Saturday, January 1, 2022

Let's Try Q & A And Whatever Else Sticky Post

Here is the post which I will try to keep sticky for people to ask questions and share their thoughts which are not on topic. This, I think is known as Open Thread. Fire away.

Wednesday, May 5, 2021

Dresden Opera Ball.

I am not going to lie--I am sill reeling after CIA recruitment video, because I know it completely degraded Russia's national security by means of disabling huge numbers of FSB officers from hernias they got from hysterical laughing from watching this video.

I am Russian ethically and even I feel embarrassed by watching this shit of a patronizing wokeism and degeneracy, not that CIA is viewed seriously by real clandestine professionals around (ahem...) some continent for a while. It also hits home with Paul Craig Roberts' piece on feminization of Western man. Here is a comparison--no, it is not about gloating, it is about being warranted and irresistible--from Dresden Ball from Saint Petersburg where Russian Suvorov Military Schools, which are high schools with a serious military education in preparation to the entrance to military officer academies--no relation whatsoever to US "boarding schools" where they teach you nothing but marching and being a glorified boy-scout. These guys already know how to shoot actual weapons, know basic tactics, study calculus and physics and principles of leadership and squad and platoon command. Plus all combined arms manuals. The orchestra is German-Russian orchestra and the ball is in the best tradition of Russia's officerdom.

This is how you grow a national elite, this is also how you prepare them for dying, if need be, for the country, because the country is a home to their first (or maybe second) love and I mean those young girls who are radiating femininity, joy and admiration for their uniformed gentlemen. Those girls are the future officer wives and mothers, but this ball will forever stay with them. Yeah, I know a little bit about it, just teeny-weeny bit))) Remember Chesterton--the soldier should not so much hate who is in a front of him as love what he leaves behind his back. You may continue to fill blanks to this post, I leave this space for you......

This is the conclusion (after) of this ball. Ah, those backward Russians not understanding all the benefits of being woke.

About Levada Poll.

Month and a half ago I wrote about how even registered foreign agent in Russia, Levada-Center, couldn't deny anymore a simple fact that:

A recent poll by the Levada Center, a research group branded a ‘foreign agent’ by Moscow, revealed that only 29 percent of Russians consider Russia to be a European country, which represents a drastic decline from 52 percent in 2008. A generational shift is underway, as younger Russians lead the way in dismissing the European identity of their country, with those aged 18 to 24 polling at only 23 percent.

To understand why the combined West goes bananas when they speak about modern Russia and Putin, one has to see the concert on 18 March 2021 (yes, this year of Covid) in Moscow (yes, the hot seat of "liberals", a euphemism for the "fifth column") celebrating the 7th anniversary of Crimea's return home. 80,000 unmasked, mostly very young, people having a blast. Overwhelming majority of these people is youth, pay attention to how they react to Pelageya's stunning rendition of the old Russian Cossack song and, of course, reaction of this immense crowd to appearance of the President of Russia starting at 29:20.

You may advance own hypothesis who put minuses to this video, wink, wink.

Tuesday, May 4, 2021

It Is So Good Not To Feel Alone.

I am not the only one who loses my cool when writing about Western (American especially) Russia "expertdom". This "expertise", or rather inability of those "Russia experts" to find their own ass with both hands in a brightly lit room, evidently got to Patrick Armstrong too and he wrote, traditionally incisive, rebuttal.

One of the favourite delusions of the people Scott Ritter calls the “Putin whisperers” is that Russia or Putin – to them the two are synonymous – are always on the point of collapse and one more push will bring them down. To the sane, observing the development of Russia from 1991 to 2021, this conviction is crazy: Russia has endured and prospered. But, as I have said elsewhere, these people fit Einstein’s definition of insanity and forever repeat their failures: Ritter calls them “intellectually lazy”. They’re not Russia experts, they’re wrongness experts and constant practice has made them quite good at being wrong.

I also do not share Scott Ritter's optimism about "Putin Whisperers" getting ready to leave the stage and I can only support Armstrong's conclusion that:

I hope he’s right but I suspect that there is still more to come: they’ve made an easy living at this grift and they can’t change now. And it’s depressingly unlikely that they will be replaced by people who can see reality.

Couldn't have said better myself. But then again, intellectual corruption is what defines the field of geopolitical expertise in the United States today. The financial one, is not far behind. Paul Craig Roberts, meanwhile, wrote a superb piece on feminization of the Western man--the problem which now reaches a truly catastrophic scale. PCR writes:

For a number of years I have noticed that unless I am among older men I often only hear males with women’s voices, speaking like girls, the same intonation and the same words, “like,” “really.” I hear males who sound like Valley Girls. When you look at them you don’t see male strength, and neither does Camille Paglia who says androgyny is historically a sign of cultural collapse.

So is an obsession with macho culture and sports, especially in the US where American Football is more than just the sports-event but long ago became a revivalist ritual for a feminized men, who sublimate their lack of real masculinity and tawdry sex-appeal through the images of new age gladiators throwing a ball in the breaks between the commercials. Let me put it this way, this is, certainly, not an ice-hockey where physical loads and fights are very damn real and very manly in a good sense. These are real fights and they are not for wussies.

But then again, who would want to fight for this:

But then...again, what do I know.

Ships Are Just Platforms.

It matters what they carry as weapon systems which defines them as either "bad" or "good", to put it in the layman's lingo. Remarkably, this is not the idea former Senator Jim Talent and former armor officer Lindsey Neas can wrap their brains around, when they write, in the neocon rag The National Review, next:

There is good news at last for America’s armed forces, or at least for the Navy. A bipartisan group of legislators has sponsored a bill that has the potential to address at one stroke a first-order priority for American national security: upgrading and expanding the nation’s shipyards. ... The Shipyards Act is an outstanding first step on the path to revitalizing America’s sea power. Given the pressing need for a bigger Navy, however, the sponsors should also seek to set aside additional money from the proposed infrastructure bill to increase the Navy’s shipbuilding accounts and buy more vessels as the shipyards expand.

I write extensively on the pitiful state of the American shipbuilding industry in general, and commercial one in particular, in my latest book. So, the fact that some steps are being undertaken to revitalize some shipyards seems to be a logical set of actions. But the issue here is not that pouring money on the problem will somehow resolve a huge list of issues for the United States naval power in its attempt to shape itself up trying to meet China PLAN's challenge. Not only Congressional Budget Office (CBO) doubts that this whole thing will make huge difference, when writing about subs:

CBO’s projection includes anticipated improvements in productivity. Automation is expected to lead to a onetime 3 percent increase in productivity—that is, tasks will take 3 percent less time, on average. For example, the design and manufacture of replacement parts is being automated in ways including computer-aided design and automated cutting of sheet metal. Because some tasks are more difficult to automate than others, the amount of time saved per task will vary greatly. The agency also projected that shipyards would realize the 5 percent efficiency gain that the Navy anticipates from the infrastructure improvements made under SIOP. CBO projected that both increases in efficiency would phase in from 2022 to 2031

It is all fine and dandy, but if one follows Talent's and Neas' ideas of "sea power":

So the Navy needs a lot more ships. No less than six recent reports and studies — including the Navy’s formal position of a 355-ship fleet by 2030 — recommend a combined total of between 355 and 688 manned and unmanned vessels in the fleet. The exact nature of the needed expansion will depend on our maritime strategy; the evolution of technology, doctrine, and tactics; the size and capabilities on the PLAN, and the contributions of our allies and security partners. That said, the Navy needs to do at least the following over the next decade. First, sustain production of aircraft carriers, destroyers, and both attack and ballistic-missile submarines. Second, in keeping with a growing consensus, ensure a substantial number of smaller surface combatants that can provide both forward presence across the Indo-Pacific region, to conduct the wide array of missions necessary in littoral environs, and the kind of distributed threat that will strengthen deterrence against Chinese aggression.

One is immediately struck by, to put it mildly, "platform-centricity" of naval thinking of these two guys. Sure, numbers matter, they always do, but the issue, apart from making a strategic and operational sense to ramp up submarine production, where even today the US Navy enjoys a decisive technological edge over PLAN, is what those aircraft carriers and destroyers will carry as their weapon systems? I omit here a reality of building more carriers, but does the United states seriously think that it can "outcarrier" mainland China which was steadily improving what no US aviator encountered since Vietnam, its comprehensive air-defense system, and what no US aviator encountered since Korea--a very capable Air Force. Even authors of this alarmist and "give-us-more-money" piece admit:

The balance of hard power in the Western Pacific has been shifting for a number of years. The implications of that are obvious. Unless deterrence is strengthened — and that means, first and foremost, a stronger American naval presence in INDOPACOM — it is only a matter of time before Beijing attempts to use force to snuff out democracy in Taiwan. That would be a disaster for America’s vital national interests in the region. The Shipyard Act, if it passes, will be the first signal in a long time that Congress is really serious about preventing it.

But I have news for them, one doesn't fight wars with "presence". China today, apart from having a deterrence of her own, has weapon systems whose analogues the US Navy will not have for a long time, if ever and that makes all the difference in the world. I am talking about, of course, anti-shipping missiles which effectively annul any legacy surface force in case of a serious war. Not only the US Navy will not be able to deploy enough CBGs around Taiwan to impress China which did put her carrier-building program in the turbo-charged mode, but the whole area around Taiwan already today is an exclusion zone for any type of a surface force, simply on the merit of China having enough "weight" in salvo to effectively overwhelm any current sea-based air-defense and this capability, augmented in the nearest future with the hypersonic capability (and, most likely, Russia-provided targeting), makes no difference in terms of actual power projection, which, as a viable concept in peer-to-peer scenario, ceased to exist at least a decade or two ago.

There are no reasons, so far, to believe that the United States can address this main, and a host of other related issues when planning for "containment" and "deterrence" of China--a set of the hollow Pentagonese catch-phrases and buzz-word which are absolutely meaningless in the world of accelerating development of a very to very long range anti-shipping supersonic and hypersonic missiles, which really do not discriminate what legacy air-defense they overcome or what legacy platform they hit--they can and will do that in case of war. This is the idea which is slow on arrival to the minds of the American naval thinkers who never graduated from the views on the naval warfare as a combination of impressive visuals and battles of carrier-centric navies of the Pacific War of 1940s. This merely underscores a complete strategic and doctrinal dead-end in Pentagon and inability to adapt to ever changing realities of a modern warfare. But, of course, visuals are important, wink, wink. But ships are merely platforms and if the US Navy thinks that it can fight China in her geographic vicinity with "alpha-strikes" of carrier aviation and with subsonic medium-range Naval Strike Missile, I think this era of naval warfare has passed long time ago. Ah, yes, I forgot--take a look at that.

For illustration, this is a new PLAN's type 055 DDG.

She carries 112-cell VLS, capable to accommodate a truck-load of YJ-18 anti-shipping and land-attack missiles, which are, and you may have guessed it already, Chinese versions of Russian 3M54/3M14 missiles, they even look the same, so if one thinks that such a ship cannot launch several salvos of M=3 on terminal anti-ship missiles (how about 3 salvos with 8 missiles in them?), they better check their facts. The US Navy simply has nothing comparable at its disposal. As I said, I repeat, it is how you are armed not how you look which matters. Chinese got that right, but then again--they had good teachers, wink, wink.

Sunday, May 2, 2021

Why It Is Not Possible.

To have normal, like in not a perpetual war of a different variety, relations between Russia and the US? The answer is rather simple--the United States views Russia as an existential threat. But that is a blanket, however correct, statement, the devil is in details. Let me explain. I am on record for years that the field of Russia Studies in the US is a wasteland. Even Matthew Rojansky, whose candidacy has been successfully sabotaged recently by neocon mafia which infested US foreign policy establishment top bottom, is not really an "expert" in Russia--he is an "expert" in US "think-tankdom" echo-chamber hustle and rubbing shoulders with big honchos, which then migrate onto CVs and Resumes for bearers to be recycled in the cesspool of Beltway "expertdom". The fact that Rojansky doesn't want an outright war with Russia and passes for a "realist" in D.C. was enough to remove him from the pool of "Russia Experts" trying to make it into the Biden Admin. Well, even an iota of a common sense towards Russian-American relations is a disqualifying trait in D.C.

Now recall Alexander Vindman, A Ukrainian Jew in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel who decided that he, not the President of the United States, is to define what kind of relations the United States must have with Ukraine and Russia. When one has such people as Vindman and a cabal of neocons being omnipresent in the establishment, it is bad enough. But then comes a "heavy artillery" of US main stream media, which are literally a propaganda machine which drives a complete destruction of Russian-American relations on the American side and "experts" there range from psychopaths such as Max Boot, deranged and confused non-binary russophobes such as Masha Gessen, to some butt-hurt ignoramuses such as "Doctor" Stephen Blank, who though it possible sending US Navy's ships to... the Sea of Azov. As you may have noticed already, a huge portion of this army of psychopaths consists of former Soviet or Russia's citizenry, primarily, but not exclusively (let's be objective), of a Jewish descend, who, instead of learning and working for the benefit of the American national interests, among which not being wiped off the map by Russia, should be a primary one, are in it for settling all kinds of accounts and grievances, most of them totally made up and fake, with Russia. If it takes US bureaucracy and sacrificing US interests, so be it in their opinions.

But what about middle level "journalist", are there any people of common sense who view Russian-American relations as crucial for global stability? Hm. Here is an example of yet another former Soviet "journo" (euphemism for not being educated), a graduate of the Moscow State University and MBA writing on the issues of modern geopolitics and Russia from Toledo, Ohio. His name is Mike Sigov.

Mike Sigov: U.S. should turn the table on Putin in Ukraine

As is the case with many former "Russians" who get to write for all kinds of US media outlets, few of them really have any background in the issue of modern geopolitics and fields adjacent to it. What they have, which ultimately qualifies them for spreading mostly BS, is their ability to read and speak Russian and navigate Moscow Metro. They also have a lot of "feelings" towards their place of birth and as a result one gets such a mental excrement as Sigov provides:

Ukraine has long been pressing NATO to admit it as a member, but the defense alliance has been reluctant so far to expedite the long process of extending its membership to Ukraine, without openly denying it one. NATO membership would all but secure Ukraine from Russian aggression but also would mandate that all the member countries — the United States included — treat such an act as a war on each one of them as well. To be sure, Ukraine's accession to NATO would increase the stakes for the United States and other members of the alliance in Ukraine. The alternative may be worse, however.

Sigov, having no clue what he is writing about and calling on Ukraine being admitted to NATO, should understand one very simple constant of modern geopolitics--Russia can annihilate any force in Eastern Europe, including combined NATO forces, even without the use of nuclear weapons and in this case, Russia will end Ukrainian statehood, much less Ukrainian armed forces, in a matter of days. Yes, Russians do not want this shithole of a country on their balance, but if push comes to shove, what will happen will be more than just annihilation of Ukraine as we know it today--a Nazi shithole and a used condom for neocons--Russia will demonstrate a complete military impotence of the United States and NATO which will be left to the only device they have at their disposal, you guessed it, propaganda. Russia CAN reject Europe, Europe CANNOT reject Russia and if Mr. Sigov doesn't understand that, I am sorry, he should have chosen a serious field of study to wrap his brains around this simple fact.

Yet, this doesn't prevent him from agitating for a situation which could be much worse than the Cuban Missile Crisis, because the United States, having very limited conventional, not to speak of combined arms, capabilities will have no chance other than commit whatever troops it will able to assemble, for annihilation in Ukraine and will, being inherently nuclear-biased country, resort to escalation towards nuclear threshold, because what the United States doesn't like is to lose big. It will not get any bigger than getting a death wish of fighting Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine granted. The moment any announcement about Ukraine "joining" the NATO is made, that seals the fate of not just Ukraine, it seals the fate of Europe and of the United States. Mr. Sigov, in a fine tradition of "Russian" (wink, wink) immigration to the US, and having no viable skills other than spreading BS and grievances, provides an Exhibit A of a "materiel" which dominates America's field of "Russia Studies" and foreign policy establishment, and which bears a huge share of responsibility for royally fucking it up for the US, and the world, in the time the US desperately needs not only face saving but a dramatic rethinking of its suicidal in its sheer incompetence foreign policy, which bankrupted the country and exposed it as a big bully capable only of big words.

Yet, Mike Sigov is an embodiment of Russian-American troubles. The United States' government institutions are neoconised and ukrainised thoroughly, top-bottom, and that is why any semblance of normality in Russian-American relations is impossible and, in fact, they will continue to deteriorate and for that, the United States has only itself to blame. I omit here sheer idiocy of American geopolitical "thinking" of the last 30 years which should be studied as a severe case of a delusion--I wrote three books on that, and may yet write another one--but even some weak signals from Biden Admin about desire to talk to Russia, in a feeble attempt to "free" dwindling and grossly overstated resources to fight China, even these signals are successfully distorted, suppressed and the transmitter is sabotaged, because the United States' foreign policy is completely subverted by ethnic and religious mafias operating within the establishment and media. If Putin-Biden summit happens, in the end, we will see what happens after it and I don't hold my breath, because the United States is non-agreement capable entity and armies of Mike Sigovs are standing by, ready to sabotage any possible move towards normalization of Russian-American relations. That is why such a normalization is not possible in the foreseeable future. That is not to mention that Russia and China seem to be committed to each-other in a geopolitical sense and the US has nothing, zilch, nada to offer Russia.

In related news, new Russian Armed Forces Cathedral held an Easter Liturgy yesterday.