Raging issues (2)

It’s not worth dying for

Ukraine President Zelensky says he is willing to die trying to get back Donbas from the Russians. But why die for a place which was never yours in the first place? The Zelensky regime is western in origin. Donbas has been Slavic and Russian for more than a thousand years. For them, it’s worth dying for. For Zelensky, it’s nothing except a geopolitical extension of a western regime snatched from an eastern rule with the help of the CIA.

Remember how the Russians beat back the invincible Germans out of Stalingrad at a cost of millions of lives in WW2? They will do it again in Donbas. If Zelensky wants the war to end and stop the massacre of innocent Ukrainian civilians, he has to concede what is not his. US NATO is using Ukraine as a pawn to strangle Russia, their final goal. They supply arms to the Ukrainians, who become the sacrificial lambs for the US-NATO goal. With Zelensky at the helm, the war in Ukraine can never end. US-NATO vs Russia Realizing it is losing the war in Ukraine, and considering a perceived massive Russian ‘winter offensive’, the Pentagon is introducing the Patriot Missile in Ukraine, according to Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector in an interview by Clayton Morris of ‘Redacted’, a social media outfit with 1.54 subscribers.

Ritter says the US is losing the war in Ukraine, yet it is “upping the ante” instead of forging a compromise. He adds that the Patriot Missile requires months of training by a staff of about 90 US trainor soldiers per battery. Thus, the Patriot will take time to be operational and will require hundreds of trainers inside Ukraine.

Putin warns that this brinkmanship puts US-NATO forces closer to “a direct path to all-out war”, in the words of Clayton Morris. If Russia targets this large US-NATO presence, with US troops as casualties, a counter-response is inevitable. We are slowly inching toward a hell-breaking loss.

The US Inflation Reduction Act appropriates a staggering $369 billion in subsidies to US corporations to give them an edge over EU competition. Germany and France lead a plan for EU ‘counter-subsidies’ to even the competition, and warned FACEBOOK and GOOGLE of stiff antitrust charges (4 billion euros for Google). The trade war focuses on competition over the trillions of dollars electric car industry. The trade war will induce protectionism where the EU will buy only EU electric cars and the US has to find other buyers.

With a worsening energy crisis, runaway inflation, and the Ukrainian war stalemate triggering increased military and financial aid, the trade war is really bad timing.

Russia is winning oil price cap war US Trans-Atlantic trade war vs EU

EU and the West are ‘shooting from the hip’ and have not done their homework in forging the Oil Price Cap strategy. The plan was based on a Western monopoly of oil tankers and the accident insurance firms required to transport oil. Western oil tankers carrying Russian oil and insured by western insurance firms will presumably adhere to the oil price cap of $60 per barrel. In response, Russia is resurrecting its old oil tankers while building new ones, which may take a while, and putting up its insurance firms, nullifying the entire price cap concept.

As a result, hundreds of tankers clogged up the Turkish Straits a few days after the price cap took effect on 5 December, but ironically, they were carrying non-Russian oil. Kazakhstan is the main casualty.

The rest of the world is another casualty. The sudden artificial shortage caused by tanker gridlock is triggering soaring prices of global oil.

The oil price cap is a suicidal plan that has boomeranged on the EU and the West. Russia and other sanctioned nations like Iran and Venezuela can now use Russian tankers for buyers such as China, Turkey, and Asia. EU and the West have worsened their energy crisis amid global runaway inflation and recession.

It is like launching a heat-seeking missile, then lighting up a bonfire against the winter cold, only to become the target of your own missile.

“EU and the West are ‘shooting from the hip’ and have not done their homework in forging the Oil Price Cap strategy.

“Ritter says the US is losing the war in Ukraine, yet it is “upping the ante” instead of forging a compromise.