Western Media Confirming Russia Solidifying Gains in Eastern Ukraine Donbas Region


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 29, 2022 | Sundance 

The Associated Press [HERE] and more importantly the U.S. Intel Community outlet, the Washington Post [HERE], are beginning to change direction in their narration of the war in Ukraine.

Both sources of information are starting to position Eastern Ukraine as a lost cause, with the Washington Post giving specific examples of conscripted Ukraine fighters who are abandoning the effort in the donbas region.  As noted, “after three months of war, this company of 120 men is down to 54 because of deaths, injuries and desertions. The volunteers were civilians before Russia invaded on Feb. 24, and they never expected to be dispatched to one of the most dangerous front lines in eastern Ukraine.”

The Ukraine commander, Serhi Lapko and one of his lieutenants, Vitaliy Khrus, “retreated with members of their company this week to a hotel away from the front. There, both men spoke to The Washington Post on the record, knowing they could face a court-martial and time in military prison.”  Together, Lapko and Khrus describe the essential elements of a fragmented Ukraine fighting force up against a committed Russian military advance.

Even the Washington Post admits the Ukraine central government is desperate to push morale boosting propaganda which seems constructed from the efforts of the U.S. State Dept, specifically the intelligence community within it. “Videos of assaults on Russian tanks or positions are posted daily on social media. Artists are creating patriotic posters, billboards and T-shirts. The postal service even released stamps commemorating the sinking of a Russian warship in the Black Sea.”

These examples are targeted toward a western audience and likely not being carried out by independent Ukraine government operation in Kyiv.  Promoting the image of Ukraine is a construct of the U.S. state dept and U.S. intelligence.

The global impression of Ukraine must remain elevated to continue the U.S. proxy war against Russia.  However, as noted, the WaPo is starting to shift the goal posts and expectations away from a Russian defeat in the donbas region.

Most notably within paragraphs like this you can see the purposeful shift. “Lapko and Khrus’s concerns were echoed recently by a platoon of the 115th Brigade 3rd Battalion, based nearby in the besieged city of Severodonetsk. In a video uploaded to Telegram on May 24, and confirmed as authentic by an aide to Haidai, volunteers said they will no longer fight because they lacked proper weapons, rear support and military leadership.”

[…] Ukraine’s military rebutted the volunteers’ claims in their own video posted online, saying the “deserters” had everything they needed to fight: “They thought they came for a vacation,” one service member said. “That’s why they left their positions.”

Hours after The Post interviewed Lapko and Khrus, members of Ukraine’s military security service arrived at their hotel and detained some of their men, accusing them of desertion.  The men contend that they were the ones who were deserted. (read more)

The Associated Press story flows in a similar line to the WaPo narrative; however, the AP must maintain the Western Government slant:

[…] Russia has intensified efforts to capture the cities of Sievierodonetsk and nearby Lysychansk, which are the last major areas under Ukrainian control in Luhansk.

Luhansk Gov. Serhii Haidai reported that Ukrainian fighters repelled an assault on Sievierodonetsk but Russian troops still pushed to encircle them. He later said Russian forces had seized a hotel on the city’s outskirts, damaged 14 high-rise buildings and were fighting in the streets with Ukrainian forces.

[…] Mariupol’s port has reportedly resumed operations after Russian forces finished clearing mines in the Azov Sea. Russian state news agency Tass reported that a vessel bound for Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia entered the port early Saturday.

In the call with Macron and Scholz, the Kremlin said, Putin emphasized that Russia was working to “establish a peaceful life in Mariupol and other liberated cities in the Donbas.”

[…]  Ukrainian authorities have reported that Kremlin-installed officials in seized cities have started airing Russian news broadcasts, introduced Russian area codes, imported Russian school curriculum and taken other steps to annex the areas.

Russian-held areas of the southern Kherson region have shifted to Moscow time and “will no longer switch to daylight saving time, as is customary in Ukraine,” Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti quoted Krill Stremousov, a Russian-installed local official, as saying Saturday. (read more)

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2000 Mules


Armstrong Economics Blog/Corruption Re-Posted May 29, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

“2000 Mules” is the new documentary everyone has been discussing. Its current audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is 100%, and interest in the film continues to rise. There is video evidence of voter fraud surrounding the mail-in ballots during the 2020 US Presidential Election. Did Joe Biden actually secure more votes than any president in the history of our nation? An overwhelming amount of evidence suggests that the American people did not vote in the current president. Democracy has shattered and our ability to hold fair elections has come to an end.

Australia – Green in Control


Armstrong Economics Blog/Australia & Oceania Re-Posted May 29, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

The world has been taken over by the “Greens” who want to destroy all fossil fuel production fearing that if the tide turns, they will lose this opportunity. We are seeing the same push from Germany, the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. The AGENDA IS TO ACTUALLY DESTROY THE CAPACITY TO PRODUCE and cause so much damage that no future administration will be able to restart what they have destroyed.

There is no rational agenda, They do not care if there is any alternative available now. Even pushing for electric cars that take up to two hours to recharge after a few hundred miles are not ready to replace everything. The power grid will never support it. Worse still, the #1 target in war is the power grid. If all transportation is electric, taking out the power grid will become critical and could render the defense of a nation impossible. Add to that the push for Digital Currencies by the central banks so the government will get every penny of tax by eliminating paper money. Takedown the power grid, and you will also wipe out the financial system.

There is no discussion with these people that is even possible. Unfortunately, this is most likely the fundamental behind what our computer has forecast the rise in a civil conflict which will no down lead to civil wars and revolutions.

Neil Oliver, Perhaps it is Time to Pluck the Strutting Peacocks at Davos


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 28, 2022 | Sundance

In his weekly monologue today, Neil Oliver discusses the strutting peacocks at Davos who think they are masters of the universe controlling the outcomes of the sheeple masses beneath them.  However, as Oliver also notes, only the brainless frogs will sit in the pot – the rest of us, but far the majority, have no time for these insufferable schemes and dictates.

The pretense of the Potemkin village can only be maintained as long as good, moral and virtuous people extend the graciousness of patience and play along with the pretending.  Whether the Davos crowd want to admit it or not, the ranks of the grace-filled are diminishing, and the ranks of the vulgarian hoard are swelling.  We are all becoming increasingly hardened, deliberate and refusing to pretend. The control mechanisms are starting to falter, and the messaging hits deaf ears.  WATCH:

[Transcript] – The usual suspects have been in Davos again, at the World Economic Forum overseen by Klaus Schwab – the few hundred of the most unimaginably rich gathered in one place to fantasise together about what the several billions of us ought to be forced to do in order to make those billionaires’ lives better.

Those poor billionaires – for whom everything on Earth might finally be perfect, if only someone would invent the vacuum cleaner big enough to suck every last one of us peasants, inconsequential specks of dust that we are, into outer space once and for all.

While listening to whichever one on stage is pontificating about this or that technological advance, or about how better to structure civilization itself, I find it best to imagine they have the high pitched, excitable voices of children – like in those TV adverts for chewy, jelly sweeties.

When I do that, I am reassured by their evident ridiculousness, their patent lack of a grasp on the reality of what this human species of ours is all about.

Some of their ilk talk blithely about the millions, billions of “useless eaters” who might best be controlled and placated by drugs and video games.

I hear it announced that it is already time to “hack” the human animal and implant technologies to make us better at being alive in the world. Some of them are apportioning to themselves nothing less than the power of God.

It is precisely that genetic failing of theirs, demonstrably present in one billionaire or technocrat authoritarian after another, that will always be their undoing in the end. That glitch, that Achilles Heel common to all of them, is their failure to note the still limitless potential of the unadulterated Human Being Mark I. They think they have us mapped – tracked and traced already – but they don’t.

There’s another thing they collectively overlook – or deny, at least to themselves – while making their plans and cooking up their little magic potions.

And it is fear – their own fear. Their all but overwhelming fear of all of us. Whether or not they’re aware of it, they are motivated, those few hundred Richey Richests, by fear of the billions of us. They look out at us, down on us, from their castle walls, and our presence – in all our endless, untidy, unpredictable variety – and they are afraid. They don’t really understand us, they don’t really get us, and it’s that which has made them fearful.

People always fear what they don’t understand. When you get right down to it, they would probably rather we just weren’t here. But we are here. We are here and every last one of us, white, black or brown, tall or short, good at maths or good at growing plants, or good at putting smiles on the faces of those around us, or whichever small fragment of the miraculous each of us has within us – every last one of us has the same unalienable right to a place on this planet as any one of them. Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates – whoever – has no more right to be here, to live the best life available here, than you or me.

You may have heard or read by now about the slowly boiled frog. It’s that notion that you can put a frog in a pot of cold water and turn on the heat beneath. Poor frog doesn’t know what’s happening and so, according to the story, is slowly and unknowingly cooked to death. We are invited to think that we are like that frog, that we are helpless to identify the danger we are in, far less to extricate ourselves from our plight. Here’s the thing: it’s not true.

Back in the 19th century a scientist of sorts removed a frog’s brain and found it would, indeed, remain in the steadily heating water until dead. But much more recently, in the 20th century, biologists tried the experiment with healthy, complete frogs – and found that every single one of them leapt out long before it was in any real danger. Sometimes, the frog wouldn’t stay in the pot even when there was no heat under it at all.

Clearly the lesson there is that only brainless frogs get boiled alive.

I would offer here a helpful analogy: we placed ourselves in a pot called the social contract. This is a way of describing the relationship we proles have with the State. Put simply, under the terms of the social contract, we agreed to behave and do our bit, and in return the State kept us safe from crime and undue suffering and protected our rights and freedoms. That was the deal.

A while ago, though – even before the adventures of Covid-19 – the State turned the heat on under the pot. It takes a while – and each one of us frogs becomes aware of the change at a different moment – but sooner or later one frog after another realises the water has become unpleasantly warm … and jumps out. I feel this is what is happening now – that’s what’s been happening for years. More and more healthy frogs, with brains intact, are getting out of the pot, turning their backs on the social contract.

For those who thought they could cook us, without us knowing, this is a frightening time. The billionaires, technocrats and autocrats can sit together in Davos and squeak excitedly to one another all they want. But they’re in another pot – a pot of their own elitism – and the heat under theirs is rising too.

I am wired to look back in time in search of answers to problems. Given the assumption that there’s noting new under the sun – that a version of whatever is happening now has likely happened in the past – I look to see how things played out.

Nearly 2,000 years ago the Caledonians of the north faced off against a Roman army led by a Roman Governor called Agricola. Among much else, the Roman Empire wantedsubmission from those people they deemed lesser, inferior.

According to Agricola’s son in law, Tacitus, the Caledonians were led by one they called Calgacus, which means the swordsman, who rallied his forces with these words, or words like them:

“To all of us slavery is a thing unknown; there are no lands beyond us, and even the sea is not safe, menaced as we are … And thus in war and battle, in which the brave find glory, even the coward will find safety … unpolluted by the contagion of slavery … the furthest limits of Britain are thrown open, and the unknown always passes for the marvellous. But there are no tribes beyond us, nothing indeed but waves and rocks, and yet more terrible Romans, from whose oppression escape is vainly sought by obedience and submission.

“Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches … they create a devastation and call it peace.”

I read about those Romans and see the model for every autocratic empire there ever was, and that ever shall be – from whose oppression escape is vainly sought by obedience and submission. The Romans were the victors of the battle in question, but they never did win either the submission or the obedience of those Caledonians. The Roman Empire declined and fell, of course – as every empire must. Empires used to last for centuries. The most recent last for just years. They fall, the world kings, faster and faster every time.

The strutting peacocks of Davos, the WEF, the United Nations and the World Health Organisation are no Romans. But they want our obedience and submission and have endeavoured to obtain as much by stealth. They thought we wouldn’t see them, wouldn’t see what they were doing, that we wouldn’t feel it, but we did and we do.

They sought to exploit our good nature. Give the devil his due – the social contract was good while it lasted. We had peace a lot of the time, rule of law, personal freedom and protected rights that passed from generation to generation.

That was then, though, and this is now. Now a handful of frightened billionaires and their enablers seek to make the pot a prison. By the manipulation of fear and the application of propaganda, they want us to be and to remain forever as frightened as they are.

They tell those of us who’ve noticed that we are being silly, that nothing of the sort is happening. This is gaslighting – and that is the gas that’s already lit under the pot. But look at what they’ve done. Having slipped and shouldered their way further and further into our lives, every aspect of our lives, they’ve only made a mess of everything. For all their wealth and their so-called wisdom we’re all about to get poorer, colder and hungrier. Already millions have had their health – physical mental or both – hopelessly compromised. It is increasingly hard not to see this as having been the plan all along. After all, surely no one in authority is stupid enough to have caused all this harm by accident.

As far as I am concerned, the social contract has been broken – not by we the many law-abiding, tax-paying majority, but by the few of the State.

Of course, an analogy only goes so far. We are not frogs. We are human beings. This is our country, our world. In the moment we decide collectively that we have nothing to fear from those who would take advantage of our good nature … in that moment the fear is gone. And somewhere in their hearts, and somewhere in their heads, the billionaires in Davos must know it too. (LINK)

Russia Takes Control of Key Railway Hub in Lyman, Solidifying Gains in Eastern Ukraine


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 28, 2022 | Sundance 

If you were to read the play-by-play of information in the U.K. Telegraph [SEE HERE], you could get whiplash from the diametrically opposed narratives coming from both sides in the propaganda war.

On one hand the western narrative is that Russia is losing, getting weaker, running out of money and weapons.  On the other hand, France and Germany are asking Russian President Vladimir Putin to release all of the captured soldiers he is gathering, while western media claim all the Ukraine retreats are “strategic”.  It would appear the Monty Python knight has lost all his appendages and is yelling, “come back coward, I’ll bite your kneecaps.”

(Via Telegraph) – Russia said its forces were in full control of the Ukrainian town of Lyman, a railway hub in the Donetsk region, on Saturday in a gain that would help set the stage for the next phase of the Kremlin’s offensive in the eastern Donbas.

Ukrainian and Russian forces had been fighting for Lyman for several days. The town lies 40 km (30 miles) west of Severodonetsk, the largest Donbas city still held by Ukraine but now under heavy assault from Russian forces.  The governor of Luhansk region, which along with Donetsk makes up the Donbas, said on Friday that Russian troops had entered Severodonetsk.

The Russian gains indicate a shift in momentum in the war. (read more)

Meanwhile the U.S. State Department, the actual combatant command center for the U.S. proxy war, along with internationally aligned diplomatic corps and the U.S. intelligence apparatus, are continuing to push the propaganda as if we cannot see how clearly staged it is.

Indeed, with the Pentagon preferring a ceasefire and peaceful negotiations while the State Dept demands more war, these are very remarkable times on the other side of the looking glass.

In the narrative tweet below….. If you ignore the new and clean uniform, to include the fresh out of the package gloves and helmet; and if you ignore the clean, groomed and well presented appearance of the “soldier”; carefully chosen for the youthful connection needed with the targeted audience; then it’s possible to admire the cinematography as well contextualized and constructed for social media delivery.  The background music is a generally good selection, and has the ‘feels’ as they say.

However, the Ukraine narrative engineers consistently run in to a problem when people start looking at the marketing aspect.  World War Reddit, becomes transparent.