Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is facing a sea of troubles, not only from foreign shores but from domestic ones as well. That sea of change comes from his inner circle, from the citizens of Ukraine, and from the battlefield. A small number of current and former members of Zelenskyy’s inner circle have gone public with criticisms of the president. It seems that our attention has switched from the fight against Russia to the fight against Hamas. As predicted, Zelenskyy may be another example of a blowback where we make friends with a leader temporarily and then ignore them and they become mortal enemies. Tonight on Ground Zero, Clyde Lewis talks with author and political analyst, Donald Jeffries about BLOW BACK BETTER.
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https://aftermath.media/podcast/11-7-23-blow-back-better-w-donald-jeffries/
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I have noticed lately that many people who I have known to be liberal are very disappointed in the direction of the country. Everything that they bought into during the election was a fraud and all of the propaganda for Joseph Biden before the vote - promised us a better future.
Trump at the time was a doomsday proposal undefined a Hitlerian government that would lead us to a nuclear end,
Now many have finally awakened into a new world. A world that they cannot comprehend so they have to use the legacy media as their guide. We are constantly being told not to question the official narrative — even when their lies are by omission and the rest can be labeled conspiracy theories.
This is the struggle– to impart intelligence, that is balanced, forthright and not the misinformation that calls itself intelligence.
The origin of the word ‘intelligence’ is the Latin ‘intelligere’ which means ‘to read between’. In other words, intelligence refers to one’s strength of discernment, one’s ability to “read between the lines”.
I was always taught that the Glory of god is Intelligence and it stands to reason that freedom is a state of mind – one free from the boundaries of belief, ideology and fear.
Freedom is the ability to doubt and question everything without any form of dependence, conformity, authority or tradition.
However, we live in times where our perceptions and opinions on just about everything are attacked for no reason — only that emotions run high, and when they are juxtaposed with opinion — they are spouted off as proof of whatever they are purported to be.
We keep doing the same things over again expecting a different result and now we have been programmed to hate without even understanding that we are being played.
It is like the dialogue between Humpty Dumpty and Alice in Alice and Wonderland.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”
Orwell said in 1984 undefinedWho controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.undefined
The media no longer gives the news undefined they make the news, they rewrite history undefined and scare you about retrocausal events where you are helpless to fight undefined you can only watch helplessly as it all falls apart.
History is rhyming again undefined and I want to share with you what I see happening.
I want to read off a list of names in history that were allies with the United States; Manuel Noriega, Muammar Kaddafi, Saddam Husein, and Osama Bin Laden. – I say were Allies Now they are dead enemies. We all remember the strange relationships we had with Noriega and Kaddafi—Their histories can be summed up by Hillary Clinton – We Came We Saw They Died – followed by a derisive cackle – and again she has all the personality of a boil-infested demon.
When the United States started sending guns and money to the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s, it had a clearly defined Cold War purpose: helping expel the Soviet army, which had invaded Afghanistan in 1979. And so it made sense that once the Afghan jihad forced a Soviet withdrawal a decade later, Washington would lose interest in the rebels.
For the international mujahideen drawn to the Afghan conflict, however, the fight was just beginning. They opened new fronts in the name of global jihad and became the spearhead of Islamist terrorism. The seriousness of the blowback became clear to the United States with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center: all of the attackundefineds participants either had served in Afghanistan or were linked to a Brooklyn-based fund-raising organ for the Afghan jihad that was later revealed to be the al Qaedaundefineds de facto U.S. headquarters. The blowback, evident in other countries as well, continued to increase in intensity throughout the rest of the decade culminating on September 11, 2001.
The same type of blowback occurred with Saddam Hussein, The US supplied him with sophisticated weapons as well as chemical weapons, with little care how they were used.
It was when Saddam became strategically less needed by the US, that he gradually began to favor other allies over the US, and only then did he become a bad guy.
Saddam’s greatest crime, and the one for which he paid with his life, was that he stopped being friendly to the U.S. after he claimed to be abandoned.
It can be said that the latest war in the middle east came about because we gave Iran 6 Billion dollars that may have been spent on weapons to arm Hamas.
Now it appears that another problem is now showing up on the radar, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky,
Zelensky is facing two troubles on the foreign front that have received a lot of media attention.
The first is that his country is receiving much less media attention. For the past month, international attention has been drawn away from his war to another.
The second is that he is confronting growing resistance in the U.S. House of Representatives. President Joe Biden’s plan to tie aid to Ukraine and aid to Israel together is both a tactical maneuver to ensure continued congressional support for Ukraine and an admission that that support can no longer be taken for granted.
But the fact is that Zelensky is facing a sea of troubles, not only from foreign shores but from domestic ones as well. That sea change comes from his inner circle, from the citizens of Ukraine, and the battlefield.
A small number of current and former members of Zelensky’s inner circle have gone public with criticisms of the president.
TIME has published an article detailing the issues Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is facing in relation to the ongoing war with Russia, including the situation on the front, international support, and Ukraine’s fight against corruption. The article’s subheading on TIME’s cover reads: undefinedThe Lonely Fight of Volodymyr Zelensky.undefined
It seems that our attention has switched from the Ukrainian fight to the fight against Hamas.
I predicted that Zelensky may be another example of a blowback undefined where we make friends with a leader temporarily and then ignore them and they become mortal enemies.
Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden come to mind.
Simon Shuster, the author of the TIME feature, wrote that public support for Ukraine in the US has been dwindling for the past several months, and Zelensky’s most recent visit to Washington, DC, has failed to change that.
During the visit, Zelenskyy felt undefinedexhaustionundefined from the undefinedpersistent need to convince his allies that, with their help, Ukraine can win,undefined Shuster wrote. undefinedNobody believes in our victory like I do. Nobody,undefined Zelensky told TIME in an interview after his trip. He said this undefinedtakes all your power, your energyundefined.
When Shuster asked a member of Zelenskyy’s team during his latest visit to Kyiv how the Ukrainian president was feeling, they replied without hesitation: undefinedAngry.undefined
The question is how angry undefined and how long will it build before he breaks?
Can we see history about to rhyme?
The article goes on to say that Zelenskyy’s undefinedusual sparkle of [undefined] optimism, his sense of humor, his tendency to liven up a meeting in the war room with a bit of banter or a bawdy jokeundefined have not survived into the second year of the full-scale war. undefinedNow he walks in, gets the updates, gives the orders, and walks out,undefined a longtime member of the president’s team told Shuster.
Another unnamed member of Zelenskyy’s team said that most of all, Zelensky feels betrayed by his Western allies, who, he feels, left him without the means to win the war, only the means to survive it.
He also said some in Zelenskyy’s team are convinced that the president undefineddeludes himselfundefined. undefinedWe’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that,undefined one of Zelenskyy’s closest aides told Shuster.
The article also recounts the problems Ukraine might face this winter if Russia renews its attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and the challenges the Ukrainian military might face with the arrival of winter.
But, Shuster wrote, Zelenskyy undefinedhas refused to accept thatundefined. undefinedFreezing the war, to me, means losing it,undefined Zelenskyy told Shuster.
Zelenskyy’s close aide told Shuster: undefinedWe’re not moving forward,undefined meaning the Ukrainian forces.
Some front-line commanders, he continued, have begun refusing orders to advance, even when they came directly from the Office of the President. undefinedThey just want to sit in the trenches and hold the line,undefined the aide said. undefinedBut we can’t win a war that way.undefined
Cognizant that the lifeline of weapons from the political West could dry up over time, Zelensky has “ramped up production of drones and missiles,” as if Ukraine could stand up to Russia on its own without the United States and its partners. All this while Zelensky simultaneously admits that without U.S. aid, “we will lose.” He recently insisted that the Ukrainian armed forces move 500 meters to a kilometer forward every day in defiance of battlefield reality.
In a second story that received less attention, former Minister of Internal Affairs and ex-Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko told Germany’s Die Welt that, despite being a “successful president” and a brilliant campaigner, no one talks about the reality that in the supposedly democratic Ukraine, “Zelenskyy rules as a sole decision-making autocrat” who “makes decisions alone.”
Lutsenko says that “freedom of speech and freedom of the press are very seriously limited.” He says that censorship applies, not only to matters of defense and security, but to “political debates…Many voices are simply not allowed to be heard on television screens.”
Zelenskyy may also be facing weakening popular support for the first time. A recent USAID-funded poll conducted by the International Republican Institute found that 42% of Ukrainians strongly approve of Zelensky compared to 58% in April.
And bad news is coming not just from his inner political circle and from popularity polls, but from conflict with his generals.
Zelenskyy’s aides told Time that, before winter, there would be “major changes in military strategy” and that at least one “senior general in charge of the counteroffensive” would be fired. Zelenskyy is reportedly in conflict with his generals, including his top general, Valerii Zaluzhny, over demands to defend Bakhmut and Avdiivka at all costs. Military leadership sees the defense of these towns as a strategic mistake that will devour soldiers, artillery, and equipment.
A close Zelensky aide told Time,
“Some front-line commanders have begun refusing orders to advance, even when they came directly from the office of the President.” A senior military officer defended the front-line commanders, saying they have no choice since “orders from the top” are, at times, disconnected from the battlefield reality. In October, Zelensky demanded the capture of the city of Horlivka. The field commanders asked, “With what?” They objected that “they don’t have the men or the weapons.”
And that is the fourth wave of troubles for Zelenskyy. The war is not going well. It is not just that the counteroffensive—in which everything was placed—has failed, but that Ukraine may now be facing a Russian counteroffensive. The Russian strategy of fighting from the defensive and devouring troops and equipment has left depleted Ukrainian armed forces vulnerable to a Russian counteroffensive. That counteroffensive may have already begun.
The war has turned so severely against Ukraine, and the losses have been so great, that a close Zelenskyy aide told Time that even if the United States gave Ukraine all the weapons it needed, they “don’t have the men to use them.”
The loss of life has been matched by the loss of equipment. Forbes reports that Ukraine has lost six Leopard tanks in just the past week. They had already lost at least six before that, accounting for, according to Forbes, a fifth of the Leopards they were given. The past few days have also seen a massive loss of aircraft. On October 25, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said that Russia had shot down twenty-four aircraft in the past five days alone. Military analyst Stephen Bryen says that unconfirmed reports from Russia are that Russia shot down twenty-fourth-generation MiG-29 jet interceptors in October.
While the world is looking away from Ukraine, Zelenskyy is facing criticism and drawbacks from all angles at what may be the most decisive moment of the war.
In the Economist, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, General Valery Zaluzhny, stated that he believes Ukraine has lost the war.
In that interview, Zaluzhny assesses that “we have reached . . . stalemate.” As for Ukraine’s chances of emerging from that stalemate victorious, his prognosis is that “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”
An admission of a stalemate is not an admission of defeat. But a stalemate entails a long war of attrition. And in a long war, according to The Economist, Zaluzhny “acknowledges [that] Russia has the advantage.” “There is no question in General Zaluzhny’s mind,” The Economist reports, “that a long war favors Russia.” Zaluzhny says “The biggest risk of an attritional trench war is that it can drag on for years and wear down the Ukrainian state . . .. sooner or later we are going to find that we simply don’t have enough people to fight.”
This is not fake news from social media. It is not propaganda from Russian media and it is not conspiracy theory undefined this is from stories provided by what we cold call reliable sources.
Moscow is also likely relishing shifting sentiment in the US, in both Congress and among the public.
According to a new Gallup poll, 41 percent of Americans say the US is doing too much to help Ukraine, up from 29% just five months ago. That figure rises to 55% among Republicans, according to the poll, as the 2024 election looms.
The paralysis on Capitol Hill has also interrupted the flow of military aid to Ukraine. The Biden administration’s efforts to link a year’s worth of aid ($24 billion) to other funding priorities, such as aid to Israel, have run into strong headwinds among Republicans in Congress.
As I have said again and again human lives mean nothing to the psychopaths in power- they keep throwing money at wars hoping that these countries continue to go into debt fighting them.
Now they’re cynically killing people with war. To fill us with outrage, counter-outrage, hate, fear–all the primal emotions that shut down higher thinking to divide us & distract us from the prison camp being built around all of us, and from which, once built, there’ll be no escape.
Those who pay for and promote these wars know that there will be a backlash or a blowback and this is why I held my disdain for these efforts where the warlords demand you join a side and count the body bags and refrigerator trucks waiting for the next holocaust.
The backlash is the point.
They don’t care about Ukrainians, Palestinians or Israelis, or any of us 99% undefined they don’t give a ratundefineds ass at how many people end up dead.
It’s just a means to an end, they say it is for the greater good.
All of these noble lies we swallow to look good for our political parties undefined and our ideals.
It’s remarkable how the media is saturated with stories and images of the most appalling attack against a civilian population and yet this is constantly and relentlessly spun as a “humanitarian” project and the very name “Hamas” now seems to provoke bloodlust whilst the call for a ceasefire is automatically rejected as “a betrayal”.
It is just convenient propaganda to continue the bloodbath.
The media and deep intelligence have succeeded in radicalizing most of America undefined our activist delusions have ignored that the wars are part of the DNA of the deep state, the war hawks, and the neo-con mobs.
We have been so brainwashed that we overlook our psychotic leaders and their apparent love affair with war and death.
To be radically amazed that we exist is to be equally amazed that we will die.
Maybe that is the point undefined we have been told to hate ourselves so much that communal suicide would be preferable to life undefined it is like the phantom of Jim Jones is back and people will not hesitate to drink the Kool aid.
I wish freedom was more than just a magic word but a real tangible and healthy state of mind.. use when we wake up from the conventional government and mass media propaganda and mind control that clouds our understanding of how the world works.
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SHOW GUEST:
Donald Jeffries started out researching the JFK assassination as a teenager in the mid-1970s, working for Mark Lane’s Citizens Committee of Inquiry. He has written six books, with three more coming out this year, and his work has been lauded by the likes of Ron Paul, Naomi Wolf, Roger Stone, Cynthia McKinney, Cindy Sheehan, Sherri Tenpenny, and Jesse Ventura, among others. His website is donaldjeffries.media
