Give Pam A Credit ...

 ... where credit is due. 

Of course, nobody in Washington will do anything like this, after all--404 is the best SOB the US ever had. But for fanboys of "Delta-force" and Hollywood type "operations", I have news--it is being now openly stated that everything was sold out to the US by Venezuelans themselves and the title of this piece in RT is correct: 

Through centuries, the region has seen leaders who stood for independence, but also traitors willing to sell out to colonial powers

Which brings us to 2023 and "mutiny" by criminal Prigozhin, his Wagner and media empire he built on lies and whose supporters are still around. This is US Army MO in "operations": 2-3 weeks of hurling whatever the US can muster in terms of stand-off weapons at usually third world "opponents", then fifth column curated by CIA and CIA paras, does the mutiny thing and voila'--the regime changed. Well, they tried to do so with Prigozhin and his Wagner, thinking that NATO "counter-offensive" will do the trick. Poor, poor kids from CIA and Pentagon, with their level of warfare "knowledge" they failed to reach even the first line of Russian defense, killed 200,000 of VSU and failed miserably, while their "fifth column" has been exposed. Not all of it--some still hide behind Russian Constitution and much greater freedom of speech than in increasingly totalitarian Europe. 

But the situation with Venezuela is ... helpful--in a sense of removing any illusions about capacity of Latin and Central America of getting out from under the US influence, reason being that building powerful, independent nations requires a removal of old "elites", often as a result of violent revolutions and brutal purging in order of the removal of opposition on the way to massive industrial expansion, with all that it entails. Exhibits A of that are Russia and China. To a certain degree--Iran, but it requires help. India too, but she has to overcome a number of serious issues, related also to being a main jewel in British Crown. So, is kidnapping of Maduro a crime? Hell, yes! But in a long run, it is a net positive for a world which was fooled for far too long with the idea that somehow "international law" can exist on its own. It cannot--laws of history and of human nature cannot be altered without CAPABILITY to do so. And that means, in the medium to long run that what is known as the Global South faces the choice, yes, if they choose the Dark Side or if they decide to stand up and fight. Will know soon enough. 

Pepe Escobar Wrote An Excellent Piece.

You can read it in full at Saker's Blog, Zerohedge or some few other media outlets, including Asia Times. Pepe refers to me, for which I am very thankful to him, when describing the the general state of the affairs today, and I quote him:

Only fools falling for the blind leading the blind syndrome don’t know that these liberal order “rules” are set by the Hegemon alone, and can be changed in a flash according to the Hegemon’s whims. So it’s no wonder a running joke in Moscow is “if you don’t listen to Lavrov, you will listen to Shoigu.” Sergey Shoigu is Russia’s Minister of Defense, supervising all those hypersonic weapons the US industrial-military complex can only dream about. The crucial point is even with so much NATO-engendered hysteria, Moscow could not give a damn because of its de facto military supremacy. And that freaks Washington and Brussels out even more.

Generally, Pepe and I we arrive to the same conclusion, as Pepe puts it:

As much as Washington is not “agreement-capable”, in the words of President Putin, so is the EU, says Lavrov: “We should stop to orient ourselves toward European partners and care about their assessments.” Not only Russia knows it: the overwhelming majority of the Global South also knows it.

A new Iron Curtain is not only possible it is inevitable now between EU/NATO and Russia. In fact, it is necessary for survival of Russia and Eurasia as a whole. Kremlin understands this completely as it is evident from today's (yesterday's) address of Putin to Valdai Conference and in a noticeable change of tone of Moscow, starting from Lavrov and now big boss himself. As Putin said today: 

"Укрепляя нашу страну, глядя на то, что происходит в мире, в других странах, хочу сказать тем, кто еще ждет постепенного затухания России: нас в этом случае беспокоит только одно — как бы не простудиться на ваших похоронах"

Translation: Making our country stronger, while looking at what is happening in the world, in other countries, I want to tell those who are still waiting for slow extinguishing of Russia: our concern in this case is only one--how not to get cold at your funeral.  

Kind of speaks volumes, doesn't it? Yes, a joke, but only so far. Remarkably, conflict in Karabah is a superb demonstration of Russia's intentions and how many still fail to understand that silly games are over. Russia knows where the relations with EU are leading to and the only political forces Russia will be looking to cooperate with in Europe will be genuinely conservative ones. Most of EU establishment and vast majority of European countries' political top is globalist and Russophobic in the extreme. Well, too bad. Putin also reiterated his old point that, sure, Russia will consider including hypersonic weapon systems into discussion on START, but Putin made explicit remarks that, indeed, negotiate anything with the US in good faith is useless. As he said--we do not desperately grasp this expiring START treaty, if it expires, so be it. Very nonchalant. 

As one commenter at Zero Hedge (probably German himself) noted:

The situation from the perspective of German citizens is exactly the opposite: The people want good relations with Russia. Many people like or love Russia. The deep-state puppet Merkel does not want or is not allowed to establish a partnership with Russia.

That may be true, after all, the best relations in the Warsaw Pact were namely between East Germans and Russians. There is a huge history between Russians and East Germans in terms of truly allied and extremely friendly relations. This explains why, as an example, French do not view Russians as European people, while modern Germans do. I guess one can figure out that the slight majority of Germans thinking that Russians are Europeans is provided by those East Germans. But, sadly for Germans, it doesn't matter for Russians anymore. As I stated not for once, throughout my almost 60 years of life never did I encounter so much contempt for the West and lack of any desire to integrate with it on part of overwhelming majority of Russians than it is the case for the last 10 years. Modern West and Russia have very little in common culturally and, as I state ad nauseam, the gap will only grow. Basically, Vladimir Putin confirmed these points today at Valdai. But the main question is extremely simple: to negotiate WHAT, with WHO? There is nobody in the West who qualifies for a status of statesman (or stateswoman)--mostly mindless globalist morons with no real influence on the events in their countries, let alone world. I agree with Pepe, Global South knows and waits when it will get its chance which will come only with the dissolution of the present world (dis)order which outlived its usefulness by about 30 years.