There are some/many who ascribe a high level of incompetency to world leaders and their attendant bureaucratic apparati. While this may be true at the individual figurehead level (the incompetence / weakness / corruptibility / blackmailability of said ‘leaders’ is necessary to make them sufficiently pliable), there is another matter – the world’s largest concentration of capital, hardware, software and human resources in the hands of the MIC, which in turn is beholden to our favorite humanitarians, the banksters, and the owners of both of the above.
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Looking upon the current and recent events in world affairs, it may seem like the West is stumbling from one miscalculation into another. Foment, fund and arm insurgency/’popular uprising’ in Syria, threaten war – then back down. Local participants get royally screwed. Foment, fund (and perhaps arm, though we are not here yet) ‘popular uprising’ in Ukraine – then act all aflutter, make noncommittal noises about respecting sovereignty and de-escalation. Then presumably back down.
I would caution against assumptions that the currently unfolding scenario has not been simulated, run and re-run, and on continuous loop since at least the last few days (if not weeks, months and years). There is lots of hardware and ‘humanware’ dedicated to war planning, at by any definition direct involvement in the toppling of a government of a strategic partner of an opposing (subsuper)power definitely falls into that category.
Options:
- Western leaders did not realize and anticipate the likely response of Russia to the efforts to remove Ukraine from its sphere of influence, and are now scrambling to try to develop a plan to deal with the situation on the ground. Image cannot be displayed
- Western leaders decided to ignore the likely detailed projections from the planning and intel teams on likely Russian response, and are now frantically reading through the options developed far in advance for just such a scenario. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D3mqiKgquY
- Despite the hard time we like to give Western .gov entities about playing checkers on a chessboard against chess pieces, they and their advisors (as well as their ‘life coaches’) knew full well the consequences of creating a situation like the one we are seeing.
There is no way, despite the corruption, nepotism, lack of oversight and rampant abuse of power, dumbing down of society and governmental institutions, that military planners and the intel community could have allowed 1) to take place, in my opinion.
While 2) could potentially still be in play, this merely points to the irrelevance of the specific placeholders installed to be statesmen proxies. This option also requires a strong belief that these 'leaders' are truly acting with autonomy, without direct outside/higher-level control. What the puppet knows, believes or chooses matters little with respect to how the play will be performed.
The question as to whether both/all sides in this performance are equally captured can be raised, but is ultimately not decisive in terms of the fact of the matter – which is that we are all watching a performance.
The real question is the intended effect of the show, and the on-the-ground outcome of the proceedings. A secondary question: what back-room parallel events are being masked by the events on front center stage? Is there something all this smoke is supposed to cover -- besides the potentially very real fire, and the intrinsic incentives involved in the conflict itself vis-à-vis control of Ukrainian society/territory/natural resources and energy infrastructure?
Over the course of the events last summer (and several years, really), the regional geopolitical crises have become a monotonous sequence (yet ever increasing in tempo). While all-out war may not (yet) be to the advantage of the players around the table, there certainly seems to be a perceived need to keep the temperature and tensions high. While the stage limelight focuses on one particular area (Ukraine right now), there are back-up scenarios being set up by the stagehands (on whichever side) in the shadows not illuminated on stage. and , just to name a few:
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Though it may very well be that the intended effect is that of financial collapse of the targeted nations, to be ‘rescued’ by the IMF and/or Western donors, there is another consideration. The national debts of the respective countries are held by – Western financial institutions and central banks. Ukraine seems to have approximately 8B of external debt as of October 2013 (though more recent estimates are around 0B). Could the 1.36M troy ounce of gold reserves be a factor to consider? Besides inducing a bail-in upon governmental insolvency, could the implosion of the sovereign debt (vast majority of which is USD denominated) – with the accompanying ripple effects in credit & currency markets and for the holders of the securities and their derivatives be in anyone’s interest at the present time? If the central issue really IS energy (natural gas), why THIS particular timing? The same applies if the direct raw military value of the territory is the driving force.
The newly installed Prime Minister of Crimea has already appealed to Russia for help:
"I appeal to the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, to provide assistance in ensuring peace and tranquillity on the territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea," Mr Aksyonov said in a statement."
All that remains is for the legal, 'legitimately'* elected Head of State for Ukraine to make the same appeal from Ukrainian soil, if legal cover were really required. Since he has already officially denied having such intentions, this might be an interesting twist to look for.
"He said he had not met Putin since his arrival in Russia.
“When I ended up in Russia, I had a phone call with him,” Yanukovych said. “We agreed once the president of Russia has an opportunity, we will meet, but I don’t know when this will happen.”
It would be adorable to see the delusions of autonomy on the part of these figures, if it were not for the very real consequences of their actions and words.
Welcome to the new normal. In this wonderful game of musical chairs, the only question is – where will the next hotspot be? And at which hotspot will the music ultimately REALLY stop. Perhaps such events really are the last throes of an unstable system. But everything, including time, is relative. In astronomical and geological terms, human history is not exactly a meaningful factor. And even in the history of the rise and fall of human empires, periods are measured in centuries and decades, not years and months. The world can stay irrational longer than individuals can stay alive.
The longer ‘this’ goes on, we can be sure that history is relentlessly moving forward – but what will constitute the ‘end’ of the current period? How will we know we have arrived there, and where is ‘there’? The funnel of the gravity well can be awfully long, especially from the perspective of those traveling within it.
Not to mention – what exactly is the plan for when we finally get to the event horizon?
Keep stacking, and make your preparations multi-faceted. One way or another, it seems we will sooner or later get to see what the other side of the singularity looks like, and I suspect assets, tools, resources and capital of all kinds will be scarcer than they currently are.
