Daily Telegraph Retreats from Ukraine: War Lost

So Ukraine PLC goes belly-up like Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. Shame, retreat and defeat  for everyone concerned - except the arms dealers who trousered over a trillion dollars and the politicians who enabled the orgy of expensive slaughter. The delusional TV actor Zelensky realises his sell-by date has arrived, the fantasy of a Ukranian victory evaporates, and the commercial wolves who hide behind the NATO mask run away laughing -all the way to the bank.

The hypocrisies of the English-speaking regimes who  arranged the funding for this tech-mech  bloodbath  have been stomach-churning. Entire populations recruited and bamboozled with dog-eared fairy-stories about "democracy" and "freedom" to justify yet another dollarfest for the death-dealers. Two solid years of tweetable lies and juvenile propaganda to fuel the illusion of a contest that could never be won.  

Nobody knows -or will ever know- how many were killed, maimed, crippled, widowed or orphaned to deliver the whopping bonus payments for the CEOs of companies like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin & BAE -just three of the corporate gravediggers which feed on the blood of those luckless nations selected to host NATO's latest proxy war.

Here's a quote taken today from the BAE website : "At BAE Systems, we provide some of the world’s most advanced, technology-led defence, aerospace and security solutions. We employ a skilled workforce of more than 93,000 people in around 40 countries." 

Isn't that inspiring? 93,000 employees pumping out weapons for all. Current estimates of the Ukranian death toll range from 300,000 to 600,000.  It is certain that well over six million (relatively smart) poor bastards have fled that country never to return. But never mind - 93,000 jobs in other countries are secure for years to come. BAE have just been awarded a £3.95 BILLION contract for services to the next phase in submarine warfare, Woo hoo; cocktails all round.

Thrilled with their two-year sales bonanza, the weapons manufacturers are already swivelling their laser-sights onto the individual politicians who will emerge victorious after the so-called  "elections" of 2024 scheduled for the US and UK. Bribed, flattered and balckmailed, these will be the arms-dealers' personal poodles going forwards -compliant windbags tasked with selling industrialised mass-murder to the dumbo students and BBC-believers who just can't wait to pick a side in the next "war for democracy".

So lets (hopefully) say farewell to some of Britain's most accomplished bloodsport enthusiasts, a clutch of odious professional fantasists who spent the last two years commentating on events happening entirely in their own heads. If anyone's wondering why the Daily Telegraph is bankrupt and desperately seeking a saviour, a swift review of the stooges supplying readers with "Ukraine" reportage may be part of the answer. Step forward Richard Kemp, Robert Clark, Daniel Hannan and the one and only Hamish De Bretton-Gordon.

Promoted to the website's front page on May 16 2023, hopeful Hamish was, at the time, remarkably bullish regarding the prospects of a Ukrainian victory: 

Labouring through fifteen paragraphs of waffle, this armchair blowhard revealed his belief that UK-supplied help would tip the scales of  war and topple the Russian regime once and for all. One wonders why the US had bothered with the lousy 4 billion dollars they'd stumped up for Zelensky a fortnight earlier.  

One whole year before the above nonsense was printed I wrote:  "Does anybody, anywhere, seriously believe the Russians couldn't wipe Ukraine off the map within five minutes? Are we supposed to think an endless supply of imaginary money will allow Ukraine to 'defeat' Russia?"...but what did I know?  [Read that full article HERE]

By June, however, Hamish was a touch less confident...

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What followed was -by newspaper standards- a relatively sober overview of the likelihood of Russia using nuclear weapons against Ukraine, although anyone with a triple-digit IQ already knew it was a complete non-starter. Russia wants its Russians back and NATO out of Ukraine, not a huge radioactive wasteland on the doorstep. Nevertheless, Hamish, being a well-paid hack, managed to squeeze 2000 words out of this self-evident truth. Unfortunately, the spectre of a game-ending mushroom cloud left his colleague Richard Kemp sucking his thumb in search of an equally look-at-me headline. The answer he came up with was terror. 

 

The weapon concerned was "superior morale" by the way, in case you -like everybody else- didn't actually read the 2000 words Dick knocked out for his fee. Even more terror was in store the following week ... 

One can picture the scenes in expensive hospices across the UK, as Telegraph-reading coffin-dodgers contemplated the nightmare of Putin's (allegedy) poor health. Who was the "us all"referred to? Dick and his chums in the war-room? Perhaps the "terror" was his own secret fear of losing his non-job for writing non-articles.

Anyway, inspired by Dick's florid rambling, fellow Telegraph wingnut Robert Clark decided there was gold in them there hills, loaded up his rapid-fire laptop and cut loose-

Unimpressed by the failure of a squillion quids worth of tanks 'n planes, the Telegraph's elite battalion of commando keypunchers had settled on a flawless strategy to floor the Russkies: scare them to death with journalism. Flattered, perhaps, by Clark's echo of the existential terror now confronting both Vladimir Putin and all Telegraph readers, Kemp responded within days, declaring the bombshell news that -

 
    

 ..the "devastating collapse" being an obscure announcement from a nameless spokesgoon warning that Russia was now officially on the United Nations' naughty chair. I think Dick might well have been drunk when he wrote that one, but his editor didn't seem to mind. If they still have editors at the Telegraph, which is by no means certain, considering they actually printed his July brainwave, titled-

Yes, Dick was now demanding Ukraine be given unlimited supplies of one of the most reviled weapons in the modern arsenal, notorious for killing civilians -usually children- for years after battlefield deployment. (Flesh-shredding explosive devices from cluster bombs will litter the ground they fall on for over a decade).  But Ukraine wants them now? Bring 'em on! cried Killer Kemp, on July 11th.   

Elsewhere in the office (assuming these hacks don't all write their copy in the local pub) another eager beaver had spotted the absence of editorial oversight on the increasingly mad Ukraine stories getting published. A mere 4 days after Dick's demand for dirty bombs, up popped a chinless buffoon named Danial Hannan with an unequivocal order directed at NATO's leaders:  

 

I suppose Dan arrived at this idea after reading Dick's work, because nobody else on earth thought Putin was 'finished'.  Regarding Russia's imminent "collapse", it's likely Dan's grasp of geopolitics comes from the landlord of the Docksider Arms in Wapping, who used to make similar announcements to clear the bar at closing time. You wonder who, exactly, Dan thought was going to "take away" the nukes from Russia? The World Police? Captain Marvel?  

In the same week that Telegraph readers were force-fed such comic-book drivel, I opined to readers of this blog - 

"Ukraine is doomed. The fairy-tales of 'territorial gains' and 'counter -offensives' will, of necessity, be dragged out until a new empty suit is installed in the White House and the latest cut-price con-artist puts his feet under the table at number 10 Downing Street. In Ukraine, of course, elections are unnecessary, as Dictator Zelensky has taken the opportunity of his 'national emergency' to effectively erase any political or public opposition to his plans.
Zelensky's days are numbered, nevertheless. His phony unwinnable war is all but finished, and the new regimes in Washington and London will be preparing brand new global catastrophes in the headlong rush to world government."  [for the full article CLICK HERE] 

Readers are invited to decide for themselves which publication was addressing reality. Bear in mind, the Telegraph's coverage has been virtually indistinguishable from that of the Guardian and the Times. In the 21st century it has become axiomatic that whenever these three so-called "newspapers" speak with the same voice on any important subject , the public is being sold a whopping lie. 

July ended on a downbeat note for the Telewarriors, with Hamish de Bretton-Gordon re-surfacing on the 28th to observe -

...which was a long, long way from his spring declaration that Putin was "on the ropes". By August, somebody had clearly told Kemp & co. to wind their necks in. Hamish, admitting through gritted teeth that Putin was no longer awaiting "the final blow", led the retreat. Indeed, for his August 12th headline, Hamish retreated a full 79 years into the past, with the news that -

The battle of Monte Cassino being a grim, fruitless bloodbath that took place in Italy in 1944. Who among his audience -which we must assume exists- did Hamish expect to understand this comparison? About 0.001% of British people could locate Monte Cassino on a map, and anyone with personal experience of the event would be almost 100 years old. Poor chap seemed to have forgotten it's 2023. Dear old Dicky Kemp, however, had a new wheeze...

Must be great in Kempworld, moving international military chesspieces across the globe with a single sentence. Sometime around here, Hamish DBG must have enjoyed a night on the tiles with Dick, which might explain his sudden lunge into Kempish bloodthirst in September...

 

In the flip-flop universe of Bretton-Gordon strategy, he was now upping the ante. Dick would have gone in with cluster bombs but Hamish wanted something on a much, much bigger scale. What, terrified Telegraph subscribers were asking, are ATACMS?  Happily, Google was on hand to explain:

 "The MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System is a tactical ballistic missile designed and manufactured by the US defense company Ling-Temco-Vought, and later Lockheed Martin through acquisitions. It uses solid propellant, is 13 feet high and 24 inches in diameter, and the longest range variants can fly up to 190 miles."

Oh. Long-range missiles with which Ukraine could hit, well...Moscow. But wasn't Hamish himself bed-wetting back in May about how escalation could lead to Russia firing nukes? Wouldn't supplying a power-crazed hoofer like Zelensky with long-range ballistic missiles be a wee bit like "escalation"?  

It mattered not, as in October the crisis conveyor belt delivered the long anticipated return of that perrenial globalist favourite, Palestine v Israel, and Zelensky's dreams of becoming World President were dashed forever. On a side-note, the mainstream media flipped to its familiar middle-eastern mode, cheerfully abandoning the idea of unlimited eternal support for Ukraine as if the country no longer existed. Which to all intents and purposes, it does not. It fell to Kemp himself to deliver the sad news to his loyal family or readership, whichever was larger, in his November 4th address headed -

 

It remains to be seen who will purchase the limp, unreadable dishrag that is the Daily Telegraph.  Jeff Bezos the Amazon oligarch has been mentioned, although propping up the enormous turkey of the Washington Post has already cost him a fortune, so newspapers may not be top of his shopping list. A  range of potential Arab investors has been mooted, although the sporty Sheikhs would rather buy English football clubs these days. (Accrington Stanley FC or the Telegraph -which would you choose?) 

Personally I can see no reason why investors of any stripe persist in supporting such grotesque self-parodies as the Times, Guardian and Telegraph. Like the BBC, they have departed so far from the world inhabited by normal people that nobody outside their echo chambers sees the slightest relevance in the daily ravings from within. 

Perhaps these "quality" papers are simply too fat to fail. The effort involved in dismantling such bloated, moribund lie-factories is probably beyond the scope of anyone in a position to try. I suspect they will instead simply shrink, morphing into pudgy little advertising pamphlets with snappy news headlines jammed in between the jingles, like spam in a dung sarnie. Big pictures and small words for all tomorrow's graduates. In a mag like that, there won't be much room for linguistic refuse-collectors like Dick and Hamish, so we may never see their like again -god willing.

Ian Andrew-Patrick

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