Cold Hard Facts.

Judge and Alastair Crooke... For many it is very painful to hear, but I can tell you more--it is even worse than that. 

I know the answer if they (neocons) really believed in 404 and VSU--they DID, this is how they and Pentagon are incompetent. It is shocking.

About This "Leak"...

 ... of Pentagon "documents" related to VSU. OK, I am not going to beat around the bush here--the only real interest in those "documents" is their "origin" in purely internal American game of shells with the catastrophe it is getting, when their plan was to triumph and humiliate Russia. Period. In terms of valuable military information those "documents" contain none, other than confirmation of Pentagon being at a complete loss while facing the facts of SMO. Peskov's response to this "leak" is right on the money. 

“We don’t have the slightest doubt about direct or indirect involvement of the US and NATO in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine,” Dmitry Peskov told CNN in a statement. “This level of involvement is rising gradually,” he added. “We keep our eye on this process. Well, of course, it makes the whole story more complicated, but it cannot influence the final outcome of the special operation.”

And it warrants reminding everyone that Russia has an extremely advanced ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) complex ranging from human intel on the ground, electronic means to satellite constellations which provide excellent situational and tactical, operational and strategic awareness. In terms of war correlates and combat statistics--I wouldn't touch anything coming from Pentagon with a long stick. As Larry correctly notes:

This document, if true, removes any doubt that the United States and its NATO partners are involved heavily in helping Ukraine plan its upcoming offensive. What puzzles me is why the U.S., NATO and Ukraine are talking so openly about the upcoming Counter Offensive. Normally, professional military planners keep their plans SECRET and use deception to mask their true intentions. Well, these documents are classified SECRET, which is what you would expect. What does not make sense is that so many Western leaders are flapping their gums about the “SECRET” counter offensive.

Exactly, let us be very clear, in terms of operational and strategic planning NATO is not even in the same league as Russia's General Staff. The problem, in the end, is not just military--it is cultural and it is incomprehensible for the combined West. Especially when one considers what kind of Russia "experts" advise the military block designed only for beating up weak and defenseless victims. 

As my good acquaintance and REAL war correspondent who is constantly on the front lines, Marat Khairullin, correctly noticed:

Военный корреспондент Марат Хайруллин объяснил промедление российских сил в штурме Артемовска (украинское название — Бахмут) в ДНР. Своим мнение он поделился YouTube-канале PolitWera. Хайруллин считает, что российские войска взяли курс на уничтожение лучших резервов украинской армии и предотвращении наступления, поэтому они не спешат идти вперед. По мнению военкора, ситуация с удержанием Артемовска стала для Украины настоящей головной болью, поскольку удержание города приобрело для Киева прежде всего политическое значение. Хайруллин добавил, что российские силы создают для украинских войск перенапряжение на некоторых участках фронта, чтобы они туда бросали все новые и новые резервы для удержания.

Translation: War correspondent Marat Khairullin explained the delay of Russian forces in the assault on Artemovsk (Ukrainian name - Bakhmut) in the DPR. He shared his opinion on the PolitWera YouTube channel. Khairullin believes that Russian troops have set a course to destroy the best reserves of the Ukrainian army and prevent an offensive, so they are in no hurry to move forward. According to the military correspondent, the situation with the retention of Artemovsk has become a real headache for Ukraine, since the retention of the city has acquired primarily political significance for Kyiv. Khairullin added that Russian forces are creating an over-strain for the Ukrainian troops in some sectors of the front, so that they throw more and more reserves there for retention.

For the last 5-6 months, Vera, Vladimir Trukhan, Marat and yours truly have been discussing Russian Forces' deliberate strategic defense configuration non-stop. It is also absolutely clear that Artemovsk is now a real headache for NATO. The fact that NATO generals couldn't see what has become obvious after Russian Forces abandoned Kherson--effectively luring VSU into the slaughterhouse--is stupefying. It also demonstrates a complete detachment of West's military and political elements from each-other and this creates one catastrophe after another because Western political top is utterly, disastrously incompetent not only in basic military matters but lacks even rudimentary governing skills. Russians, meanwhile, are eagerly waiting for VSU's "counter offensive". I am sure with Pentagon's planning it will be a... crushing success, if you know what I mean.

On Average...

US (and Western in general) MSM journo is stupid and badly educated. Real journalism requires a very high level awareness and analytical type of mind and an extraordinary level of education in a broader, classical sense, which translates in class and integrity. But as any uncultured human he(she) thinks that he(she) is entitled to be taken seriously. Here, the President of Russia is dealing with the girl who has no concept of throwing rocks while living in a glass house thinking that her high school student news-paper-level "reporting" means anything. 

But then again, she is lucky that she is dealing with a former (not really, they never are former) intelligence professional who would eat her bosses for breakfast and will spit them out in a minute, but who is also very humane. Real intelligence professionals, unlike the BS portrayed in Hollywood, avoid "collateral damage" at all costs, their and others' lives depends on that.  Here is another example, now of the graduate of the Moscow Institute of International Relations, famed MGIMO, and a son of very high level KGB professional, the President of Azerbaijan wiping the floor with some psycho-bitch from BBC who had the audacity to think that she can compete in wits with people whose educational and cultural level dwarfs pretty much any cretin having positions nowadays in government  in both UK and US (well, in EU too) and pedophile-covering totalitarian British Broadcasting Corporation which is...a statutory corporation established by Her Majesty Government. 

Apart from not having any class, which is a first indicator of great education, honor and integrity, look at how this pompous idiot from BBC reacted physically when understood that she is being destroyed and being made an Exhibit A of a typical clown working for Western media. Her clutched hands in "house" close to her body speak volumes--a first involuntary defensive reaction. Ilham Aliev could have eaten her alive and humiliated her to the point of her being thrown out even from such a sewer as BBC for being utterly unprofessional. But he gave her a last second exit. Those who recall Vladimir Putin's interaction with bimbo Megyn Kelly and subtly humiliating her--I am not even sure that morons at NBC, BBC or CNN are even brought up above the level of high-schoolers in human, forget about professional, terms, to get it. 

All of them are so dumb, so conceited that they don't even understand that the jokes are on them, that they are a laughing stock around the world. And, of course, none of them, with the exception of such people like, say, Sanjay Gupta of CNN who is a bona fide and successful neurosurgeon in his own right and has all qualification for reporting on medical issues, are good for anything. Most of them, however, are the dregs of a degenerate US "humanities" education and wouldn't be allowed in normal society to run a 7-11 convenience store, let alone pretend that they know what they are talking about or pretend that they have real "sources". Russiagate and Steele Dossier anyone? If we talk about Russians, overwhelming majority of them is now keenly aware of what Western media are and it took opening Russia to the world to succeed immensely where no ideological department of Central Committee and Soviet Propaganda ever could--to convince Russians that Western MSM are nothing more than a crude lie-machine, stuffed at best with mediocrities, at worst-- mindless propaganda parrots who don't know shit from shinola. 

 

UPDATE: here is how "free" media operate in the US. 

 

Corruption top-bottom.

I Am So Heartbroken... Not.

Aw, poor-poor talented baby Pavel Durov, he is so hurt by this injustice, that it almost broke my heart. Not really.  Get this:

Telegram has been forced to abandon its cryptocurrency initiative, with its founder Pavel Durov blasting the US for seeking to crush any attempt at decentralization in order to maintain its global financial dominance.Telegram founder and St. Petersburg native Pavel Durov announced the move in a post to his own Telegram channel on Tuesday, stating the crypto project – the Telegram Open Network (TON) and its currency, known as “Grams” – would have to be shut down.“Unfortunately, a US court stopped TON from happening,” Durov said, adding that the court ruled “people should not be allowed to buy or sell Grams like they can buy or sell Bitcoins.”

I had recently an exchange about programmers with one of our very own software engineer here. I want to repeat my point to him, now to everyone who read this--I do not disrespect programmers. Without programmers our life as we know it would stop, but being even a top notch software engineer, or top notch aerospace engineer or, for that matter, even the head of a giant corporation having several degrees in everything ranging from electronics to economics, is, in itself, by no means a guarantee from being an ass-hole or even dumb as fvck. I personally knew some Ph.Ds with STEM and humanities degrees, who, while being reasonably good at their work, were complete morons, that is why I KNEW them, not anymore. So, moans and appeals to public by some creep who is into the business of "managing" people who write a code for social networks--one of the most important markers and arenas for exhibiting a mental breakdown of the global society--do not impress me at all, not to mention the fact, and here it comes, that, and I said it many times, the issue of the social networks is not an issue of programming or software engineering in its highest forms. It is the issue of publicity and the level of exhibitionism people ready to reach. Remove Durov and VK (his brainchild), nobody will notice, because there are hundreds if not thousands like him standing in the wings ready to take his place and offer something even "better" than VK, or Facebook, for this matter. 

The guy is, obviously, of a very narcissist nature (I guess running a social network can do this to one) and, frankly, in my book is a typical Russian liberda. Here are some snippets which give an impression about this creep. As is expected from this type of people, he wrote a manifesto in which he proposed how "to save Russia".

Two of Durov's ideas from the manifesto include abolishing Russia's national currency and allowing foreign interests to purchase state land, reports Business Insider.

Well, I guess you get the idea who this guy is, as he describes himself as a libertarian (red flag immediately), a euphemism for globalist shill and, pardon me, lack of real economic and history education.  I also need to make a disclaimer here that when people such as Durov (or Gates, or Zuck) speak about "technology" they do not speak about REAL technology, they speak about computers and software only because for them the rest of the productive, scientific and military technological reality is beyond their grasp. Come on, can you imagine Bill Gates (who never completed any serious STEM program) or Durov, who has a degree in... philology, to understand issues of systems' integration in aircraft, space ships or weapon systems, or can you imagine them sitting solving differential equations or creating models, let alone designing a commercial aircrfat? They hire people who can do that, that is for sure, while they strategize, conceptualize....

In the end, it takes such a great effort for these dudes, such as Durov, to find some creepy PR cause to throw their weight behind or to decide what kind of act of mental masturbation they will perform to keep themselves in the news and on the market of mostly useless services. Wait, bang!! Let's invent currency. And here, let me become Devil's Advocate. Let's imagine that there is a some fairly higher-up in US governmental hierarchy and that, unlike Durov, he (she) has, say a serious degree in Computer Science, has completed economics study and has connections to some actual intelligence and military sources in the US. Imagine that such a person also has some good practice in actual geopolitics across the globe and has a good idea what really moves this world. This person knows that US livelihood depends on the petrodollar and USD in general being a world's reserve currency. Let's say this person is a realist. And let's say this person, who is a higher-up, is not 35 years old as Durov but in his very late 50s and early 60s and had a fairly eventful life. So, now imagine, that this person learns about some "Russian" crum who thinks that he is a big shot and decides to introduce yet another scam such as Bitcoin but this time on his social platform. Wow! How original. So, after this person laughs for 20 minutes, especially at Durov's faith:

“Today, we are in a vicious circle: you can’t bring more balance to an overly centralized world exactly because it’s so centralized. We did try though,” Durov said, adding that Washington controls the “global financial system” and can coerce ubiquitous tech giants like Google and Apple to serve its agenda.

No, this is really LOL. He merely picks up the phone (or e-mails) the American STATE, government, that is, appropriate brunch, and tells them that some mama's boy decided to do what is a decision level of people such as presidents, prime ministers and secretary generals. So, this person in US simply initiates the movement of the gears of the government--the government of still, however declining, superpower. So those gears do the job they are suppose to do--prevent any stupid ideas from materializing. And I have a question for Durov:"Boy, do you even have a grasp of the scale and forces involved in this geopolitical game, to pretend that your pseudo-intellectual (in reality ignorant) manifestos and attempts to "decentralize" are a first sign of you being totally ignorant of the outside world and its complexity?" Because one needs to be a complete dumbfvck to believe what Durov believes. Obviously, Durov doesn't understand the reality in which REAL money appear--they appear in the STATES, as in nations, who build all necessary infrastructure ranging from finances and banks, to courts, to foreign ministries, to real industries to armed forces which protect all this infrastructure and it is only THERE where modern money can appear. Not in imagination of some self-anointed brainiaks who think that they are smarter than everybody else, including people and institutions who are in charge of real money.

We may say whatever we want here about US Dollar, or, for that matter, Yuan or Ruble, but behind all of these currencies are massive institutions of economic, financial and military national power which, justly so, will not allow some bedbug play the game for which he is utterly unqualified, especially when based on loony ideology of libertarianism. I am 100% positive that Russian government in private is rather satisfied with this outcome and is smirking observing the bedbug being squashed by real power. I am smirking too, I love when arrogant narcissists are shown their real place, even when it is done by such unholy structure as US financial empire. As for "more balance" in this "overly centralized world" which was so "viciously" taken from Durov, I think the 35 year old boy (these types seldom grow into real men) better not go where the REAL balance and decentralization of this world is being forged by people with "funny" degrees and backgrounds most of which Durov never heard about. You know, people who operate in reality not in the virtual world of social networks. In this case I would suggest Durov to continue exploiting the idea of social networking, and not get into the world of real power, and that is the power of the state. He simply is unqualified for that. And that is why I am absolutely heartbroken... not.  

P.S. Second name Durov in Russia, while popular, has a little bit of a funny ring to it, wink, wink. 

Who Said So To Start With?

Daniel Larison asks a question, a good one: about Kissinger's mythology. He asks the question based on Thomas Meany's (oh, he is so meany to good ol' Henry, couldn't contain myself;)) piece in New Yorker titled The Myth Of Henry Kissinger. Larison posits: 

The contrast between the worldviews and careers of Kennan and Kissinger is instructive, and it helps to explain why the Washington foreign policy consensus has gotten so many things wrong over the decades. Meaney mentions that as early as 1965 Kissinger was privately admitting that the war in Vietnam was unwinnable, but publicly he supported it and went on to preside over its continuation and escalation for many years. During the same period, Kennan spoke out against the war, and urged full withdrawal.  

My main point is this: hey, guys, aren't you a bit too late to the party? I, personally, heard enough about Washington consensus, but apart from praises heaped on Kissinger by Washington and some in squarely pro-American camp elsewhere, I, as an example, since childhood, which fell on Vietnam War, heard nothing positive about the guy, which could have been explained by USSR support for Vietnam. Later, however, I came to appreciate all hollowness of his reputation as a "geopolitical thinker" or "maitre of global diplomacy" when started delving a bit deeper into the history of the American geopolitical mindset--there was nothing to admire not just on humanitarian grounds, but on academic ones too, about Kissinger. In fact, bar some things which qualify as war crimes, Kissinger's views are down right numbingly boring in their mediocrity and predictability. The history of the US "diplomacy" and geopolitical thinking in the last  30 years is one of a shoddy scholarship, perpetual delusion and demagoguery rooted deeply in the platitudes and cliches which by now became memes and a butt of jokes around the globe. Kissinger was the one who helped to forge this pitiful state of the US "foreign (lack of) policy" and present, with the assistance of many willing helpers, self-evident truths as insights worthy of a true statesmen. Insights they were not and America's obvious decline and geopolitical retreat, denied by some against the body of overwhelming empirical evidence, was in many ways predetermined by Kissinger's views of the world, which were and are, politely speaking, are those of a slick top government bureaucrat, pretending to be a scholar and a real statesman, while not being genuine article at all. We all know what this "scholarship" is. Enough to recall Kissinger's recent meandering pathos-ridden pseudo-historical piece in the Wall Street Journal where he waxes "geopolitical" and confirms the lack of proper intellectual rigor in modern US political class, obvious to everybody but the US political class itself.  

Larison, however, while counter positioning (to Kissinger) praising George F. Kennan for his views regarding War in Vietnam, forgets that, be as it might, thinkers and scholars are not always defined by their careers. After all, Kissinger had a brilliant career when defined within the beltway framework where competence, principles and integrity play second, if not the third, fiddle to self-promotion and exposure in the media. Especially so in the modern US where self-aggrandizing is a pastime on the same level as baseball. Kennan might have been right on Vietnam, and later he lamented his famous Long Telegram but still, in his wonderful memoirs offered some prescriptions for the world which he would have never offered should he be alive today. For starters, Kennan, being a diplomat and, surprise-surprise, Russian speaker failed to grasp (later, in 1980s he will fail it again) the impact warfare had and continues to have on Russia. 

At bottom of Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity. Originally, this was insecurity of a peaceful agricultural people trying to live on vast exposed plain in neighborhood of fierce nomadic peoples. To this was added, as Russia came into contact with economically advanced West, fear of more competent, more powerful, more highly organized societies in that area. But this latter type of insecurity was one which afflicted rather Russian rulers than Russian people; for Russian rulers have invariably sensed that their rule was relatively archaic in form fragile and artificial in its psychological foundation, unable to stand comparison or contact with political systems of Western countries. For this reason they have always feared foreign penetration, feared direct contact between Western world and their own, feared what would happen if Russians learned truth about world without or if foreigners learned truth about world within. And they have learned to seek security only in patient but deadly struggle for total destruction of rival power, never in compacts and compromises with it.   

Mind you, this was written in February 1946, 9 months after the end of war in Europe and 5 months after the end of WW II as a whole. The phrase about "learning the truth" reads especially comical today when Russia is on order of magnitude freer country than any one in Europe and we live with the consequences of a destruction of American political institutions which used to be commonly known as democracy, not to mention chaos, destruction and murder unleashed by NATO and its main sponsor, USA, on the world. This was written after yet another historic Russia's "direct contact" with the West, which, as was the case with yet another "contact" in 1854-56,  1812, and before that in 1618, and prior to this in 1242, among many others, resulted not only with the West "contacting" Russia, for some reason, again, on her territory, but in a genocide of Slavic and other people of Russia on a historic scale, resulting in 27 million people killed and most of the historic Russia literally wiped off the face of the earth. By any metric being a bit "neurotic" not only in Kremlin but on the level of the whole population of the historic Russia was more than reasonable. As history demonstrated so vividly up to this present moment--Russia's "sense of insecurity" was and is not only inevitable but highly warranted. Sadly, Kennan, being a man of, primarily, letters and law and having a rather idealistic, and in many respects "aristocratic", that is highly misguided, view of primarily pre-revolutionary Russia, couldn't grasp then the true scale of the events of the WWII and how it related not only to Russia, but to the Western world in general, and the US in particular. 

Later, in his memoirs, while giving a recognition to the WW II, he would still stick to the narrative of a grotesqueness of a Stalin's "regime" and some alleged impact it had on Russians (that is why he is voted the most important Russia's statesman, I guess), implying, indeed, grotesque, Solzhenitsified figures of political repressions, debunked today by competent and honest historians both in Russia and in the West, not to mention by opening of the archives and by Russian people themselves. Yet, as idealistic and in many respects a well-wishing (prekrasnodushnyi) man Kennan was, he left one important realist legacy, which despite his role, even if unwitting, in unleashing a Cold War on false premises, he stated this, and that was a statement by a man of principles:

What did the greatest damage was not our military preparations themselves, some of which (not all) were prudent and justifiable. It was rather the unnecessarily belligerent and threatening tone in which many of them were publicly carried forward. For this, both Democrats and Republicans have a share of the blame. Nobody -- no country, no party, no person -- "won" the cold war. It was a long and costly political rivalry, fueled on both sides by unreal and exaggerated estimates of the intentions and strength of the other party. It greatly overstrained the economic resources of both countries, leaving both, by the end of the 1980's, confronted with heavy financial, social and, in the case of the Russians, political problems that neither had anticipated and for which neither was fully prepared.

Little did Kennan know, that from the vantage point of 2020, his views of Russia and Russians, free to "directly contact" the West any time they want, could be a subject of scorn by overwhelming majority of these very same Russians who, justifiably, view the United States as a military aggressor doing over and over again what Kennan stood against in 1960s--the war. Thus, any references today to Western "democracies", while setting Kennan as a person on a much higher level than Kissinger, hardly make a better case for him being properly qualified to pass a judgement. In the end, as I repeat like a parrot--the problem is systemic and endemic in the American post-WW II exceptionalism exercised even by those who refer to themselves as realists (however meaningless this term is) and who still are trying to find a political and moral rationale where there never was any but greed, lust for power and gross overestimation of own power and significance. American modern elites are simply not good, no matter which opposites they praise in their pursuit of a chimera.

START Is Dead.

START Treaty is dead, because of the US exceptionalism, I mean, because of US political class being exceptionally arrogant and exceptionally incompetent, if not outright dumb. Marshall Billingslea is your typical product of the US law "education" machine and political career within swamp. Serving as an aid to late Jesse Helms alone qualifies a man for a serious observation by experienced psychologist but that is only half the problem. The issue is larger and it is that realistically it is impossible to teach US upper power echelon anything because it makes shit up as it goes to experience a constant gratification from own aggrandizement, a perpetual orgasm, of sorts, and one does not negotiate with such people. So, this dude came up with the set of conditions for extension of START Treaty, which, everybody understand the United States wants dead and works hard for that. He spoke to Washington Examiner and declared:

New START is an issue that the Russians are seized upon,” he said. “It does nothing for the United States with respect to our concerns regarding China, and it does nothing for the United States with respect to our concerns regarding what Russia has been doing, which are a series of destabilizing activities outside of — and not constrained by — the treaty.

There is no need to debunk this obvious newspeak, but some retrospective is needed here--obviously the United States, at the peak of own, grossly talked up, unipolar moment in 2002 decided to quit 1972 ABM Treaty--one of the most important building blocks of the arms control system. But here is a clue, in 2002 Bush Jr. Admin thought itself to be very righteous and very competent--a defining characteristic of US body politic. They, and their in-house lawyers and corridor generals, thought that the end of history has arrived and US was well on its way to a complete "democratic" global dominance--a typical mode of thinking, or, rather lack thereof, by the whole highly concentrated cabal of all kinds of geopolitical, military, economic and what have you "experts" abusing their sinecures inside the Beltway think-tankdom. Well, it is not 2002 anymore and some hard cold military-technological realities begin to dawn even on all those career bureaucrats in, now, Trump Admin. 

The reason to a Billingslea's bloviation about START is not even China and preposterous desire to make her a party to this treaty, despite the fact that even if to consider a degree of misinformation  about the actual size of Chinese strategic nuclear arsenal emanating from Chinese themselves, China's arsenal still remains well below massive nuclear arsenals of Russia and US. But, obviously, nobody in Trump Administration ever heard of weight categories in boxing, power lifting and wrestling. The real, also well know, reason for this patent BS from US Department of State is this:

The two systems covered by the treaty are the new Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile and the Avangard hypersonic missile stage, a maneuvering nuclear or conventional warhead delivery system. Three other new weapons include a new air-launched ICBM called Kinzhal; and the Burevestnik, a nuclear-powered, nuclear-tipped subsonic cruise missile. That new missile blew up during a test in August, killing several Russian arms developers and spreading radiation in the White Sea. The last new strategic weapon is a drone submarine armed with a large nuclear warhead capable of blowing up ports.

Here is the real deal. As I stated not for once, and even wrote a book on this issue, main concern is a dramatic shift in geopolitical power balance that Kinzhal and Burevestnik provide even merely in a conventional, non-nuclear that is, variants. Burevestnik (Petrel) is a weapon which assures that no one who makes a homicidal decision to unleash a global war, while sitting it out somewhere in Patagonia or in New Zealand, will feel safe from, as it is becoming known, Mach=6+ justice capable to wait for attack for days in the air. In general, this weapon is for cooling heads trying to save their asses in the Southern Hemisphere, in addition to its already wide range of purely military applications globally. Per Kinzhal--it was discussed so much and on so many occasions that I simply see no reason to concentrate again of the weapon which changed naval warfare forever. Wait for 3M22 Zircon getting to IOC by the end of this--start next year and you may confidently add this too to the list. The issue is a dramatic lag of the United States in hypersonic weaponry and anti-air and anti-missile defense. In other words, the US lost arms race in these and other key fields of military (or dual use) technology. There is simply nothing out there which can compete with something like S-400, not to speak of S-500, forget about Nudol, US has NO supersonic missile weapons, it certainly doesn't have any viable hypersonic technology and I can continue with this list for a long time. 

In one of the more remarkable demonstration of the depth to which US military-industrial complex fell in the last decades is the fact that the US Navy for years hasn't been able to come up with a viable design for a frigate and was forced to resort to an Italian (Finkantieri) design of what essentially is a FREMM class frigate. It is a nice ship and the US Navy made a choice in favor of this ship. These are unprecedented developments which can not obscure the fact, that even with the most of hulls and equipment of the American origin, this frigate follows in the wake of a technological and fighting doctrine catastrophe of a ship-class known as LCS (Littoral Combat Ship) known in US Navy as self-propelled 57-mm gun. If that wasn't enough, latest revelations about F-35 not being capable to fly super-sonic without damaging itself, only underscore a major clusterfvck that US technological "expertise" has become and underscores neurotic, delusional and arrogant statements from US political top, which was, most likely, briefed on a simple fact that the only default position for the US in a new world is to build as many nuclear ICBMs as possible and even this position is untenable, once one takes a look at the US economy.

As is often the case, under such circumstances US "elites" resort to lying and stealing, so much so that even Russia's Foreign Ministry today officially demanded from Trump Administration to stop lying about WW II (in Russian). Daniel Larison may lament the upcoming death of the START and Trump's China "diversion", but behind all this hustle in D.C. ranging from perpetual sanctions' war, to losing one war after another, to killing START to lying about WW II is a reaction of sore losers who desperately want to see and feel themselves important and powerful. Same as Barbara Jean Trenton from Twilight Zone Episode "Sixteen-millimeter Shrine", in which aging movie star still pretends to be a young starlet capable to play roles of young lover, forgetting that she lives not in 1934 but in 1959. I know, reality is a bitch and US political top has neither class, nor competence, nor education to understand that making grandiose demands and statements they increasingly look like clowns or Barbara Jean Trenton. But I am on record, for years now, that most of those people have no concept of causality and that every act has consequences.     

Oh Boy, Do I Feel Vindicated!

Not that I really enjoy my vindication--I am not as self-centered as many US "scholars" because I am used to living in real world, but still, how funny is this:

I wrote two books about US "ruling class" incompetence and now am getting ready to write the third one, but hey--I always liked Tucker. 

Patrick Armstrong Asks A Question.

Patrick wrote today and important piece. I would say a metaphysical (almost) one.  In it he essentially asks and answers the question of WHY people like him (it relates to me in a sense too) do what they do. The piece is titled: 

WE’RE NOT JUST TALKING TO OURSELVES – OTHERS FIND US

It is one of those must read pieces and here is the answer (crucial part of it) to the question of why do what Patric, Bernhard from MoA, The Saker or I do. 

So what’s the point of writing? I already agree with you, you already agree with me. Our readers are here because they also agree. Writing becomes a mechanical operation, moving along a pre-determined course. No minds are changed, no minds are even engaged. But there is one big and important difference between the two solitudes which leads us out of the my bubble/your bubble stalemate. The well-informed person will be less often surprised than the poorly informed person. There is an objective reality and people who actually do have a pretty good take on things, see that reality more clearly than those who don’t. In short, those who actually are well-informed will be less often surprised than those who aren’t. Surprise is the clue: it is both the consequence and the evidence of ignorance.

It is absolutely crucial point. Consider this blog. OK, you read this blog, so let's consider this one as an example, in the end it is the only one way for me to heap the praise on myself, otherwise, as Russian saying goes--did not praise yourself today, consider the whole day wasted(c). This blog, now in a sixth year of its existence, was and remains relentless from the very inception in its warnings about reality being not what it is being presented by people and institutions which Patrick effectively described as being surprised in a non-stop manner:

But the readers and writers of the WaPo/NYT/Economist/Guardian bloc were surprised. They are certain that Assad gasses his own people when there’s no reason to; they believe that Qaddafi “bombed his own people“; they laughed when Trump said he was taped; they called Milosevic the “butcher of the Balkans“; they expect the Russian economy to collapse; they’re confident that the JIT is an honest investigation; they expect the protests will weaken Putin; they believe the “world community” recognises Guaidó; they are confident the West would be happy if Putin weren’t sowing discord; they expect that the next world problem will be managing China’s decline; they know where to find democracy in Hong Kong. And, especially, they were confident that Mueller will find a bombshell to blow up Trump. They remain believers in Browder’s story. The devotees of the establishment media bloc are almost always surprised by the way things turn out. That, by itself, shows that they are poorly informed about reality. Everybody is surprised some of the time but the poorly informed are surprised all of the time.

Bingo, I write for years now that not only WE (as an alternative media) are better in our OODA due diligence, but that Western establishment is utterly incompetent and that is why it is surprised non-stop. I called it few years ago a permanent Chalabi Moment. Mind you, Patrick Armstrong was an analyst in Canadian Defense Ministry, Larry C Johnson or Philip Giraldi were bona fide CIA officers, Colonel Patrick Lang is a Vietnam War combat veteran who availed his blog as a platform for many people whose military-intelligence backgrounds and experiences are genuine and proved viable throughout the years  by giving in general a top-notch analysis and providing good reliability of their forecasts. And here is the point--for people who involve themselves into such activity as assessing and forecasting anything, the first requirement for them, if to put it in a layman's lingo, is to be right, correct in their "predictions" at least once in a while, forget being consistent. That requires knowledge of the subject. In the end, one has to have his facts straight and this is not easy and requires a lot of professionalism,  labor and honesty--qualities completely lacking in the Establishment media and think-tankdom.

We (I say we because I do not separate myself from what, say, Patrick Armstrong and Strategic Culture Foundation do) simply know better. Let me demonstrate Patrick's point about people seeking out truth on this blog's example--from the inception I literally did not use any technologies other than my posts on a discussion boards to attract attention to my blog. None. I referred to some of my post through links on a discussion boards at Unz Review, plus I posted couple of them at Colonel Lang's blog. My blog became more or less known largely through the "word of mouth". Here is how it went since 2014. 

Blog started at December 2014

In other words, Armstrong is spot on when stating:

But people do change and our audience is growing. How can that be happening if we change no minds? Because the individual makes the first step on his own. So this is the reason why we write and speak and – religious allusion again – testify. People we’ve never heard of, disgusted by the strident one-sided nonsense, surprised by some unexpected reality they bump into, stop passively believing, begin to doubt, search around and find us. Our writings then show them they were right to doubt and lead them to a better appreciation of reality. We don’t persuade them, they persuade themselves; we don’t convert them, they convert themselves. But we reinforce their conversion and show them that there is more reality (less surprise) on our side. Once gained to our side, they won’t leave. It’s conversion.

But in the end, we are simply better, because we know more, much more about things we are talking about. Moreover, most of us know our own limitations but we know where to seek competent opinion on matters we don't know about. BTW, while at it, this blog is well over 2 million original views now and, as I stated before, practically nothing was done to promote it, people simply started seeking it out mostly by the "word of mouth". Of course, publishing books helped too. Recall what I stated almost five years ago:

The realization, that Russia IS already inside the West's (and US in particular) OODA Loop (if it does have any at all--the conclusion to which I begin to lean) should settle in by now. Getting inside one's OODA Loop was a highest priority for Colonel Boyd. It did already happen. It is so simple, if to put in into famous (and correct)  slogan--You Are What You Know. And it goes without saying that combined West knows shit about Russia. It always did.      

My assertion stands and it is now supported by an overwhelming body of empirical evidence.