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Geopolítica e Política

Lusa - Lusística - Mundial

Geopolítica e Política

Lusa - Lusística - Mundial

Why hypersonic weapons change everything

They can sink ALL of the U.S. aircraft carriers, all at once

26.03.23 | Duarte Pacheco Pereira

A Kh-47M2 Kinzhal being carried by a Mikoyan MiG-31K interceptor

A Kh-47M2 Kinzhal being carried by a Mikoyan MiG-31K interceptor

 

By Alex Krainer 
Posted at Alex Krainer's TrendCompass on March 22, 2023 • has comments 
Reposted at ZeroHedge on March 23, 2023 • has comments

 

When it comes to all matters military, I have been following a handful of analysts among whom Croatian Admiral Davorin Domazet (retired) emerged as perhaps my favorite. He has deep and detailed command of technical matters (like Andreiy Martyanov he insists that you can’t prevail in modern warfare without deep knowledge of of advanced mathematics and probability). More importantly, he has perhaps the clearest understanding of the broad historical context of today’s clash between Russia and the western powers.

Unfortunately, Admiral Domazet does not give many interviews and none in English, but I thought that his last one was important enough to share more broadly in this article.

Admiral Davorin Domazet (Croatia)

If you happen to speak Croatian/Serbian, you can find the interview, published on 17 March 2023 at this link. It runs over 2 hours.

The context is everything

Domazet is the only military analyst that I know of, who takes into account the history of western financial oligarchy, their Venetian roots, migration to Amsterdam where they formed the Dutch Empire, and subsequent move to London which, to this day remains the ideological and spiritual headquarters of the undead British Empire.

He has correctly labelled humanity’s enemy as the “western occult oligarchy,” and has even called the war in Ukraine as the clash between Christ and anti-Christ, underlining that the anti-Christ is in the west. Mind you, Croatia is a NATO member state and is, like Poland, a catholic Slavic nation, sharing even some of its cultural Russophobia (though it may not quite as rabid in Croatia as it is in Poland).

About Russia’s hypersonic weapons

However, the part of Domazet’s last interview that I found particularly worth sharing was what he laid out about Russia’s hypersonic weapons.

It was in 2018 that Vladimir Putin took the stage to present Russia's new hypersonic weapons. The term "hypersonic" refers to missiles that fly at speeds of 5 mach and higher. At the time, many in the west dismissed Putin's claims and thought it was a bluff. We now know that he wasn't bluffing. Russia is the only country in the world that has deployment-ready hypersonic missiles - not one but three types: Zircons, Kinzhals and Avantguards. 

Domazet explained why these weapons are radical game changers in warfare. Namely, in World War 1, tanks were the game changing military technology. Since World War 2, it’s been the air-force. Aircraft carrier strike groups have been an irresistible force wherever they travelled, dominating the seas ever since. But hypersonic precision missiles have rendered that force obsolete overnight.

The main military front in today's global conflict, according to Domazet, are the Anti-Ballistic (ABM) batteries which the US has set up on the Poland-Romania axis, and the Russians on the North Pole-Kaliningrad-Crimea-Syria axis. These are defensive systems, conceived to intercept incoming nuclear missiles (though they can easily be converted to offensive nuclear missiles). However, today's ABM systems are only effective against missiles flying at speeds up to mach 3.5 (3.5 x the speed of sound).

The Kinzhal turns mighty aircraft carrier strike groups into sitting ducks

Russia's new Kinzhal missile flies at speeds of mach 12 to mach 15 and nothing in western defensive arsenals can stop its strike. During the war in Ukraine, Russia staged a stunning demonstration of its power. The first Kinzhal strike, delivered one month after the beginning of hostilities in Ukraine, was perhaps the most significant: Russian forces targeted a large weapons depot in Ukraine which had been built during the Soviet times to withstand a nuclear strike. It was buried 170 meters (over 500 ft) underground and protected by several layers of armored concrete.

The Kinzhal flies at altitudes of between 20 and 40 km, with a maximum range of 2,000 km. When above target, it dives perpendicularly and accelerates to 15 mach, generating enormous kinetic energy in addition to its explosive payload. That first strike with a single Kinzhal missile destroyed Ukraine's nuke-proof underground weapons depot. This was a message for the west.

Moscow calling: we can sink ALL your carriers

The Kinzhal was developed with the express purpose of destroying aircraft carrier strike groups. If it could destroy a warehouse built to withstand a nuclear strike, it can cut through an aircraft carrier like a hot knife through butter.

The Kinzhal missile is an aircraft carrier killer

According to Admiral Domazet, neither the western powers nor China are anywhere near having weapons like that. He explained that the critical issue with hypersonic weapons are the extreme temperatures reached during hypersonic flights on the surface of missiles, which can cause them to break apart mid-flight. Russia is the only nation that has developed special materials that enable the missiles to withstand this stress, so their flight can be controlled throughout its trajectory and delivered with pinpoint accuracy.

Western intelligence estimated that Russia had some 50 Kinzhals at the start of the war in Ukraine, and thus far it has used only 9 of them. Last week, they fired six Kinzhals in a single salvo. That too, was a message. Here’s how Domazet explained it: United States have 11 aircraft carrier strike groups. Of these, fewer than half will be active at any one time (while others are in dock for maintenance, or in preparation). Firing six Kinzhals in one go is military-speak for, “we have the capability to sink ALL of your aircraft carriers at once.”

Russia will run out of ammunitions any minute now, (experts say)…

Russia has the capacity to build about 200 Kinzhals per year and now has means of delivering Kinzhal and Zircon missiles anywhere from aircraft, ships and submarines. In addition to destroying aircraft carriers, they can also destroy NATOs ABM missile sites. In a nutshell, Russia is now a clear winner of the 21st century arms race.

It could take the western powers 10 years or longer to catch up and until then, the only way to avoid losing the war is to either concede defeat and accept Russia's security demands, or to escalate the conflict to nuclear exchange.

A conservative estimate suggests that at least a billion people would perish in such a conflict and nobody would win. Who would do such a thing? The idea of using nuclear weapons is, in fact, so repugnant that we can be assured that our leaders will never chose the path of escalation. Surely, nobody’s that evil, right? Are they? 

Alex Krainer – @NakedHedgie is the creator of I-System Trend Following and publisher of daily TrendCompass reports. For US investors, we propose an inflation/recession resilient portfolio covering a basket of 30+ financial and commodities markets; in 2022, we significantly outperformed the S&P 500 as well as the 60/40 death trap investment model. For more information, you can drop me a comment or an email to xela.reniark@gmail.com

Alex Krainer's TrendCompass is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Five Stages of Collapse

By Dmitry Orlov at Club Orlov on February 22, 2008

25.03.23 | Álvaro Aragão Athayde

Anasazi gettyimages-122314918Here’s Why These Six Ancient Civilizations Mysteriously Collapsed: 3. Anasazi

 

 

Dmitry Orlov original article and and reader's comments

 

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross defined the five stages of coming to terms with grief and tragedy as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, and applied it quite successfully to various forms of catastrophic personal loss, such as death of a loved one, sudden end to one’s career, and so forth. Several thinkers, notably James Howard Kunstler and, more recently John Michael Greer, have pointed out that the Kübler-Ross model is also quite terrifyingly accurate in reflecting the process by which society as a whole (or at least the informed and thinking parts of it) is reconciling itself to the inevitability of a discontinuous future, with our institutions and life support systems undermined by a combination of resource depletion, catastrophic climate change, and political impotence. But so far, little has been said specifically about the finer structure of these discontinuities. Instead, there is to be found a continuum of subjective judgments, ranging from “a severe and prolonged recession” (the prediction we most often read in the financial press), to Kunstler's “Long Emergency,” to the ever-popular “Collapse of Western Civilization,” painted with an ever-wider brush-stroke.

For those of us who have already gone through all of the emotional stages of reconciling ourselves to the prospect of social and economic upheaval, it might be helpful to have a more precise terminology that goes beyond such emotionally charged phrases. Defining a taxonomy of collapses might prove to be more than just an intellectual exercise: based on our abilities and circumstances, some of us may be able to specifically plan for a certain stage of collapse as a temporary, or even permanent, stopping point. Even if society at the current stage of socioeconomic complexity will no longer be possible, and even if, as Tainter points in his “Collapse of Complex Societies,” there are circumstances in which collapse happens to be the correct adaptive response, it need not automatically cause a population crash, with the survivors disbanding into solitary, feral humans dispersed in the wilderness and subsisting miserably. Collapse can be conceived of as an orderly, organized retreat rather than a rout.

For instance, the collapse of the Soviet Union – our most recent and my personal favorite example of an imperial collapse – did not reach the point of political disintegration of the republics that made it up, although some of them (Georgia, Moldova) did lose some territory to separatist movements. And although most of the economy shut down for a time, many institutions, including the military, public utilities, and public transportation, continued to function throughout. And although there was much social dislocation and suffering, society as a whole did not collapse, because most of the population did not lose access to food, housing, medicine, or any of the other survival necessities. The command-and-control structure of the Soviet economy largely decoupled the necessities of daily life from any element of market psychology, associating them instead with physical flows of energy and physical access to resources. This situation, as I argue in my forthcoming book, Reinventing Collapse, allowed the Soviet population to inadvertently achieve a greater level of collapse-preparedness than is currently possible in the United States.

Having given a lot of thought to both the differences and the similarities between the two superpowers – the one that has collapsed already, and the one that is collapsing as I write this – I feel ready to attempt a bold conjecture, and define five stages of collapse, to serve as mental milestones as we gauge our own collapse-preparedness and see what can be done to improve it. Rather than tying each phase to a particular emotion, as in the Kübler-Ross model, the proposed taxonomy ties each of the five collapse stages to the breaching of a specific level of trust, or faith, in the status quo. Although each stage causes physical, observable changes in the environment, these can be gradual, while the mental flip is generally quite swift. It is something of a cultural universal that nobody (but a real fool) wants to be the last fool to believe in a lie.

Stages of Collapse

Stage 1: Financial collapse. Faith in “business as usual” is lost. The future is no longer assumed resemble the past in any way that allows risk to be assessed and financial assets to be guaranteed. Financial institutions become insolvent; savings are wiped out, and access to capital is lost.

Stage 2: Commercial collapse. Faith that “the market shall provide” is lost. Money is devalued and/or becomes scarce, commodities are hoarded, import and retail chains break down, and widespread shortages of survival necessities become the norm.

Stage 3: Political collapse. Faith that “the government will take care of you” is lost. As official attempts to mitigate widespread loss of access to commercial sources of survival necessities fail to make a difference, the political establishment loses legitimacy and relevance.

Stage 4: Social collapse. Faith that “your people will take care of you” is lost, as local social institutions, be they charities or other groups that rush in to fill the power vacuum run out of resources or fail through internal conflict.

Stage 5: Cultural collapse. Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost. People lose their capacity for “kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion, charity” (Turnbull, The Mountain People). Families disband and compete as individuals for scarce resources. The new motto becomes “May you die today so that I die tomorrow” (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago). There may even be some cannibalism.

 

Although many people imagine collapse to be a sort of elevator that goes to the sub-basement (our Stage 5) no matter which button you push, no such automatic mechanism can be discerned. Rather, driving us all to Stage 5 will require that a concerted effort be made at each of the intervening stages. That all the players seem poised to make just such an effort may give this collapse the form a classical tragedy – a conscious but inexorable march to perdition – rather than a farce (“Oops! Ah, here we are, Stage 5.” – “So, whom do we eat first?” – “Me! I am delicious!”) Let us sketch out this process.

Financial collapse, as we are are currently observing it, consists of two parts. One is that a part of the general population is forced to move, no longer able to afford the house they bought based on inflated assessments, forged income numbers, and foolish expectations of endless asset inflation. Since, technically, they should never have been allowed to buy these houses, and were only able to do so because of financial and political malfeasance, this is actually a healthy development. The second part consists of men in expensive suits tossing bundles of suddenly worthless paper up in the air, ripping out their remaining hair, and (some of us might uncharitably hope) setting themselves on fire on the steps of the Federal Reserve. They, to express it in their own vernacular, “fucked up,” and so this is also just as it should be.

The government response to this could be to offer some helpful homilies about “the wages of sin" and to open a few soup kitchens and flop houses in a variety of locations including Wall Street. The message would be: “You former debt addicts and gamblers, as you say, ‘fucked up,’ and so this will really hurt for a long time. We will never let you anywhere near big money again. Get yourselves over to the soup kitchen, and bring your own bowl, because we don’t do dishes.” This would result in a stable Stage 1 collapse – the Second Great Depression.

However, this is unlikely, because in the US the government happens to be debt addict and gambler number one. As individuals, we may have been as virtuous as we wished, but the government will have still run up exorbitant debts on our behalf. Every level of government, from local municipalities and authorities, which need the financial markets to finance their public works and public services, to the federal government, which relies on foreign investment to finance its endless wars, is addicted to public debt. They know they cannot stop borrowing, and so they will do anything they can to keep the game going for as long as possible.

About the only thing the government currently seems it fit to do is extend further credit to those in trouble, by setting interest rates at far below inflation, by accepting worthless bits of paper as collateral and by pumping money into insolvent financial institutions. This has the effect of diluting the dollar, further undermining its value, and will, in due course, lead to hyperinflation, which is bad enough in any economy, but is especially serious for one dominated by imports. As imports dry up and the associated parts of the economy shut down, we pass Stage 2: Commercial Collapse.

As businesses shut down, storefronts are boarded up and the population is left largely penniless and dependent on FEMA and charity for survival, the government may consider what to do next. It could, for example, repatriate all foreign troops and set them to work on public works projects designed to directly help the population. It could promote local economic self-sufficiency, by establishing community-supported agriculture programs, erecting renewable energy systems, and organizing and training local self-defence forces to maintain law and order. The Army Corps of Engineers could be ordered to bulldoze buildings erected on former farmland around city centers, return the land to cultivation, and to construct high-density solar-heated housing in urban centers to resettle those who are displaced. In the interim, it could reduce homelessness by imposing a steep tax on vacant residential properties and funneling the proceeds into rent subsidies for the indigent. With plenty of luck, such measures may be able to reverse the trend, eventually providing for a restoration of pre-Stage 2 conditions.

This may or may not be a good plan, but in any case it is rather unrealistic, because the United States, being so deeply in debt, will be forced to accede to the wishes of its foreign creditors, who own a lot of national assets (land, buildings, and businesses) and who would rather see a dependent American population slaving away working off their debt than a self-sufficient one, conveniently forgetting that they have mortgaged their children’s futures to pay for military fiascos, big houses, big cars, and flat-screen television sets. Thus, a much more likely scenario is that the federal government (knowing who butters their bread) will remain subservient to foreign financial interests. It will impose austerity conditions, maintain law and order through draconian means, and aide in the construction of foreign-owned factory towns and plantations. As people start to think that having a government may not be such a good idea, conditions become ripe for Stage 3.

If Stage 1 collapse can be observed by watching television, observing Stage 2 might require a hike or a bicycle ride to the nearest population center, while Stage 3 collapse is more than likely to be visible directly through one’s own living-room window, which may or may not still have glass in it. After a significant amount of bloodletting, much of the country becomes a no-go zone for the remaining authorities. Foreign creditors decide that their debts might not be repaid after all, cut their losses and depart in haste. The rest of the world decides to act as if there is no such place as The United States – because “nobody goes there any more.” So as not to lose out on the entertainment value, the foreign press still prints sporadic fables about Americans who eat their young, much as they did about Russia following the Soviet collapse. A few brave American expatriates who still come back to visit bring back amazing stories of a different kind, but everyone considers them eccentric and perhaps a little bit crazy.

Stage 3 collapse can sometimes be avoided by the timely introduction of international peacekeepers and through the efforts of international humanitarian NGOs. In the aftermath of a Stage 2 collapse, domestic authorities are highly unlikely to have either the resources or the legitimacy, or even the will, to arrest the collapse dynamic and reconstitute themselves in a way that the population would accept.

As stage 3 collapse runs its course, the power vacuum left by the now defunct federal, state and local government is filled by a variety of new power structures. Remnants of former law enforcement and military, urban gangs, ethnic mafias, religious cults and wealthy property owners all attempt to build their little empires on the ruins of the big one, fighting each other over territory and access to resources. This is the age of Big Men: charismatic leaders, rabble-rousers, ruthless Macchiavelian princes and war lords. In the luckier places, they find it to their common advantage to pool their resources and amalgamate into some sort of legitimate local government, while in the rest their jostling for power leads to a spiral of conflict and open war.

Stage 4 collapse occurs when society becomes so disordered and impoverished that it can no longer support the Big Men, who become smaller and smaller, and eventually fade from view. Society fragments into extended families and small tribes of a dozen or so families, who find it advantageous to band together for mutual support and defense. This is the form of society that has existed over some 98.5% of humanity’s existence as a biological species, and can be said to be the bedrock of human existence. Humans can exist at this level of organization for thousands, perhaps millions of years. Most mammalian species go extinct after just a few million years, but, for all we know, Homo Sapiens still have a million or two left.

If pre-collapse society is too atomized, alienated and individualistic to form cohesive extended families and tribes, or if its physical environment becomes so disordered and impoverished that hunger and starvation become widespread, then Stage 5 collapse becomes likely. At this stage, a simpler biological imperative takes over, to preserve the life of the breeding couples. Families disband, the old are abandoned to their own devices, and children are only cared for up to age 3. All social unity is destroyed, and even the couples may disband for a time, preferring to forage on their own and refusing to share food. This is the state of society described by the anthropologist Colin Turnbull in his book The Mountain People. If society prior to Stage 5 collapse can be said to be the historical norm for humans, Stage 5 collapse brings humanity to the verge of physical extinction.

As we can easily imagine, the default is cascaded failure: each stage of collapse can easily lead to the next, perhaps even overlapping it. In Russia, the process was arrested just past Stage 3: there was considerable trouble with ethnic mafias and even some warlordism, but government authority won out in the end. In my other writings, I go into a lot of detail in describing the exact conditions that inadvertently made Russian society relatively collapse-proof. Here, I will simply say that these ingredients are not currently present in the United States.

While attempting to arrest collapse at Stage 1 and Stage 2 would probably be a dangerous waste of energy, it is probably worth everyone’s while to dig in their heels at Stage 3, definitely at Stage 4, and it is quite simply a matter of physical survival to avoid Stage 5. In certain localities – those with high population densities, as well as those that contain dangerous nuclear and industrial installations – avoiding Stage 3 collapse is rather important, to the point of inviting foreign troops and governments in to maintain order and avoid disasters. Other localities may be able to prosper indefinitely at Stage 3, and even the most impoverished environments may be able to support a sparse population subsisting indefinitely at Stage 4.

Although it is possible to prepare directly for surviving Stage 5, this seems like an altogether demoralizing thing to attempt. Preparing to survive Stages 3 and 4 may seem somewhat more reasonable, while explicitly aiming for Stage 3 may be reasonable if you plan to become one of the Big Men. Be that as it may, I must leave such preparations as an exercise for the reader. My hope is that these definitions of specific stages of collapse will enable a more specific and fruitful discussion than the one currently dominated by such vague and ultimately nonsensical terms as “the collapse of Western civilization.”

 

[Update May 2010: Two years after its publication, this article has been read by 54,000 or so people, and is still being read by an average of 1,500 people each month—on this site alone. Based on this steady level of interest, and on how effective of this taxonomy of collapse has proven to be in mapping out the events of the intervening two years, I have decided to give it a book-length treatment, which I will announce on this site once the publication date becomes known.]

 

[Update November 2011: In light of the unfolding global sovereign debt fiasco, I have issued an update. Thanks to the tireless efforts of our elected and unelected representatives to artificially extend the lives of bankrupt financial institutions, collapse is turning out to be less of a waterfall and more of an avalanche.]

 

[Update January 2013: The book, The Five Stages of Collapse: Survivors’ Toolkit, now has a publication date of May 1st, 2013. Please order it directly from this web site.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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NPR “Mondego”

Uma opinião sobre o que se passou e porque se passou

23.03.23 | Duarte Pacheco Pereira

Domingos David Pereira, Sargento-mor da Armada, na situação de Reforma

Domingos David Pereira, Sargento-mor da Armada, na situação de Reforma

 

Fui encontrar este texto e tomei a liberdade de partilhar aqui… é bom ler até ao fim.

Crónica nacional – 13 – TREZE
(Actualizado)

Domingos David Pereira
Sargento-mor da Armada, na situação de Reforma.
Antigo dirigente da ANS.

Para quem como eu serviu Portugal na Marinha durante 36 anos não é fácil (ou seria, mas procurarei afastar-me dessa tentação…) vir aqui escrever sobre a posição dos 13 Marinheiros – porque todos servem na Marinha – da guarnição do NRP Mondego, o qual não conheço, quando passei à situação de Reserva esses navios ainda não existiam, e, provavelmente, aqueles 13 “Filhos da Escola” ou ainda não tinham assumido a Condição Militar ou o tinham feito há muito pouco tempo e o mais provável é não conhecer nem ser conhecido por nenhum deles, excluindo desde já a hipótese de estar a falar de alguém conhecido sequer.

Muito tem sido dito e escrito acerca do assunto, nalguns casos por gente que não sabe distinguir um Alcache de um Lais de Guia, menos ainda do profundo significado da Disciplina Militar e das suas implicações para todos os militares de todas as patentes e posicionamento hierárquico. Porém do muito já dito, uma boa parte “coisas aventadas” sem cuidar sequer de o fazer de costas para o vento, os marinheiros sabem porquê por experiência própria, há uma coisa acertada: “Os navios [não embarcações] de guerra estão preparados para navegar em condições muito degradadas” – sim, é verdade.

Porém, esta como todas as verdades tem os seus pressupostos; no caso vertente, estabelecidos pelo Construtor reflectindo os requisitos dos fabricantes dos muitos equipamentos componentes dessa Unidade Naval, que passam por limites temporais e de condições de funcionamento, de onde ressaltam horas de trabalho, substituição atempada de componentes cuja durabilidade é limitada, só para citar dois aspectos já vindos a lume.

Outro aspecto é o facto de a construção de um Navio de Guerra, combatente ou não, ter normas técnicas de flutuabilidade e estanquidade, por exemplo, que passam por só atingirem esse estado degradado quando submetidos a combate ou a intempéries inusitadas, e mesmo após essas “provas de fogo” conseguem manter a flutuabilidade e navegar até águas seguras para efectuar as necessárias reparações.

Ora, como se sabe aquele Navio não entrou em combate bélico, nem foi sujeito a uma intempérie inusitada. Aquele navio e a sua guarnição, tal como todas as Unidades Militares Portuguesas e as próprias Forças Armadas têm sido submetidas há mais de quarenta e cinco anos a um ataque sistemático por parte dos vários Governos assumindo estes o papel de “Comissão Liquidatária faz Forças Armadas”, com o beneplácito, quando não com a colaboração, dos Chefes de Estado Maior e de muitos oficiais generais e superiores, num esquema perverso de escolhas pelo poder Político.

E foi desse Combate desigual, entre as políticas dos Governos e as Forças Armadas, do qual o NRP Mondego saiu no estado degradado reconhecido implicitamente pelo próprio ALM CEMA e pelo Comandante Naval da Madeira, que, de uma forma nada consentânea com a ética militar agora tão apregoada, deixou ao critério do vulnerável Comandante do Navio a decisão de cumprir ou não a missão – e este aspecto tem sido descurado na mensagem passada ao nosso povo.

Aliás, não só este navio mas uma boa parte da Marinha está nesta situação, pois na senda da “Liquidação das Forças Armadas” o Arsenal do Alfeite foi privatizado e diminuído, (pois externilizar – estes palavrões… – as reparações dá origem a concursos e estes, como o caso do ex-HMDIC veio evidenciar, originam negociatas escusas… e mais não digo para não fugir ao tema) encarecendo as manutenções atempadas, e, por isso, vão sendo adiadas “para quando houver verba”, mas as missões têm de se cumprir, custe o que custar, segundo o ALM CEMA. E assim, um dos pressupostos para os Navios de Guerra poderem operar em condições degradadas, fica corrompido, e todos sabem disso.

Portanto o que aqueles 13 Bravos “Filhos da Escola” nos vieram dizer – de forma disciplinada e frontal, como é apanágio da Condição Militar, após terem rumado ao Funchal e debelado o enésimo alagamento por obsolescência de um componente da refrigeração do único Motor Principal em funcionamento deficitário por já ter mais de 2.000 horas de funcionamento sem manutenção segundo as recomendações do fabricante – foi que a degradação provocada por esse combate surdo e invisível aos olhos da maioria, já atingiu o limite a partir do qual a estanquidade e a flutuabilidade do Navio não oferecem segurança na sua navegabilidade, podendo ficar à deriva ou afundar-se.

O Governo ao ordenar de imediato a deslocação de meios para o local a fim de a degradação mais visível ser ocultada, como o Comandante do navio veio reconhecer: “A operacionalidade foi retomada após esta manutenção”, comprova a justeza da posição daqueles Homens e Marinheiros honrando a sua farda e o seu Juramento de Bandeira ao tornarem público este combate criminoso de décadas. BEM HAJAM POR ISSO.

Quanto aos aspectos legais, o seu advogado saberá melhor do que eu como argumentar em sua defesa, mas não deixo de notar dois aspectos: Primeiro: o ALM CEMA ao repreendê-los publicamente, em directo, a cores e ao vivo já os castigou disciplinarmente, e para o mesmo crime só pode haver um castigo; Segundo: como já muitos referiram, o ALM CEMA no seu afã de se exibir em público de “chicote” na mão a zurzir naqueles sobre os quais também tem o dever de tutela, incorreu no crime de punir e referir-se injuriosamente aos seus homens como criminosos sem ter sido concluído qualquer processo, disciplinar ou outro, e, por isso, não pode haver processo transitado em julgado. E, neste caso, mesmo sem ter sido instaurado processo ao ALM CEMA já o podemos dar como tendo cometido esse crime em público, venham agora afirmar o que quiserem.

O Comandante-Supremo das Forças Armadas, o actual e anteriores, tem muito pouca margem pois também ele nas várias funções públicas exercidas até hoje nunca ousou sequer objectar contra esse tal Combate de Liquidação e Degradação das Forças Armadas, se não colaborou activamente fê-lo por omissão. Aliás, como no concernente ao Incumprimento da CRP por parte dos Governos, basta ler o artigo 7º Deveres do Estado, para se aferir desse Incumprimento da Lei Mãe de todo o edifício Jurídico Português, também por parte daquele que constitucionalmente deveria ser o seu guardião.

Acrescenta-se:

Todos aqueles que serviram Portugal na Marinha conhecerão tão bem ou melhor do que eu o Calvário que era, e pelos vistos é, conseguir resposta atempada a um Relatório de Avaria e pedido de reparação, ou de uma requisição de material ser aviada para a reparação ser efectuada com os meios de bordo, ou seja por nós técnicos operacionais embarcados.

Pelo que vou lendo nas parcas notícias e pelo relatório de bordo enviado por um antigo camarada embarcado no mesmo navio, imagino a grossura das pastas dos Sargentos de Máquinas e Electricista de bordo, reportando avarias e requisitando material ao longo dos anos sem a cadeia de Comando responder sequer, deixando a situação degradar-se até ao ponto conhecido.

A Disciplina é necessária em qualquer organização, e quanto maior o perigo enfrentado pelos seus membros mais esta deverá ser levada a sério e acarinhada, como um bem para salvar vidas e garantir a coesão e a segurança de todos. Nos seus fundamentos preambulares no próprio RDM (Regulamento de Disciplina Militar), fica implícito desde logo a Confiança, na qual a Disciplina assenta. O militar tem de ter plena confiança na cadeia de Comando, de que esta age de acordo com princípios éticos e profissionais conhecidos, reconhecidos e aceites sem margem para dúvida.

E, a meu ver, a tal COLA de que fala o ALM CEMA é a Confiança, essência e base da disciplina e de todo o funcionamento interno da organização, qualquer que ela seja, a militar de um modo muito especial e dramático, pois dela podem depender vidas humanas. E sempre que a Cadeia de Comando não responde com a celeridade devida ou nem responde sequer aos reportes e solicitações da base, estão a deitar água na tal COLA, enfraquecendo a disciplina, minando assim as bases éticas e profissionais em que assenta a Confiança, e, por consequência, a Disciplina.

Haverá por certo um ou mais processos a decorrer, seria bom, para aclaramento total da verdade, seguirem a pista desses tais relatórios de avaria e as requisições de material, se foram ou não atendidos, ou sequer respondidos e em que termos e os porquês, as razões pelas quais havendo conhecimento superior em diversos escalões operacionais das situações relatadas, a situação operacional do navio chegou a este ponto – e se se quiser saber mais, estender essa pesquisa aos restantes navios, de forma cautelar, prevenindo assim outras ocorrências.

Quando ainda estava no activo, cada Relatório tinha um caminho ascendente, consoante a tipo de Navio, mas sempre semelhante: preenchido pelo técnico de bordo, assinado pelo seu chefe de serviço, levado ao Comandante que o despachava e encaminhava para o exterior no patamar seguinte: Comando da Flotilha, Esquadra ou Esquadrilha consoante o tipo de Unidade Naval, com conhecimento ao Comando Naval respectivo, e daí encaminhado para a Direcção de Navios com conhecimento à respectiva Superintendência, e, eventualmente, desta para o Estado-Maior.

A Requisição de material seguia um percurso idêntico na área dos Abastecimentos ou da Logística. Uma cadeia hierárquica e burocrática bem pesada sob o superior comando do ALM CEMA.

Por aqui se pode ver a quantidade de superiores hierárquicos envolvidos na situação, na qual o pessoal de Bordo, Comandante incluído, pouco ou nada pode fazer, ficando dependente dessa cadeia, por vezes inactiva por falta de recursos financeiros – mesmo com dotação orçamental mas cativada à ordem do todo poderoso ministério das Finanças. De forma a abreviar um despacho positivo da reparação ou do fornecimento de tal ou tal componente, o Chefe de Serviço manda o Sargento ir seguir o caminho do documento por despachar, para ver se consegue desbloquear a situação. Por vezes consegue-se outras não, na maioria não se consegue mesmo.

[Já várias vezes alertei para o excesso de carga burocrática para o fornecimento de sobressalentes e de reparação de equipamentos, ao ponto de bastar aos Sargentos Técnicos cumprirem as normas vigentes, sem ir atrás dessas requisições rompendo com as normas, para os ramos pararem sem ser necessário declarar qualquer greve ou outra acção de protesto. Se um dia tal acontecer deve-se à excessiva carga hierárquica desnecessária, mas onerosa e pesada.]

Aqui chegados, e mesmo sem o ou os processos estarem concluídos, podemos questionar se houve crime disciplinar na atitude dos 13 Bravos Marinheiros, ou se antes, tiveram a coragem de se precaver para as consequências danosas dos crimes cometidos pela cadeia de comando cada vez que um Relatório ou uma Requisição de Material não foi devidamente atendida, olvidando cada um dos alertas contidos nesses tais Relatórios, pois estes para além dos aspectos técnicos são também um alerta para uma situação conducente à inoperacionalidade no todo ou em parte da Unidade Naval.

Seria útil um dos processos abordar a acção da Comissão Liquidatária das Forças Armadas e o seu envolvimento e culpas no ocorrido desde os Paióis de Tancos ao NRP Mondego, passando pelas negociatas exaurindo a Saúde Militar de meios para cumprir a sua missão de manter as Forças Armadas sãs e prontas para o Combate e a toda a Família militar como determina o Estatuto da Condição Militar no único artigo onde fala de direitos, para falar só de Forças Armadas.

E já agora, qual a responsabilidade do Comandante Supremo em todo este processo, por acção ou omissão?

E assim vamos, desde do SNS ao NRP Mondego, passando pela Escola Pública e pela Segurança Social Pública, pelos transportes públicos… até ao dia em que aqueles 13 Bravos se multipliquem por centenas de milhar; até lá a Comissão Liquidatária de Portugal Soberano e Independente prosseguirá o seu criminoso combate.

Abraço solidário para os 13 Bravos!
Venha Mar!

 

Tintin a bordo do NPR Mondego

 

Fontes

  1. Texto e fotografia do autor: aqui, via Old Boys Network.
  2. Cartoon: Old Boys Network.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Punctured Bag and the Firehose

Dmitry Orlov on the 2023 Financial Crisis, March 21, 2023 at 11:23

23.03.23 | Álvaro Aragão Athayde

Bag of Money with Holes

 

Dmitry Orlov
C l u b O r l o v | ideas to blow your mind
March 21, 2023 at 11:23 | Has readers’ comments | For subscribers only | Here

 

Few people are able to see through the smoke and grasp the sinister machinations of the Federal Reserve, the US Treasury and their affiliate the European Central Bank. It’s possible to endlessly pour over news articles, faithfully read all of the Fed’s reports and maybe even take night classes in macroeconomics and finance, and still not have much of an intuitive grasp of what’s happening. Statistics don’t so much lie as just sit there and let you stare at them blankly without a clue as to what all of it really means.

And yet once in a while a statistic catches my eye that describes the situation quite eloquently. Here is one: 83% of all the US dollars that now exist in the world have been summoned into existence during just the past 22 months; since May 2021, that is. Four out of every five dollars in existence has been conjured up pretty much yesterday in historical terms.

Did the US, all of the participants in the dollar system, grow 83% richer? No, quite the opposite! The population of the US is rather distressed, with many people either living paycheck to paycheck or failing to make ends meet altogether. Other Western countries are in even sadder shape, with protests and riots erupting here and there and everywhere.

Was there 400% inflation, forcing the monetary authorities to issue new cash just to cover all of their member governments’ various obligations that are, in some way, indexed to inflation? No, in all of the West inflation is still well under 20%, with Poland, at 18.4% getting close.
With so much loose cash sloshing around, are bankers chasing their clients down the street and attempting to stuff their pockets full of money just to get rid of the stuff? No, in fact, there is a severe liquidity problem — so severe that recently the Fed had to inject $300 billion of new liquidity into the banking system in a single week just to stabilize things for the time being.

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The Triumph of American Corporate Bullshit

18.03.23 | Duarte Pacheco Pereira

T.S Eliot

T. S. Eliot

 

Ladies, on whom my attentions have waited
If you consider my merits are small
Etiolated, alembicated,
Orotund, tasteless, fantastical,
Monotonous, crotchety, constipated,
Impotent galamatias
Affected, possibly imitated,
For Christ’s sake stick it up your ass.

Ladies, who find my intentions ridiculous
Awkward, insipid and horribly gauche
Pompous, pretentious, ineptly meticulous
Dull as the heart of an unbaked brioche
Floundering versicles freely versiculous
Often attenuate, frequently crass
Attempts at emotion that turn isiculous,
For Christ’s sake stick it up your ass.

Ladies who think me unduly vociferous
Amiable cabotin making a noise
That people may cry out “this stuff is too stiff for us”–
Ingenuous child with a box of new toys
Toy lions carnivorous, cannon fumiferous
Engines vaporous- all this will pass;
Quite innocent, –“he only wants to make shiver us.”
For Christ’s sake stick it up your ass.

And when thyself with silver foot shall pass
Among the theories scattered on the grass
Take up my good intentions with the rest
And then for Christ’s sake stick them up your ass.

The Triumph of Bullshit – T.S. Eliot

 

 

Donuts to Democracy Art

 

From “Donuts” to Wars for “Democracy”

The Triumph of American Corporate BS


A.J. Smuskiewicz • The Unz Review • March 13, 2023 • 1,500 Words • Has Comments • Original


Consider the humble doughnut, generally a ring or flattened sphere of fried dough topped or filled with sugary or fruity flavoring. These sweet, satisfying bakery products have been created and enjoyed for centuries in various forms. Then in the mid-1900s, a big U.S. corporation called Dunkin’ Donuts became very successful by selling what can best be described as limp, weak imitations of doughnuts. A corporation’s idea of a doughnut. The company’s marketing geniuses convinced millions of Americans—and eventually much of the rest of the world—that their mass-produced “donuts” were highly desirable.

Although the multinational rebranded Dunkin’ now sells countless numbers of their products all over the world, a purchase from most any small local doughnut shop will reveal the falseness of the claim that Dunkin’ actually makes real doughnuts. (Unfortunately, the local shop is probably spelling doughnut incorrectly, just like the big corporate chain. Such is the modern perversion of American English.) Go buy some doughnuts from your local shop, and you will understand the difference between a real doughnut and an artificial donut.

The amazing American innovation of giant fast food corporations has corrupted many other forms of food, of course. Compare the artificial chemical concoctions of what McDonald’s calls hamburgers with the real, meaty, simple, traditional hamburgers that most old-fashioned sit-down family restaurants still serve. (The sloppy disgusting creations of burger excess that are served by such large restaurant-bar chains as Applebee’s are another matter entirely.)

This is artificial food that masses of brainwashed people have been conditioned to crave by the clever marketing of American advertising companies, generating vast amounts of revenue for the creators of the fast-food crap. And keep in mind that the cravings promoted by the ubiquitous advertising campaigns are supplemented by the physically and emotionally addictive ingredients that the big corporations deviously add to the foods.

I believe that this concept of successful American marketing of artificiality can be extended far beyond the fast food business to encapsulate almost every sector of the giant-corporation-controlled U.S. economy today. In fact, I propose that what is often called America’s national and international “greatness” can be summarized with this equation: Artificiality x Marketing = American Greatness. A cruder way of articulating this concept would be to refer to The Triumph of Bullshit, which T.S Eliot once hilariously wrote about in a much different context.

Bullshit, within the corporate context that I am discussing here, can be viewed as the primary domestic product and export product of the United States today. I mean, we are hardly known for manufacturing steel or any other real things anymore, like we were back when the United States was a real country, instead of just a military with a stock market like it basically is today.

Consider the cell phones, “smart” phones, and other technological electronic gadgetry that enable the online, virtual connections to which the multitudes are now psychologically addicted. Mass marketing has convinced the masses of people today that they need these artificial corporation-made technologies to live, just as much as they need Mother Nature’s oxygen. Moreover, the corporate economic structure is now set up so that if you don’t use at least some of these electronic technologies, you effectively cannot even survive and function in the modern-day world.

So, a conscious, non-braindead person (unlike our current president, for example) cannot help but make the following observations these days: People walking down the street with their eyes and hands glued to their cell phones, oblivious to the real world (including the traffic) all around them. People eating or drinking out with friends or family but never even talking with or looking at their fellow humans sitting right next to them, as they are entirely focused on the virtual world emanating from their phones. Adults sacrificing real-life relationships for the convenience of make-believe online relationships or online pornography. Children no longer going out to play in the real world outside their homes, because, like their parents, they are addicted to their virtual worlds that can be easily accessed inside their homes via electronic devices.

And, of course, “virtual reality” devices today are expressly designed and marketed to remove users from reality and transport them to make-believe places. You can buy all the virtual reality and anything else you want from Amazon with your virtual money. You never have to use real money or go to a real store. You can pay with the make-believe money on your credit cards (for which you might go into deep debt as you never actually pay for your purchases, because that’s the American way). Or you can now use the new make-believe money of “cryptocurrency.” Wow, what monetary scam will this amazingly innovative American society think of next? I wouldn’t know. I still use cash and personal checks, American outcast that I am.

Technological devices and online virtuality are the most obvious consumerist manifestations of the successful American marketing of artificiality these days. But I observe this concept even extending into the marketing and consumption of political and societal policies and agendas, where make-believe and sophisticated propaganda (ie, slick BS lies) are viewed as much more important and successful in swaying public opinion than are grounded reality and objective truth.

This is clearly demonstrated in the astonishingly successful ways in which the American (and also Western European) elite “intellectual” classes have insidiously and thoroughly inserted phony “woke” agendas into almost every large institution today. Examples of such agendas include net zero, climate change; diversity, equity, inclusion; and environmental, social, governance, as well as the overall globalist WEF program. These agendas, which I believe are designed primarily to grow the power of the elites over the regular people, have no basis in reality, yet they now seemingly dominate the functions of almost every large American corporation, media organization, academic institution, and science and medical establishment. You just can’t escape it. In my view, many educated people who should know better go along with this stuff simply because they value their jobs, while uneducated or uninformed people go along with it because they don’t know any better.

This is how artificiality triumphs over reality, how bullshit beats truth.

The marketers of American and Western foreign policy have pushed the triumph of artificiality over reality to perhaps its greatest height yet. The most prominent current example is the war in Ukraine. The reality is that Russia is waging a legitimate war for its national security and is achieving success on the battlefield. Yet, we see that the real war on the battlefield is not as important as the propaganda war being waged online and in the mass media.

The same types of marketing geniuses who successfully convinced millions of people of the wonders and joys of the artificial doughnuts and hamburgers purchased from fast food joints and the artificial realities derived from cell phones and the Internet—not to mention the artificial “protection” obtained from ineffective masks and dangerous vaccines—have now apparently convinced most Americans that Russians are evil brutes hungering for more land, that Ukrainians are honorable and brave defenders of “democracy,” and that the United States is—yes, yet again—the great champion of global truth and justice! Most people in the European Union have also apparently been convinced of these propaganda points.

We’ve seen this same brand of BS propaganda many times before, from Vietnam to Iraq. All initially glorious triumphs for the U.S. military-industrial complex’s marketing machine, but ultimately not so good for the people in those countries and very costly for Americans.

So, we are told that the masses of people are eating up all this war propaganda—along with their Dunkin’ donuts and their McDonald’s hamburgers—and that they are buying all the other lies promoted in the media—just like they buy the latest iPhone and everything else they get from Amazon.

However, is that really true? Are most people really buying all that BS about the war, about climate change, about diversity, equity, inclusion, about environmental, social, governance, and all the other globalist nonsense? Or have people today, submerged in their various forms of virtual reality, become so oblivious to genuine reality that they just have no idea at all as to what is going on in the real world—whether it’s some distant foreign country, their own country, their own neighborhood, or even their own home and family?

I tend to believe the latter explanation.

The awesome triumph of the American-based corporate marketing of artificiality is on display every day in the phony society that we have in the United States and Western Europe today. From artificial foods to artificial relationships to artificial news to artificial economies to artificial educations to artificial science to artificial wars, we now live in a society consisting mostly of bullshit.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that there are still some isolated bastions of truth and reality out there, such as a few honest, independent, non-corporate news sources. And there will always be, I hope, the small, local doughnut shop. You just have to take the time and effort to look for these few pleasant good things hidden among all the putrid piles of crap.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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