https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4598095214928566760/4112062173849396778
NATO Summit, A Theater of the Absurd
The unfulfilled goals and objectives from last year’s meeting in Madrid loom over the Atlantic military alliance. When the membership meets in Vilnius this week, normalizing failure might best describe the most that can be accomplished.
The leaders of NATO’s 31 constituent member states have begun to assemble in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, for the alliance’s 33rd summit, an event that has come to symbolize the military organization’s increasingly difficult task of transforming political will into tangible reality.
Since the Wales Summit of 2014, when NATO made Russia a top priority in the aftermath of the Russian annexation of Crimea, and the Warsaw Summit of 2016, when NATO agreed to deploy “battlegroups” on the soil of four NATO members (Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Poland) in response to perceived Russian “aggression” in the region, Russia has dominated the NATO agenda and, by extension, its identity.
The Vilnius summit promises to be no different in this regard.
One of the major issues confronting the NATO leadership is that the Vilnius summit operates under the shadow of last year’s Madrid summit, convened in late June in the aftermath of Russia’s initiation of military operations against Ukraine.
The Madrid summit came on the heels of Boris Johnson’s deliberate sabotage of a Ukrainian-Russian peace agreement that was supposed to be signed on April 1, 2023, in Istanbul, and the decision by the United States in May 2023 to extend to Ukraine military assistance exceeding $45 billion as part of a new “lend lease” agreement.
In short, NATO had opted out of a peaceful resolution to the Russia-Ukraine conflict and instead chose to wage war by proxy — with Ukrainian manpower being married with NATO equipment — designed to achieve what U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith, in May 2022, called the “strategic defeat” of Russia in Ukraine.
The Madrid summit generated an official NATO statement which declared that “Russia must immediately stop this war and withdraw from Ukraine,” adding that “Belarus must end its complicity in this war.”
When it came to Ukraine, the Madrid statement was equally firm. “We stand in full solidarity with the government and the people of Ukraine in the heroic defense of their country,” it read.“We reiterate our unwavering support for Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders extending to its territorial waters. We fully support Ukraine’s inherent right to self-defense and to choose its own security arrangements. We welcome efforts of all Allies engaged in providing support to Ukraine. We will assist them adequately, recognizing their specific situation.”
Confidently Seeking a ‘Strategic Defeat’
NATO, it seemed, was supremely confident in its ability to achieve the outcome it so very much wanted — the strategic defeat of Russia.
What a difference a year makes.
NATO assistance to Ukraine resulted in a successful counteroffensive which compelled Russia to withdraw from territory around the city of Kharkov, as well as abandon portions of the Kherson Oblast located on the right bank of the Dnieper River. Once the Russian defenses solidified and the Ukrainian attack stalled, NATO and Russia both began preparing for the next phase of the conflict.
NATO began a months-long effort to equip and train nine Ukrainian army brigades to NATO standards by providing them with NATO tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and training them in NATO-style combined arms warfare.
For its part, Russia conducted a partial mobilization of both its manpower (calling up some 300,000 reservists while recruiting an additional 150-200,000 volunteers) and its defense industry (dramatically increasing its production of tanks, missiles and artillery ammunition). Moreover, Russia prepared hardened defensive positions in accordance with a military doctrine that had been updated to consider the lessons of the first year of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine.
NATO had placed high hopes on the Ukrainian army being able to carry out a counteroffensive against Russia which would achieve discernable results both in terms of territory re-captured and casualties inflicted on the Russian army. The results, however, have been dismal to date — tens of thousands of Ukrainian casualties and thousands of destroyed vehicles while failing to breach even the first line of the Russian defenses.
One of the challenges NATO will face in Vilnius is the question of how to recover from this setback. Many NATO countries are starting to exhibit “Ukraine fatigue” as they see their armories stripped bare and their coffers emptied in what, by every measurement, appears to be a losing cause.
The scope and scale of the Ukrainian military defeat is such that the focus of many NATO members appears to be shifting from the unrealistic goal of strategically defeating Russia to a more realistic objective of bringing about a cessation to the conflict that preserves Ukraine as a viable nation state.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will attend the NATO summit. However, his demands for NATO membership will not be met — U.S. President Joe Biden himself has weighed in on the matter, saying this would not be possible while Ukraine is at war with Russia.
Face-Saving Gestures
There will be face-saving gestures from NATO, such as the creation of a NATO-Ukraine Council and talk of eventual post-conflict security guarantees. But the reality is Zelensky’s presence will do Ukraine more harm than good, since it will only accentuate the internal disagreement within NATO on the issue of Ukrainian membership and highlight NATO’s impotence when it comes to doing anything that can meaningfully alter the current trajectory on the battlefield, which is heading toward a strategic defeat for both Ukraine and NATO.
The vision of the Madrid summit was that of NATO capitalizing on its strategic victory against Russia to further expand its ranks in Europe (both Finland and Sweden were invited), and to push its influence into the Pacific Ocean. While NATO’s Pacific partners (Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea) have been invited to Vilnius, the hopes that their presence would coincide with the announcement of the opening of a NATO liaison office in Japan have been quashed by France, which objects to an alliance ostensibly focused on North Atlantic security becoming involved in the Pacific.
While Finland has joined NATO, Sweden has not, and its membership is becoming increasingly problematic given Turkey’s opposition. Turkish President Recep Erdogan’s recent announcement that Turkey will agree to Swedish NATO membership when the European Union admits Turkey appears to be a poison pill that permanently scutters Sweden’s membership hopes, since the European Union is not inclined to admit Turkey.
The Vilnius summit will most likely be defined by these issues, and by the inability of the alliance to reach a meaningful consensus on how best to address them.
One can expect a plethora of rhetorical spin and posturing by the NATO membership, but the fact is the real mission of the Vilnius summit is how best to achieve a soft landing from the unfulfilled goals and objectives laid out last year in Madrid.
Normalizing failure might best describe the best that NATO can accomplish in Vilnius.
Any failure to try to stop the accumulation of debacles that represent the current NATO policy toward Ukraine will result in further collapse of the military situation in Ukraine, and the political situation in Europe, which, in their totality, push NATO closer to the moment of its ultimate demise.
This prospect does not bode well for those whose task it is to put as positive a spin as possible on reality. But NATO has long ago stopped dealing with a fact-based world, allowing itself to devolve into a theater of the absurd where actors fool themselves into believing the tale they are spinning, while the audience stares in dismay.
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http://endoftheamericandream.com/we-are-starting-to-experience-the-apocalyptic-weather-of-the-end-times/
We Are Starting To Experience The Apocalyptic Weather Of The End Times
Have you noticed that we are being hit by an endless series of weather emergencies? Here in the middle of 2023, farms in the Midwest are being devastated by a seemingly endless drought, massive dust storms are happening as far north as Illinois, residents of Vermont just experienced the worst flooding that they have seen in nearly 100 years, and the Southwest is being baked by unprecedented heat. I realize that this is a very sensitive topic. A large portion of the population insists that what we are witnessing is “normal”, while another large portion of the population believes that we can fix the weather by changing our behavior. Unfortunately, both groups are wrong. What we are beginning to experience is the apocalyptic weather of the end times, and things are only going to get crazier during the months and years that are in front of us.
Right now, the horrifying heat wave that is frying the Southwest is making headlines all over the nation…
Across a wide swath of the U.S. from Texas to Nevada, a major heat wave that is threatening to break temperature records continued to bake parts of the South and Southwest on Wednesday, sending people scrambling for relief and adding to what has become a series of weather extremes that researchers say fit the pattern of a warming environment.
Temperatures well into the triple digits are expected this weekend from California to Texas to Florida, with parts of Nevada forecast to reach 116 degrees Fahrenheit and cities in Arizona expected to hit a staggering 118 F.
Temperatures this high are life-threatening, and it is likely that quite a few people will die from the heat in the days ahead.
In Phoenix, there is a possibility that the city could actually see the 120 degree mark for only the fourth time ever…
‘While the 120-degree mark is not a certainty for Phoenix, it is possible late this week and this upcoming weekend,’ AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski warned this week of forecast temperatures for the famously arid city, known as Arizona’s Valley of the Sun.
The city has seen 13 consecutive 110F-plus days – and now weather experts warn the city may soon challenge its all-time record of 18 days.
The all-time record high in Phoenix is 122 degrees.
There is a chance that record could get broken.
But even now, the heat is so intense that it is actually melting tar on the roofs of some homes…
‘How bad is the Phoenix heat wave? The tar is melting off the newish roof on our house,’ Astrid Galvan shared in a post.
On TikTok, one hilarious resident shared a video of himself frying an egg on a grill that was not plugged in but heated up by the sun.
‘Gotta love Az summers,’ the creator captioned the video.
That is hot!
Unfortunately, conditions are going to be like this for a while.
These oppressive temperatures are being caused by a “heat dome” that is “now set to persist through much of the month”…
A sprawling area of high pressure currently positioned directly over the Four Corners is responsible for the scorching temperatures, which are unusual even for the notoriously hot expanse.
Known as a ‘heat dome’ to meteorologists, the phenomenon is now set to persist through much of the month – scorching metros in Arizona, Nevada, and California in the process.
And of course this is happening in the context of a historic global heat wave.
In fact, we are being told that last month was the warmest June “since at least 1850”…
Last month was the warmest June globally since at least 1850, when record-keeping began, according to a new report by Berkeley Earth, a nonprofit research organization that focuses on climate data analysis. The report found that June 2023 broke the previous record, set last year, by a “large margin,” putting the planet on track for one of the warmest years on record — if not the warmest.
Meanwhile, ocean temperatures also continue to rise.
If you can believe it, some areas off the coast of Florida are actually experiencing “hot tub-like water temperatures”…
Buoys off the coast of Florida measured hot tub-like water temperatures near 97 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday in the shallow, heat-prone Florida Bay between the southern tip of Florida and the Keys. The more ecologically vital and expansive coral reefs are located east and south of the Florida Keys, but the buoy measurements indicate just how extreme the heat in Florida has been so unusually early in the summer.
Ocean temperatures around Florida usually get hotter as the summer progresses and don’t reach their peak until late August into September, Manzello said, meaning ocean temperatures could rise further.
If ocean temperatures stay this high, it will significantly intensify any major storms that come along later this year.
Perhaps this explains why Farmers Insurance has suddenly decided to completely pull out of the state of Florida…
Farmers Insurance will stop offering its policies in Florida, including home, auto and umbrella policies, in a change that will force thousands of people to change their insurance provider.
The company said in a statement that its decision to get out of Florida was a business decision necessary to manage its risk exposure in the hurricane-prone state. Farmers serves 100,000 customers in Florida but said there will be no impact to customers who use Farmers’ owned subsidiaries like Foremost Signature and Bristol West.
So why is all of this happening?
Well, whenever there is a lot of solar activity temperatures tend to rise, and right now sunspot activity has spiked to very alarming levels.
So we are being cooked from above, and we are also being cooked from beneath.
In a previous article, I discussed some of the very unusual things that are happening on our ocean floors. For example, scientists recently discovered “a sprawling field of hydrothermal vents” on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean that are releasing material “hot enough to melt lead”…
On March 12, a team of scientists gathered in the control room of the RV Falkor (too), an oceanographic research vessel operated by the Schmidt Ocean Institute. They watched the monitor of a camera-wielding underwater drone, or ROV, as it explored the deep sea 2,000 meters (6,600 feet) below the ship. When the screen showed a plume of black smoke, the scientists cheered.
The video showed a sprawling field of hydrothermal vents — fissures in the seabed where seawater mixes with magma — on the Puy des Folles Volcano on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Some of the vents, known as “black smokers,” had formed tall “chimneys” of iron sulfide deposits that gushed out dark, sulfurous plumes with temperatures up to about 340° Celsius (644° Fahrenheit), hot enough to melt lead.
During the months and years to come, our planet will get even more unstable, and that is because we really are living in the end times.
Sadly, most people don’t want to hear the truth.
Most people just assume that the politicians have everything under control.
But they don’t.
What is happening to us is outside of our control, and the “birth pains” that we are experiencing will only become more intense in the days ahead.
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