This Is ALREADY...

 ... a legend. Russian T-800 at work. 

 

Why They Are "More Adequate".

Vzglyad's observer Dmitry Bavyrin asks this question. 

Пентагон резко снизил накал страстей вокруг упавшего в Черное море беспилотника. Его шеф Ллойд Остин лично позвонил Сергею Шойгу, назвал Россию великой державой и подчеркнул важность контактов с ней. Такое легко можно было представить десять лет назад, но для нынешней политики США это нечто невообразимое. Чем Остин отличается от тех американцев, которые засели в Госдепе и Белом доме?  

Translation: The Pentagon has sharply reduced the intensity of passions around the drone that fell into the Black Sea. His boss Lloyd Austin personally called Sergei Shoigu, called Russia a great power and emphasized the importance of contacts with her. This was easy to imagine ten years ago, but for current US policy, it is something unimaginable. How is Austin different from those Americans who settled in the State Department and the White House?

I answered this question many years ago and continue to answer it ad nauseam. The answer is because the US military is the one who does dying for American political circus populated by ignoramuses, chickenhawks and cowards who never bear responsibility for their words and actions. This, plus US military deals with tangibles--personnel, hardware, technology--some of it very advanced--plus they have to rely on more realistic view of the outside world and, especially, key enemy. Such as Russia. Most American politicians, media personalities and "intellectuals" are BSers with zero applicable skills in any meaningful field of human activity. That's the answer. 

I am on record--middle to middle-high level of Pentagon people, those colonels and major generals, and rear-admirals who have to deal with resources, operational planning and warfare are the last vestiges of professional competence left in any American governmental institutions. We know that CIA is being purged of people who try to deal with facts, US military was purged and partially corrupted by neocon and woke psychopaths, but the rest of US government institutions are de facto functional failures, which cannot perform effectively functions they have been created for. Same goes for many businesses, which are nothing more than financial manipulators producing nothing. So, yes--last American professionals ARE in Pentagon.  

That also explains a desperate attempts to simulate a useful activity such as by kangaroo ICC which issued today arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin. 

THE HAGUE (AP) — The International Criminal Court said on Friday it issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes because of his alleged involvement in abductions of children from Ukraine. The court said in a statement that Putin “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”

This is a logical conclusion to the activity of utterly corrupt European "justice" and just another proof of a correct Russian strategy designed to drown Europe in its own excrement and then see what kind of regimes' changes will occur there. To explain matters in more detail, the ICC President is this guy: 

Piotr Józef Hofmański (born 6 March 1956) is a Polish jurist and judge who has served as President of the International Criminal Court (ICC) since 2021. He has been a judge of the ICC since 2015. His election into the Presidency of the ICC is for a three-year term. Prior to his tenure as a judge of the ICC, Hofmański was a legal expert and advisor at the Council of Europe.

So, make you own conclusions. 

In related news, the date of Xi's visit to Moscow was announced and it is this Monday. As was correctly stated, many things would be discussed tete-a-tete and rightly so--there is a lot to discuss in terms of the configuration of a new gigantic block emerging in Eurasia. Prepare yourself for the Western media going apoplectic. Meanwhile, the price cap is working, working... ah, wait:

Japan purchased Russian crude oil at $68.5 per barrel in February, TASS news agency reported on Thursday, citing calculations based on statistics from the Japanese Finance Ministry. The figure is above the $60 price cap that Tokyo agreed to with its Western allies, in an effort to punish Russia over the conflict in Ukraine. Last month, Japanese importers reportedly bought 232,700 barrels of oil from Russia with a total value of 2.125 billion yen ($15.945 million). The average cost of a barrel from the February batch totaled $68.52, exceeding the Western price cap for Russian oil supported by Japan.

Not to mention others buying it way above this price cap. But, as I said, it is impossible to explain to Western politicos that they are dumb, because they are dumb--Dunning-Krueger for ya. For people whose only ability is to shake the air, it is inconceivable to relate to reality.

I Didn't Want To, But I Might As Well.

Yes (sigh), Iran shooting US drone. I hate commenting on these things. Pure and simple: US wanted the response to her probing "action". Iran delivered the response. US has nothing to follow on with, honestly. What are the US options here? To launch a volley of Tomahawks and JASSMs at Iran, specifically at Bushehr, Tehran, what have you? So, some JASSMs will leak through, blow some buildings, damage some military installations, kill some Iranian military, possibly civilians? Then WHAT? I heard (do not even want to browse internet for that) the figure of 2000 sorties a day floating around supposedly required for "punishing" Iran, that is allegedly bombing her into the stone age. Good luck with that, considering the fact that Iranian Air Defense is not third-rate, at least. And then, of course, the air war against Iran will fast move into the territory the United States doesn't want it to go--attacks on US, Saudi and Israeli targets in the Middle East. Iran, unlike Iraq, has means to respond. 

Now, Pompeo's recent visit to CENTCOM in Florida was primarily to twist hands of US military which is very reluctant to get into the actual shooting war with Iran--after all, they are military professionals and they know how to calculate and what to expect. Trump doesn't want that war? Probably he doesn't, but being an utter amateur in military-political field he cornered himself by:

1. Assembling his so called national (in)security team consisting mostly of ignorant chicken-hawks and Israeli-firsters;

2. By constantly bloviating about how great personally he, Trump, and America are, capable of...exactly what?  

So, now media report that Trump pulled away from the precipice of the war on Iran in the last minute. Sure, in Trump's world it stands for statecraft. In the rest of the world it means an empty threat-mongering and chest-thumping ending, now predictably, with a whimper. Truth is, the United States doesn't have resources to attain any sensible political objective with Iran. US military knows it, again--they, unlike it is the case with Trump, Bolton or Haspel, were taught operational planning of scale. As with Venezuela, it all fast degenerated into the media circus yet again, while in the process making Trump and his Admin look like a bunch of amateurs. Oh, wait...

In the good news, if to believe "lefty" media sewer such as Daily Beast, it is now Tucker Carlson who advises Trump and Carlson's position is clear--he is in open opposition to Bolton-Pompeo gang and is decidedly anti-war figure. If true--good! I think Tucker is on several orders of magnitude more qualified to be National Security Adviser than this dangerous loser Bolton. Hey, Donald, do you hear me? Remove Bolton and offer his job to Tucker. In fact, I am sure Tucker will be good as the Secretary of the State too--way better than the grey mass of the so called American "diplomats", who are primarily Hillary's leftover bureaucrats who are incompetent. So, here it is. I hate, no really, I hate commenting on some launch sequence and firing solution in whatever Iran used (locally updated ancient Hawk missile complex?) to shoot down slow and radio-contrast target. The game is much larger than that and if Trump really wants to get his second term--he better learn how to govern really, not for the consumption of the mass media. And he better stay away from ANY military provocation against anyone. OK, done, over, let's move on.