Tom Cotton is a military hack (despite being a "hero" in Afghanistan) who doesn't have a tool kit to grasp real warfare. He is a lawyer who went through OCS and some Ranger Course--these are, at best, basic lower tactical level "boots" for people with Bachelor's Degree. Knowing that these are from the US Army, you can make your own conclusions that Cotton has zero grasp of REAL operations and is a neocon amateur whose only task will be to feed MIC and neocon crowd.
You already noticed that the festivities are over and serious issues begin to pop-up. If any of these people--Cotton, Pompeo et al--make it to new Administration, forget it--it will be a repeat of his first admin. I assess such a probability as high and the US will continue to be pushed towards ruin as an extension of Israel, with some cosmetic measures here and there, and with continuous fluffy rhetoric to anesthetize the base. That is why I enjoy the meltdown of DNC and Democratic Party as a whole, and yes--we voted for Trump, but it was in choosing the lesser evil. For now I am in a wait and see mode, or in "giving a benefit of a doubt" mode. We'll know soon enough.
... we can be thankful, because the pseudo-civilization of freaks got burned. That is positive.
In this respect, these elections have been very indicative and signaled that Americans retain, unlike their European counterparts, a degree of common sense which will be crucial for the adjustment of the United States to its new status of just another Great Power. This process is objective and does not depend on will of America's political class, but this class can make some arrangements to prevent the US from a complete collapse. Per DJT, as a NYC real estate shyster he will try to "sell" 404 to Russia in exchange for China. He will fail. But he will try. I hope Doug Macgregor gets some position in his cabinet and will explain to him what REAL war is.
... Son of a Gun did it again. Congrats to President-elect Donald J. Trump. It is a very convincing win. Now, getting buckets of pop-corn in anticipation of appointments to his cabinet. Then we'll talk. Hey, at least America will have a hot First Lady again--that's a plus. In all honesty, Melania is a class act.
I am always in awe with the US establishment newspeak when they try to turn causality upside down and break any logical connections to the events. BTW, this is how they teach military history in the US military academies.
Ah, so these are merely "attitudes", which could be "adjusted" by propaganda machine, not the real situation with the US economy which is, in reality, catastrophic. Huge part of it, of course, is pouring money and resources into the catastrophe in 404 and the US already IN the strategic defeat--a hare brained scheme by ignorant ideologues such as late Zbig and other doctrine-mongers from Washington who know about zero about Russia and warfare. Now we have this:
As you may have guessed it--these are all the hallmarks of the "great" economy. We also witness now "great" Israeli "Army" "fighting" as only they can do...
The pattern repeats itself in Donbas and Kursk Oblast against civilians, including children. Rape, beheading, public executions. Well, Washington, enjoy yourself in the mirror. These are your people, albeit in case of Israel--you are Israel's people... The West is over...
This was of course a referendum. Donbass represents a microcosm of the
solid internal cohesion of Russian citizens around the policies of Team
Putin – while at the same time sharing a feeling experienced by the
overwhelming majority of the Global South. VVP’s victory was a victory
of the Global Majority.
It was a referendum. Read the whole thing at Sputnik...
Of course, it is very pleasant for Ze and his curators such as Vikki Nuland to wet dream about this, but they still cannot wrap their brains around the fact that the balance of power in the world not just shifted, but shifted dramatically on a historic scale and the West is in a death spiral. One cannot rewrite history.
Here is an example of a brainwashed by Western "education" Russian liberal from Valdai who still believes in a BS of rewriting history. This is one of the reasons I do not communicate with RT anymore--they continue to promote obvious demagogues who cannot formulate basic fundamental things.
It doesn't matter who have what ideas, the truth is KNOWABLE and always is. For some it is God, for others it is beauty, for others it is a historic process supported by facts, numbers and fundamental laws. So, even the opinion of a whole cabal of neocons in D.C. or morons from King's College in London who pretend that they know war means nothing in the larger scheme of things--reality manifests itself always and it is a four wheel drive bitch. E.g. "degree" in political "science" or in "politics" should be considered a disqualifying factor in any public discussion on matters of serious applied geopolitics. I cannot "research" advances in DNA-based treatment of cancer because I have no fucking clue what it is and have no education in that. I may try to study it and I probably end up on the level of a second trimester of a medical school freshman, but that's about it.
How somebody who has zero background in anything, literally, other than a compilation of a facts smugly known in the West as "the range of interpretations" can offer opinions on WW II, or somebody being "military historian" without having at least introductory course in Operational Research and Operational Planning and engineering defies my understanding. Especially, against the background of SMO, which produced a deadly shock for anyone in the West with IQ higher than the room temperature. We are talking about things of a scale of discarding most, not all, humanities studies in the West as degree mills for pseudo-scientific fraud. Today, Vladimir Putin stated what many knew already.
How did this course in "politics" go, Mr. Bordachev, in Bruges? I am sure they "taught" a lot about "democracy"/s. In related news, educated people read Plato or Machiavelli on their own and can easily pass exams on demagoguery, ah... pardon me, politics. My bad.
Tawdry it is and the reason those "leaders" fail time after time is precisely because elections and PR are the only things they can do. This one was even more spot on:
Considering he all but begged for an audience in a flurry of phone
calls, Macron was received by Putin with no special honors. Comic relief
was provided by French mainstream media hysterics, “military
strategists” included, evoking the “French castle” sketch in Monty
Python’s Holy Grail while reaffirming every stereotype available about
“cowardly frogs”. Their “analysis”: Putin is “isolated” and wants “the
military option”. Their top intel source: Bezos-owned CIA rag The
Washington Post.
Read the whole thing, it is charming in its mocking of Macron. The only caveat I have, however, is about this:
Now, a very high-level Deep State intel source, retired, comes down
to the nitty gritty, pointing out how “the secret negotiations between
Russia and the US center around missiles going into Eastern Europe, as
the US frantically drives for completing its development of hypersonic
missiles.”The main point is that if the US places such hypersonic missiles in
Romania and Poland, as planned, the time for them to reach Moscow would
be 1/10 the time of a Tomahawk. It’s even worse for Russia if they are
placed in the Baltics. The source notes, “the US plan is to neutralize
the more advanced defensive missile systems that seal Russia’s airspace."
Yes, Russia is worried about any missiles close to its territory, but the only thing anywhere near anything hypersonic the US has now is a Dark Eagle system which is not even out of the prototype stage. Moreover, in case this system is deployed in 2023--which, I, frankly, doubt--it is still behind the pace of Russia's development of already serial produced S-500, S-300V4, not to mention S-550 coming on-line in 2024, all of which are designed to intercept perspective hypersonic weapons which the US still... doesn't have. So, in the end, already new anti-missile systems now deployed can mitigate if not altogether prevent such a strike and one way or another the US proper will "get it" anyway. Especially with 3M22 Zircon planned to be deployed at Russian Navy subs in 2024. It is a lose-lose situation for the US and is the result of failure, including by the US top brass and MIC, to adapt to the warfare of the 21st century. But I am on record on that... for many years. In related news, the third serial-produced K-571 Krasnoyarsk SSGN of Yasen-M (pr. 885M) class gets to sea trials this June (in Russian) and these are all hulls which will be also Zircon carriers.
Pat Buchanan, for all my respect for him, shows tiredness and lack of imagination when writes today about this proverbial Suez Moment for the United States. Of course, he is entitled to it and I myself used this expression when writing of America's decline. Pat writes:
That is all true and there is no better eyewitness and chronicler of British imperial demise than Corelli Barnett. But each overstretch, and each decline is different. Pat got one thing right about Soviet demise:
The USSR then disintegrated along ethnic and tribal lines into 15 nations. Its diversity tore the Soviet Union apart.
It wasn't Afghan War which doomed the Soviet Union. But Pat's "history" was always fuzzy, to put it mildly, and he demonstrates it again by presenting this rather bizarre interpretation of it.
Indeed,
NATO was formed and its war guarantees were issued to Western Europe in
1949, seven decades ago. War guarantees to South Korea, Japan, the
Philippines and Australia were all issued from 1950 to 1960. These
commitments to go to war for other nations were issued when Stalin was
in the Kremlin, a 400,000-man Red Army sat on the Elbe in Germany, and
Mao and his madness had just come to power in Peking. How
long must we sustain all these alliances and soldier on in the “forever
wars” of the Middle East? Do we Americans still have the national unity,
sense of purpose, and disposition to sacrifice for the cause of Western
civilization we had in the early days of the Cold War?
Pat is a peculiar man and if very inaccurate with his numbers since in 1945 the number of Soviet troops facing West, in Germany alone, was 1.5 million, in 1949--the year of NATO's establishment--this number grew to 3 million. I wonder why did it grow, wink, wink. I guess Russians were a little bit queasy about this "democracy" thing. As per "sacrifices for the cause of Western Civilization", I am not sure Pat really lives in a real world anymore. If there were "sacrifices" they, certainly, come across as fully unnecessary and, in fact, grossly harmful when one observes today the current state of the Western world and principles on which it operates. Chimera of "democracy" and "human rights" was needed for the realities of the Cold War 1.0 and, at some point, many did believe in it, yours truly included. Once the Soviet Union was no more and the Sword of Damocles of "Soviet global conquest" disappeared, the mask started to come down. It cam down in full in 1999 with West's gang-rape of Serbia.
Encore with attacking Iraq which had nothing to do with 911 fully demonstrated full hypocrisy and insanity of the empire and all that was accompanied with what seems then as a "positive" development of House Resolution 4444China Trade
Bill in May of 2000 and next, 2001, year China's ascendance to the World Trade Organization--all of it enthusiastically supported by GOP and Clinton Democrats. So, for the US which was dramatically more powerful than British Empire, at least on paper, the "Suez Moment" started around that time. This IS the start of disintegration of the United States and of the aggregate force of sins of the past, from Vietnam to segregation, starting to catch up with the US. Tragedy of 911 was an important symbol but it had primarily a psychological, if not psychiatric, effect. Economically and militarily the United States started to decline even before that. By the end of Obama's Administration the United States was thoroughly deindustrialized, militarily not-impressive and growing in leaps and bounds in terms of incompetence of her elites across the full spectrum of ideological preferences. So, in all, because of the America's size and importance globally, there was no single "Suez Moment"--it is a process of about two decades in making and warnings about America's decline have been heard from many quarters ranging from Orlov, The Saker, me, Patrick Armstrong, Daniel Davies among many others for many years.
Those warnings were issued not because we wanted Empire to survive, but precisely because of a grave danger Empire posed for the American nation which was being dismantled from within since wrongly perceiving itself a "victor" in the Cold War 1.0. So, as of 2018-2020, especially after international disgrace of America's election process, the United States does not exist as such. It ceased to exist and the country which we have today here is some geographic location in which what used to be known as the United States of America existed. Andrei Raevsky today was to the point when wrote a piece titled:
But then again, we all warned that the death wasn't coming--it was already here. And what we have today is a corpse. Yet, recall the last four years and ask yourself a question--the nation which for 4 years was being fed an utter BS of Russiagate and no one even faced a single charge of perjury, lying and treason, speaks volumes about "health" of such a nation, doesn't it? 20 years in historic terms is a very short period of time. The United States self-destructed in a matter of an hour, if not a minute, when compared to the time-scale of human civilization. So, there you go--another one bites the dust. The Saker, however, is still semi-optimistic, or philosophical, when concludes that:
Things will only begin to really change when a new generation of US
leaders will begin look at themselves and at their own responsibility
for the catastrophe which has now happened.
I can only add that one must learn lessons but present crop of America's "top people" is not capable of doing so. They lack in every department required for true leadership. New generation must emerge, but we all know that "thingy": bad times give rise to good people, good people give rise to good times... and on, and on, and on. So, if you ask me about America's Suez Moment, here it is: 1999-2020. This "moment" also saw a meteoric decline of the American "elites" into psychosis and dumbfuckery not seen in many generations.
In related news, as Laurent pointed out in the other thread, Russian MoD ordered 6 corvettes for Pacific Fleet with only 2 of them being pr. 20380, while 4 being pr.20385--Oniks and Zircon carriers. There is a lot of news coming out of Russia nowadays re: Russia's technological development. This report by NTV is in Russian but it gives an excellent view of Zvezda shipyard and Catherine the Great (Ekaterina Velikaya) newest ice-breaking supply multipurpose vessel being floated, including her impressive Russian-made azipods, not to mention the fact that Zvezda's portfolio for today is 50+ vessels, all of them ranging from major size vessels to super-tankers and LNG carriers.
Here is a not very fresh video from Zvezda with English subtitles. Dry dock is already finished, as an example.
And in conclusion--a bit of the Netcentric Warfare porn, Russian S1 Pantsirs networking with Podlyot-K1 radar system (means literally air approach) designed to "land" everything including drones.
So, as you can see Russia continues on her downward spiral of decline and is about to collapse. Any day now, wink, wink.
Truth is, it doesn't matter who wins in the United States' circus, aka presidential elections, because, as I am on the record for a long time, the final result will be within the same realm of outcomes ranging from utter collapse and wide-spread violence to simply protracted, and accelerating, decline and slow dissolution into the Orwellian reality. Acquaintance of mine sent me today some essay, which already circulates in Russian media-sphere, called: A Message to Russian Expats Living in the US. It contains passages such as this:
Colleagues, I want to address you.Face it: the America you came to is dying. A great civilization
is getting its last, euthanasia shot. Do not count on the fact that “the Republicans control
the Senate, they will not allow anything to be done”. They will allow. And
if the election was stolen from Trump now, then stealing two Senate seats in
Georgia with Biden as president-elect is clearly an achievable task. You have invested years of work, tens (if not hundreds) of
thousands of dollars, and endured serial stress in order to gain a foothold in
a new place. This is worthy of respect. Admitting that the best thing you can
do for yourself (and more importantly, for your children) is to leave again is
very, very painful. However, what is now whispering in your head, that “it’s
not so bad”, and that “America will return”, is still your sunk
cost fallacy, not rationale.
And, of course, goes into the race relations with statements like this:
Your children will be on their knees, and will write letters of
apology for being white, like how American nuclear scientists from Sandia Labs
write letters of apology to blacks.
If those children have been brought up in the modern American "cultural" tradition, especially on the campuses of modern American universities studying useless pseudo-scientific BS in "humanities", absolutely--those children will kneel and prostrate themselves, which would indicate that they are not really Russian children, brought up without any Russian cultural input and in this sense they are one step away from Eurowussies, who surrendered their countries to the hordes of barbarians without putting up a fight. In fact, there is very little difference between urban population in Western Europe and in the US, the larger the American city is, the more emasculated its white male population. Luckily, even despite the fact of GOP being a bunch of unprincipled cowards, even my uber-liberal acquaintances stated that people who elected (yet, again) a flaming "socialist" bat-shit crazy Kshama Sawant, who makes even retarded Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan look reasonable, totally deserved what is coming to them. Same goes to people of Portland, or, for that matter, the whole state of California--a first American state qualifying for the genuine third world shithole.
So, while this pathos-driven essay (or manifesto) to Russian Americans is cute, truth is--the decline of America on the institutional level has been predicted long time ago, and I just want, yet again, to remind you my 6-year old conclusion which led me to writing my books:
In fact, I was on this topic since roughly 2007-08 when it became, after Putin's famous Munich speech, and Russia disposing of the Georgia's Army in less than 5 days in August 2008, patently clear that the whole thing was basically the house of cards ranging from economy to military, to social issues. Now we all saw how institutions collapse. I voted for Trump in the state (Washington) where his chances to win are as remote as for me to become Chinese, but the main reason we voted was to reject this:
As you can see, Seattle (King County) is a hot bed for sexual perverts and pedophiles who think that sexually "educating" a kindergarten child is admissible. So is a Jefferson County, known for an extreme concentration of former hippies and alternatively gifted, primarily on the other plane, people around Port Townsend. As you can see rural Washington, especially Eastern Washington, a state and region's granary rejected this insanity. This is also, where real America survives, the country of deplorables. It is also the America which is is heavily armed and we do not know what will be the responses in coming months but America which I and my family came to has been gone for at least 15 years and my task was to document how nation was committing suicide using prescriptions of the American oligarchy which played its hand really well offering majority of America a faux-choice between shitty and down right disastrous. Remarkably, the only thing Trump got right was decoupling from China, but for NYC real estate shyster it was execution of the plan which sucked pretty badly and I am sure they are smiling in Bejing expecting the charade with vote-counting be over soon and then welcome Democratic Administration which would pursue same set of policies of financing Chinese economy through negative trade balance. Recall this:
This is really important, because this is exactly what (if they push it through) the Biden, I mean Harris, I mean HRC's, administration will pursue again, while increasing the pitch of anti-Russian hysteria and making sure Euro cucks are in line. Well, Democratic foreign policy "establishment" is an exhibit A of highly illiterate and unprofessional people, so the whole thing will be a big mess with Russia. Not that Trump's Admin was any better, with the lunatics of the scale of Pompeo or Billingslea--it is just a whole process of American "elites" being increasingly dumb. So, no matter who comes to "power" in the US it changes only the mode of decline, it doesn't change a fact that nothing could be done about it within utterly corrupt and dysfunctional framework of America's political discourse and a real data (not some garbage of US economic "statistics" or polls) speaks volumes about America's shrinking real economy and sociopaths, if not outright psychopaths, constituting America's ruling class, no matter party affiliation. In the end, look at the title of my upcoming book--it says it all. I warned everyone years ago:
This process is relatively non-violent for now, but the attack on American Europeanism, due to sometimes justified historic grievances and present inequalities, only grows in intensity. The new race- and gender-based agenda and grievances culture has slowly but surely displaced an old left whose main focus were jobs and wages
for the majority of working Americans, be they white, black or any other race
or gender. The old left is gone today, being supplanted with what Steve Sailer
calls the “Democrats’ coalition of fringes”—a combination of interest groups,
also known as social justice warriors, associated with the Democratic Party and
vying for resources and influence in shaping the future of the United States.
It is a profoundly depressing outcome for anyone who came to appreciate and
treasure the best that American culture offered in the past—most of it European
in origin. But the so-called establishment conservatives in the US are in no
position to be critical—they were the ones who conflated American patriotism,
often justified, with a culturally and economically debilitating militarism.
They were also the ones who continue to push ahead with a destructive
neo-liberal globalist economic agenda. And the ones who controlled American
corporations and off-shored them, depleting American manufacturing, and thereby unions and jobs. ... Against such a background, it is difficult to see how this trust and mutual respect can be restored. US elites have simply stopped producing any truly competent people; the US stopped producing real statesmen, not just politicians, even earlier. When experts fail, as they failed America, not least due to many of them not being real experts at all, actors, comedians, sportsmen, conspiracy theorists and demagogues from the mass-media take their place.
So, there is nothing truly unexpected with what happens to the United States now, since the silhouettes of America's future were seen by many who had their heads out of their own asses for years. America is a radically divided country which failed to coalesce into genuine nation and that was a recipe for disaster from the get go. Today it is a territory populated with a variety of people who have nothing in common culturally, economically or metaphysically and American "elites" demonstrated this fully. The America as we knew it is no more and many understand that. When enough people will grasp this fact, then there could be some small chance on rearranging whatever will be left in the United States into some form of a functional state. I don't hold my breath, though. I am a simple man, I just want to get to my beloved Cascades and further, into Rockies, stopping in the small towns in Idaho, Montana or Eastern Washington, sipping on my coffee at some diner, and contemplating the beauty of the nature and of people, who are a disappearing breed still found in the rural America, over my chicken fried steak. Life doesn't stop, it never does and it will continue on even after we are all gone. We just need to make sure that no life-ending event occurs, thus making possible for a generation of normal people to emerge at some point of time in the future. Last question: do I believe that there were illegal votes and bulletins' dumping? Absolutely, but it doesn't matter since in four years Trump did nothing, except tweeting and parading himself in media, to save his (and ours) country. So, good riddance, let democrats now finish off whatever is left of it. Believe me, they will wreck it big time and GOP will help them.
