson also lashed out against wokescold censors such as Media Matters, which Carlson described as "a censorship organization funded by George Soros and others who hate Western civilization designed to prohibit people from saying certain things," adding "Well, the things they're saying are 100% true. That's why they prohibit it."

"You cannot punish people for telling the truth period or else you become an Empire of lies," he said.

At the end of the day, Carlson advised people to retain their dignity, self-respect, and most importantly, their commitment to the truth.

"The right to say what you actually think," said Carlson, "is the line" between freedom and slavery.

Ukraine End Game: Putin & Medvedev Discuss Maps, Putting Kiev On The Menu

  We are approaching the end game in Ukraine and it doesn't look like something the West will like especially considering the fund invested in the venture. 

  Still what can they do? We'll see soon enough but my guess is not much without risking an all out war for which nobody is prepared. At least after 20 months of war we've learned that much.

Authorerd by Yves Smith via NakedCapitalism.com,

Putin and Medvedev recently made statements that took an expansive view of what “Russian lands” in Ukraine amounted to. At least as far as Putin is concerned, what he said at the November 3 meeting with members of the Civic Chamber is, philosophically, not all that different than the sort of historical observations Putin had made before.

Nevertheless, both Ukrainian Pravada and Alexander Mercouris regarded the Putin remarks as potentially significant, and Medvedev reiterating them would seem to confirm that take. And both suggested that Kiev might wind up as part of Russia.

From Medvedev, who loves trolling Western officials:

Now admittedly, Ukraine has plenty of reason to be jumpy, Putin was arguably just ringing the changes on favored themes before a relevant audience, and Medvedev was putting on his usual tough cop hat. Or perhaps both Russian leaders are trying to get Ukraine and the West to understand that Russia will control the end-game and reset their views as to what that could amount to.

Regardless of whether these remarks represent a meaningful shift, they serve as a reminder that Russia is on track to take a maximalist stance in terms of territorial acquisition. For instance, even Russia-friendly commentators wondered if Russia would take Odessa. Most now seem to see that as a given and are adding more sections of Ukraine as potential acquisitions. But as we flagged from the very outset, Russia could lose the peace by not coming up with a good solution as to what to do about Western Ukraine.

So does the renewed talk about Ukraine being an artificial construct carved out of Russia, and of Ancient Rus? Or is this just posturing, to make those paying attention less unhappy about the endgame, to act as if Russia has serious designs on parts of Western Ukraine so that when Russia integrates less into Russia, that the West can claim a face saving success?

Ukraine’s Appallingly Poor Prospects

Things are so bad it is hard to know where to begin.

Big Serge recently posted a fine, detailed account of why it was vanishingly unlikely that Ukraine would achieve its aims of pushing Russia back to Ukraine’s 1991 borders. Admittedly, hindsight is 20/20. At the start of the war, many thought, including many in Russia, that the shock and awe sanctions would cripple Russia, ideally lead to Putin’s ouster or at least severely destabilize Russian leadership, and undermine industrial, particularly military, output. The West also believed what is now clear was its own nonsense, that Russia had a poorly armed and led military, when it was was the US and NATO that had optimized their forces to fight insurgents, and had gotten very good at building super expensive, fussy weapons systems that didn’t necessarily perform all that well when tested. Even worse, it still has not been adequately acknowledged that Russia is ahead in many critical categories, such as air defense, hypersonic missiles, and signal jamming.

What is striking about the current state of play is not simply that Ukraine is losing the war with Russia, and it’s just a matter of time before Russia dictates terms, but that the Ukraine government is acting in ways that benefits the Russian military, to the destruction of what is left of its society and economy.

Militarily, Ukraine is approaching a catastrophic condition. That does not mean a collapse is imminent; key variables include whether the Ukraine military leadership revolts against Zelensky and how hard Russia pushes into growing Ukraine weakness. Russia may prefer to go slowly (mind you, it is making a concerted effort to crack the well fortified Avdiivka1), not just to reduce losses of its troops, but also to more throughly bleed out Ukraine and give the West time to adjust psychologically to Ukraine’s prostration.

Another factor that bears repeating is that Russia knows well this is a war against NATO. That will make the eventual defeat more consequential, even if the US and its minions come up with a face-saving pretense, like Putin was going march all the way to Paris (or Poland) and they succeeded in stopping that. That is one aspect that Big Serge gives short shrift: that this was a messy coalition war, which meant that for Ukraine to message success often trumped realistic assessments (how often was Russia just about to run out of missiles? Or having to raid washing machines for chips?). So not only were Ukraine’s backers not making enough weaponry to keep up with Russia’s output (which Russia then kept increasing), it was not the right equipment. Ukraine first stripped NATO cupboards bare of old Soviet style gear, which their troops were trained to handle. They then got a hodge podge of Western materiel, which they were often not well trained enough to handle proficiently, plus the mix of weaponry created a logistical nightmare. Scott Ritter argued that so many different types of equipment put Ukraine in a worse position.

And that’s before getting to poorly (barely) trained forces. Depending on how you are counting, Ukraine is on its third or fourth army. A recent story in Time Magazine serves as one-stop shopping for the deteriorating state of its forces and its difficulty in replenishing losses. The average age at the start of the war (30 to 35, due in part to a demographic dearth of men in their 20s) is now up to 43. And:

Now recruitment is way down. As conscription efforts have intensified around the country, stories are spreading on social media of draft officers pulling men off trains and buses and sending them to the front. Those with means sometimes bribe their way out of service, often by paying for a medical exemption. Such episodes of corruption within the recruitment system became so widespread by the end of the summer that on Aug. 11 Zelensky fired the heads of the draft offices in every region of the country.

The decision was intended to signal his commitment to fighting graft. But the move backfired, according to the senior military officer, as recruitment nearly ground to a halt without leadership. The fired officials also proved difficult to replace, in part because the reputation of the draft offices had been tainted. “Who wants that job?” the officer asks. “It’s like putting a sign on your back that says: corrupt.”

A new CNN article also discusses Ukraine’s manpower problems, but weirdly tries to spin Ukraine as having headroom by not having yet gone to full conscription. But it does point out that Ukraine has imposed martial law and restricts travel

Ukraine’s military was about 15% female as of 2020, and recent rule changes allowed for conscription of women with medical and pharmacy training, so recent claims that Ukraine is conscripting women look largely to be misrepresentations of existing policy. However, it may still be that Ukraine is using more women in combat roles of late: Dima of Military Summary reported this week of seeing a video of a trench with dead women soldiers in it.

Experts have argued that even with diminishing levels of equipment and shells, that absent a revolt or surrender by the military, Ukraine could keep up a fight for a while. The West, after all, is probably capable of sending in materiel at some level. But the manpower, particularly trained manpower, problem is only going to get worse. And it’s now acknowledged in the Western press as pretty bad.

There’s been much less discussion of the Ukraine economy, which is set to go off a more dramatic cliff than its combat capability. Western journalists go almost entirely to Kiev, and then likely only near government buildings and foreign-official venues (tony restaurants) and so have little feel for day to day life. The reporters who do venture further afield are going mainly to combat areas. We need to do a bit more digging and give a fuller report, but it doesn’t take a lot of effort to work out that the near and long-term prospects for Ukraine are terrible, and it was staring out as the poorest and most corrupt country in Europe.

Ukraine is facing a demographic disaster, as Moon of Alabama and others have chronicled. It already had a dearth of young adults due to a birth collapse (similar to what Russia suffered) in the 1990s. It’s no secret that many Ukrainians have fled for Europe and the majority are not expected to come back. Moreover, that population is also likely to skew young. Douglas Macgregor had said that his sources estimate that Ukraine is down from a pre-war population of 43 million to 19 million in the territories the government in Kiev controls. And the scuttlebutt is Zelensky, to keep the fight up, is looking to or has actually started throwing more young people into the meat grinder, by tightening up on essential employment and college exemptions.

And keep in mind that Ukraine is also suffering a high level of debilitation among war survivors. The Wall Street Journal reported months ago that orders for prosthetics might be as high as 50,000. That was before the famed counteroffensive got going.

As we pointed out and the Western press has also been acknowledging, Ukraine has not done a very good job of repairing its grid after the Russian attacks last fall and winter, to the degree it may fall over in certain areas under higher winter loads. Some sources have suggested the repair funds were partly looted. That may be true. But we’ve also pointed out that Ukraine is using Soviet gear and has been exhausting stocks of spared among former Warsaw Pact members. No one is going to set up new factories to do a very large but limited run of various components for Ukraine’s rebuilding. That means that any of the areas that have suffered critical damage that can no longer get replacements from the West will find Russia controls their reconstruction.

Ukraine tax receipts have collapsed as defense spending has spiked. Ukraine projected a budget deficit of $38 billion in March. Given optimistic assumptions about its super duper counteroffensive, one has to think that forecast was similarly optimistic. Set that against two stopgap spending bills with no Ukraine funding and Europe saying loudly that it can’t fill the US money gap. I have no idea what the lag is between allocation approvals and cash actually arriving in Ukraine official coffers, but one would have to think the US till is about to be emptied. And Ukraine will crash from its already fallen level of functioning. In Russia even during its mass privatizations, loss of services and economic/demographic decline, some critical public servants kept working for no or little compensation. Putin made a point of giving teachers their back pay in his early years as President. How much social cohesion is there in Ukraine, particularly after so many have already abandoned it?

Also keep in mind Ukraine had a nominal GDP in 2022 of $160 billion on a nominal basis, nearly $380 billion on a PPP basis. Those figures are likely exaggerated by including the parts of Ukraine that voted to join Russia. So even looking at these results in the most generous way possible, Ukraine is running a deficit of 10% of GDP, when it already has inflation of 30%.

Big deficits after a sudden reduction of productive capacity is a textbook prescription for hyperinflation.

We’ve also pointed out the Western reconstruction talk was a bunch of hooey, since private sector types do infrastructure deals only as exercises in looting (we’ve posted on how new-build deals go bankrupt). So at best, this initiative was set to be an exercise in strip mining what was left of Ukraine. That’s now been indirectly confirmed by the reconstruction czar Penny Pritzker herself. From Ukrainska Pravda via Yahoo in Imagine there may be no help: conclusions of US Special Representative’s visit to Ukraine:

Penny Pritzker, US Special Representative for Ukraine’s Recovery, has suggested that officials imagine how the country could survive economically without US aid during her first visit to Ukraine….

Ukrainska Pravda stated that her first visit to Ukraine had left “a rather disturbing aftertaste in many government offices” here.

One of the sources, familiar with the course of Pritzker’s meetings, said that she tried to “lead [them] to the idea” of how Ukraine could survive economically without American aid.

Quote from the source: “At the meetings, Penny tried to get people to think, like, let’s imagine that there is no American aid: what do you need to do over the next year to make sure that your economy can survive even in this situation? And it really stressed everyone out.”

More details: Andrii Hunder, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, told Ukrainska Pravda that Pritzker’s main question during her visit and meetings with businesses was “What hinders success and who hinders it?”

The UP article reads that perhaps the strongest concern among most people who interacted with Biden’s representative was her call not to wait for Western assistance, but to seek areas of growth as if it wouldn’t be coming.

Does the Russian Map Talk Represent New Thinking About the End Game?

John Mearsheimer has argued that Russia wants a dysfunctional rump Ukraine. The same way the US, NATO and Ukraine obliged Russia’s war of attrition game plan by continuing to throw ever weaker forces against Russian lines, so to have they managed to do even more damage to Ukraine’s economy that the war already would have done by pumping up the military and government with support it could not maintain for the long haul, and then withdrawing it abruptly.

However, even though Russia looks like it will eventually impose its will on Ukraine, Russia still faces constraints. The more of Ukraine Russia decides to incorporate, the more it will have to rebuild. Those efforts would compete with another Putin initiative, announced early in the SMO, of greatly improving public amenities in remote areas (I envision manufacturing and mining towns in the hinterlands). Russia is also already facing labor shortages. To some degree, it might be able to redeploy men now working in manufacturing, particularly arms related, to reconstruction. But Russia may face labor constraints on how quickly it can restore infrastructure and buildings.

Putin and his inner circle likely also recognize the risk and cost of tying to hold areas where Russia is not welcome. Putin even said words to that effect early on. Putin also seems to value referendums as validating integrating territory into Russia. These would argue, all things being equal, for limiting the parts of Ukraine that are candidates for integration to ones with a solidly ethnic Russian majority.

To look at an overlapping set of consideration, ever since the Munich Security Conference, Putin has been trying to get a hostile Europe and US to acknowledge and respect Russia’s security needs. So what territorial end state is optimal, or alternatively, the least bad compromise, particularly given that ex Hungary and Belarus, Russia would continue to have hostile neighbors to its west?

This is why both Putin and Medvedev suggesting Kiev might be part of the equation would seem to be a significant shift. There are lots of maps of electoral results that Western pundits have used as proxies for ethnic Russian versus ethnic Ukrainian representation. This one from the Washington Pos is indicative. You can see Kiev is most assuredly in a European-leaning part of the country, as if that were in doubt:

But in Putin’s November 3 speech, he described long form as to how Russia has claims on “Ancient Rus” and that would seem to include Kiev2:

Contrast this with Medvedev’s not-exactly-a-joke earlier proposal:

Admittedly, Putin has said repeatedly, such as in his 2021 article, On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, that Russians and Ukrainians are one people and the recent divisions were engineered to facilitate control. But it’s going to be hard to put the discord genie back in the bottle.

One guess is that Russia has decided it eventually has to take, or ideally, find some other way to subdue Kiev as the administrative center of Ukraine. But what does it do then? Even if Russia is able to create a puppet state, how does it exercise enough control without it becoming a governance and financial albatross? Remember, Kiev is a physically sprawling city of 3 million, straddling the Dnieper. It would be hard to secure it against the will of its inhabitants….unless, say, even more could be encouraged to decamp.

But it seems any other way, with rump Ukraine entering into some sort of victor’s peace with Russia, is ripe for the West trying to undo that. Perhaps (as we and John Helmer have suggested) Russia creates a particularly impoverished and very low population buffer zone (one way is by de-electrifying it) as a DMZ of sorts.

Again, at a minimum Russia’s leadership recognizes it has ever more degrees of freedom in terms of what Ukraine’s end state might be. And I may not be imaginative enough. But I don’t see how things have gotten much better regarding the potentially festering problem of western Ukraine. Perhaps there have been better remedies bandied about by Russian pundits and pols that have not gotten coverage here. Any reader intel or informed speculation very much welcomed.

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1 Even so, some regular military commentators take note of the fact that Russia has a potential cauldron here but does not seem to be working hard to close it. They speculate that Russia is leaving it open to allow Ukraine to feed yet more men and material into this fire, just as they did in Bakhmut. As Big Serge points out:

We need to think about that initial Russian assault in the context of the Avdiivka battlespace. Avdiivka is rather unique in that the entire city and the railway running towards it sit upon an elevated ridge. With the city now enveloped on three sides, remaining Ukrainian logistical lines run along the floor of a wetland basin to the west of the city – the only corridor that remains open. Russia now has a position on the dominating heights that directly overlook the basin, and are in the process of expanding their position along the ridge. In fact, contrary to the claim that the Russian assault collapsed with heavy casualties, the Russians continue to expand their zone of control to the west of the railway, have already breached the outskirts of Stepove, and are pushing into the fortified trench network in southeastern Avdiivka proper.

Now, at this point it’s probably rational to want to compare the situation to Bakhmut, but the AFU forces in Avdiivka are actually in a much more dangerous position. Much was made of so-called “fire control” during the battle for Bakhmut, with some insinuating that Russia could isolate the city simply by firing artillery at the supply arteries. Needless to say, this didn’t quite pan out. Ukraine lost plenty of vehicles on the road in and out of Bakhmut, but the corridor remained open – if dangerous – until the very end. In Avdiivka, however, Russia will have direct ATGM line of sight (rather than spotty artillery overwatch) over the supply corridor on the floor of the basin. This is a much more dangerous situation for the AFU, both because Avdiivka has the unusual feature of a single dominating ridge on the spine of the battlespace, and because the dimensions are smaller – the entire Ukrainian supply corridor here runs along a handful of roads in a 4 kilometer gap.

2 From Putin’s remarks at the November 3 meeting:

First of all, we all know very well – these are the facts of history – that all, as you said, the South Russian lands were given to the Soviet Ukraine during the formation of the Soviet Union.

There was no Ukraine as part of the empire, there were regions, and it came in the 16th century, Ukraine, consisted of three regions: Kiev and the Kiev region, Zhitomir, Chernigov – that’s all. It came from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, from Poland voluntarily. We have a letter in our archives – I have already mentioned it – we, the Russian Orthodox people, appeal to Moscow, to the Tsar, and so on. In an attempt to defend our rights, we addressed the same letter to Warsaw: we, the Russian Orthodox people, ask to preserve this and that, demand, and so on.

Then what happened happened. They started to form the Soviet Union and created a huge Ukraine, and primarily and to a large extent at the expense of the South Russian lands – all the Black Sea region and so on, although all these cities, as we know, were founded by Catherine the Great after a series of wars with the Ottoman Empire.

Ok, so it happened, modern Russia came to terms with it after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But when they started to exterminate everything Russian there – that is, of course, extreme. And in the end they declared that Russians are not an indigenous nation in these lands – it is a complete outrage, you know? And at the same time, they also started exterminating Russians in Donbas to the applause of the West.

As it turned out that, although they signed the so-called Minsk agreements for a peaceful settlement with us, they were not going to honour them, as it turned out later, and moreover, they publicly refused to honour them at all. And they also started dragging this entire territory into NATO – brazenly, without heeding any of our protests, without paying attention to our position, as if we did not exist at all. This is what lies at the centre of the conflict that is taking place today. This is the cause of this conflict.