Let's Try Q & A And Whatever Else Sticky Post

Here is the post which I will try to keep sticky for people to ask questions and share their thoughts which are not on topic. This, I think is known as Open Thread. Fire away.

Some Hint For Larry Wilkerson (And His Partners in Video).

Colonel Larry Wilkerson, speaking to a couple of people on the video-conference in April this year--around the time regime in Kiev decided to play games grown-ups play--and Wilkerson, who is a  D.C. insider didn't mince words about real situation. Watch, and listen, what he says between 7:00 and 16:00 in the interview and mind you, the guy was Chief of Staff of then Secretary of the State Colin Powell. 

He doesn't really say anything new for anyone who read me (this blog and books) for the last 7 years, but he reiterates one point which I try to stress non-stop for many years and this is, as Larry says, verbatim: "we don't know anything about that." That being, of course, a real war. Then he proceeds with his (or article he read) estimate on the number of casualties the United States will sustain in case of the war with someone like Russia or China and the reaction of Larry's partners speaks volumes. Wilkerson's number is at 40,000 in the first week. Compare this to Douglas Macgregor's estimate of the US casualties, say in war in Europe, which he puts around 300,000+ in total, with 110,000 of them KIAs in the first 110 days in WW I. 

Many forget that Vietnam, for all of its turmoil, was a protracted, 10-year long, war in which US casualties were accumulating over significant periods of time--many months and years. Wilkerson is correct asking what I call a Zumwalt question--what would D.C. do, how will it react, when it will be getting that kind of numbers killed and wounded, not to mention losses in high value and prestigious assets, such as combat aircraft, let alone combat ships, not to speak of aircraft carriers. Is the United States ready to take this in? Absolutely not, this is not even a theorem, it is an axiom. Wilkerson's story about Obama asking both Powell and Wilkerson during the meeting in the White House on how to get out of this Washington's "bias toward war" is remarkable in a sense that it shows a complete helplessness, in Obama case aggravated by Obama's overall mediocrity (not that anyone before him or after are better) and lack of principles, of the US political "elite" to do anything, even if to imagine that they want to do so, about not fighting wars. 

The system is wound this way, you cannot do anything about it unless you change the system on a fundamental level or provide a massive shock to it. If not, you will continue to get people like Lindsey Graham dominating a political discourse and driving country into the ground, granted very little is left of it. 

But then again, what "democracy"? Who buys this shit anymore? The United States has just elected and sworn to the highest office the guy who barely remembers his name and who has to be pumped with a cocktail of drugs to keep him focused for a few minutes. What do you expect from all that? I largely sat out this whole Afghanistan debacle because I don't kick those who are already on the floor, but political consequences of what we all observed in the last couple of months, from abandoning Bagram to a clusterfuck in Kabul with images which make Saigon imagery pale in comparison, did not even start to arrive in earnest, this all is still ahead of us and, boy, I can tell you--we are in for a ride which this country never experienced before. Remarkably, Biden's (or whoever makes decision for him) decision to escape Afghanistan was strategically correct, it was executed piss poor, but no matter the imagery from Kabul, any withdrawal, even more-or-less orderly one, would have been a declaration of a departure of the United States from its largely self-proclaimed status of hegemon. These are obvious conclusions anyone with IQ slightly higher than room temperature could have arrived to. But the main reason I started to write today, is the fact that I stumbled on this lecture on Mahan and I was perfectly OK with changing my perspective on Mahan from this professor of strategy in Naval War College until, in his Q&A, he gets to what he says on 1:19:00. 

And he gets into this trope about America being "still the biggest economic power in the world." I turned this off. This is the guy who teaches strategy, alright, but he still waxes "service industry" and the myth of Chinese "stealing" shit because "we are so open". Surely, Chinese do steal shit, as does anyone else--it is called an industrial espionage, but did this John Kuehn guy ever heard about House Resolution #4444, or NAFTA, or any other legislative of fiscal instrument developed for the transfer of the US real economy, especially manufacturing, abroad? I understand the United States lies, many countries do, but it is one thing to BS the world for the sake of PR, nowadays met with sarcastic humiliating smiles, but to continue to lie to oneself--when was the last time this "strategy" Doctor Kuehn open economic statistics, ANY economic statistics? 

Now you see my point, lie and BSing permeates America's political discourse, media and academe. John Kuhn is a former naval aviator and I am damn sure that Boyd's fundamentals of OODA Loop are well known to him, but if this former naval officer convinces himself at the point of the first "O" (Observe) that some redundant, if not harmful, US "service industries", such as a financial one, count for anything towards China producing almost 15 times more steel than the United States (Russia produces almost the same amount as the US) or Chinese shipbuilding industry dwarfing that of the US. Or Chinese car-making, or pretty much anything, with the exception of commercial aerospace, but Russia is helping China on this one.  So, a good start for the United States in terms of beating this bias toward war is to stop lying to themselves. Especially so on the level of an elite officer graduate and post graduate school such as Naval War College. In the end, Kuhn himself can follow Mahan's wise advice and admit that the nation should have a naval force commensurate with its economic capability and there is a reason the United States is de facto a bankrupt nation--it continues to maintain a military force and, especially the Navy, which it simply cannot afford. Not even close. 

And then, of course, there is this teeny-weeny issue of revolution in military affairs and the fact that you cannot apply strategic naval wisdom of the 19th century, no matter how tantalizing this may feel, to technological and operational realities of the 21st one. You just cannot, because neither Mahan, not Corbett, nor Fischer could have foresaw fleets engagement envelopes measured in many thousand kilometers, space travel, hyper-sonic weapons, computers and ISR which would make Arleigh Burke and Chester Nimitz teary. Stop lying to yourself and face the facts that the United States failed as a military power, and it will be a real tragedy if it fails as a political entity, which either will slide toward a third-worlddom, a process which was underway for quite some time now, or will disintegrate completely. How about people of South Carolina vote this neocon SOB Lindsey Graham out of the office? I am sure people of South Carolina are smarter than Arizona voters who kept in office late war criminal and supporter of Islamic terrorists John McCain. Hey, one has to start somewhere, right? 

Screw Politics. ABBA is forever.

Just to relive one more time this magic that ABBA is and always will be. It is 2021 and ABBA couldn't have come at a better time with their new music.  

Son of a bitch, I almost got emotional)))
 

We were in many respects a lucky generation which had THIS. 

UPDATE: just wanted to add how even this joyous occasion is always poisoned by ideological warriors and other internet trash lying though their teeth. Encountered couple of comments from allegedly "Soviet" people (those are now buried in thousands of enthusiastic and emotional comments--but if you want I am sure you can find them). In one of them some SOB, obviously from a cesspool of internet warriors stated: aw, my aunt was a cab driver in Moscow and then one foreigner gave her a cassette and that is how we learn about ABBA. You can immediately pinpoint a provocateur and an ass-hole, because Soviet TV and vinyl market of 1970s and 1980s were dominated by ABBA. ABBA was everywhere, literally. Soviet main record producer Melodia was printing ABBA's LPs like there was no tomorrow. You still can find those on internet. 

Or this: 

Or this:

USSR printed a WHOLE ABBA's catalogue, and then some in 1970s and 1980s, and I am still puzzled with why somebody needs to come up with a BS story, what's the purpose?

You All Know What It Means.

 Just in: 

The city of San Francisco will launch a bold initiative to curb gun violence: paying “high risk” individuals to put the guns down and become more productive members of society. San Francisco will launch the ‘Dream Keeper Fellowship’ as a pilot program in October, the San Francisco Examiner reported on Tuesday. Behind the whimsical name, the idea is simple: people “who authorities believe are most at risk of shooting someone” will be offered $300 per month to meet with “life coaches” instead, and to talk other “high risk” individuals out of committing gun crimes.This monthly stipend increases to $500 as these individuals complete tasks, like meeting with mentors and applying for jobs.

What can I say. 

Lavrov said it already and you all know what he said at this moment.

Read My Lips...

Not in terms of taxes, as George H.W. Bush said, making this phrase famous, or a meme, if one wishes, but in terms of Russia NOT GOING back to Europe. So, read my lips: majority of Russians have a profound sense of contempt for modern Europe and Russia's future is in Eurasia, not in Europe. The reason I post this because of a funny exchange between Chris Chuba and the guest under the handle Milly, who discuss Milly's statement:

There was no liberation of Europe or anything else by the Red Army! You, as a Russian are only entitled to believe that the Red Army liberated USSR. As soon as it passed the western border it became an occupier. Reason for that is simple: every "liberated" country and people would have preferred German occupation even under Nazis rather then occupation by the soviet communists or any Russian (communist or not) occupation, for that matter. Don't you see how unwelcome the Russians are today for ALL Europeans including one or two orthodox peoples who were somewhat inclined to look upon Russia as a friendly country until having been screwed up by "new Russia" acting cloak and dagger on behalf of the "partners", like the Serbs for example. Therefore, for Russia: no more "partners", no more friends, no future looking towards Europe and that is a truly terrible proposition for all Russian industrial, financial and political oligarchy. In other words: Europe and Russia are two totally different worlds whether you like it or not.

Milly, whoever he(she) is, obviously failed to read this blog and keep abreast with the events of the last 8 years or so. Not only I constantly stress the fact that modern Europe and Russia "are totally different worlds", but I am on record for years calling for erection of the new Iron Curtain by Russia and detaching Russia from Europe in the most dramatic way, bar some basic economic ties which are mutually expedient, for now. There could be no normal relation between Russia and Europe as a whole and Eastern Europe in particular. I agree with Milly, Europe is an enemy of Russia and latest moves by Russia testify to this fact--from Russia declaring in her new Constitution a primacy of Russia's laws over any supranational, primarily conceived in EU, laws, such as European Human Rights Court, to shutting down, finally, a bunch of NGOs which, despite declarations, have nothing to do with "democracy" and "human rights". 

Apart from some economic ties, the main task for Russia in new geopolitical paradigm is to be an arc for those Europeans who are still sane and cannot live anymore in the multicultural totalitarian cloaca Europe increasingly becomes. Here is the second reading of my lips: never again Russian soldier's foot will step on European soil--keep the Iron Curtain and let Europeans face whatever they cooked for themselves--it was their choice.  I am sure Arabs and Africans have own ideas on the fate of Europe. So, if tomorrow Europe will start wearing burkas--Russia has no business in all that. If new European idea of marching to the East rises again, Russia simply has to wipe out the seats of European governments who advocate such a plan and this is easy to do. As long as EU countries pay for Russia's hydrocarbons and other products, they can do whatever they want and all become transgenders if they wish. Europe cannot be saved and Russia and Russians have a very clear understanding of this fact. If there is a hint which cannot get any clearer that Russia wrapped it up with Europe, this is Shoigu's plan for new Russia's Siberian industrial clusters:

"We need to build at least three, but preferably five, large centers of scientific, industrial and economic activity in Siberia," he said. "In other words, they should be cities with a population of 300-500,000 or, better – up to a million people. And we shouldn't only build a city and move the capital here, but make each [new city] specifically aimed at one or another sphere of activity."

This is Shoigu's not only the actual plan--obviously approved at the very political top of Russia--but Shoigu's path to Russia's presidency. Shoigu is the guy who gets things done. This major undertaking in Siberia:

Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov said that the initiative proposed by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to build new cities in Siberia is very important. “Of course, the development of the country requires the emergence of new centers, new cities,” – said Peskov, adding that the development of existing cities is also a constant priority for the country’s leadership.

You see, Europeans still don't get it that they are not that important to Russia anymore and they still love to delude themselves with their self-importance, while in reality, bar few Russian Nouveau riche and tourists, there is very little value in Europe for Russia. Just to give you some idea, why should Russians go to France's Nice or Spain, when the string of resort cities on Russia's Black Sea coast--even considering ever expensive Sochi--goes through transformations like that. Here is old Russian resort city of Gelendzhik (I, actually, have few friends who live there), and this is just one of many such cities. 

You see, no crime, no African and Arab immigrants and boat people harassing everyone, clean, affordable. Massive highways are being built as I type it. My only regret is that we didn't buy a condo in Gelendzhik when they were more affordable. So, for Europeans it is a high time to wake up and get a bit of self-awareness and take a look around and recognize the reason why Russia is gone, gone, gone and thank God for that.

She Is Not Supposed To Be Around Children, Period!

Good that parents reacted. This is not to speak of the fact that she does look and behaves bat-shit crazy. There are many people like her around US schools who damage children instead of teaching them basic civics and how to be good citizens, which is a good start on the road to become educated--a function at which US public school system fails miserably, because teaching serious math, physics and chemistry requires serious skills. Unlike it is the case with Critical Race Theory, Third Wave Feminism and LGBTQ "values"--that "education" requires zero talent and knowledge. 

I am afraid though that the poison has spread in the organism of American statehood and some even see privatization of schools as the only way out.

It is simple. Privatize the schools, all of them. Then, each side can be accommodated. Will this stop all of the infighting? No. Both sides will still want to impose their desiderata on the other. But at least it will reduce tensions. No man of good will can want a civil war to take place in this country and that is where we might be headed if tensions are not reduced. It is the same with regard to divisive educational issues of lesser import: Should children all wear school uniforms? Should they be required to partake of the Pledge of Allegiance; sing the Star Spangled Banner? At what age should sports teams be inaugurated? Should sororities and fraternities be welcomed in high schools? There are not totally unreasonable arguments on both sides of all these and other such issues. The only way everyone can be accommodated is with an all-private school system.

I cannot say that I completely disagree with this point of view.  Something should be done and US public education system is utterly corrupt top bottom, and it is not just public K-12 education. American higher education, it's "humanities" programs especially, is an exhibit A of an educational schizophrenia fluctuating between equally extreme concepts of "liberal left" (which is not really left) and laissez-faire fundamentalism. The system is imploding. We can only speculate about the number of teachers and professors with obvious mental issues populating today what used to be a respectable public education system. Not any more.

What a Coincidence.

As I repeat ad nauseam--the root of the mythology of modern combined West is in WW II, where it was effectively saved from itself by primarily Red Army, and this fact completely messes up this whole idea of the United States exceptional "liberation" of Europe from the evils of Nazism, a strictly European invention, by those Stalin's dirty Asiatic hordes. Like in 1814 with Russian Army triumphantly entering Paris, Red Flag over Reichstag in May of 1945 doesn't allow many in the West to sleep and face the reality of the XX century, in which the West decided to commit a suicide. Removal of those Soviet/Russian "hordes" and those who led them in liberation of the death camps and Europe from the history, or re-framing their role in this process of liberation, is a task which Western historiography and propaganda machine got engaged with immediately after the WW II. This revisionism is vital for the existence of  Pax Americana, because modern world of ours was born in the crucible of WW II in which America was a second, however important, fiddle in ridding world of Nazism. 

There are several ways of how Western revisionists--a euphemism for barely literate people with agenda (a defining characteristic of Russia Study field in the West)--do their job.

1. They completely exonerate Nazi Germany and Axis from its crimes (e.g. visit Unz Review and see one of a highest concentrations of crypto-nazis dominating discussion boards there), often it goes hand-in-hand with Holocaust issue and total ignoring of Axis being responsible for 27 million lives of Soviet citizens and millions upon millions of other lives. These are the most insane and illiterate people and they are incapable of tracing basic causalities. 

2. They equate the responsibility of Nazi Germany with that of the USSR for unleashing the WW II. This cohort, including "professional historians" has a lot in common with those mentioned in p. 1. They also are on the position of stressing that even if Nazis were guilty, Stalin's USSR was so horrible and so Mordor that "hell with them, they had it coming". These people also are not strong in history, nor do they have a military background which would allow them to grasp technical, operational, strategic and economic realities of WW II, and as in p.1 in circle they place guilt on Stalin and Soviet Union.

3. Russian "voices" such as Rezun, Solzhenitsyn, adjacent to them Western voices, such as "mass rape specialist" (a euphemism for falsifier) Antony Beavor, other "Russian" dissidents who have an army of followers in the West, despite their sophomoric writing and open falsification of the history and who go for the jugular and deny Soviet/Russian people any agency and ability to distinguish right from wrong, which is wholesale attributed to "communist" ideology and Stalin is singled out as a main culprit. 

4. Pursuers of "Jewish-centric" version of Russian history, in which Russian October 1917 Revolution was a Jewish conspiracy and because of that Russians, as in p.2 "had it coming" and too bad Nazis didn't wipe Russians out.

All this is a result of a combination of factors of both very low and constantly declining intellectual level of Western societies in general, and of ideological imperatives of a Cold War which disregards actual, still available but shrinking, scholarship in favor of pure propaganda. Plus, of course, a visceral hatred of Western "elites" of Russians as an obstacle to West's delusional dreams of domination. This is a very brief review of this phenomenon and I dedicated two thirds of my first book to this issue. 

But evidently, there are still some people out there who are bothered by a murky stream of a grotesque pseudo-history in the United States and who cannot keep silent anymore. Ian Dowbiggin makes a review of yet another pseudo-historical excrement which passes in the United States for scholarship.

Rewriting History for the New Cold War. A Bard College professor has produced a sweeping, revisionist history of the Second World War that places the blame at Russia's doorstep.

Read the whole article, and pay attention to Unz "team" immediately appearing there to defend the book being reviewed and Dowbiggin arrives to a conclusion which for my readers shouldn't be a secret for many years:

Stalin’s War fits comfortably into a world where it is now fashionable to hate Russia. Earlier this summer, Nick Carter, Britain’s top military commander, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that Putin’s Russia was “an acute threat” to European peace. The CBC’s coverage of Carter’s comment was the latest in a series of media stories in recent years about Putin’s foreign policy, his clampdown on dissent in Russia, and his alleged “meddling” in the domestic affairs of other countries. Last March, President Joe Biden even called Putin a “killer.” The twist on anti-Russianism today is that, unlike during the anti-communist years of the 1950s, it’s now the Soros-backed progressive left that demonizes Moscow.

Russians are keenly aware of that and here is a coincidence. Sergei Lavrov, speaking to veterans of Great Patriotic War in Volgograd (Stalingrad) today stated:

ВОЛГОГРАД, 30 августа. /ТАСС/. Попытки выставить Иосифа Сталина главным злодеем его эпохи являются частью атаки на отечественное прошлое, на итоги Второй мировой войны. Об этом заявил в понедельник министр иностранных дел России Сергей Лавров на встрече с ветеранами Великой Отечественной войны в Волгограде. Он подчеркнул, что осуществляемые извне нападки на историческое прошлое России нацелены не только на то, чтобы переписать историю, но и политически ослабить РФ. "[Вы упомянули] Иосифа Сталина, который <...> всеми процессами должен был руководить. Я абсолютно согласен с тем, что историю нельзя трогать. Кстати, нападки на Сталина как на главного злодея, сваливание в одну кучу всего, что он сделал в довоенное время, во время, после войны - это ведь тоже часть той самой атаки на наше прошлое, на итоги Второй мировой войны", - сказал министр.

Translation: VOLGOGRAD, August 30. / TASS /. Attempts to portray Joseph Stalin as the main villain of his era are part of an attack on our country's past, on the results of World War II. This was stated on Monday by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a meeting with veterans of the Great Patriotic War in Volgograd. He stressed that outside attacks on Russia's historical past are aimed not only at rewriting history, but also politically weakening the Russian Federation. "[You mentioned] Joseph Stalin, who <...> was supposed to lead all the processes. I absolutely agree that history should not be touched. By the way, attacks on Stalin as the main villain, lumping together everything he did in the pre-war period, during, after the war - this is also part of that very attack on our past, on the results of World War II, "the minister said.

Lavrov's statement is not going to change anything in the West, least of all in the United States which as a society has no concept of a war as such nor is capable to think outside America-centric world, including its elites and most of "scholarship". This gap is unbridgeable and it will continue to grow. I guess the West needs new Solzhenitsyn, which is not easy to find in times of internet and social networks. Lavrov's statement is for Russians primarily, new generation, that is, which increasingly wants and demands to see the history of their country as a continuous process in which Soviet period, with all of its failures and achievements, is just another step in Russia achieving her greatness. Plus, can we cut the crap? Few westerners have any idea what Soviet period was and how it played out in the past and plays out in present day Russia. They just don't get it. They will not get it. But even registered foreign agent Levada Center and a cloaca of The Moscow Times cannot hide the fact:

A record 70 percent of Russians approve of Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s role in Russian history, according to a poll published by the independent Levada Center pollster on Tuesday. Stalin’s image has been gradually rehabilitated in the 2000s from that of a bloody autocrat to an “outstanding leader.” President Vladimir Putin has revived the Soviet anthem, Soviet-style military parades and a Soviet-era medal for labor during his presidency.

Why this happens is beyond the grasp of people described above in this post (pp. 1-4), as per "Western history", I am on record--the whole clusterfuck which modern West is today is a direct result of a complete lack of self-awareness and of operational knowledge of the outside world across the whole spectrum of activity from economics, warfare, politics, culture and history. With "historians" like Sean McMeekien West as we know it doesn't have much time left anyway.