A Profound Duh.

You all know by now that I do not trust practically any think-tank, be it a public one with a rather open (or semi-open) agenda or even more "mysterious" (and "secret") think-tanks that are closer to governments, especially if they are US think-tanks operating within American cultural milieu, which has a tendency to dumb things down  until they turn into a grotesque. One of the reasons, apart from incompetence of a majority of cadres in those "think-tanks", is the fact that in such fields as history, public or even military policy, any person with IQ slightly higher than the room temperature, given appropriate time and resources, can arrive to two mutually exclusive conclusions based on absolutely same set of data, which, in the end underscores the fraudulent and pseudo-academic nature of the field of a political "science." Take me personally, for example, albeit this applies equally to many people with a professional background. I can, with numbers and models, prove simultaneously that, say, Tomahawk missile is both an awesome weapon, while being simultaneously an obsolete and highly ineffective. 

I can make many of such mutually exclusive claims but I personally don't do that because of a simple golden rule--I am a public person and there are people out there who will, unlike it will be the case with most civilian people who wouldn't know the difference, call my BS and will ruin my reputation, which is dear to me, because it allows me to periodically publish books and buy good sour mash and good cigars on royalties from sales. This, plus, I, frankly, respect myself and people who read me too much to feed them an absolute BS and pretend that this is the way it is supposed to be. It is not. There are two ways of going about it--you either produce what can convincingly be proven to be the truth or very close to it, or you come up with a very convincing and professionally tailored BS, which will pass for the truth. Examples of former are numerous: I (not me only, this is just for illustration) state that hypersonic weapons are revolutionary and changed warfare. US pundits initially state that it is all just smoke and mirrors, two years later the US is trying desperately to develop own ones. You see how it works? Life itself puts everything in its place. But the latter one is a complex issue, when we talk about US vast think-tankdom and all those cadres abusing their sinecures in them only because they are ideologically pure not because they are competent. Listen to this:

Brookings Institution, the cabal of double-speaking neocons and liberal interventionists all of whom are rooted ideologically in DNC's insane irrational world of Comeys, Strzoks, Clappers and other creeps such as Brennan, all of who wouldn't qualify for a lawn mower position in apartment complex in any normal country, yet, here is this one of the America's "preeminent" think-tanks which is an originator of a "dossier", which, shouldn't it has been a reason for and foundation of America's national insanity and hysteria, would have been laughed out of the office of a low level operative or analyst in Zimbabwean or Papua New Guinea intelligence services. Not in America where "intelligence professionals" and "sources" create an alternative reality which, finally, did an irreversible damage to a country which becomes more and more incompetent across the board exponentially. 

No, of course, there was a laughter and an amusement, slowly turning into a worry, that nuclear superpower was turning itself into a global Jerry Springer Show. I can only imagine people in FSB, SVR or GRU having their eyes popping out while observing how a bunch of losers, including ones with Pulitzers, as Maria astutely observed in a video, assembled a pile of a steaming shit, such as Russia Collusion, aka Russiagate, so unbelievable in sheer cretinism of its assumptions and fantasies that one has to pinch oneself to make sure that one is awake and is not having some kind of Kafkaesque nightmare. Russians and Chinese didn't have to do anything but to sit back and observe how a bunch of creeps, from, now a global laughing stock, aka US "intelligence community", to a cesspool of US main-stream media were dragging the whole country into the tar pit. They DID succeed. The US today is damaged goods, ungovernable and spiraling down into economic oblivion. Nor do I have anymore any faith in AG Barr or Durham's investigation--it was ongoing now for far too long and, most likely, will end up not with a bang but with a whimper. 

But there is more even to Nunes's hints that Brookings is a beneficiary of Chinese "grants." Possible? Yes, undeniably possible, but how probable--that is yet to be determined. I have my ideas but I will not disclose them. Plus, even if it was true, China is steadily removing the United States as main market for her goods and, frankly, I am getting tired pointing out that Chinese economy dwarfs that of the United States and China has a shitload of US dollars and other "instruments" to simply buy the US, or destroy it. US convulsions in trying to stop the Nord Stream-2 or decouple from China (something tells me that China does the same), or trying to unleash new Cold War--are all signs of the situation which now is a meme and is usually accompanied by this caption: "seriously?" 

I guess the United States needs to really try to actually uphold its own Constitution and law and order. The more talking, as opposed to putting perpetrators behind bars, is done on American TV, while the country burns, the clearer it becomes that nothing can be discussed with these people. Plus, American "think-tanks"? They are tanks, all right, with no think involved. What did you expect from people with Ph.Ds in political "science"?   

In related news, Russian Ministry of Defense announced yesterday that trials of 3M22 Zircon are winding down and tests are successful.  

The recent dry runs, which were performed from aboard the Admiral Gorshkov frigate, have “confirmed the unique tactical and technical characteristics of this missile, as well as its ability to travel at hypersonic speeds,” the MoD said in a statement. The Zircon will be able to reach speeds of up to Mach 9, nine times faster than the speed of sound. It will have an operational range of 1,000km, capable of hitting both water and land-based targets. The Defense Ministry said the Zircon is going to be placed on nuclear submarines and surface ships, but there are also plans to develop a ground-based version of the weapon. Tests of the Zircon kicked off late last year, with Deputy Defense Minister Aleksey Krivoruchko saying that the missile is expected to come into service sometime in 2021 or 2022.

There was a lot of festivities on Russia's four Fleets and one Flotilla yesterday due to Navy's Day celebration and Sevastopol was deliriously happy from seeing Fleet growing and doing its thing, as I remember it from 50 and 40 years ago. 

The only thing different today is that the explosion from torpedo was done then way outside of the Northern Bay and that one usually was gigantic and loud as hell. Well. If you are a kid--this is precisely the moment you decide to get into naval academy.