REMEMBRANCE DAY. I remind Russians that, while D-Day was not the decisive battle of the war, it was not hastily thrown together when it was clear that Germany was defeated either.
STEELE DOSSIER. It’s good to be able to tell your MSM-duped neighbours that you were right and their “trusted sources” were lying but so what? Five years too late and still more to go before the principals are on the dock. So what difference does revealing it now make? The coup succeeded: whatever Trump might have done was stymied and Putin was established as The Enemy.
NO KIDDING. “The allegations cast new uncertainty on some past reporting on the dossier by news organizations, including The Washington Post;” Meanwhile they pump out new lies, eliding their responsibility for the last ones: “uncertainties”, “some past reporting”. That’s all we can expect.
QUOTE OF THE YEAR. “The vast majority of disinformation, propaganda and lies that flooded the country over the last 5 years did not come from MAGA boomers on Facebook or 4Chan teenagers but the largest and most influential liberal corporate media outlets.” Reading over what I wrote at the time (for example four years ago), I see that I always underestimated the power that the media/security merger could mobilise to keep the lie going: I kept thinking that some revelation would finally blow it up, but on and on it went. And some are so deep in the delusion that they still spin it away.
CORRUPTION. Criminal cases, firings, disciplinary actions on prison torture scandal.
RUSSIA-BELARUS. More agreements worked out in a meeting; the two grow closer. Especially on defence cooperation which Lukashenka made a point of praising. And that is “a response to the policy of pressure from the West“. Joint air patrol today. I continue to expect an end state with Lukashenka retired and the two countries, while formally separate, very closely tied together on security and economies.
REFUGEE WARS. Colour revolution attempt to overthrow Lukashenka fails; fake bomb threat lands plane, activist discovered, arrested, sings. The West accuses Minsk of this and that; sanctions. Lukashenka imports refugees who congregate at EU borders. That’s b’s take and it sounds reasonable to me. Brussels simulates more outrage. But consider the background: Washington’s “war on terror” has displaced 37 million people and Merkel invited them in. Zakharova suggests Poland, given its participation in the Iraq invasion, should take a few “grateful Iraqis” and Lavrov helpfully suggests Brussels bribe Minsk (I note that Russians permit themselves to be snarkier). Oh, BTW, shouldn’t the EU be addressing its demands to Tsikhanouskaya?
UKRAINE. 1 Nov: Russian buildup on Ukraine border shrieks controlled US media. 2 Nov: CIA Director Burns goes to Moscow; said to warn Moscow against military operations. 3 Nov: Dmytro Yarosh appointed adviser to the commander-in-chief of the Ukraine armed forces, Defence Minister resigns. 4 Nov: US official visits Kiev. 7 Nov: Kiev says no indication of Russian buildup on border. What just happened? Moscow got its message across and Washington turned its puppet off? (If so, nobody told Blinken.) Hard to imagine anyone in Kiev thinks “a good little war” would improve the wretched situation. But Yarosh might. This time I think Moscow will use force – if they didn’t get the hint in the spring, there’s no point in more hints: time for facts. (Ossetia 2008; but faster.)
GUNS. Putin met with the military bosses (Day 1) (Day 2) (Day 3) and praised the new high-tech weapons for “ensuring a high level of Russian military security for many years”. The fearsome “terminator” is about to go into service; as is the S-500 and they’re working on an S-550, 2000 RPVs. Meanwhile, the US military’s most powerful and competent component confronts 30 years of faking.
YUKOS. The Netherlands Supreme Court has overruled a lower court’s judgement on Yukos: nice to see there’s at least one court there that doesn’t write its verdict at the beginning of the trial.
STASIS. 71% think the US is on wrong track. 30% think the election was stolen. Few in the world think US democracy a good model. Second-greatest life expectancy drop among “wealthy countries”. Graham Allison says the era of US military primacy is over.
NEW NWO. Milley says there are three great powers. Does this mean anything? Who’s in charge in Washington anyway?
COVID. “With” or “From”? Good question – Italian, Googlish.
WESTERN VALUES™. Putin and Xi are wrong for not bringing their planes and motorcades.
© Patrick Armstrong Analysis, Canada Russia Observer
Yes,,Lets All Quite Letting Zeus Play War Games With Human Lifes…Which He Did with The First Club in Cains Hand…and we could all just Start bringing Our Pick Up Trucks…to Meeting Halls around the World..and Have Pot Luck Dinners..and Play Baseball..and Horse Shoes..and Backgammon..and Checkers…Make Friends…Without anyone Talking about …Covid…CRT…War…or Politics…I Know a Good Fishing Hole…Down on The Creek….up the Country Road from The Grange Hall…where Cousin Lee and His Band are playing Music ..and Children of All Races..are Dancing..and Laughing..and Holding Hands..
Washington War on Terror did not unleash 37 million migrants flooding into Europe – it was the MENA high birth rate population bomb, one could easily see coming down the road for years.
You can’t have severn plus average birth rate in MMENA countries, with few to no resources to absorb them. Demographics is destiny, as we learned in California.
I think on this one, Deap, it’s clearly wrong. Videos, I think not staged, of migrants being herded through Polish barriers. Often chivvied by soldiers.
If Belarus doesn’t want to take migrants it shouldn’t fly them in. It’s flying them in in order to deliberately push them through to Poland and then on to Germany. That’s an appalling way to behave and there’s no way of making Belarus look good.
Same applies if it tries the same trick with the Ukraine.
I can’t imagine what the Russians are up to not attempting to restrain Lukashenko. Apart from the inhumanity of treating migrants in this way it makes both Russia and Belarus look bad. Where’s the Putin of the 2015 UN speech?
>If Belarus doesn’t want to take migrants it shouldn’t fly them in
It’s private aircompanies doing that. It might be news for you, but Belarus is a capitalist country. These private enterprises just striving to get some profit after the EU banned them from their airspace.
Or are you suggesting that Lukashenko must adopt… bolshevik… approach to the business? If yes, then why not apply said approach to the EU countries, where migr… sorry, sorry – “refugee”-import is real enterprise involving scores of people across the whole Union?
>I can’t imagine what the Russians are up to not attempting to restrain Lukashenko.
Belarus is an independent sovereign state [nod-nod]
What Belarus is doing with the immigrants is dumb and should be stopped.
>What Belarus is doing with the immigrants is dumb and should be stopped.
First of all – they are not “immigrants”. Oh, no-no! They are “refugees”. Rembeber 2015/16? The rhetoric of the mainstream Western press and chief EUnuchs? How all the people daring to call them “migrants” became canceled before it became mainstream? Own up to it!
Second – bat’ka Lukoshenko does nothing with them. It’s “refugee” export firms that do this stuff. In his today’s big interview he demanded from the West any solid proof, that implicates him personally
Can’t buy it, Lytenburgh.
This is a squalid business, using migrants as a means of annoyance. At least the French, also pulling the trick, are “letting” it happen, not using soldiers to push the migrants into the inflatables. Lukashenko’s deliberately and callously using the strategy and “nod-nod” or not the Russians should be saying no.
The Turks are up to another version of the same, demanding cash to keep migrants out of Europe. As it happens I’m against an open borders policy but that doesn’t mean we should use the poor devils caught up in that policy as a means, often very risky for them, of exerting political pressure.
You’ll see all this, maybe, through the perspective of what’s happening on your Southern border. But what’s happening in Europe in this respect is very different. I don’t believe anyone in the US, no matter their views on that Southern border, would condone such use of migrants as a political weapon for one state to use against another.
>Can’t buy it, Lytenburgh.
Good thing that I’m not selling anything then.
>This is a squalid business, using migrants as a means of annoyance.
“Refugees”. See my comment above.
>You’ll see all this, maybe, through the perspective of what’s happening on your Southern border.
[…]
I’m Russian.
Well, after the EU, Great Britain, the US all worked toward a color revolution in Belarus (whether Lukashenko had made himself a big, fat target for this aside), and failed – signally – what did they expect? For President L to be all apologetic and conciliatory? This speaks, and loudly, of the complete ineptitude of the West in its policies toward their designated “enemies”, i.e., Russia, and any of its allied friends.
Ya say ya just lurv them “refugees”, you Western powers? Well, then let’s help you get a whole bunch more of them, Good and Hard. They don’t speak your lingos, they are likely not any kind of asset to your (increasingly fake and ghey) satrapies, but if you don’t mind feeding, housing, and whatever else they need (crime victims? Step right up, dhimmis, we’re your beasts), we’ll help you out…bigly. (Snicker. Just think of it as sanctions on YOU for a change, mkay?)
You’ve probably spotted this but an interesting situation seems to be heating up on energy supplies into Ukraine Patrick.
The Russians have stopped their supplies of coal for power stations, claiming they need it. Over half of Ukraine’s coal fired power stations are now effectively shut. Winter is closing in fast.
Whilst the Russians could get paid, by contra transactions against the gas transit money, Ukraine has no money to pay anyone else for coal, even if they could get it again in time. From memory the last time this happened it took them months to get the right coal grade from Australia.
Meanwhile the regime in Kiev is looking at the ample supplies of exactly the right coal, that in their mind is rightfully theirs, coming out of the mines not that far over the demarcation line in Donbas. As a consequence, there must be a huge temptation for, as a minimum, a limited ‘smash and grab’ strike to seize those assets.
It is unlikely to work, given the locals aversion to the idea and Russia’s support, but desperate men, and by January they will be that, do desperate things. It might explain the recent military moves that are otherwise puzzling.
As we have seen elsewhere, Russia, especially in both the gas market and in the words of Lavrov, have been taking an increasingly tough line as they increase in confidence. With their friends in Donbas having plenty of power it is those in Ukraine proper that they have in a vice like grip. Lavrov being in action today in Paris in a Ukraine 2+2 meeting https://tass.com/politics/1360187
Where is Burisma and their crack talent team, when you really need them?
China banned Australian coal due to a tiff over COVID investigations so Russian exports to China have climbed over 50%. The Russians need it all right, for a reliable trading partner.
Thank you, Patrick, for the piece on D-Day and the 80-20 split. Sifting through it now, but grateful for your perspective.
Another one https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/05/30/why-russias-victory-day-was-crucial-for-the-survival-of-european-values/
“I kept thinking that some revelation would finally blow it up, but on and on it went.”
It is coming.
Though it is the Russians who will decide when as they drop the Doomsday Dime about MH-Seventeen. Then Exceptional Elites cover-up campaign will make sense to one and all.
How big a story is The Dossier? how much reporting of the Italian COVID count? Little and none. Therefore, nothing happened.
As to MH17, Almaz-Antey did a study that disproved the whole Western story of the firing point. Where has it been reported? (here — but who cares what I say? https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2015/10/18/mh17-final-report-is-not-a-final-report-its-just-a-limited-hangout-it-tells-as-much-of-the-truth-as-it-has-to-but-no-more/). Russian evidence that the Buk part the Ukes magically produced had been sent to the Ukr SSR — ever see that mentioned? https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2018/09/18/russian-mh-17-briefing/
“If a tree falls in the forest and the NYT et al don’t report it, does it make a sound?”
The numbers who have moved well beyond MSM reporting – formerthe legacy media giants – are now making an impact, and fast fading MSM does not like it one bit:
https://redstate.com/kiradavis/2021/11/11/they-hate-us-because-we-dont-need-them-n473852
So yes, if a tree falls and NYT does not report it today means a tree not only did fall, but it was not due to “climate change” or OrangeManBad. MSM became too monotone, and too often 100% wrong.
Well, there’s always bankruptcy — https://www.zerohedge.com/political/cnn-reportedly-fire-good-number-air-talent-staff-major-shakeup
Patrick,
You certainly (along with others in alternative media) did yeoman work reporting inconvenient facts related to the shoot down of MH-17, and indeed it was not seen in the MSM. But if, as Old Timer Thomas believes, the Russians have been keeping their powder dry in regard to this incident, whatever more they have to add of evidentiary value (satellite imagery, archived radar, communications intercepts whether from the Ukrainian military or Ukrainian governmental sources, or for that matter from Western sources) will likely be directed primarily toward the rest of the world, as attempts to force the Western MSM or governments here in Clown World to report on it is a lost cause. But given the systemic collapse of credibility of the Hegemonic Narrative over the last few years, this reportage could drive a further collapse. Timing is all, and that might be worth something. As the Saker is fond of saying, “Russians are slow to saddle, but quick to ride”, and this would be a perfect time for a strategic illustration of that dictum.
Maybe. One can hope.
Is it true that the only ammunition plant in Ukraine is in Lugansk, which is now, shock!, not in the ‘government’s’ (neocon supported one) hands? I wonder if that impacts having ammunition?
The Sovs had huge ammo stocks parked here and there. And Sov weapons are good for a long time
https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2016/02/29/ukrainian-civil-war-where-the-rebels-get-their-weapons-how-they-use-them-and-what-their-most-effective-are/
I recollect reading that most informative article. It confirmed what I was picking up in bits and pieces elsewhere. Though since a day’s fighting was said to take a trainload of ammunition and supplies, I imagine there was direct re-supply over the border later, in addition to the items mentioned.
What we don’t know, and I suppose won’t, is how many Russian and NATO personnel were covertly involved on the respective sides. Plenty or rumours but nothing solid as far as an amateur could see at the time. Might I enquire, has anything further come out on that since?
I think you underestimate the amount of ammo that would have been stockpiled. The Sovs well knew about consumption rates. see this interesting photo for interest
https://www.alamy.com/us-senator-barack-obama-inspects-a-pile-of-decommissioned-weapons-in-a-warehouse-in-donetsk-august-30-2005-obama-and-his-colleague-senator-richard-lugar-visit-ukraine-to-oversee-destruction-of-dangerous-material-from-the-soviet-era-and-announced-the-signature-of-an-agreement-providing-for-us-funds-to-help-ukraine-deal-with-and-destroy-its-chemical-weapons-reutersalexander-khudotioply-tpcvi-image379361902.html?irclickid=3541ZSwmpxyIT3K34FT2OQBMUkGxi5zXNQ%3AkxQ0&irgwc=1&utm_source=77643&utm_campaign=Shop%20Royalty%20Free%20at%20Alamy&utm_medium=impact
Thanks PA,
Per:
https://www.rbth.com/science-and-tech/334392-new-russian-s550-system
guess that the S-550 will be for close range, and thus less expensive (allowing increased production/delivery)
Minor correction.
The fearsome “terminator” is about to go into service; the S-500 “is in service.” Deliveries of S-500 are already several months ago!
Any good document to read as to why the terminator is so termed (compared to other tanks)?
It seems to be a new kind of thing. Supposed to support tanks in urban fighting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqHPOeW4Wn4&t=41s
Another thing I notice is that the Russians seem to have a number of similar turrets (cannon + ATGMs) that they can put on different chassis.
Remember the laughable “dragoon march”?
Russia has plenty of close range SAM systems, I’d put my money on the S-550 going the other way, more advanced ABM, ASAT and the like. The S-nnn name has always been reserved for the top of the range, highest and furthest reaching SAMs the Russians can make at a particular time.
The linked article is not correct, the S-500 is not the first generation ABM, that was/is the A-135, a system still being upgraded, they missed out the word ‘mobile’. The S-500 is an anti ABM optimised upgrade of the S-400 and is barely in service, in that there are a couple of systems up and running in the Moscow area seemingly for training. These look to be pre-production units in the normal Russian way, with series production units not due until 2023, an indication that they are in no hurry.
The origin of the name Terminator seems to be lost in time but is clearly related to the movie. The first time I see it used was back in 2012, referring to the existing BMPT, a T-72 re-turreted with smaller guns than normal, another one of those ‘good idea’ projects looking for a use, which it finally seems to have found with 9 samples tested last year and 9 (the same ones?) being released to the Russian Army next month. I believe that Algeria also took delivery of some last year, its abilities more closely matching their requirements than the Russians. Given its armament, a pair of 30mm cannon, each with twin, switchable belt feeds capable of containing different shell types (no ATGM at the start) if you were on the receiving end then Terminator would seem appropriate.
>I continue to expect an end state with Lukashenka retired and the two countries.
Well, more the reason to keep him where he is, if only to spite Western liberals, who, as Mr. Armstrong makes it abundantly clear, can’t stand the man. Good. No – excellent. Former kolkhoz manager as formally independent head of state that does some…stuff… is exactly what’s needed to “own the libs”.
If Russia decides to settle the Ukraine question, once and for all, I would think that there might be some planning by their intelligence community to discreetly take out the FSO Safer when the invasion starts. This would be the biggest oil spill in history and the Suez canal could be shut down for months….
Tidewater – had to look that up to see what the current position was –
https://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/FSO-SAFER-oil-spill-risk.aspx
A spill there that coincided with a crisis elsewhere would automatically be attributed to Russia whether Russia was implicated or not. Even those who regard current Western policy with regard to Russia as incorrect – there are very many such, amongst whom I count myself – would regard such a move as wrong.
The Russians had better hope, therefore, that that rotting oil storage facility near the Yemen holds up, whatever happens elsewhere.
But are we not ignoring the basics anyway? All this Defender Europe 21 nonsense, with us in the UK joining in the fun by sending HMS Tethered Goat to the Baltic, and now sending an aircraft carrier to China is just that, nonsense. If the Russians found themselves seriously threatened the mere turn of a gas tap would wreck Europe. If the Chinese, then merely ceasing to load the westbound containers would wreck most Western economies.
What I believe we in the West are doing is not what it says on the tin. We are not preparing for serious military action against Russia, nor expecting it the other way. We are using our currently superior economic weight to spend more on defence than they can, or than is healthy for their economy. That, and the usual destabilising attempts, is what we are hoping will bring them down.
Dumb, of course. Also repulsive. But can we point to any aspect of the foreign policies of the Western countries that is not at once dumb and repulsive?
Unable to correct. HMS Tethered Goat was of course sent to the Black Sea.
What about Iran?
I guess I will answer my own question. I doubt that the FSO Safer will make it into the New Year. Hutchison Ports (HPH) and its Saudi counterparts at Jazan (JCPDI) are already preparing for a spill. I assume this means getting sweeps, booms, sorbents, chemicals, and skimmers ready for the shut- down.
But FSO Safer will most certainly not survive an Israeli attack on Iran. Which could come in the spring.
And by the way, the Ukraine Question and the Iran Question are as closely related to one another as the Fashoda incident was to the First Moroccan Crisis or even to the later Panther incident…
Apologies, Tidewater. I wasn’t sure what the question meant. But your further comment explains.
Also had to look up that last since I know it as the Agadir crisis.
So happens I’m also looking at the run-up to August 1914.
This is being fueled to avoid, or at least delay, the replenishment of the NSII.
Thus, Belarus and Russia have nothing to do with the packing of migrants.
We all know who manage the waves of refugees.
belarus has a visa free agreement with almost all the ME countries refugees come from. Migrant mafias there could be moving the migrants in mass where the agents in the West who are creating the energy crisis demand…
English Outsider,
I am very glad you took notice of this and made some mention because it is very big news. Thank you.
Funny about that! If you take a closer look at it. It’s the same old Gunboat Diplomacy, innit it? And what about colonialism! Except that this time around the gentiles are fighting for the colonial state of the Jews! What a joke. Who would have thunk? (Will the California independent Republics now register their teenage girls for the mandated draft? Including their Iranian girls? Or, for that matter, come to think of it, will the Jews? Just a little slip up Over There and the girls who wear Prada are on a nonstop Uptown for a rendevous with the bus that will take them out to Fort Dix to meet Staff Sergeant ‘Sister Snap- Em’ O’Leary.
Just thinking about it. New thought. Closer from Ukraine to Iran than from Fashoda to Agadir, it turns out! Therefore: I have a college paper! (Interior monologue. I coulda’ gone to Yale and worked on the Yale Record undergrad and joined Mother DEKE (Phi) and then after suitable grad work devoted myself to the Boswell papers! Gotten my pink oxford button-down shirts and light tweeds from J. Press, too, though Chipp, unexpectedly small and one flight up, in the City, was still just as good, maybe better. Fuck Hemingway. John O’Hara was right! I wanted to be an Ivy League guy and I wasn’t. Then the man in the Gray Flannel suit (Sloan Wilson) ended up in a marina on a forty-footer on the other side of the Northern Neck. Cool! I was a BN myself. I wish I had gone over and gotten his autograph. I still remember the ‘fear’ he talked about before the Harvard game. I felt that going over the bridge before the Woodbury game. God, the dreams I had of a life in the City.)
Now. Where was I? Oh yes. We will most likely see the most ethnic cleansing in recent human history this winter. There could easily be a million or two dead in Afghanistan and in Tigray and Ethiopia, in the Horn of Africa. We are looking at a great disaster. And what happens in East Africa and the Gulf no longer stays there. Nota bene!
And I feel shame!
We are looking at a sea change in our history and foreign policy. It is fucking unbelievable. I never thought the Berlin Wall would fall. This is the same thing.
(Interior monologue. Yeah, I have started drinking again. WSJ wine club just came in. They know what they are doing. Really noticeable. I recommend.)
EO–thanks again. Cheers.
Yes. Crazy time. Has been for a while. Some slight chance that it might have been got under control when the Americans, ever optimists, elected an off the wall New York property tycoon as President. That chance got slimmer as time went on and has now gone.
Looking around that pre-1914 period got me to this –
https://youtu.be/hMKqPgWJYr8
A long watch. I found it worthwhile because the speakers aren’t just grubbing around archives. The brief comments they make, almost just in passing, show they’re asking how it all happened. The most significant passing comment was short – “Butterfly”. And that said it all.
In a chaotic or complex system small incidents can have catastrophic effects. That butterfly flapping its wings in Peru can start off a chain of events that might, or might not, lead to a typhoon in China. A chauffeur taking a wrong turning in Sarajevo can lead to the devastation of a continent. Random events, that’s all. Our site host, Colonel Lang, summed it up a while back. History is just stuff that happens.
Of course the butterfly can’t do it all by itself There are huge forces waiting to be released and it just so happens that that tiny disturbance that it causes are the key to that release.
The statesmen and diplomats of that period thought they had the huge forces under control. That’s what comes through from the video. They didn’t. Today the politicians and their sidekicks think – if they think at all and it isn’t just emergent behaviour – that they can calibrate the pressure applied and control it. They can’t.
So we live in a time when our future is down to blind chance. Some random incident might kick mayhem off. It might not. None can predict.
In the meantime devastation, in total now exceeding the devastation even of WWI has become routine. We blockade Hodeidah, thousands starve, the British ambassador to the UN blocks debate because “British interests”, and none turn a hair. We devise “sanctions architecture”, more thousands die, and all is regarded as normal.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1191808201177604096
So on throughout the world. For countless millions in various parts of the world the typhoon has already struck. It might strike here in the West. It might not. History is just stuff that happens and it’s blind chance what sort of history is going to happen to us.