Another solid read from Simplicious with lots of references
Craig’s Substack - The End of Pluralism in the Middle East
Very powerful by Craig Murray if a bit alarmist, quoting from here
A truly seismic change in the Middle East appears to be happening very fast. At its heart is a devil’s bargain – Turkey and the Gulf States accept the annihilation of the Palestinian nation and creation of a Greater Israel, in return for the annihilation of the Shia minorities of Syria and Lebanon and the imposition of Salafism across the Eastern Arab world.
This also spells the end for Lebanon and Syria’s Christian communities, as witness the tearing down of all Christmas decorations, the smashing of all alcohol and the forced imposition of the veil on women in Aleppo now.
Yesterday US Warthog air-to-ground jets attacked and severely depleted reinforcements which were, at the invitation of the Syrian government, en route to Syria from Iraq. Constant, daily Israeli airstrikes on Syria’s military infrastructure for months have been a major factor in the demoralisation and reduced capacity of the Syrian government’s Syrian Arab Army, which has simply evaporated in Aleppo and Hama.
It is very difficult to see the tide turning in Syria. The Russians now have either to massively reinforce their Syrian bases with ground troops or to evacuate them. Faced with the exigencies of Ukraine, they may do the latter, and it is reported that the Russian navy has already set sail from Tartus.
The speed of collapse of Syria has taken everybody by surprise. If the situation does not stabilise, Damascus could be besieged and ISIS back on the hills above the Bekaa valley within a week, given the speed of their advance and the short distances involved.
A renewed Israeli attack on Southern Lebanon to coincide with a Salafist invasion of the Bekaa Valley would then seem inevitable, as the Israelis would obviously wish their border with their new Taliban-style Greater Syrian neighbour to be as far North as possible. It could be a race for Beirut, unless the Americans have already organised who gets it.
It is no coincidence that the attack on Syria started the day of the Lebanon/Israel ceasefire. The jihadist forces do not want to be seen to be fighting alongside Israel, even though they are fighting forces which have been relentlessly bombed by Israel, and in the case of Hezbollah are exhausted from fighting Israel.
The Times of Israel has no compunction about saying the quiet part out loud, unlike the British media:
In fact Israeli media is giving a lot more truth about the Syrian rebel forces than British and American media just now. This is another article from the Times of Israel:
While HTS officially seceded from Al Qaeda in 2016, it remains a Salafi jihadi organization designated as a terror organization in the US, the EU and other countries, with tens of thousands of fighters.
Its sudden surge raises concerns that a potential takeover of Syria could transform it into an Islamist, Taliban-like regime – with repercussions for Israel at its south-western border. Others, however, see the offensive as a positive development for Israel and a further blow to the Iranian axis in the region.
Contrast this to the UK media, which from the Telegraph and Express to the Guardian has promoted the official narrative that not just the same organisations, but the same people responsible for mass torture and executions of non-Sunnis, including Western journalists, are now cuddly liberals.
Nowhere is this more obvious than the case of Abu Mohammad Al-Jolani, sometimes spelt Al-Julani or Al-Golani, who is now being boosted throughout western media as a moderate leader. He was the deputy leader of ISIS, and the CIA actually has a $10 million bounty on his head! Yes, that is the same CIA which is funding and equipping him and giving him air support.
Supporters of the Syrian rebels still attempt to deny that they have Israeli and US support – despite the fact that almost a decade ago there was open Congressional testimony in the USA that, to that point, over half a billion dollars had been spent on assistance to Syrian rebel forces, and the Israelis have openly been providing medical and other services to the jihadists and effective air support.
One interesting consequence of this joint NATO/Israel support for the jihadist groups in Syria is a further perversion of domestic rule of law. To take the UK as an example, under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act it is illegal to state an opinion that supports, or may lead somebody else to support, a proscribed organisation.
The abuse of this provision by British police to persecute Palestinian supporters for allegedly encouraging support for proscribed organisations Hamas and Hezbollah is notorious, with even tangential alleged references leading to arrest. Sarah Wilkinson, Richard Medhurst, Asa Winstanley, Richard Barnard and myself are all notable victims, and the persecution has been greatly intensified by Keir Starmer.
Yet Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) is also a proscribed group in the UK. But both British mainstream media and British Muslim outlets have been openly promoting and praising HTS for a week – frankly much more openly than I have ever witnessed anyone in the UK support Hamas and Hezbollah – and not a single person has been arrested or even warned by UK police.
That in itself is the strongest of indications that western security services are fully behind the current attack on Syria.
For the record, I think it is an appalling law, and nobody should be prosecuted for expressing an opinion either way. But the politically biased application of the law is undeniable.
When the entire corporate and state media in the West puts out a unified narrative that Syrians are overjoyed to be released by HTS from the tyranny of the Assad regime – and says nothing whatsoever of the accompanying torture and execution of Shias, and destruction of Christmas decorations and icons – it ought to be obvious to everybody where this is coming from.
Yet – and this is another UK domestic repercussion – a very substantial number of Muslims in the UK support HTS and the Syrian rebels, because of the funding pumped into UK mosques from Saudi and Emirate Salafist sources. This is allied to the UK security service influence also wielded through the mosques, both by sponsorship programmes and “think tanks” benefiting approved religious leaders, and by the execrable coercive Prevent programme.
UK Muslim outlets that have been ostensibly pro-Palestinian – like Middle East Eye and 5 Pillars – enthusiastically back Israel’s Syrian allies in ensuring the destruction of resistance to the genocide of the Palestinians. Al Jazeera alternates between items detailing dreadful massacre in Palestine, and items extolling the Syrian rebels bringing Israel-allied rule to Syria.
Among the mechanisms they employ to reconcile this is a refusal to acknowledge the vital role of Syria in enabling the supply of weapons from Iran to Hezbollah. Which supply the jihadists have now cut off, to the absolute delight of Israel, and in conjunction with both Israeli and US air strikes.
In the final analysis, for many Sunni Muslims both in the Middle East and in the West, the pull seems to be stronger of sectarian hatred of the Shia and the imposition of Salafism, than preventing the ultimate destruction of the Palestinian nation.
I am not a Muslim. My Muslim friends happen to be almost entirely Sunni. I personally regard the continuing division over the leadership of the religion over a millennium ago as deeply unhelpful and a source of unnecessary continued hate.
But as a historian I do know that the western colonial powers have consciously and explicitly used the Sunni/Shia split for centuries to divide and rule. In the 1830’s, Alexander Burnes was writing reports on how to use the division in Sind between Shia rulers and Sunni populations to aid British colonial expansion.
On 12 May 1838, in his letter from Simla setting out his decision to launch the first British invasion of Afghanistan, British Governor General Lord Auckland included plans to exploit Shia/Sunni division in both Sind and Afghanistan to aid the British military attack.
The colonial powers have been doing it for centuries, Muslim communities keep falling for it, and the British and Americans are doing it right now to further their remodelling of the Middle East.
Simply put, many Sunni Muslims have been brainwashed into hating Shia Muslims more than they hate those currently committing genocide of an overwhelmingly Sunni population in Gaza.
I refer to the UK because I witnessed this first hand during the election campaign in Blackburn. But the same is true all over the Muslim world. Not one Sunni Muslim-led state has lifted a single finger to prevent the genocide of the Palestinians.
Their leadership is using anti-Shia sectarianism to maintain popular support for a de facto alliance with Israel against the only groups – Iran, Houthi and Hezbollah – which actually did attempt to give the Palestinians practical support in resistance. And against the Syrian government which facilitated supply.
The unspoken but very real bargain is this. The Sunni powers will accept the wiping out of the entire Palestinian nation and formation of Greater Israel, in return for the annihilation of the Shia communities in Syria and Lebanon by Israel and forces backed by NATO (including Turkey).
There are, of course, contradictions in this grand alliance. The United States’ Kurdish allies in Iraq are unlikely to be happy with Turkey’s destruction of Kurdish groups in Syria, which is what Erdoğan gains from Turkey’s very active military role in toppling Syria – in addition to extending Turkish control of oilfields.
The Iran-friendly Iraqi government will have further difficulty with reconciling US continuing occupation of swathes of its country, as they realise they are the next target.
The Lebanese army is under control of the USA, and Hezbollah must have been greatly weakened to have agreed the disastrous ceasefire with Israel. Christian fascist militias traditionally allied to Israel are increasingly visible in parts of Beirut, though whether they would be stupid enough to make common cause with jihadists from the North may be open to question. But should Syria fall entirely to jihadist rule – which may happen fast – I do not rule out Lebanon following very quickly indeed, and being integrated into a Salafist Greater Syria.
How the Palestinians of Jordan would react to this disastrous turn of events, it is hard to be sure. The British puppet Hashemite Kingdom is the designated destination for ethnically cleansed West Bank Palestinians under the Greater Israel plan.
What this all potentially amounts to is the end of pluralism in the Levant and its replacement by supremacism. An ethno-supremacist Greater Israel and a religio-supremacist Salafist Greater Syria.
Unlike many readers, I have never been a fan of the Assad regime or blind to its human rights violations. But what it did undeniably do was maintain a pluralist state where the most amazing historical religious and community traditions – including Sunni (and many Sunni do support Assad), Shia, Alaouites, descendants of the first Christians, and speakers of Aramaic, the language of Jesus – were all able to co-exist.
The same is true of Lebanon.
What we are witnessing is the destruction of that and imposition of a Saudi-style rule. All the little cultural things that indicate pluralism – from Christmas trees to language classes to winemaking to women going unveiled – have just been destroyed in Aleppo and could be destroyed from Damascus to Beirut.
I do not pretend that there are not genuine liberal democrats among the opposition to Assad. But they have negligible military significance, and the idea that they would be influential in a new government is delusion.
In Israel, which pretended to be a pluralist state, the mask is off. The Muslim call to prayer has just been banned. Arab minority members of the Knesset have been suspended for criticising Netanyahu and genocide. More walls and gates are built every day, not just in unlawfully occupied territories but in the “state of Israel” itself, to enforce apartheid.
I confess I once had the impression that Hezbollah was itself a religio-supremacist organisation; the dress and style of its leadership look theocratic. Then I came here and visited places like Tyre, which has been under Hezbollah elected local government for decades, and found that swimwear and alcohol are allowed on the beach and the veil is optional, while there are completely unmolested Christian communities there.
I will never now see Gaza, but wonder if I might have been similarly surprised by Hamas rule.
It is the United States which is promoting the cause of religious extremism and of the end, all over the Middle East, of a societal pluralism similar to Western norms. That is of course a direct consequence of the United States being allied to both the two religio-supremacist centres of Israel and Saudi Arabia.
It is the USA which is destroying pluralism, and it is Iran and its allies which defend pluralism. I would not have seen this clearly had I not come here. But once seen, it is blindingly obvious.
Beirut 6 December 2024
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The Emporno bites back ... no no.... the Empire's dead cat bounce.... no, it's - Simplicious - The Empire Strikes Back - Launching Multi-Pronged Hybrid War Against Resistance Axis
More in the way of timely digest and analysis from Simplicious
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The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: Simplicious - Election Aftermath: Notes on the 'Gr...: Simplicious - Election Aftermath: Notes on the 'Grand Realignment' by Simplicius Another digest from Simplicious. In fact, it's...
Here is analysis of the performance of M2 Bradley IFVs and Zelensky regime military using them on the example of one localized operation:
Practice, as we know, is the criterion of truth. June of the current year (2024) two kilometers east of Sokol.
Three Zelensky regime Bradleys with a landing party tried to attack the positions of one of the platoons of N company, N infantry battalion, 14th N regiment, RuArmy.
The attack was supported by: MLRS Vampire - 1 unit, 120 mm mortar - two units, Abrams tank - 1 unit, 777 howitzer - two units. The number of UAVs (attack, reconnaissance, airdrop) cannot be counted - the number is significant.
As a result - only one Bradley vehicle reached the landing line, the one in the photo.
One was destroyed by a Fagot ATGM crew at a range of 700 meters, and burned down, one Bradley vehicle retreated and was destroyed with a Lancet drone while in retreat.
The third one — in the photo — was hit near the grenade launcher's trenches by an RPG-7 PG-7 VL* grenade, the track was knocked off. The crew abandoned the vehicle and were destroyed by machine-gun fire, the landing party troops abandoned the vehicle and were partially destroyed by small arms fire, some were dispersed and managed to hide in a forest planting.
The Bradley stood with the engine running for a whole day until it stalled. A week later, a Russian Armed Forces ARV pulled the Bradley to the rear.
The Russian Armed Forces platoon in question suffered three moderately wounded.
The enemy lost three Bradleys, the tank was hit by an ATGM, the turret jammed. Up to twenty enemy soldiers were killed, including the Bradley crews.
There were no changes in the positions.
Fin
(c) R. Marchenko
*
In Russia, the West is at your feet and in your sights
Daily Wail, or whoever, is scaremongering... as the only one that matters is London as, in Europe, only the shat island of britain will likely be destroyed by way of a demonstration strike and also because an island - easier to contain potential hazards, and the rest of Europe has nothing to fear for now.
And these are just small, tactical nukes... there are also intermediate and strategic nukes a-plenty waiting for their chance to release pent-up energy.. as the yoke of the West, especially of the Angloid entities, on humanity is finally coming to an end, even before our very own eyes.
Analysis by General Kazimir Sokolowski (ret):
Europe looks better from Moscow, Russia has always dominated Europe, mostly benignly but when called to do so beat sense into it on more than one occasion when Europe tried to rise, first under Napoleon and then under Hitler and now under the EU, and Europe will cease to exist before its domination by Russia ends.
Let me tell you, comrades,
Western Europe is in particular just a periphery of European civilization, of which Russia is the core, they are to Russia what the
barbarians were to Rome on the fringes of the Roman Empire. In fact, they were exactly the barbarians of the time of the Rome Empire.
Stands to reason too, because Moscow is the Third Rome and there shall be no fourth (guess why).
But in more general terms, it's like this:
- WWI weakened and undermined Western white-man powers and emboldened an Asian power - Imperial Japan - to challenge subsequently the white man's world order for the first time in about a thousand years;
- WWII destroyed the Western system of Imperial control of the world, in which ironically Imperial Japan played a pivotal role and ultimately served as a catalyst single-handedly and easily dismantling the British empire in the East, and the ease with which British empire outposts fell to Japan sealed its doom post-war, even though Japan herself lost the war;
- Ukraine war, whatever the outcome, is then going to continue the trajectory and will likely break the backbone of the Western white, especially Angloid, races and undermine their standing in the world for good and irreversibly so; and there is nothing you or anybody else can do about it now. Ironic how Natoids, Western white-trash Nazi sympathizers will end up achieving exactly the opposite of what they set out to do.
>>>>>>>>
The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: ANALYSIS & OPINION: US Nuclear Arsenal As Ineffect...: The U.S. Nuclear Arsenal: Ineffective, Obsolete, and Lacking Credibility Alternative title: The US Nuclear Arsenal Is As Ineffective As Her ...
The U.S. Nuclear Arsenal: Ineffective, Obsolete, and Lacking Credibility
Alternative title: The US Nuclear Arsenal Is As Ineffective As Her Conventional Weaponry, the US Is Now Ripe for Taking and Easy to Knock Out Finally For Good And Maybe It Should Be As There Will Hardly Be a Better Time Than Now
On October 30, 1961, the Soviet Union achieved a momentous milestone in military technology by testing the Tsar Bomb, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created. This historic detonation over a remote northern island produced a flash visible from over 1,000 kilometers away, evoking a mixture of shock and awe in distant locations such as Norway, Greenland, and Alaska. The explosion generated a towering mushroom cloud that ascended to an astonishing height of 67 kilometers. The resulting blast wave traveled around the globe three times, completing its first circuit in just 36 hours and 27 minutes. Seismic waves throughout the Earth’s crust also conveyed the enormity of the event, while the atmospheric pressure wave was detected as far away as New Zealand, also in a series of three.
This monumental test enabled Soviet scientists to validate innovative design principles for high-yield thermonuclear devices, leading to the creation of nuclear weapons with "practically unlimited power," as one report succinctly described it.
In stark contrast, though it used two early nuclear devices in 1945 to kill hundreds of thousands of people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two cities in Japan, the United States has never conducted a test that approaches the scale or potency of the Tsar Bomb, not only because domestic testing sites are scarce, but also because the U.S. has never been able to develop technology comparable to that of the Soviet Union. This technological gap is further illustrated by the consistent missile testing carried out by Russia, which regularly executes intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) tests from launch sites in northern Europe to targets in the far reaches of the Russian East. In these tests, missiles traverse the entire expanse of two continents—Europe and Asia—and cover more than half of the Earth's circumference at the equator.
Importantly, these missile tests in Russia do not merely serve as public relations spectacles; they result in successful strikes on land-based targets, allowing for comprehensive recovery and assessment of both warhead performance and missile precision. By comparison, the U.S. military often resorts to theatrical demonstrations, occasionally launching missiles into the ocean for show rather than conducting rigorous tests aimed at improving technological capabilities.
No other nation, including the United States, has undertaken the kind of intercontinental missile launches across vast expanses as routinely performed by Russia. The implications of this disparity are profound. If the U.S. were to engage in a similar test, it would entail launching a missile from a location slightly north of New York, New York, all the way to striking a target at the southernmost tip of Patagonia—an ambitious and unprecedented endeavor but hardly ever achievable.
"No other nation has ever tested a nuclear-capable ICBM (or IRBM) in real-life combat situations"
This glaring gap in nuclear capabilities reveals a troubling lack of knowledge and expertise in the U.S. arsenal, raising serious questions regarding its deterrent value. The reality is that the U.S. nuclear arsenal, far from serving as a credible deterrent, appears increasingly ineffective and disconnected from modern military realities. In light of this evidence, one might question whether such an arsenal should deter anyone at all—or if, perhaps, it has become irrelevant in an evolving geopolitical landscape.
However, there is more to consider. As impartial observers of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine should know by now, one significant lesson from this NATO-provoked war is that NATO's weaponry—especially that of the United States—is, at best, subpar and, at worst, often entirely ineffective. Frequently, these arms fail to work as intended or do not function at all, and they are relatively easy to destroy.
When we extrapolate this observation to U.S. nuclear arms, it’s worth noting that I won't even delve into the anemic and outdated nuclear arsenals of certain European nations, such as France and Britain, which lack proper means of delivery. The rationale becomes clear: it is both justified and prudent to conclude that the United States' nuclear armaments and systems, which comprise its nuclear deterrent, are unlikely to perform any better than the other poorly designed and constructed American weaponry. This is a direct consequence of their production by the same corrupt capitalist Military-Industrial Complex, which prioritizes unrestrained profits over the essential qualities of quality, reliability, sound design, and proper performance.
In fact, U.S. nuclear weaponry may function even worse than its conventional military technology does. At this point, it is highly improbable that these weapons will operate effectively at all. In addition to the issues shared with other overrated but largely ineffective American arms, the nuclear arsenal suffers from further complications. Many of its components are outdated, superannuated, and degraded, with likely deteriorated nuclear elements due to decades—or even longer—without testing or replacement.
Moreover, critical skills related to the design, production, maintenance, and operation of nuclear weapons appear to have been lost, resulting in an alarming erosion of the necessary know-how. Should the U.S. military dare to attempt the use or even test its nuclear arsenal in real-world conditions, the likely outcome would be a disaster or catastrophe at launch.
Thus, all indications suggest that the U.S. nuclear arsenal does not work effectively; it is little more than a façade—nothing but an elaborate bluff, filled with hot air and an ineffective poker face. Compounding this issue is the fact that the United States lacks a reliable anti-ICBM defense system, but relies on deterrence that thus may or may not be functional.
This scenario invites tantalizing opportunities for nations with proven nuclear capabilities, including India, Pakistan, China, Iran, and North Korea. Moreover, whether the United States possesses a functional nuclear deterrent may ultimately be irrelevant.
Contrary to popular belief, a mass nuclear attack is not the only route to incapacitating the United States.
A creative approach could yield devastating consequences. For instance, a 2017 report from the EMP Commission concluded that North Korea could easily detonate a single EMP device—a nuclear explosion at high altitude—over the United States. Such an event could permanently disable the electrical grid, potentially resulting in the loss of up to 90% of the U.S. population within a year, according to the study.
Additionally, the Yellowstone supervolcano represents another unconventional target for a nuclear strike on the U.S., whether or not a credible nuclear deterrent exists. A single nuclear device could breach the fragile structure of the volcano, potentially triggering a supereruption that, as per current scientific understanding, could spell the end not only for the United States but also devastate Canada in the process.
For American leadership, arriving at this painful realization could not come at a worse time. As its conventional weaponry faces severe scrutiny and degradation on the battlefield in Ukraine and is abused and put to shame there, the U.S. has positioned itself squarely on Russia's shit list it may remain on for the foreseeable future and must now eke out the rest of its sorry existence in grave fear.
It will be even easier to terminate the U.S.'s chief client - Britain - and kill its entire benighted population and probably safer too seeing as it is on a tiny island which will make it easier to contain any hazards.
By I.
***
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The Fog of War & Ghanima Blog: ANALYSIS: Lessons of Ukraine War: Western Military...: Lessons of Ukraine War: Western Arms Are Waste and Wasted In Ukraine As a Prelude to Liberation and Pacification of the North Atlantic Axis ...
Lessons of Ukraine War: Western Arms Are Waste and Wasted In Ukraine As a Prelude to Liberation and Pacification of the North Atlantic Axis
One result of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine that started over two years ago in February 2022, when the post-2014 coup Zelensky regime stubbornly refused to de-occupy large territories in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics even as Putin’s Russia, after much delay and vacillation, finally recognized them as independent states and was appealed to by them to assist in expelling the masses of the occupying Zelensky military and paramilitary forces long entrenched in the region, is the discovery of how inferior and substandard Western-made weaponry has turned out to be and likely has always been, though it is only now that we are beginning to find out for real thanks (if that is indeed the word) to the persisting Ukraine conflict, with a mass of pictorial and video evidence of destroyed Western origin weapon systems overwhelming and saturating the Internet, so much so that all of the Western government controlled major search engines are now obfuscating and censoring the pictures and videos in an attempt to throw the would-be impartial conflict researcher, analysist or observer or just a curious member of the public off the track with their rigged search results popping up all over the computer-, tablet- or cell phone screen to promote baseless Western propaganda.
Early on, and even for a long time before the start of the conflict, Western, and especially US-made, weapons had been held, touted and generally shamelessly proclaimed, without a shred of evidence, to be superior or even invincible and the prized game-changer capable of reversing the situation on any battlefield in any conflict on their own, by virtue of their mere appearance there as if by black magic or witchery.
In the Ukraine conflict, however, a long succession of the so-called Western Wunderwaffen (itself a telling term whose roots are in the failed WW2 Nazi mythology from a period when Nazi Germany was likewise making grabs at imaginary straws in her desire to survive at all cost) followed after each previous one had successively failed to make a meaningful impact and been destroyed in large quantities, and now the Western entities have basically nothing left in their arsenals that has not yet been destroyed in Ukraine in great numbers.
The Humvee
Let’s start at the bottom of the junk heap of Western weaponry – the US-designed and made HMMWV – High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, aka the hapless Humvee.
Though it is merely a truck and, according to some, the worst in the world, the reason we cannot overlook it in this analysis is that the Humvee is also an armed and armor-protected battlefield vehicle platform and a carrier of weapons systems and was and continues to be a ubiquitous symbol of US military might and worldwide reach, accordingly sometimes described as “the vehicular backbone of US forces around the world”, and has also been a regular feature of every (ill-advised) foreign campaign perpetrated by the US military since at least the late 1980s and the invasion of Panama, needless to say, all of them illegal wars of aggression under international law as properly understood as they were never approved by the UN Security Council.
But the Humvee has now ultimately become a symbol of disaster, defeat and repeated military failure.
Hundreds of destroyed Zelensky regime US-supplied Humvees are now populating the internet image searches and have been documented by various open-source intelligence enthusiasts (OSINTers) as destroyed in Ukraine - over 500 units, at the time of this writing, as the verified minimum based solely on readily and easily available photographic and videographic records, which likely resolves to the overall numbers of destroyed Zelensky regime Humvees that are in the region of over several thousand units, with scores also captured.
In early August 2024, the Zelensky military attempted a major brigade level inclusion into Russia’s Kursk region which resulted in a notable increase in destroyed Humvee sightings.
Although the Humvee has been long known for the poor protection that it affords to the crew and operators, even in its upgraded and extra armored-kit versions, still the nature of its total, though picturesque and often very atmospheric, destruction and the gruesome aftermath, in most cases, upon being hit, as has happened hundreds of times now in Ukraine, is a huge shock even to the seasoned observer, though not of course even nearly comparable to the shock that its occupants get when they are thus surprised.
Humvees also belie their grandiose appellation invoking “high mobility” by providing only rather limited mobility as their use is confined to tarmac or, at best, dry dirt-roads, and they cannot negotiate mud, plowed fields, grasslands or swampy grounds comprising the majority of the terrain in the Ukraine.
But lack of mobility is what every other Western weapon system suffers from too, so the Humvee is hardly alone in this and is definitely not the worst either.
The M113
Another venerable military fighting vehicle, and even some twenty years the Humvee’s senior, that has been optimistically supplied for use in the Ukraine conflict in large numbers by the United States and her clients and has now been destroyed in almost equally large numbers is the M113 tracked armored personnel carrier produced by the FMC corporation for the US military.
Starting as far back as in the early 1960s, the M113 APC first saw action in Vietnam and used to be the mainstay of US Army armored cavalry formations in many wars (though, in the final analysis, all eventually lost by the US military with one or two minor exceptions) starting from Vietnam and up to the US military’s lost wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 21st century but is now likewise an embarrassment and a huge stain on the reputation of the US capitalist run military-industrial complex (what's left of it) and the American made weapons and engineering design and workmanship in general, with hundreds and maybe even thousands of US-supplied M113 APCs and derivatives spectacularly destroyed in Ukraine already, with more taken out almost every single day.
With the untold numbers of the M113, including all its many versions or variants, such as the Dutch YPR-765 and others, having been thusly destroyed by the Russian army and by groups of Ukrainian partisans by now, into hundreds if not thousands of units already, the destruction of this particular Western chariot is the biggest M113 destruction in the history of humanity since Vietnam, but the Ukrainian destruction of the M113 still continues on a near daily basis and more of the previously destroyed M113s are coming to light almost every single day.
Recently, on August 27, 2024, a rare M113 version – an M577 command post carrier was seen and destroyed in Russia’s Kursk region where Western weapons and armor assets are continuing to be destroyed at the fastest rate since the start of the hostilities as of this writing.
Pictures of destroyed M113s and variants, are very atmospheric and something to behold too – often spectacular art installations of torn and melted aluminum, pierced armor plates, huge holes in the sides, shed tracks and hollowed out boxy hulls gutted by raging fires – better not to peer inside any too closely; it likes to keel over too on the slightest of provocations being a tall, angular, square and bulky vehicle, easy to spot and hard to miss.
The M113 has also been known to evaporate and de-atomize completely following an explosion in its cargo bay, of which at least one video exists on the Internet.
Dubbed the “RPG Operator’s Dream”, the M113 easily falls prey to the ubiquitous 1950s RPG-7s but also to nearly everything else – from concentrated small-arms and machine gun fire, to IFV gun- and tank rounds, to artillery shells, guided missiles and, maybe most frequently, to cheap appropriately modified, or weaponized, commercial drones – almost anything is good to knock out, and often destroy outright, the subpar US-made vehicle that is the M113.
Though not yet officially retired or superannuated, the M113 is outdated of course but newer US designed- and made vehicles and US origin weapons systems have fared no better if not actually much worse, which brings us neatly to the M2 Bradley fighting vehicle.
The Bradley IFV
A much newer US-made weapons system and fighting vehicle, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle (BFV) is a tracked armored fighting vehicle deployed by the United States and her client states, developed by FMC Corporation and manufactured by BAE and with potential and intent for further development, upgrade and modernization.
Over 300 Bradley IFVs have been supplied to the Zelensky regime in Ukraine but as of this writing most of them, certainly over 190, were destroyed very soon after daring to appear anywhere near the frontline, and, though large numbers of M2 Bradley IFVs (ca. 150) were also destroyed in the protracted 2003-11 Iraq war, it is the first time in history of warfare that this vehicle was destroyed in such large quantities and over such a relatively short period of time of just about six months after its introduction to the conflict.
Tall, square and boxy vehicles, Bradley IFVs are easy to spot, engage and to knock out or destroy using quite a range of weaponry that elements of the Russian forces or Ukrainian partisans have at their disposal for the eventuality of chancing upon a Bradley IFV.
If you search the internet for relevant Bradley IFV destruction key words other than using the truth-suppressing major Western-controlled search engines (hint: try using Yandex search for a change though it is not entirely free from Western censorship either), you will see no shortage of photographic and videographic evidence of such Bradley IFV destruction.
From the footage and photographic evidence this writer has personally seen and sifted through in the course of his research preparatory to writing this exposition and analysis, the M2 Bradley appears to be another irredeemably inferior Western origin weapons system: a poorly engineered based on the wrong assumptions and faulty concepts, worse built and very fragile US-made fighting vehicle easily knocked out with small DIY explosives attached to cheap commercial drones, also easy to knock out or disable with heavy machine gun and even concentrated rifle fire; heavier or dedicated antitank-grade munitions or tank rounds themselves leave no chance, destroy these vehicles totally, also burns well with the slightest of provocations and melts down, pops off turrets too for good measure.
Helicopter launched anti-tank missiles are especially cruel on these heaps on tracks as are dedicated anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM).
As to the combat effectiveness of the Bradley fighting vehicle, in this type of action that we are seeing in the Ukraine theater, it is very low indeed; maybe it is only suitable, and was apparently designed, for lazy colonial-style warfare in far-flung corners of the world against under-armed opponents or civilians - the only type of action the US military has seen in many decades though still was ultimately defeated in every campaign since their last minor military success which was the afore-mentioned 1989 invasion of Panama perpetrated on the orders of the late Bush Senior.
Various other Bradley versions, derivatives or lookalikes like the German Marder, the Swedish skit CV90 or the Canadian origin Stryker IFVs have performed at least equally abysmally, with most of them likewise destroyed on their first outing to the frontline, and need hardly be specifically mentioned here. Suffice it to say that, like the Bradley IFV, they have been destroyed in numbers only slightly below those in which they were supplied, with virtually no survivors of even the shortest stint in the actual war zone.
A significant number of M1132 Stryker IFVs outfitted with LWMRs (light-weight mine rollers) were also seen and destroyed in the Zelensky regime’s latest offensive failure to date – in Russia’s Kursk Region, ca. August – September 2024.
Western tanks are the worst of the lot
After years of post-Cold War propaganda and hype regarding Western tanks, largely based on willful misrepresentation and misinterpretation of the lessons and results of the 1991 and 2003-2011 Gulf and Iraq wars, not to mention outright lies and propaganda disseminated by the United States Department of “Defense” downplaying and denying US military losses in tanks, it is safe to say that Western origin tanks have not made a good name for themselves in the Ukraine, as is now finally clear to all, even the most obtuse and unimaginative.
German Leopard series tanks have been supplied in most numbers, including advanced Swedish versions such as the Strv 122, up to 300 tanks to date; and again many if not all of them have been destroyed on their first attempt at something resembling real action when they attempted to face the opposing forces. Some made quite a splash in the news early on in the so-called and now failed Zelensky regime counteroffensive of the summer of 2023 and for the wrong reason too, from the viewpoint of their manufacturers and sellers, as they were knocked out or destroyed en mass.
Again, photographic and video graphic evidence that abounds even in Western media outlets is proof that they are very bad tanks: unreliable mastodons with insufficient or poor-quality armor, weak engines, drivetrains, suspensions and tread-track systems, barrels can be knocked off with small arms fire - they are rather prone to fires, weaponized commercial drones carrying RPG-7 grenades strike top down and knock them out and scorch the innards – and with artillery, tank rounds or anti-tank missiles there is never even a doubt as to their failure to survive anywhere near the actual battlefield.
This should come as no surprise at all as very few countries in the world have a full-cycle tank building capability and even fewer have ever managed to produce anything worthwhile.
Germany is still one of such tank-building nations but the Germans are well known for manufacturing and using inferior tanks as they did in most of World War Two, until they finally (but very belatedly) succeeded in copying the Russian T-34 as Panther V, and it appears they are now back to square one with the Leopard which is an irredeemably inferior tank for reasons too numerous to enumerate here, suffice it to say it has many weak points making it easy to knock out even using 30 mm BMP IFV gun rounds delivered in a quick succession to the side or heavy machine gun fire or even weaponized commercial drones as happened multiple times, and in the only two tank duels the T-72 triumphed over the Leopard both times.
Leopard tanks are no strangers to bad press and bad BDA (battle damage assessment) -- on one previous occasion of their attempted use in something resembling real fighting, maybe the first for the type, though nothing like what we are seeing now in Ukraine, a number of them were totally destroyed in Syria ca. 2013 both by ISIS and Kurd militias wielding Russian RPG-7s and Konkurs ATGMs, so burning or torn-apart Leopard tanks is nothing new, they burned and blew up spectacularly before but it is the M1 Abrams tank that is likely the worst tank in the world and has been destroyed in greatest numbers across the entire Middle East, and in the Arab world, with scores US military admitted losses of Abrams tanks which likely means hundreds destroyed in actual fact.
Actually, the Americans have a long but checkered history when it comes to manufacturing tanks.
It is quite prudent to say they have only ever managed to produce three types of tanks: bad tanks, worse than bad tanks and worst tanks.
Simplicious - Election Aftermath: Notes on the 'Grand Realignment' by Simplicius
Another digest from Simplicious. In fact, it's two in one as the pre-election one is also there
Big Serge delights us with another ponderous piece
Last of the Wunderwaffen is the shortest lived: the F-16 is to be found out in Ukraine
Unreliable and accident-prone, the F-16 “Fighting Falcon” jet fighter plane is more like a diseased crow on its last pair of wings - a flying tin-foil fuel tank wrapped around the fat US-made turd of a single thirsty jet engine nearly scraping the ground with the soft underbelly while sat on tarmac that flies worse than a MiG-29 and is less maneuverable and is otherwise nothing special and is a soft and flimsy jet plane with a huge unprotected canopy making the pilot especially vulnerable to all kinds of impact
In the summer of 2024, after some two years of training pilots to fly the same, the first six F-16 Fighting Falcons fighter jets were delivered to the Zelensky regime’s heavily depleted air force with much fanfare in a ceremony held at an undisclosed location accompanied with bloodcurdling threats mouthed by Zelensky’s officials, including himself, regarding their impending use against the Russians and the things that they could do to them – nothing short of winning the war single-handedly for the Zelensky regime, albeit rather belatedly.
As per usual much was made of their “superiority”, the advanced weapons that they supposedly carried or could be equipped with, their upgraded and improved “electronic warfare suites” and what not.
However, only two or three weeks later, on August 26, 2024, one of the F-16s either went down, or never got up, on its maiden combat mission and took the pilot along with it for company to the beyond – and coincidentally did so on a day of a massive Russian air and missile strike on Zelensky’s war making capabilities.
This may be the first kill of an F-16 in the Ukraine war but it is far from the first combat loss of the F-16.
About thirty F-16 kills have been (very reluctantly and after years and years of lies and evasion) confirmed by their operators - F-16s have been lost to date mainly to Soviet-made weapons such as: at least seven F-16s falling to Iraqi-operated SA-6 (2K12 Kub), SA-3 (S-125 Neva), shoulder-launched SA-16 (9K38 Igla) SAMs as well as anti-aircraft gun and small arms fire during the 1991 Desert Storm; one F-16 to 2K12 Kub (SA-6) SAM over Bosnia in 1995, and another one over Serbia in 1999; one F-16 to S-200 over Syria as recently as in 2018, a further five or so were lost to air-to-air missiles reportedly fired by a Mirage, various MiGs, or even other F-16s as in the case of a Turkish F-16 shoot-down by a Greek F-16.
Eight or ten crashed whilst on combat missions under unclear circumstances, including low altitude maneuvers, and could have been hit by ground fire, for a combined total of maybe 30 confirmed F-16 combat losses.
Many more kills are claimed by adversaries and some with good reason, especially by the Syrians over the IAF dating back to the early 1980s and, in the case of the Syrians, continuing up to the present time.
Over 800 F-16s have crashed since 1975 across all operator nations in various major accidents resulting in loss of aircraft, and frequently the pilot too, not thought to be related to combat.
While there is again a myth of superiority and invincibility that is quite intentionally spread by the manufacturers, the US military and other principal operators of the F-16 about the aircraft – likely in order to discourage attacks on the same and paint the aircraft as invincible and unassailable, the US-made fighter jet will likely go the way of the other Western Wunderwaffen in Ukraine, and, if it is deployed at all in significant numbers, is in for a mass cull by Russian air-to-air- and surface-to-air systems or even missile forces and unmanned one-way drones like what likely happened on Aug 26, 2024 where a collision of the F-16 with a Shahed 136 drone or a near explosion cannot be ruled out.
Russia has many assets that can take down the F-16 Fighting Falcon, or any other existing or even future warplane for that matter, including near-autonomous self-aiming air-to-air missiles that have a range of over 300 km, nuclear tipped anti-aircraft missiles designed to take down entire flying formations and clearing the skies and the world’s best and most numerous air defense systems.
Also, the F-16 is not that hard to kill. Not at all.
It doesn’t require cutting-edge- or particularly advanced weapons to knock it down. Most of the known shoot-downs were achieved by Soviet designed and built SAM systems that stem back to the late 1950s and the F-16 is yet to face modern Russian, or anybody else’s, anti-aircraft weapons as it has never operated in peer- or near-peer conflicts.
In low altitude passes it can even be brought down by concentrated small arms fire or stray bullets or shrapnel and debris that will puncture and likely ignite or de-fuel the fuel tanks or pierce the canopy and kill the pilot.
Once the cobweb of lies and propaganda is torn down, the F-16 “Fighting Falcon” is more like a diseased crow on its last pair of wings – a flying aluminum () foil fuel tank wrapped around the big thirsty turd of a single jet engine, nearly scraping the ground with the soft underbelly while taxiing on the tarmac – that flies worse than a MiG-29 and is less maneuverable and is otherwise nothing special and is an ageing accident-prone, soft armor-less jet plane with a huge unprotected canopy making the pilot especially vulnerable to all kinds of impact in the event of a shoot-down, of which there will be many in Ukraine, no doubt.
By I.
Moscow, August - September, 2024
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post originally published on September 22, 2024
