LOL)) Yes, LOL!

 Freakshow continues)))

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he’s naming Secretary of State Marco Rubio as acting national security adviser to replace Mike Waltz, whom he is nominating for United Nations ambassador. Trump announced the moves shortly after news broke that Waltz and his deputy Alex Wong were departing the administration just weeks after it was revealed that Waltz added a journalist to a Signal chat being used to discuss military plans.

Nebenzya will make a complete idiot out of this guy in UN publicly. DJT, of course, couldn't foresee that the neocon trash he imported into his admin will sabotage him/s. And while everyone discusses the "mineral deal" which has no meaning for reality on the ground, Nikolai Patrushev makes an important comment on upcoming BaltOps 25:

НАТО на учениях вблизи российских границ отрабатывает сценарии с захватом Калининградской области и превентивными ударами по ядерным арсеналам. Об этом в интервью ТАСС заявил помощник президента РФ, глава Морской коллегии Николай Патрушев. По его словам, Североатлантический альянс второй год проводит самые масштабные за последние десятилетия учения, «на которых отрабатывает сценарии наступательных действий на большой протяженности — от Вильнюса до Одессы, захвата Калининградской области, блокирования судоходства на Балтике и в Черном море, превентивных ударов по местам постоянного базирования российских сил ядерного сдерживания».

Translation: NATO is practicing scenarios involving the seizure of the Kaliningrad region and preemptive strikes on nuclear arsenals during exercises near the Russian border. This was stated in an interview with TASS by the Russian presidential aide and head of the Naval Collegium Nikolai Patrushev. According to him, the North Atlantic Alliance is holding the largest exercises in recent decades for the second year, "in which it is practicing scenarios of offensive actions over a large area - from Vilnius to Odessa, the seizure of the Kaliningrad region, blocking shipping in the Baltic and Black Seas, and preemptive strikes on the permanent bases of Russian nuclear deterrent forces."

While I am on record for decades now that it is conventional power which matters in military affairs--the competition NATO has lost--yesterday Ania asked me a pointed question: how many nukes it will take to "calm" NATO down. It goes without saying that Russia can sink every NATO fleet in Baltic conventionally, but it must be understood--any real move on Kaliningrad means immediate nuclear response, including at NATO's military political top. Conventionally, NATO (US included) is a paper tiger, but considering a complete insanity of European political "elites", turning some of the European and UK sites into parking lot could become necessary. We, of course, can discuss after that the algorithm of escalation (or de-escalation) after initial "lesson", but Russia can go with her own version of the Ledeen Doctrine: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.” Rephrase it in accordance with present situation from Russian point of view and the list of candidates pops up immediately. I'll give you a hint--the US will do nothing.

Leopold the Cat was appealing to his adversary mice non-stop. Guys, let's live like friends. But in the end, he had to take Ozverin pills to calm things down.

Not That It Matters...

... but UK long ago turned into political, economic and military circus and the fact that Liz Truss lasted only 44 days changes absolutely nothing because reserves of clowns in UK are, obviously, limitless. By far the more important news than Liz Truss' tenure was this:

Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has now emerged as the Conservative Party's most popular potential replacement for the current head of government, Liz Truss, a new YouGov poll has shown. The survey, which was conducted on October 17-18, revealed that 32% of respondents would like Johnson to return as prime minister, despite a series of scandals and cabinet resignations that precipitated his eventual departure. “Those who voted for Truss to take over are particularly keen on a Boris Johnson return if she left: 44% put him top of their list of potential successors,” the pollsters noted.

You cannot cure terminal illness, the only thing possible is a palliative therapy, meaning shooting copious amounts of hard drugs into the patient to relieve pain and suffering before death. I am, in general, not very optimistic about Europe and Larry's posting yesterday the "travel report" from Phil Giraldi reinforced my position. The crisis is systemic and affects every single facet of modern combined West no matter what actions completely cornered Western "elites" take to save themselves. 

My friend Mike Krupa sent me the link to today's excellent piece by Douglas Macgregor in TAC.  He notes:

Of the Vietnam War, Henry Kissinger, former national security advisor and secretary of State under Presidents Nixon and Ford, said, “We should never have been there.” Before long, Americans, even the politicians inside the Beltway, will reach the same conclusion about Washington’s Ukrainian proxy war against Russia. No one in the White House, the Senate, or the House consciously set out to turn the proxy Ukrainian war with Moscow into a contest of “competitive societal collapse” between Russia and NATO. But here we are. No one imagined that the Biden administration and the bipartisan war party would drive Americans and Europeans into a political, military, and economic valley of death, from which there is no easy escape. Yet that is precisely what is happening.

What Macgregor describes here is incompetence. It is not a bug but a feature of which I write non-stop for a decade, at least. They ARE that ignorant, they ARE that stupid, and, yes, they ARE that incompetent and a massive body of empirical evidence supports these assertions. But that is what defines a systemic crisis. Read the whole piece, it is worth it, not to mention the fact that I applaud Macgregor's description of Kissinger's "strategy" in Vietnam--a recurring story for Washington. And Macgregor concludes it with what I warned for 8 years now, when stated in late 2014-early 2015 that the US has sustained a massive defeat. 

As long as Washington delivers cash, military assistance, and equipment to Ukraine, Kiev will fight its unwinnable war, and Washington’s ruling political class will profit from the transfer of cash to the Pentagon and the U.S. Defense Industrial Base. But Washington, its NATO allies, and Ukrainians will gain nothing of strategic value, while Russia is likely to grow stronger. That is a development Washington will regret.

Well, Russia is growing stronger every day and no volume of tactical minutiae can hide anymore the fact of West's collapse and it being written off. Even this little detail tells us something:

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has denied “ordering” the bombing of the Crimean Bridge, earlier this month. The president made the remarks during an interview with the Canadian broadcaster CTV, aired on Wednesday. Asked to comment on the “spectacular attack” on the bridge, as the broadcaster put it, Zelensky said Kiev was not involved. “We definitely did not order that, as far as I know,” he told the reporters.

He is right, in a larger sense, because it was ordered by British and this is the extent of modern British military "power"--sabotage, false flags, propaganda and things of this nature. Saying that, I do not offer my personal opinion--it is a recurring theme in Russian media based on high-positioned sources in Russian government that Crimean Bridge sabotage had all hallmarks of British involvement. In the same time--what's new? Zelensky is panicking. So, when London cries that:

A Russian Su-27 fighter jet fired a missile near a British Boeing RC-135 reconnaissance plane over international waters in the Black Sea, Defense Minister Ben Wallace told the UK's Parliament on Thursday. According to Wallace, the incident was accidental and Moscow blamed it on a technical malfunction. He added that London had accepted this explanation. The run-in between the spy plane and the fighter jet occurred on September 29. Following the incident, London temporarily suspended patrols and expressed concerns to Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, Wallace noted. “A reply by the Russian Minister of Defense on the 10th of October, stated that they have conducted an investigation into the circumstances of the incident and stated it was a technical malfunction of the Su-27 fighter,” he revealed, adding that Moscow “acknowledged that the incident took place in international airspace.”

They should remember that the next time some S-400 AD complex in Crimea may have also some technical malfunction and some missiles may accidentally shoot down RAF planes "patrolling" over the Black Sea, which is about 1,700 miles from Albion. 

In related news, the pain dial is being turned closer and closer to 11. 

For the first time since Russia invaded, Ukraine is facing large-scale nationwide disruptions to electricity and rolling blackouts from extensive damage to the country’s power infrastructure from Russian missile attacks this month. Ukrainian officials have sought to restrict supply to allow energy companies to repair power facilities that have been pounded by Russian air strikes. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has urged people to use as little electricity as possible from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. and prepare for temporary blackouts if this was not done. Russian attacks have knocked out 30% of the country's power plants, causing massive blackouts. The new development comes just weeks after Russia and Belarus announced the formation of a new joint force, with the Ukrainian army seeing rising military threats from the north. 

Nah, nothing to see here, Russia is losing and VSU is about to take Moscow. Any British Prime-minister will tell you that. Ah, wait...