Our group had a meeting with a Buryat shaman in 1995(?). He said he was the descendant of generations of shamans and during the Soviet times had passed himself off as a naturist healer. He read us all and said that my family had had problems with the Inquisition centuries ago. I didn’t think much of this until I remembered the Great Monition of Cursing of my ancestors in 1524 by the Archbishop of Glasgow. So that’s pretty close.
How many people can look at this and not feel their brains explode because IT DOESN’T FIT!!!!!
The world’s most famous Zek meets the the world’s most famous Chekist. (And it’s total respect and love).
Putin attended the unveiling of a statue in Moscow on the 11th. “He clearly delineated the true, genuine, people’s Russia and the totalitarian system, which brought suffering and severe trials to millions of people.”
Curious that both Kremlin mouthpieces @RT_com (Russia Today) and @rianru (RIA Novosti) have cameras strategically placed around French capital and are only outlets shown on Twitter to be livestreaming the ‘gilets jaunes’ protests today #GiletsJaunes
If Western media followed the events, perhaps no one would follow RT or RIA Novosti.
RUSSIA INC. This report from Awara on Russia’s economy is much better than the one I mentioned last time. The authors argue that the Putin Team saw sanctions coming and proofed the economy against them: “Russia now has the world’s most self-sufficient and diversified economy capable of producing anything possibly made in the world. Russia is now for the first time in its history food self-sufficient while simultaneously exporting more food than ever before. With this clout, Russia is prepared to withstand the economic siege, that the US regime is hatching.” And it’s armed to defend itself. The sanctioners did not, as they thought, “have good intelligence“: “The single biggest error was to believe the propaganda lie that the Russian economy was totally dependent on oil and gas. Here they foolishly confused the share of oil and gas in total exports – which was and remains at the level of 60% – with the share of these commodities of the total economy, which in 2013 was 12% (today 9%)”. In short, Russia is well-positioned to go it alone. (It doesn’t have to though, all the countries on Washington’s hitlist are potential collaborators). As I like to put it, Russia has a full-service economy, few others do. I recommend reading the report (testy in parts, but given the mountain of anti-Russia nonsense, that’s forgiveable).
TURKSTREAM. Another big step with completion of the offshore section.
WESTERN VALUES™. The next time the US State Department solemnly declares some country’s election “undemocratic”, just laugh: ballot harvesting in CA and NC.
AMERICA-HYSTERICA. Finally we learn what Flynn’s “crime” was. He may have corroborated Pence’s erroneous statement that there had been no contacts with Russian officials and, like so many others, he lobbied for a foreign government. (His real crime, of course, was revealing Obama’s and that is why he had to be taken out first.) I hope this begins the end of the Mueller farrago.
NUGGETS FROM THE STUPIDITY MINE. Guardian prints fake story, gets caught, some ex-CIA guy suggests Putindunnit. “They had 17 aircraft, we have 48 missiles – I think we’re going to win that one.” In the real world, just before they noticed anything, the first Kinzhal would have slammed in at Mach 10.
GEORGIA. Salome Zurabishvili is the new President of Georgia. She, a quondam French diplomat, was Saakashvili’s Foreign Minister (salary paid by Paris, BTW) until she had enough of him and quit. Always wondered whether Paris’ relatively rational view on the 2008 war owed something to her.
CW ATTACK? WHAT CW ATTACK? “More Than 100 People Wounded In Aleppo Chemical Attack: Syrian Officials“. “The West Stays Mum About Aleppo Chemical Attack“. Not a hard deduction.
UKRAINE. No one expects that Poroshenko can be re-elected, no matter what fraud he pulls off. And nothing to suggest that his erstwhile supporters in the West want him any more. The simple truth is that post-Maidan Ukraine has been a comprehensive disaster and a new President (Tymoshenko is ahead and she’s no friend) will need someone to blame. And who better than Poroshenko? So his choice is to finagle his way out of the election or join Saakashvili in the Formerly Useful Club with an arrest warrant on his head and no money. Hence the stunts: the church robbery and now the Kerch Straits adventure. (I doubt your Local News Outlet told you that Ukrainian military vessels following the Russian rules quietly passed through in September.) He tried to get out of elections by declaring martial law but his opponents forced a limitation: only a month and only in Novorissiya and bordering Transdnestr (where he wouldn’t get any votes anyway). So that option has been blocked for the moment. (Another something your LNO outlet hasn’t told you: in early November the martial law regulations were amended to allow deportations. Almost as if it was planned, eh?) What’s left? Start an attack on the eastern rebels and claim Russia invaded? Plenty of rumours of that from both sides. (CW attack? Alleged Russian buildup.) There are always rumours of an imminent Ukrainian attack and I usually discount them; I am less willing to do so this time because of Poroshenko’s desperate situation. If Kiev does attack, it will be another defeat.
MH17. A lawsuit is possible. Not sure what to think: a real trial, with real evidence and real argument would be a good thing; another precooked show not. Are real trials still possible when it’s Russia?
TRUMP OPENS A NEW FRONT. “I am certain that, at some time in the future, President Xi and I, together with President Putin of Russia, will start talking about a meaningful halt to what has become a major and uncontrollable Arms Race… “. (Is his INF treaty denunciation a step to getting a US-Russia-China INF? Step one of what Scott Adams calls his persuasion technique?)
Patrick Armstrong Analysis, Canada Russia Observer
(Miscellaneous comments from pieces dealing with Russia I’ve collected. Most of them anonymous or with pseudonyms. They are chosen to illustrate either rabid hostility to everything Russian or stone-dead ignorance of present reality. I post from time to time when I have enough, spelling mistakes and all.)
********. Aegis is a system capable of engaging multiple air and sea targets concurrently. That single destroyer would be able to eliminate the entire Russian navy. Of course there is no mention of the attack sub(s) that would have been accompanying it. As for “running away”, the POS russian navy probably couldn’t keep up with the cruising speed of the US destroyer. Ever seen that laughable carrier they sent to the med, moves at 3 knots and belches so much ****, it could be on a global warming sci-fi movie as the enemy.
It would be very stupid for Putin to do exactly what the US military is trying to get him to do. If there is any military engagement with the US at all, Russia is done and Putin ends up like Sadaam. He needs to repeat that to himself like a mantra and do a lot of blinking in the coming days.
Commenter on a web site, 6 December 2018
(Miscellaneous comments from pieces dealing with Russia I’ve collected. Most of them anonymous or with pseudonyms. They are chosen to illustrate either rabid hostility to everything Russian or stone-dead ignorance of present reality. I post from time to time when I have enough, spelling mistakes and all.)
I wake up this morning and find the far-right Twittersphere going nuts over my old tweets/articles praising Macron. They seem to be cheerleading for chaos in Paris to topple him. Are Russian bots behind this, @anneapplebaum? I wonder.
A distinction.
A neo-nazi lives in his mother’s basement with his collection of replica SS daggers and dreams his dreams.
A nazi can show a direct intellectual and, in many cases, a direct biological connection with the real, genuine, Jew-killing article.
The first is a possible danger, certainly to be watched, but probably pretty harmless.
The second is alive and well in Ukraine and has lots of guns and opportunities.
When the first meets the second we’ve all got big problems.
Maybe the Russians did fool around with NATO GPS reception in the recent exercise.
Maybe Russians do fool around with Aegis ships and cause them to be run into by big slow commercial ships or jam their systems so they can’t see Russian planes.
(Stuck in the back of my head is a Russian guy who knew about these things telling me that, back in The Day, the Sovs had looked at their weak points and NATO’s strong points and directed their efforts accordingly. And that Russia has inherited the tendency and the results).
The Russians know that without GPS most of USA/NATO’s ground or air wouldn’t work and without Aegis their surface navies would just be targets.
On the other hand, maybe USA/NATO forces aren’t as good as they think they are. (I well remember how bad the US Army was on NATO exercises in Germany in the 1980s).
Two thoughts to think about.
Me? I don’t know. I put all this stuff in the Maybe (awaiting further data) Basket.
VICTORY! I’ve been waiting a decade for Washington to explain that the Ossetia war was actually a triumph for it. And here it is at last. American efforts resulted in “the Russians withdrawing to their start positions.” Well, they never intended to occupy Georgia. The same official then creatively blames Assad for “producing” ISIS. A complete echo chamber of delusion.
SANCTIONS. Bloomberg calculates that the Russian economy is about 10% smaller than it forecasted it would be in 2013. It reckons that about six percentage points of the decrease are due to Western sanctions and the rest to other factors. In short, sanctions have hurt but not as much as all that. I have long believed that this is transitory pain which will pay off later. For example, the increase in Russian food production has been remarkable. It would be interesting to see Bloomberg do an estimate for the cost to the EU: plenty of estimates out there, some as high as €100 billion. The point is that Russia wasn’t such a big market for the EU, but it was one of the few that was growing.
CORRUPTION. We are told that 300 police officers have been fired this year after complaints from citizens. There were 45,000 complaints. VTsIOM reports that trust in the police has dropped ten points since last year’s all-time high of 67%. Better than the old days when trust was under 50%; so, more work to be done, but work is being done. Corruption is a tricky subject, often treated too simply, I believe.
DIPLOMACY. Russia is trying to fix Libya and Afghanistan. I think it’s time to start contemplating the thought that Moscow might have some soft power.
WAR. A recent report comes as close as we will ever see to an admission that the USA would lose a war with either Russian or China on their home turf. This comes on the heels of a report showing that a large number of key defence components manufacturers are not secure and an earlier one that said many US weapons systems are vulnerable to hacking. These are consequences of endless wars in MENA, twenty years of poking Russia and China and unilateralism. Surely the rational conclusion would be that Washington should start rethinking things from the bottom up. Nope, more of the same is the answer: “The report also called for an expansion of the current $716 billion defense budget.”
THE LATEST. “GPS glitches during NATO’s largest war games in decades blamed on (DRUM ROLL) Russia“. Maybe. Russia is preparing for a war and, without GPS, NATO ground and air forces would be pretty helpless. So maybe a teeny tiny test to see if jammers worked. On the other hand, excuses are cheap and the exercise was not a very happy experience for Norway.
WESTERN VALUES™. Over the years I have grown drearily accustomed to human rights organisations being co-opted – weaponised is the fashionable word – by the Western war party (MSF, Pussy Riot and the rest) and have pretty well given up on them. But, a ray of light appears. Amnesty International is active in reporting the destruction of Raqqa by the US coalition. It is starting a project to record the destruction: what they have collected so far on “the most destroyed city in modern times” is at strike-tracker. So the next time the White Helmets or Bellingcat tells you of some Russian atrocity, remember that it would be impossible to be more indiscriminately destructive than US/NATO “targeted actions“.
US ELECTIONS. Did Putin fix them? If so how? Why did he want Trump’s party to lose the House? If he didn’t, why didn’t he? I look forward to the NYT explaining how this fits into Operation Infektion.
NUGGETS FROM THE STUPIDITY MINE. Masha and the Bear. “Putin’s tanks are hidden in Masha’s backpack“. DM readers treat this with the scorn it deserves. A friend suggested setting up a mock conference to make deadpan over-the-top claims to ridicule Russophobia. I don’t think you can ridicule people who believe in Masha’s armoured backpack and Medvedev’s pillow carrier.
EUROPEANS ARE REVOLTING. Some more straws in the wind. Madrid has allowed 3 Russian warships to resupply at Cueta, the first time in 3 years. A minister says Paris will lead EU efforts to create a payment mechanism to keep trade with Iran. And TurkStream marks another milestone.
UKRAINE. Remember when Ukrainian nazis were just Putin propaganda? US News, Daily Beast, AIM, Fox, and plenty more assured us (BBC here) that reports of nazis in Ukraine were only troll factory output. Now, for some reason, the Western media is noticing: New Republic, CBS, AP, Max Blumenthal. Even the US propaganda outlet RFE/RL tells us: “Azov, Ukraine’s Most Prominent Ultranationalist Group, Sets Its Sights On U.S., Europe.” And chickens are arriving home as this Criminal Complaint shows. Why they notice today what was perfectly obvious then, I cannot tell you.
NOTE. Alexander Mercouris has referred me to his discussion of the Bloomberg report. He argues, very convincingly, that the report doesn’t actually make sense when you look at it carefully, that Russia has very effectively responded to Western sanctions and that it is a very strong position to withstand further sanctions. He sees the report as part of a propaganda effort to gather support for more sanctions on the grounds that sanctions are working and that another push will gain the desired result. It’s reinforcing failure along the lines of Einstein’s alleged definition of insanity.
© Patrick Armstrong Analysis, Canada Russia Observer
For example, in Georgia in 2008, without using American military forces on the ground, we used a whole set of – a whole smorgasbord of tools, international tools with Sarkozy, the president of France at the time, leading the international diplomatic effort, sanctions and other actions that eventually saw the Russians withdrawing to their start positions at the beginning of that conflict in Georgia. So that’s an example of how you can do it.
Briefing by James F. Jeffrey, (US) Special Representative for Syria Engagement, 14 November 2018
I’ve been waiting for Washington to claim it pushed Russia out of Georgia and now here it is. The Russians never had any intention of staying and that’s a big difference between the Russia way of war and the American: the Russians know that there are only certain things you can do with violence; the Americans still haven’t figured that out.
Russia Observer 
