DeDollarization

"War games conducted by Chinese researchers found the US military’s most prized aircraft carrier could be reliably sunk with relative ease in the event of a hot war in the South China Sea.

A volley of hypersonic missiles could reliably sink the US military’s most powerful aircraft carrier group in a potential conflict, according to war game simulations carried out by a team of Chinese military planners.

Using 24 of their most advanced anti-ship missiles, Chinese forces consistently destroyed a carrier fleet led by the USS Gerald R. Ford over the course of 20 mock battles in simulations which were run on a war game platform employed by the People’s Liberation Army.

The basic principle underlying the exercise was to be “lenient with the enemy and strict with oneself,” Cao explained. As the Hong Kong-based outlet explained, “during the simulation, the PLA used its sea-based surveillance network to detect and identify the US carrier group before firing eight of the less-reliable hypersonic missiles simultaneously from southern and central sites in China.” Though “some of the missiles were intercepted, the attack depleted the US fleet’s SM-3 munitions, paving the way for the PLA to launch “eight of its more accurate hypersonic missiles from northern and western China, with four focused on the aircraft carrier while the others targeted the destroyers,” the outlet noted. “After the attack, four ships survived from the blue [US] team, with the destroyers having the most remaining, on average.” A “mop-up” operation with six of the less accurate hypersonic missiles was able to dispatch with the remaining vessels, the research paper determined. After the simulation was run 20 times to allow for different variables which could affect the outcome of the engagement, the team’s strategy was ultimately able to eliminate an average of 5.6 out of 6 surface vessels – effectively meaning the “total destruction” of the carrier group. The release of a paper detailing the war game in May marked “the first time the results of simulated hypersonic strikes against a US carrier group have been made public” by China’s military."

"Osama Hamadan, senior spokesperson of Hamas, has told Al Jazeera that they are not attacking civilians.

“You have to differentiate between settlers and civilians; settlers attacked Palestinians,” Hamdan said.

“We are not targeting civilians on purpose. We have declared settlers are part of the occupation and part of the armed Israeli force. They are not civilians,” Hamadan added.

His remarks came after a number of Western-backed rights groups, including Amnesty International, accused the resistance movement of killing “Israeli civilians” in their retaliatory strikes.

Asked whether civilians in southern Israel were considered settlers, the Hamas spokesman said “Everyone knows there are settlements there.”"

"...

Between the two devastating bombings too, the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria and immediately began obliterating the mighty Kwantung Army.

The Japanese were already well aware Washington was willing and able to raze their country to the ground.

On March 9th, 1945, the US Air Force firebombed Tokyo, which incinerated 16 square miles of the city, killed 100,000 and left one million residents homeless.

It remains today the single most destructive bombing raid in human history. A staggering 99.5% of the city of Toyama was destroyed in a US firebombing attack on August 1st.

Yet, records of an urgent meeting held by Japanese officials on the morning of August 9th indicate that Tokyo’s overwhelming concern was the Soviet invasion.

The atomic bomb that struck Hiroshima three days earlier was barely discussed.

Concurrently, Japan’s Supreme War Council also met. An army representative declared that they had intelligence suggesting the US possessed 100 more atomic bombs, and Tokyo was their next target.

The prospect troubled attendees significantly less than the Red Army’s presence in Manchuria.

The Soviet invasion was pivotal to Tokyo’s August 10th acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, which threatened “utter destruction of the Japanese homeland” in lieu of unconditional surrender.

Three days later, Japanese premier Kantaro Suzuki explained that rapid capitulation was vital as, “the Soviet Union will take not only Manchuria, Korea, Karafuto, but also Hokkaido. This would destroy the foundation of Japan. We must end the war.”

Accordingly, for many years, a nuclear weapons exhibit at the National Museum of the US Navy was replete with a plaque, which stated:

“The vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the Japanese military. However, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria changed their minds.”

That plaque has now vanished. So too has all consideration of the Soviet Union’s enormous contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in Western public consciousness.

This is no accident. Opinion polls in the immediate aftermath of the conflict show Europeans were contemporaneously under no illusion that Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini would’ve prevailed, were it not for the incalculable sacrifice of the Soviet people and Red Army.

The role of Britain and the US was considered effectively irrelevant.

Fittingly, one of the key mechanisms through which the US manipulates global audiences about the realities of World War II - and much, much else besides - is cinema.

The CIA, FBI, Pentagon, and individual branches of the US military all boast dedicated “entertainment liaison offices”, which over the past century have influenced the content of thousands of movies, documentaries, TV serials and other entertainment products.

As a result, a highly specific version of reality past and present, reflecting Washington’s national security interests, is constantly broadcast internationally."