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In this mailing:
* Guy Millière: Is Putin Destroying Russia?
* Amir Taheri: Iran: Great Replacement Ahead?


** Is Putin Destroying Russia? ([link removed])
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by Guy Millière • January 29, 2023 at 5:00 am
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* If Putin succeeds in winning even a little territory, his victory will embolden other predators.
* Retired British Army Colonel Richard Kemp describes Putin's plan as a "desperate gamble.... Moscow at present does not have the numbers to decisively overcome resistance from the depleted Ukrainian army". Putin nevertheless has the ability to turn Ukraine into a grease-spot, then take on Moldova, the Baltic States and whatever else he wants.
* Putin knows that if he loses, it will be the end of his rule, maybe his life.... Russia is relying on its few allies and America's lack of will....
* [Many...] seem not to understand that, as opposed to Las Vegas, "what happens in Ukraine does not stay in Ukraine." Even a partial win for Putin could end up costing America far more in the long run -- in both lives and treasure. It would have been so much easier to stop Hitler before he crossed the Rhine.
* Western leaders, with the exception of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán... have reaffirmed that they will support Ukraine until it wins. Some, including Putin, spoke of negotiations; however, he warned that all his demands must be met and that he intends to fight until victory -- meaning that he will accept only unconditional surrender.
* Western populations... grasp that to abandon Ukraine will lead to an even wider bloodbath.
* Leaders in the West most likely see that without Putin's defeat, a return to stability in Europe is effectively impossible. To make the slightest concession to Putin would send all predators the message that they can invade a country, annex it in whole or in part, and commit war crimes to their hearts' content without any consequences.
* Russia after this war will likely be a devastated country that has lost the last remnants of its status as a great power.
* What is clear is that NATO will be strengthened, and fully emerge again as the defense structure of the democratic world.
* European leaders who believed that the collapse of the Soviet Empire would lead to an era of perpetual peace, or who had illusions about Russia and Putin, or had largely given up their military spending, discovered the catastrophic extent of these illusions.
* The United States -- if it does not lose its nerve and its will to protect the West -- will emerge as the big winner, but this should not overshadow the damage and destruction that the Biden administration – even though it has been extremely generous – caused by dithering and often providing materiel often too little, too late. If the US had pre-armed Ukraine, the invasion might actually have been prevented in the first place. Let us hope that the United States does not make the same costly mistake by failing adequately to pre-position "porcupine weaponry" in Taiwan to make the risk to China too great even to think about invading.
* It would be dangerous to forget that without the weakness that the Biden administration exhibited toward China; without the disaster it inflicted on both the United States and Afghanistan; without Biden's suggestion that if Russia limited itself to a "small incursion", that would be fine, it was in effect green-lighting aggressors. If American soldiers in Ukraine had not withdrawn a few days before Russia's invasion, there probably would have been no invasion and no war.
* It would also be dangerous to forget that during the first days of the invasion, U.S. President Joe Biden reportedly offered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky help to leave Ukraine. The message was that Biden was ready to abandon Ukraine to Putin. The Biden administration has so far not provided long-range strike capabilities or air cover to Ukraine, thereby giving sanctuary to the Russian military to fire into Ukraine or proceed with a scorched-earth aerial bombardment. The cost to innocent Ukrainian people will be countless lives lost -- and prolonging the war.
* [T]he Biden administration and the rest of the Western world... finally [supported] Ukraine. For the future of the West and the Free World, the Biden Administration should continue to do exactly that.

Russian President Vladimir Putin knows that if he loses in Ukraine, it will be the end of his rule, maybe his life. (Photo by Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

December 13, 2022. UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace tells the House of Commons that, since the start of the war in Ukraine, "over 100,000 Russians are either dead, injured, or have deserted". Today, the figure is undoubtedly higher. The losses to the Russian army have been such that on September 21, Putin decreed a mobilization. Tens of thousands of men were sent to ,military training. Thousands of others were immediately deployed to the front, with no training, no arms, or with only rusty guns, and sent to a certain death. Another mobilization seems to be in the works. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu recently said that the Russian army will soon number 1.5 million men, but whatever the number, if front-line soldiers do not have adequate equipment, they will be killed.

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** Iran: Great Replacement Ahead? ([link removed])
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by Amir Taheri • January 29, 2023 at 4:00 am
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* Since 1979, when the mullahs seized power, Iran has topped the list of countries hit by "brain drain". However, what was a sectoral hemorrhage may now become a general bleeding affecting other sectors of the population.
* The study shows that the desire to flee Iran isn't caused by economic hardship, unemployment or inflation. It is not the poor and/or the unemployed that wish to flee but those who either have or could have well-paid jobs and a seat on the gravy train of the mullahs and their security-military associates.
* To deal with the consequences of "brain drain", the Islamic Republic has unveiled a program to attract highly-educated and skilled people from "anywhere in the world" with a promise of thee-year contracts, good salaries and "all rights apart from voting".

Since 1979, when the mullahs seized power, Iran has topped the list of countries hit by "brain drain". However, what was a sectoral hemorrhage may now become a general bleeding affecting other sectors of the population. (Image source: Curimedia/Wikimedia Commons)

Since 1979, when the mullahs seized power, Iran has topped the list of countries hit by "brain drain". However, what was a sectoral hemorrhage may now become a general bleeding affecting other sectors of the population.

A feature in the official news agency IRNA was headlined, "It's not only the elite who emigrate."

The daily Javan, an organ of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) also warns that Iran is losing some if its best-educated people and claims that mass-emigration by "elite elements" is costing the nation millions of dollars. Emigration is now attracting Iranians with lower skills or no skills.

According to best semi-official estimates, since 1979, some eight million people, almost 10 percent of the population, have left Iran, including an estimated 4.2 million with higher education and skills.

In the past four years, the brain drain has accelerated, with an average of 4,000 medical doctors leaving each year.

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