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lee Vladimir cleef

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The Decline And Fall Of The Western Empire​

Almost everyone sees it, and almost no one wants to discuss it: America and Western Europe are spiraling out of control. And the speed of the descent is crescendoing rapidly.
By
Jonas E. Alexis, Assistant Editor
-
August 30, 2022

Almost everyone sees it, and almost no one wants to discuss it: America and Western Europe are spiraling out of control. And the speed of the descent is crescendoing rapidly.

It took a long time for the old Roman Empire to collapse. The seeds of its demise blossomed slowly, but the historically astute among the Romans saw the destructive nation-eating plants growing when they first began to appear, but no one would believe them. And when the end came, it came quickly—almost overnight.

The Roman Empire was so rich and prosperous and so militarily mighty that no one within the empire could even imagine that a collapse was possible. I’m sure that what I’ve heard hundreds of Americans say, “It can’t happen here,” also echoed throughout the old Roman Empire for generations.
From The Saker:

Sometime in the future a learned academic will be writing a weighty tome with the title The Decline and Fall of the Western Empire. Perhaps the Contents Page will include, among others, twelve chapters with titles something like this: World War One. World War Two. Korea. Vietnam. Palestine. Iran. Nicaragua. Afghanistan. Iraq. Syria. Ukraine. Taiwan.

Indeed, Karin Kneissel, the former Austrian Foreign Minister, is at present writing a book with the working title A Requiem for Europe. In an interview with Asia Times on 31 July she declared that ‘European countries are growing ever weaker on the international stage and their places are being taken by Asian countries’. She said that the Europe ‘where she was born and grew up and to which she was devoted no longer exists’. ‘European leaders, through ignorance and arrogance, are neglecting the existing geopolitical realities and basic principles of diplomacy and this has created a dangerous situation’.

She added: ‘This is connected with Eurocentrism. We believe that we are so great that nobody can do without us…It seems to me that Europe needs Russia more than Russia needs Europe. If I am right, then is it really in the interests of the Old World to treat Moscow as an enemy, inclining Moscow to Beijing? Today Europeans are more and more disillusioned and desperate and this may cause mass disorder and anti-government violence’.

Kneissel, who is from Central Europe, makes it sound as if Europe is living in the past, before 1914, when it was politically central to the world, instead of being a more or less irrelevant political backwater as it is in 2022. What is certain is that the physical fall of an empire is always preceded by its spiritual fall.
Spiritual fall always precedes the fall of the State. In the Ukraine many have noticed the satanic tattoos and pentagrams on the bodies of the Neo-Nazi thugs who formed the elite of the Kiev regime armed forces and many have seen videos showing their satanic rituals.

The extraordinary thing is the self-justification of the Western world for its own suicide and its refusal to admit that anything is wrong with it. On the contrary, only its ‘values’ of ‘freedom, democracy and human rights’ are correct and must therefore be spread throughout the ‘free world’.

All who do not accept its ‘values’, which in fact are anti-values because they are destructive, not constructive like real values, must be mocked, slandered and, if necessary, bombed into submission. Today’s Western world is visibly coming to resemble medieval frescoes showing the torments of hell, which are what spiritual death is. The Western world has been demonised, the demons have been called up from the bowels of hell to occupy it and visibly and mockingly inflict its ‘Western values’.

Did you catch what he said? “Spiritual fall always precedes the fall of the State.” I have been saying this for over three decades. How many times have you heard me say that America’s primary problems are spiritual, not political?

My critics often call me a “political” pastor. If those same people had really listened to me for any significant period of time they would know that I am one of the most apolitical preachers in the country. While the pastors who call me “too political” are neck-deep it partisan politics, defining America’s problems in mostly political terms by promoting the Republican Party and refusing to oppose GOP politicians when they engage in destructive and anti-Freedom activities and policies for fear that doing so would “help the Democrats,” I spare no party or politician. I am not interested in what is good for the party; I am only interested in what is good for the country and what is RIGHT.

Party partisanship, compromise, personal agendas, arrogance, willful ignorance of the Constitution and the total void of the fear of God have turned the vast majority of our political leaders in both parties into dangerous demagogues who are facilitating our nation’s destruction. Truly, they are “blind leaders of the blind.”

If America’s primary problems are spiritual (which they certainly are, as The Saker astutely observes), then the solutions are primarily spiritual. And this reality puts the responsibility of providing these spiritual solutions squarely on the shoulders of America’s spiritual shepherds: the pastors.

But as you very well know, on the whole, America’s pastors are totally unmoved and uninterested in providing the courageous spiritual leadership that America so desperately needs.

Very quickly, let me tell you the reasons why this is happening. Being a veteran pastor of over 47 years qualifies me to provide both an educated and experiential analysis. All pastors will not fall under each category below, but taken together, the following categories encompass the vast majority of evangelical pastors, regardless of denomination.

1. Pastors are hirelings.
 
The Ukrainian counter-offensive against in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions appears to have stalled, with heavy casualties.

As I pointed out at the start truth is the first casualty of war. The Ukrainians have been less than honest and the Russians have played their cards close to their chests.

However on the whole Russian statements have been borne out by the facts, even if they were a bit slow to acknowledge that the Moskva had indeed been sunk by Ukrainian anti-ship missiles, albeit with NATO assistance.


Moskva

Western reports of heavy Russian casualties are probably cut and pasted from Ukrainian defence ministry statements. Put another way, they’re junk. Very few Western journalists are actually embedded with the Ukrainian forces. Most of what you see and read in the MSM is coming from Kiev, not the front line.

Whilst published estimates of Russian casualties are way over the top it’s clear that Russian forces, sadly, have suffered severe casualties. Whilst the Ukrainians would have collapsed without massive NATO military assistance, Russian tactics at times have been hard to fathom, frankly. The Moskva, for example, apparently had critical radar systems offline.

Russia has clearly decided on a war of attrition, holding back most of her air power until Ukrainian stocks of SAMS have run down. Since NATO’s own stocks are running low the strategy makes some kind of sense, although it’s coming at a cost.

As all ya’ll know, I’m well-disposed towards Russia and am not a Cold War Warrior. I recognise that modern Russia is a democracy – it’s difficult to imagine President Putin lighting up the Kremlin in red lights, surrounding himself with the military and making a speech as scary as Joe Biden’s in Philadelphia. However I’m not a Kremlin mouthpiece.



It was a clear mistake not to declare war and commit all of Russia’s resources from the beginning. Declaring war, on the basis of a just casus bellum, not only has effect in the international plane, but in the domestic plane as well. If a country is clearly at war, with just cause and identified war aims, its population is more likely to rally around its leadership and armed forces.

In fairness the West made the same mistake in the Korean War. Not satisfied with failing to defeat North Korea and China in that war we went on to mess up the Suez and Vietnam Wars. We also decided to make a mess of the Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Russians are continuing to play their cards close to their chests over Ukraine’s illegal bioweapons program and Kiev’s plan to attack the Donbas Republics. The result is that ‘illegal Russian aggression’ is the only narrative Western publics are hearing.

How willing consumers in the UK and the EU will be to pay for the war through massively increased energy costs is an open question. The closure of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline is piling additional pressure upon Germany, for example.


Lenin

The yawning gulf between Russia and the West is growing, and getting more dangerous. No Western politician is even making an attempt at understanding the Russian viewpoint. Russia sees the conflict as essentially internal and regards the Ukraine as part of Russia, as indeed she was. The idea of splitting Ukraine off from Russia came from German intelligence after World War I. Their man Lenin was the first to pursue it.

President Putin is highly intelligent – he’s much brighter than any Western leader, for example. Unlike any leader in the West he also has access to good intelligence advice. In Britain for example all intelligence product is politicised by the Cabinet Office. Any intelligence favorable to Russia is simply suppressed. President Putin will know, for example, that Lenin was a German asset. Western leaders still labor under the delusional belief that he was a communist.

Moscow does not regard Ukraine as a legitimate, sovereign state. They are well aware in Moscow that the Maidan revolution was sponsored by Germany, whereas Western leaders still think that it was some sort of authentic expression of Ukrainian nationalism.

The war will grind on until at least the spring, in my view. I still think that Russia will win, but the cost will be high. The Ukrainian military collapse could accelerate quite quickly however as the flow of Western weapons dries up. Once the Russian Air Force is able to control the skies it will be all over.

The West ought to be talking to Moscow, but neither Britain nor America has a suitable backchannel available. In the Cuban Missile Crisis President Kennedy has General Vernon Walters, who was very smart, and Harold Macmillan had that charming man Sir Frank Roberts, who had been British Ambassador to the USSR. Both later became friends of mine. At the moment matters are being allowed to drift.
 
Veterans Today

How Russia-Ukraine War Is Crippling the Global Economy​


military-tank.jpeg

The war in Ukraine is a complex, confusing situation that has left many people across the world asking questions about why it’s happening and what it means for the future.

The use of advanced weapons like tanks, advanced rifle sights, and advanced fighter jets fueled the intensity of this war.

The conflict has been raging since 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and backed pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. Russia denies it is fighting a proxy war against NATO and Western allies, but the European Union and the United States have imposed sanctions on Russia as punishment for its involvement in Ukraine. The EU is also considering an arms embargo against Russia.

In 2015, the United Nations estimated that more than 9,000 people had died in the conflict since April 2014. More than 1 million people were displaced by fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine at the end of 2018, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The war has impacted the global economy as well as geopolitics because it shows how powerful military might can be used to gain political control over territory or other resources.

Disruption in Food Supply​

The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine is having a negative effect on the global economy, and it’s not just because the countries are currently at war.

Russia is one of the world’s top producers of wheat, and Ukraine is a significant producer of corn. Russia has been accused of using its food exports as a weapon, especially when it comes to Ukraine.

There have been reports that these increases have led to higher prices for consumers in both Russia and Ukraine—and consequently, lower demand for these products among consumers who can’t afford them anymore. This has severely impacted the economies of both countries.

Impact on Commodity Trade​

The Russia-Ukraine War is not only crippling the global economy but also disrupting commodity trade. The country’s proximity to other major trading areas has made it a major hub for commodity trading, but that ability has been greatly impaired by this conflict. The war has increased the prices of commodities across the board, especially those related to oil and gas production.

Oil supplies have been disrupted because of fighting in the Ukrainian region of Donbas, where a number of refineries are located. These disruptions are affecting both Ukraine and Russia, which are major oil producers and consumers in Europe. The disruption has led to higher prices for oil at home and abroad, contributing to higher inflation rates and lower GDP growth rates around the world.

Global Supply Chain Disruption

The global supply chain is an intricate system that allows companies to manufacture and distribute their goods all over the world. When this system is disrupted, it can cripple an economy. The Russia-Ukraine War has caused a significant disruption in the global supply chain, which has caused a ripple effect throughout the world.

This conflict has already caused billions of dollars in damage and a major disruption in global supply chains. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that the Russian economy will shrink by 8.5% this year and Ukraine’s by 35%.

Meanwhile, European countries are hurting because of their close economic ties with Russia. Countries like Germany and Italy have seen their exports to Russia plummet. And countries like Poland have seen their economies shrink as their trade with Russia falls off.

The biggest impact on the global economy comes from disruptions in supply chains caused by sanctions imposed on Russia by Western nations after its invasion of Ukraine last year. These sanctions include restrictions on exports of goods such as electronics and machinery to Russia; they also ban imports of certain goods from Russia into Western nations such as Britain or Germany.

Increased Cost of Living and Global Inflation
In the first 100 days of the conflict in Ukraine, oil and gas exports by Russia brought in close to $100 billion (£82.3 billion). According to the independent Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), sales have been down since March as more nations avoided Russian shipments but are still high.
The report also stated that Russia’s gas exports will fall further this year because of its inability to ship gas through Ukraine’s pipelines.

Moreover, the increased cost of living and global inflation has been attributed to the political instability caused by the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Oil prices have risen significantly as a result of the threat posed by Islamic State militants in Iraq, Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers, as well as sanctions imposed on Russia because of its involvement in Ukraine.

The rising costs of food and other commodities have been devastating for many families around the world. There are multiple factors contributing to this rise in prices, including the increased demand for certain goods due to war and geopolitical tensions, as well as fuel costs rising because of
 
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