Today Is The Anniversary ...

 ... of dozen of European languages invading Russia in 1812. It was the largest army (how novel for Russians, not) in history at that time to invade Russia. Napoleon assembled all of Europe for that. Well, French excluded most of the battles from their so called "history" books (you know, frost, all those nasty Russians and Cossacks et al interfered with otherwise "brilliant" Napoleon), but reality is--it was a calamity of unimaginable scale (how traditional, eh). And it was at Borodino that Russians exorcised European spirit for pillage, theft and robbery for almost a century.   

And then, as you all know, came June 22, 1941. 

Let us imagine two men who have come out to fight a duel with rapiers according to all the rules of the art of fencing. The fencing has gone on for some time; suddenly one of the combatants, feeling himself wounded and understanding that the matter is no joke but concerns his life, throws down his rapier, and seizing the first cudgel that comes to hand begins to brandish it. Then let us imagine that the combatant who so sensibly employed the best and simplest means to attain his end was at the same time influenced by traditions of chivalry and, desiring to conceal the facts of the case, insisted that he had gained his victory with the rapier according to all the rules of art. One can imagine what confusion and obscurity would result from such an account of the duel.

The fencer who demanded a contest according to the rules of fencing was the French army; his opponent who threw away the rapier and snatched up the cudgel was the Russian people; those who try to explain the matter according to the rules of fencing are the historians who have described the event.

After the burning of Smolénsk a war began which did not follow any previous traditions of war. The burning of towns and villages, the retreats after battles, the blow dealt at Borodinó and the renewed retreat, the burning of Moscow, the capture of marauders, the seizure of transports, and the guerrilla war were all departures from the rules.

Napoleon felt this, and from the time he took up the correct fencing attitude in Moscow and instead of his opponent’s rapier saw a cudgel raised above his head, he did not cease to complain to Kutúzov and to the Emperor Alexander that the war was being carried on contrary to all the rules—as if there were any rules for killing people. In spite of the complaints of the French as to the nonobservance of the rules, in spite of the fact that to some highly placed Russians it seemed rather disgraceful to fight with a cudgel and they wanted to assume a pose en quarte or en tierce according to all the rules, and to make an adroit thrust en prime, and so on—the cudgel of the people’s war was lifted with all its menacing and majestic strength, and without consulting anyone’s tastes or rules and regardless of anything else, it rose and fell with stupid simplicity, but consistently, and belabored the French till the whole invasion had perished.

And it is well for a people who do not—as the French did in 1813—salute according to all the rules of art, and, presenting the hilt of their rapier gracefully and politely, hand it to their magnanimous conqueror, but at the moment of trial, without asking what rules others have adopted in similar cases, simply and easily pick up the first cudgel that comes to hand and strike with it till the feeling of resentment and revenge in their soul yields to a feeling of contempt and compassion.

Fucking illiterate idiots with fake credentials who teach the so called "strategy" in the US (Western in general) military academies and war colleges still cannot resign themselves to a simple truth, that forces larger than them in intellect and resources are at play here and that they have no clue about what they are dealing with. 

P.S. What's the deal with this June thing, hm? I guess they love solid roads in Russia. I always said--I don't like this whole highway system in Russia, wink, wink;) 

P.P.S. I reiterate, Tolstoy doesn't say "And it is well", he says "И Благо тому народу"--And Blessed are the people. 

Yet Again...

 ... somebody singled out those 32 minutes of hell on earth of a real war from Sergei Bondarchuk's greatest creation of War and Peace. More than two centuries passed but those morons still learned nothing. Morons being of course NATO planners. 

OK, how to put it politely--even for Waterloo they asked Bondarchuk to shoot the movie. But Waterloo was inconsequential for the faiths of Europe, except for this Swedish band which still doesn't want to leave us alone (they never will, even after 200 years), but the reality of war as hell remains and, what became clear, Western mind from Pentagon to Western media is not ready to face the reality of the real war. Russia is ready, West is not--they never learned real military history.

For Those Who Do Not Know...

 ... about opening music in my latest video--I repeat, this is a famous march (one of the best, really) called La Victoire est à Nous (Victory is ours) French Napoleonic Military March. It is from French Opera of the end of XVIII century. Here it is in full:

Here is where it is brilliantly portrayed by Sergei Bondarchuk (not his talent-less loser son Fedor) in his immortal War and Peace, Napoleon enters Moscow:

Here are French on Spasskaya Tower Military Orchestras tattoo of 2012 playing all Napoleonic marches and Russians love it...

Hey, Erika is an awesome march too, despite sounding like panzer division on offensive. But that's Germans...

For Germans it is an innocent song about girl waiting home for German soldier. The fact that it all sounds like anti-tank weapons or Blitzkrieg... well. But then, of course, Russians come in and show those wussies how it is done...

Live with this, losers...

Vyacheslav Ovchnnikov Rest In Peace, Genius.

He died 10 days ago, a genius who wrote this masterpiece to another masterpiece. The era of titans is passing... I can not watch any adaptations of War and Peace, especially by gift-less BBC. I wish Fridays were more fun. 

Pay attention to chandelier shots, then google Beauty and the Beast by Disney. 25 years later.

Ahh, The Skripal Snafu.

Even if it takes a profoundly lefty Salon to start question things and even come to this conclusion: 

It may be that the not-especially-competent May got carelessly out in front of herself as she authorized the first expulsions of Russian foreign service staff. It may be that the French, Germans and Americans lined up an extensive alliance behind the British to save the May government from self-induced embarrassment. But what followed last week suggests something else. Given the evident coordination of the rapid-fire wave of expulsions, we are left to question whether the Skripal incident was not extensively planned among the leading Western capitals as an intentional provocation. This is Moscow’s argument now, in any case.

Then something went really-really wrong. I can even say what--a loss of Western competencies across the whole spectrum of states' activities, including inability to even do a proper false flag. Not that recent West's false flags were proper--all of them, from WMD in Iraq to White Helmets' "chemical weapons" histrionics in Syria, all of them are the work of amateurs. As it is duly noted in Salon's piece:

If I read the past week correctly, we witness the start of a sustained campaign to force Russia into a condition of diplomatic isolation. This may be correctly viewed as a response to the failure of economic sanctions to cripple the Russian economy, given that Russian GDP is now once again expanding, but that is not the point. As spring turns to summer we are also to watch as NATO once again pushes the degree of tension along Russia’s frontier to a still higher degree of danger.

Are these matters a prelude to events disastrous enough to get their own chapter in the history books? Things unfold incrementally, one bit of bad news at a time, leaving us disinclined to think in these terms. We should resist this tendency. Moments such as this have turned into disasters often enough in the past.

Actually, what is highlighted in yellow IS the point. Everything what was thrown at Russia in the last 10 years by combined West not only didn't reach any desired objectives but, in fact, grossly weakened this very West. You know I like to use Tolstoy often and I'll do it again to draw warranted, in fact irresistible, parallels with the state of mind of the combined West today, which explains a lot:

"Despite news of the capture of the fleches, Napoleon saw that this was not the same, not at all the same, as what had happened in his former battles. He saw that what he was feeling was felt by all the men about him experienced in the art of war. All their faces looked dejected, and they all shunned one another's eyes only a de Beausset could fail to grasp the meaning of what was happening.

But Napoleon with his long experience of war well knew the meaning of a battle not gained by the attacking side in eight hours, after all efforts had been expended. He knew that it was a lost battle and that the least accident might now- with the fight balanced on such a strained center- destroy him and his army.

When he ran his mind over the whole of this strange Russian campaign in which not one battle had been won, and in which not a flag, or cannon, or army corps had been captured in two months, when he looked at the concealed depression on the faces around him and heard reports of the Russians still holding their ground- a terrible feeling like a nightmare took possession of him, and all the unlucky accidents that might destroy him occurred to his mind. The Russians might fall on his left wing, might break through his center, he himself might be killed by a stray cannon ball. All this was possible. In former battles he had only considered the possibilities of success, but now innumerable unlucky chances presented themselves, and he expected them all. Yes, it was like a dream in which a man fancies that a ruffian is coming to attack him, and raises his arm to strike that ruffian a terrible blow which he knows should annihilate him, but then feels that his arm drops powerless and limp like a rag, and the horror of unavoidable destruction seizes him in his helplessness"

Leo Tolstoy, War And Peace, Book 10, Chapter XXXIV.

I can only repeat Marga Simonyan's recent appeal to the West:

I’ve been telling you for a long time to find normal advisers on Russia. Sack all those parasites. ...But the only Empire, you have left, ignores history, it doesn’t teach it and refuses to learn it,  meaning that it all will end the way it always does, in such cases.