Month: February 2016

Telling the Truth© By Lying

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE, SYRIA, WAR ON RUSSIA

First the US “private, nonprofit” channel PBS (or, as they would say, were it Russian: mostly state-funded broadcaster) passed off Russian footage of strikes on Daesh oil facilities as US coalition strikes. This was easily caught because they left the Cyrillic letters on the footage.

Now their French allies have followed through. On a France 2 broadcast (or as they would say if this were something out of Russia – the fully state-owned France 2 TV station broadcast) while castigating the Russians for indiscriminate bombing, moaning about the very difficult choices that the US coalition have to make to seek out the targets, swaggering that every effort is made to avoid civilian casualties, illustrates the castigation, moaning and swaggering with….

….Russian videos.

This time they had the wit to crop the Cyrillic lettering out.

Watch the video for yourself.

The Collapse of Russia – Coming Soon!! Again!!

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE, WAR ON RUSSIA

Stratfor – the “Shadow CIA” – has attracted some attention with its recent prediction that Russia will break apart in the next decade.

But Stratfor is very late to the party – the CIA, back around 2005, predicted that Russia “could fall apart at the seams in a decade and split into as many as eight different states”. Summarised here by The Independent.

The report, Global Trends 2015, has sparked a lively debate in Russia about the country’s territorial integrity and triggered passionate denunciations from some of Russia’s leading politicians. Its unflinchingly bleak assessment of Russia’s prospects has angered many at a time when the Russian government is doing its best to talk up the economy.

The fact that the gloomy prognosis comes from its old Cold War enemy makes it all the harder for Russia to swallow. But many ordinary Russians seem to share the CIA’s pessimism.

Blah blah blah, et cetera et cetera.

Oh, and Russia’s population is 13 million more than the CIA said it would be.

But, unfortunately for the CIA’s reputation, 2015, instead of being the Year of Russia’s Collapse turned out to be the Year of the Russian Threat Redivivus. Loudly trumpeted from all corners.

Getting back to Stratfor (The “Shadow CIA“), its prediction for 2025 is:

There will not be an uprising against Moscow, but Moscow’s withering ability to support and control the Russian Federation will leave a vacuum,” Stratfor warns. “What will exist in this vacuum will be the individual fragments of the Russian Federation.”

We expect Moscow’s authority to weaken substantially, leading to the formal and informal fragmentation of Russia” the report states, adding, “It is unlikely that the Russian Federation will survive in its current form.”

The breakout of Russia’s nuclear weapons stockpile will be “the greatest crisis of the next decade,” according to Stratfor.

And the US will have to figure out what to do about it, even if it means dispatching ground troops to secure loose weapons, materials, and delivery systems.

Note the quaint assumption that the USA will be in any sort of condition in ten years to do anything much anywhere.

So, I guess that Stratfor’s claim to the title of “Shadow CIA” mostly comes from its use of the CIA’s old, discarded and worn out crystal balls.

Either that or we have to believe that Russia breaks apart every decade and miraculously re-assembles itself without anyone noticing.

Today’s Putin Quotation

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn QUOTATIONS

I’ve always liked this one because, if you think about it, it really sums it all up. Systems, like communism or naziism, which are based on One Answer to all questions are, sooner or later, going to meet with a question they cannot answer. Democracy, which (properly understood, is simply pluralism), always has, somewhere, the answer to the question no one had earlier thought of.

History proves all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are intransient.

История убедительно свидетельствует, что все диктатуры, авторитарные системы правления преходящи. Непреходящей оказываются только демократические системы.

Putin “Russia at the turn of the millennium”, 1999, http://pages.uoregon.edu/kimball/Putin.htm

Growth of the Russian Government

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn HISTORY, PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE

This from my Sitrep of 24 Sep 2010 bears repeating, I think. Many many people say Russia’s government is bigger today than it was, usually as part of a bill of indictment against Putin. The statement involves a considerable misunderstanding.

BUREAUCRACY. The Finance Minister said the other day that the number of federal bureaucrats was to be reduced by 100,000 over the next 3 years. World experience shows that this is much easier to say than to do. By the way, one of the many wrong things repeated by the Kommentariat is that Russia’s bureaucracy is bigger than it was in the Communist days. Not so: they forget the enormous CPSU structure that paralleled and directed the government structure. The overall total of state functionaries is surely much lower today. There was a sort of coup that took place in the 1990s in which the local GorIspolKoms (ie “government”) took over the local GorKom (CPSU) building. This can be seen in towns all over Russia if you look: the huge building on Lenin/October/Revolution Square that used to be the local Party HQ is now the City government. Vide Smolniy in St Petersburg.

Really Stupid Things Said About Russia

On By Patrick ArmstrongIn PROPAGANDA, LIES AND NONSENSE, QUOTATIONS

but why not try to measure Russia’s greatness by its ability to build a free and prosperous country, a good global citizen at peace with its neighbors? This kind of Russia might also fare better at the Olympics. The four leading medals winners in Vancouver are free-market democracies.

“The Pride of Russia: An Olympic lesson for the Kremlin”, The Wall St Journal, 27 February 2010