Defence

2025-03-04

A force to keep the pressure on Russia, and to keep UK-EU military forces in the Ukraine.

And if Russia does agree a peace deal, to boost the Ukraine's defensive capabilities...

I commented yesterday on the logic of Starmer's position, but one salient point i missed:

Call me old-fashioned, but if Russia has waged a war since 2022 to keep Ukraine out of NATO and NATO out of Ukraine (as clearly stated by Vladimir Putin), then Russia will just reject these ideas out of hand as putting NATO into Ukraine under another name.

It simply won't fly. There will be no lasting ceasefire under these suggestions, and probably no

2025-03-03

War requires ice-cold emotionless thinking, accurate and timely military intelligence, and an economy that can support the Forces' needs for munitions and military equipment as and when they need them. Oh, and of course they will need the Forces themselves, trained up and ready to go. 

And where will we get the steadfast national leadership that could lead the nation through such a perilous venture? 

Given the government's track record of sacrificing all of the above in pursuit of the ridiculous UN Green New Deal and the numerous fairy tales that that involves, the chances of this new "peace-keeping" venture holding back a vast well-prepared battle-hardened Russian army with copious supplies of state of the art armaments, look vanishingly small to me.I would go so far as to say that should Russia decide to call our bluff and brush us aside... 

...

2025-03-02

Scott Ritter - give him an inch and he'll take a mile!

Peace in the Ukraine is only just beginning to be talked about, and here he is thinking about the real need to phase out mankind's ability to self-immolate through nuclear war.

Probably not a moment too soon if you ask me. The world needs people like Scott who not only have the foresight to identify a path forward, but also have the experience to assess the pitfalls and map out how best to do it. Sadly they are becoming thin on the ground, so the sooner the process can be mapped out, the better for all concerned.

(31 minutes)

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2025-03-01

Scott Ritter lays it out - and then some!

"Donald Trump has done more in one month than anyone has ever done in any peace negotiations in the history of modern warfare"

Whether we think he did a good job or a bad job will depend upon our view of the objectives, Trump's stated objective being to end the pointless slaughter.

Recent years have demonstrated that short of starting WW3, Ukraine+NATO/EU will not hold the Russian advance, let alone push them back behind their erstwhile boundaries.

Many won't like that, but would we like WW3 any better?

(2 hrs 3 mins)

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2025-03-01

Yanis Varoufakis, economist, author of very accessible books, self-proclaimed leftist and scourge of the EU at the time of the Greek "bail-out", and now apparently a Professor, (and virtually the only "leftist" that I rate very highly for his logical analysis and ability to get to the real nub of political problems) explains the current state of Trump's relationship with Europe.

Oh, and the workings of Chinese municipal government! Maybe we should be wondering how our own new political system should look, once our current failing systems have collapsed.

Very informative.

(32 minutes)

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2025-03-01

With "renewables" leading to ever higher energy costs, nuclear still regarded with some suspicion (and SMRs not yet rolling off the production lines in volume), government-backed mega power-stations seemingly permanently mired in the paralysis of analysis and the perils of politicking, and of course fracking being sent packing, some think that old king coal is poised to make a come-back.

Yes, there are obvious problems with that, but there's problems with everything just now - and just how are all these wonderful new but power-gobbling AI data-centres going to be powered?

"It's a massive coal boom in China ... "

(29 minutes)

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2025-02-28

There's a short version and a long (unbelievably long!) version - so atke you rpick!

First up - the short version:

(36 minutes)

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(12 hours)

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2025-02-26

"... this is now a US world and we will do as we want... "

Jeffrey Sachs explains the context within which the Ukraine conflict developed.

It's a sorry story, and the UK's Boris Johnson made a significant 'contribution'.

"I don't believe that there's a Collective West"

"... or a Global South... "

"... China is not an enemy, China is just a success story... "

"... we can do so many wonderful things right now... what do we need in order to do that? In my view, we need peace... most importantly, there are no deep reasons for conflict anywhere... "

"... because we don't have enough on the planet... as an economist I can tell you,

2025-02-25

In case you are still wondering... 

In view of the lack of conventional military capability/capacity, as ever, Europe resorts to national posturing.

"If you oppose America's peace plan in Ukraine... then you are becoming an existential threat to the national security of the United States"

"... the script has been flipped... take a look at what happened at the United Nations recently... it was the United States voting with Russia, China, Belarus, North Korea, and it was France and the UK in opposition"

"... it's about economic relationships... "

" We will now seek economic collaboration as our primary methodology of coexistence..."

"...

2025-02-25

Even if politicians and estate agents traditionally vie for the title of "those who least enjoy public trust", it seems that at least in the EU, the incumbent politicians somehow are still preferred over their upstart opposition (perhaps the system still somehow works to consolidate the vote share of the leading parties?). It's a tricky analysis to perform, but Redacted have lined up a fearless pundit who doesn't shy away from picking some figures to indicate how he considers the political tides are moving in Germany, and the consequent reactions from the EU's "great and the good".

"The winner of the German elections is being called a big win for Globalists... a big win for more war in Ukraine... and a slap in the face to free speech and closed borders"

Maybe elections should be about policies rather than parties?

But whatever, it looks like a large number of German and maybe EU politicians are

2025-02-22

A wide-ranging review of the geopolitics of the West, the EU/NATO, BRICS, the Ukraine, and what implications the Trump Presidency holds for the future.

(21 minutes)

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2025-02-20

Yes, it's George Galloway, a British politician still in possession of most of his marbles - sadly a rarity in this time of political pygmies-in-charge.

And his hectoring style does lend his oratory a certain... substance.

"Zelensky's Ukraine is not worth the bones of a single British grenadier"

Quite so.

He isn't exactly uninformed either... and raises some interesting points about the situation in Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza.

President Erdoğan's intentions are not raised, when maybe they ought to be, as Turkey is indeed a major player in the region. Yes, it's complicated.

(20 minutes)

Neil Oliver Meets Col Douglas Macgregor

2025-02-16

There are also other sobriquets out there that many may feel inappropriate in polite conversation.

The Daily Sceptic reveals that a story they ran showing how Big Finance may have influenced certain politicians to change the taxation rules on farmers in such a way that Big Finance might better acquire their properties elicited not so much as an acknowledgement from the NFU.

Now one can understand that not everyone wants to get involved with politics, but unhappily politicians don't reciprocate by not wishing to get involved in everyone's affairs, so that's a losing strategy if ever there was one.

Perhaps the farmers were hoping that the NFU would look after their politcal interests for them, thus relieving them of an irksome burden?

So is the NFU merely asleep on the job, or does it really serve the farmers' interests?

On the other hand I am no farmer, so maybe the

2025-02-14

Well, we might have to reverse a few years to find the "old politics" that JD Vance enthuses over to the Munich Security Conference, but there's nothing new under the sun.

"I've heard a lot about what you are defending yourselves from, but what exactly is it that you are defending your selves for?"

"If you are running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you"

"You cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail... "

(19 minutes)

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2025-02-13

As spelled out at NATO HQ by Peter Hegseth in Brussels.

One might loosely summarise (pay up, arm up, revamp defence industries, recognise realities, and make peace in Ukraine) - all wrapped in supportive language. 

Largely unspoken were the implications for NATO if they should fail...

Re: the situation in Ukraine:

"I think that realism is an important part of the conversation that hasn't existed enough... "

(28 minutes)

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2025-02-13

Weapons of Mass Destruction, NATO, USSR, hot wars, cold wars, Covid, false flags, UN Agenda 21, WEF, Ukraine, biolabs, Putin, Zelensky, etc plus Ole's family history, and a hot tip from his father.

Oh, and look out for a significant sprinkling of bombshell surprises ..!

There are so many dots connected here that 2 hours seems an impossibly short period in which to cover them.

"... the United Nations... why did we have to unite? The world was a beautiful place before... the first world war that was created by... "

"When you look at the Russian Revolution, it wasn't a revolution at all... "

"... don't buy into what you're being told... "

This is an absorbing history lesson - we think we know our history, but its not until we identify the threads that sew it together that we can begin to

2025-02-11

"Here is a man who has never read anything apart from a legal textbook, and an Arsenal Programme"

This may start a bit slowly, but David Starkey makes an interesting and perceptive analysis of our current state/State, and clearly puts across the value of our (now neglected) historical heritage - we don't know what we have until it's been lost.

"... we f****ed up partly because we became 'experts'... "

Expertise in a narrow field is no substitute for breadth of knowledge and experience.

He gives us much to think about, and in the process, helps us realise that what we as a society now lack is the influential wisdom of experienced and knowledgeable elders - we no longer value the depth of understanding that such aldermen (using the word in its historical sense) should bring to our new and upcoming

2025-02-11

USAID is much in the news as the Trump Administration sets about righting the federal ship of state, and America and the world finds out what has been going on, seemingly for ever.

So what is it all about?

Well, it's a bit wider than merely USAID...

Scott Ritter paints the picture. Listen up!

(49 minutes)

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2025-02-10

Ben's report this week is, as one might expect with Trump (and his appointees) seemingly making as many waves as there are people-hours in the day, jam-packed.

Although plenty of political earth-shaking is ongoing, and nothing of great import not already noted by his regular readers seems to be featured, there is plenty of confirmatory nature to pique our interest.

With the Trump team busy wrong-footing as many opponents as possible, we seem to be assured of "interesting times" ahead.

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