FAKE NEWS. Hackers or leakers (“We are Anonymous”) have released documents (1, 2, 3, 4) showing that a lot of “trusted news sources” are actually outlets for London-directed propaganda. All under sanctimonious claims of “democracy-promotion” or countering “disinformation”. (Apparently, “disinformation” is most dangerous when it’s true: “Another barrier to combating disinformation is the fact that certain Kremlin-backed narratives are factually true…”). Credit to Max Blumenthal (“…revealing Reuters and the BBC as apparent intelligence cut-outs feasting at the trough of a British national security state…”), Kit Klarenberg (“Thomson Reuters Foundation… has engaged in information warfare initiatives on behalf of Whitehall.”), Neil Clark (“The double standards are off the scale.”) and the hackers/leakers themselves for telling you what the corrupt “trusted sources” never will. Summary by Andrew Korybko. It’s an information war against Russia and I remind you of two good rules. First: when NATO accuses Russia of doing something, it is an admission that NATO is already doing it; it’s all projection. Second: pretend you’re a Soviet citizen reading Pravda when you read Western “news” media.
DISILLUSION. Read this (translation) (original). The author is one of the most liberal people in Russia. He’s had it with Europe – a “New Ethical Reich”; “You just need to unhook this carriage, cross yourself and start building your own world.” Published in Russia’s most liberal paper and causing quite a stir.
MULTI-ETHNIC. Putin (search on Neanderthal nationalism) stresses that the slogan “Russia only for [ethnic] Russians” (Россия только для русских) is bad for the country, for [ethnic] Russians and ahistorical. He is correct – Russia has always had different peoples and religions. This is the reason for the choice of the four “recognised religions”: there have always been Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Jews and Buddhists in “the Russian lands”. It’s also why there are two words for “Russian” – one meaning ethnic, the other political. I would also observe that, in contrast with North America, the native peoples of the Russian Federation still live where they have always lived.
NAVALNIY. No longer “prisoner of conscience” to Amnesty International. They noticed cockroaches.
SOCIAL MEDIA. Levada poll shows its importance. Online sources (combining social media and internet news) now beat TV for news. Worth noting that FB and Twitter score low. VK is number one.
CONSISTENT. Putin’s views on the Soviet experiment haven’t changed: a Bolshevik “time bomb” (1991). “Road to a blind alley” (1999). 2016. McFaul is equally consistent.
ARCTIC OCEAN IS A RUSSIAN LAKE. More evidence.
NORILSK NIKEL. A diesel spill last year resulted in a two billion USD fine; a building has just collapsed. Potanin, the owner, admits responsibility. Potanin was one of the seven men who, according to Berezovskiy, owned Russia in the 1990s. He took Putin’s warning to heart and concentrated on business.
RUSSIA-IRAN. Another naval exercise in the Indian Ocean. (Video)
WESTERN VALUES™. Insulting war veterans: in the UK bad; in Russia OK.
I WAS WRONG calling NATO a paper tiger – it’s a paper pussycat dreaming it’s a tiger. Very dangerous; take the UK for example: one the one hand, it cuts troops and on the other it funds war propaganda. This will not have a good ending.
DEFENDER OF THE FATHERLAND DAY. From one of the greatest generals ever: “Fight the enemy with the weapons he lacks.” Russia has air defence, hypersonic missiles and EW; NATO hasn’t.
GPS. Has Russia figured out how to spoof GPS? In which case, the war will be over before it begins. Russia has its own system and I’ll bet it’s EW-hard. China has its own system too.
AMERICA’S BACK. Back in Afghanistan; back in Germany; back in Iraq, back in Syria, back to Trump is a Russian agent. Back to Assad must go. And she’s back. Back.
FLAT LEARNING CURVE. A great takedown of the Baker’s husband’s appeal to repeat past failures: “Robert Kagan Diagnosed America’s Biggest Problem: Americans Who Don’t Want To Run the World“.
THE DEATH OF IRONY. NATO GenSek: “China and Russia are at the forefront of an authoritarian pushback against rules-based international order.” To which I answer: Libya.
SOUTH. Trouble brewing in Georgia and Armenia. Neither very prosperous or stable and that not helped by US/NATO destabilising.
UKRAINE. The only thing he’s missed in the unfolding Ukraine disaster is the possibility of a major nuclear power station accident.
© Patrick Armstrong Analysis, Canada Russia Observer
IMHO the 60 Minutes story was timed to manufacture consent for continuation or escalation of the war on Syria.
The Youtube channel The Kremlin Stories, on Putin´s significant whereabouts has been suspended….
You just achieve a blanc page of Youtube…
IMO this is an escalation…
There is turmoil in Armenia, with now not only the whole joints, but also high ranking police calling for Pashynian to resign…
Donde las dan, las toman, que decimos por aquí….
I read Pashynian Twitter account is claiming he has Putin´s support, whilethis does not seem to be true, since there has not been any statement by the Kremlin, except for to say “it is an internal Armenian issue”..
What do you think it could happen, Patrick and turcopoles?
I do not trust Pashynian at all, find him treacherous, and find it difficult for him to resist with all law enforcement plus military against…There has been a tiny rally in a square in Yerevan of Pashynian followers called by him…
@Pat Armstrong I agree with the main thrust of your article, however this below sugar coats reality. Ethnic cleansing and forced relocations leading to large numbers of deaths have been part of Russian history as you would also know, I’m sure, and not just in the Stalinist period:
I would also observe that, in contrast with North America, the native peoples of the Russian Federation still live where they have always lived.
I thought I would get a reaction on this. But it’s true — Kalmyks live in Kalmykia, Chechens in Chechnya, Buryats in Buryatia, and many more examples. In NA, Micmacs, Hurons, Sioux have more or less disappeared or live in miserable fractions of their territories. Some of this is a result of the diseases unwittingly brought by Europeans (did they kill 90% or 95%? I recommend the book 1491)), but a lot of it is due to the attitudes of the British (get these savages off our land) and Spanish (enslave them) conquerors. IMO the French had somewhat the same approach as the Russians.
That being said, the Russians conquered the Caucasus in a long and bloody war and Central Asia ditto. (Although the move into Siberia was more peaceful — a surprising number of Russians learned to speak Buryat, for example.) Russians have a hard time admitting this.
And the CPSU moved a lot of people around with considerable indifference to their mortality.
But, the fact still remains that, after everything, “the native peoples of the Russian Federation still live where they have always lived” is a generally true statement.
Except, of course, for the Tivan living in the MoD HQ.
What many westerners don’t realise is that when Tsarist Russia conquered the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan and Siber, it incorporated their leading families into the Moscow elite. In the area of the former Siber Khanate, Russians and Tatars have been intermarrying for 500 years.
The phrase “scratch a Russian, find a Tatar” has real meaning here, as does the corollary, “scratch a Tatar, find a Russian”.
I find that Russians (in both meanings of the word), judge a man by the colour of his heart, not his skin.
I’ve always liked the three generals at Borodino — a Turk, Frenchified Scot and a Georgian all fighting for Mother Russia.
A bit like England when it took over Scotland and, to a much lessor extent, Ireland.
Mind you, some up over the border believe that they are still England’s colony.
Re: Robert Kagan in Foreign Policy:
“Americans have never been isolationists. ” For the love of……
“That Americans refer to the relatively low-cost military involvements in Afghanistan and Iraq….” It cost Kagan zero blood and made him an imense amount of money.
“By the early twentieth century, the United States had become the richest and potentially most powerful country in the world, but one without commitments or responsibilities.”
For the love of…..! Fear not though, becuause, yes, it gets worse.
“The time has come to tell Americans that there is no escape from global responsibility, that they have to think beyond the protection of the homeland.”
Please God save us from these psuedo elite intellectuals.
Neanderthal Nationalism, that’s really a thing. I don’t know if they’re serious or just joking around. My younger son did the Geico dancing caveman web campaign. It was so successful, it crossed over to a TV campaign.
Good to see Putin embracing the multi-culti nature of Russia. It’s always been that way and will only become more diverse as time goes by. We should watch Putin’s efforts to further forge the Russian identity across all Russian peoples closely and take notes.
As an anthropology student, I concentrated on circumpolar peoples. I was impressed how peoples such as the Yakuts, Nenets and others retained much of their culture and nomadic lifestyle through Soviet times. I figured it was because these native peoples exhibited a kind of communal lifestyle that fit into the Soviet idea of the new communist man. It wasn’t always that way. In the 18th century Moscow tried to erase several of these cultures. Lucky for the natives, they proved a tough egg to crack. One of the military leaders the Czarina send to destroy the native literally lost his head in the attempt. Christianity didn’t do these people any favors, either. I guess the native religions didn’t threaten Communism as much as they threatened Christianity.
I came to much this opinion listening, years ago, to a Buryat singer in Buryatia and talking with a Buryat shaman (https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2018/12/13/buryatia/). However much BS there was to Catlin’s formulate “nationalist in form, socialist content” something real was preserved for the future. And, as to religion, I am intrigued that, after all these years, Orthodoxy still has an existence in Alaska. Quite different from the experience in the Americas. (But never forget the tremendous destruction caused by disease — when de Soto went through the Mississippi valley in the 15s he reports lots and lots of people and towns; a hundred years later de la Salle found forest. In the Russian east the same diseases would have had their run and not have wiped out millions all at once.) PS can’t recommend this book too highly https://www.amazon.ca/1491-Americas-Columbus-Charles-Mann-ebook/dp/B00MIBKWYI/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=1491&qid=1614301816&s=digital-text&sr=1-2
Catlin???!!! Bill Gates has taken control of my keyboard — I meant Stalin
Do you ever wonder what would have happened if the “natives” of the North American continent had arrived in Europe first and brought their diseases to the European population?
Still not clear who gave syphilis to whom however. Does it count that Europe got the Black Plague from someone else, or do only American settlers have to wear an eternal hair shirt for doing what migrating groups have been doing for eons – intermingling men and microbes.
With reference to the piece on Syria linked to. I think it’s possible that we’re being prepared for further action on Syria and possibly for new atrocity stories. The BBC does not put such articles as this out at random.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-56126016
The last time I saw an article as carefully crafted as this was a while back. The BBC put out a long and ingenious explanation of the Nuland tape. By the time you’d finished reading it you could have been convinced that that Nuland conversation was innocent, praiseworthy even.
The only significance I gave it at the time was that it confirmed for me that the Nuland tape was genuine. A rebuttal like that is not put out unless there’s something to rebut. Together with other statements put out in the States on the Nuland tape at the time, I felt it was safe to believe that that tape was no fake.
But that long ago article and this article on the White Helmets gets me wondering. I don’t believe the run of the mill BBC journalist can construct something like that.
So is this planted disinformation? If so, planted by whom? We know that a great amount of money has been invested by HMG in destabilisation activities in Syria. I recollect thinking of that as the US subbing out the more squalid parts of the attempt to destabilise Syria to the Brits. I therefore believe this article on the White Helmets may also be planted disinformation rather than something the BBC happened to come up with independently.
If that is so, why plant it at this time? Does this BBC article herald considerably more active attempts by the new US administration to renew destabilisation activities in Syria?
I suspect that you have hit the nail.
In the west of Syria, ahead of the natural time for an Idlib operation by the SAA, there are persistent Russian statements that another ‘Assad gases the innocent civilians’ false flag is being prepared.
In the south and east there are continuing rumours of the US moving ISIS operatives from SDF jails down to al Tanf and releasing them at the same time as moving other ISISers from Iraw into Syria, hence the US bombing last week.
Whilst up in the NE corner of the country a new US airbase, with SHORAD already in place, is under construction.
Meanwhile the Russians have shown a red card to Israel regarding its attacks and have moved more aircraft into Hmeimen. At the same time working, slowly, on extending the runway there, on the balance of probability to allow fully loaded Tu-22M3 to be operated there. The latter having a far larger bombload than the current Su-34 based there.
Whilst in the background the Turks move forces into Syria at every available opportunity and the SDF, who were moving closer to the SAA have now, following Biden arriving with more US support, gone back to the ‘eastern Syria for the Kurds’ mantra.
All in all I don’t think a peaceful solution is on the cards.
Robert Kagan deserves to be kicked out the back end of a C-130 low level right into the wars he advocates. I’d give him 5 minutes survival time.
Well, it seems that the Fumbling Bumbling Idiots have placed Putin’s Chef catering magnate Yevgeny Prigozhin on its wanted list with a reward of up to $250 Grand for information leading to his arrest. The Fumbling Bumbling Idiots accuse Prigozhin of Conspiracy To Defraud The United States, charges Prigozhin calls a ‘witch hunt’.
Prigozhin is accused of running an influence op in the U.S. Election and Political Process.
Prigozhin says that these allegations/charges are designed to try and cover-up an American Horror Story that is the gap between the deep state and the citizenry.
Now could the real reason that the Fumbling Bumbling Idiots have charged Prigozhin have anything to do with his advancing Russia’s interests abroad and in particular Africa? How does one spell…..Hmm.
Note: INTERPOL had already cancelled their Red Notice on Prigozhin. INTERPOL had determined that the case against him was of a political nature, not a criminal one.
The Fumbling Bumbling Idiots also consider Prigozhin a ‘flight risk’. Now isn’t that a hoot?
Who’s running Counter Intelligence?
Wanted Poster on Prigozhin:
https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/counterintelligence/yevgeniy-viktorovich-prigozhin
Prigozhin’s rebuttal:
https://t.me/Prigozhin_hat/585
DoD announces that they’re throwing more money down a forever sank-hole that is the Ukraine experiment:
https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/2519445/defense-department-announces-125m-for-ukraine/
Biden preparing to launch series of ‘clandestine’ cyberattacks against Russia – NYT
https://www.rt.com/usa/517481-cyber-attack-biden-russia-solarwinds/
Gee, what could go wrong with that?
Do you smell the melting of plastic? Nobody would dare retaliate against Biden’s cyber threats, now would they? Hmmm.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ovh-data-center-fire-darkens-thousands-of-sites-worldwide/398485/#close
Do you hear the squeaking of the door hinges? Appears that Biden has gone back into his dark cavern. One has to wonder which bat-suit he’ll put on next.