Like General John Hyten understands. Especially when talking to such a "think-buggy" as Brookings, known to be a nest of exceptionalist and neocon ideas.
Actually, give it up for Hyten--he talks totally common sense things and, what is really important, and I know it for sure, neither Russia nor China want the war with the United States. In fact, his conclusion on modernization of Russia's nuclear arsenal is spot on--Russia was worried about the US. Russia still worries about the US, this time because of a major clusterfuck the country has become and Russians are keenly aware that bat shit crazy element in US decision-making circuit is still present and one cannot completely exclude a possibility of those people pushing the United States to the brink of unleashing a war of desperation. Good that Hyten speaks to one such institution where neocon ideas are popular due to military ignorance of people exercising those and the words of General Hyten can only be commended. But as I am on record non-stop, the remaining expertise about the outside world rests today primarily, not exclusively, with some segments in the US military, who, by the virtue of their profession, have understanding of a horrendous price if the United States decides to unleash a suicidal war.
Russians worry, alright. They train today, at Zapad-2021 maneuvers, a creation of a local AD network, designed to repel a massive attack on Russia's forces in case of real war.
For those who may ask, S1 Pantsirs have a ground-attack capability and their guns are actually extremely effective against armored ground targets and personnel. In related stream of military porn from Zapad-2021 remotely controlled and robotic combat means (such as Uran-9 which was improved after Syria's underwhelming performance) and some new combat vehicles such as BMD-4.
As they say, Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum. Especially in times like these we have on our hands.
It does look real hm... skynettish. But then again, it is 21st Century, after all. Russia finally recognized that you either are powerful or you are a slave. Russians don't like to be slaves and that is why they build ultra-modern armed forces.
Now, I want to thank all those people who became my patrons on Patreon. I hope our relations will be long-lasting and to the benefit of both parties. I hope to start making new videos by the end of this week. But, yes, I will need all support I can get to develop my teeny-weeny media "empire", especially after reading materials such as this (thanks to Bernhard from Moon of Alabama for finding these "pearls"), damn, the delusion is strong on this one.
You see, this is why I welcome sober and realistic opinions of real professionals, such as General Hyten, especially spoken to those who still reside in their make-believe world of America's omnipotence.
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.
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.
It is inadmissible and such problem shouldn't exist in principle. I remember years and years ago organization Feed the Children ran a series of infomercials about a very real hunger in America. Some huge country music stars took part in delivering food to kids, especially in he South, who WERE malnutritioned and in dire need of care. They were hungry. I remember some country music star weeping in microphone asking how the "country of milk and honey turned into the country of greed and money". You can see some of their infomercials still on Youtube.
Yes, yes, I am talking about American (as in the United States of America) kids from poor or dysfunctional, unemployed families. Majority of them white kids. My heart was already broken then from seeing what criminal "reforms" in Russia did to children turning them in homeless, hungry beggars, but to see kids hungry in the US then was simply inconceivable. Then, of course, 2008 happened and there were numerous reports all over media space about food banks running out of even basic food, especially in the flyover country.
As it turned out today, things are not good at all. Brookings published today some studies on children's "food insecurity" in the United States by Laureen Bauer. Household and its children are considered "food insecure" if such statements are considered true (or somewhat true):
The statistics is staggering it is also the case when you are ready to climb walls in desperation while understanding that this is not the problem which could be solved by donations or volunteering.
The Survey of Mothers with Young Children found that 40.9 percent of
mothers with children ages 12 and under reported household food
insecurity since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is higher than
the rate reported by all respondents with children under twelve in the
COVID Impact Survey (34.4 percent) but the same as women 18–59 living
with a child 12 and under (39.2 percent.) In 2018, 15.1 percent of
mothers with children ages 12 and under affirmatively answered this
question in the FSS, slightly more than the 14.5 percent that were food
insecure by the complete survey. The share of mothers with children 12
and under reporting that the food that they bought did not last has
increased 170 percent.
It is mind-boggling. I actually, give Brookings Institution a credit here for having enough guts to publish this indictment, there is no other term for that, of the system which measures its "success" in fake data covering up a stunning economic dislocation and crisis, which, at least for now, could be blamed somewhat on COVID-19. For now. We don't know what is going to happen down the road. But this is terrifying statistics of what otherwise could be defined as a hidden hunger in the United States.
Will measures proposed by Laureen Bauer to alleviate hunger be accepted? Who knows, but it is clear that it is population of the United States which is "too big to fail", not the Wall Street swindlers and elites who support and profit from them, who brought this upon the country, which increasingly begins to look more and more as the third world.
