22 June 1941...

 ... today is the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow. 22 June 1941--Axis forces invaded Soviet Union. As Churchill said that day in his broadcast to British peoples:

At 4 o'clock this morning Hitler attacked and invaded Russia. All his usual formalities of perfidy were observed with scrupulous technique. A non-aggression treaty had been solemnly signed and was in force between the two countries. No complaint had been made by Germany of its non-fulfillment. Under its cloak of false confidence the German armies drew up in immense strength along a line which stretched from the White Sea to the Black Sea and their air fleets and armoured divisions slowly and methodically took up their stations. Then, suddenly, without declaration of war, without even an ultimatum, the German bombs rained down from the sky upon the Russian cities; the German troops violated the Russian frontiers and an hour later the German Ambassador, who till the night before was lavishing his assurances of friendship, almost of alliance, upon the Russians, called upon the Russian Foreign Minister to tell him that a state of war existed between Germany and Russia.    ...

All we know at present is that the Russian people are defending their native soil and that their leaders have called upon them to resist to the utmost. Hitler is a monster of wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder. Not content with having all Europe under his heel or else terrorized into various forms of abject submission, he must now carry his work of butchery and desolation among the vast multitudes of Russia and of Asia. The terrible military machine which we and the rest of the civilized world so foolishly, so supinely, so insensately allowed the Nazi gangsters to build up year by year from almost nothing-this machine cannot stand idle, lest it rust or fall to pieces. It must be in continual motion, grinding up human lives and trampling down the homes and the rights of hundreds of millions of men. ...

The Nazi regime is indistinguishable from the worst features of Communism. It is devoid of all theme and principle except appetite and racial domination. It excels in all forms of human wickedness, in the efficiency of its cruelty and ferocious aggression. No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty-five years. I will unsay no words that I've spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding. The past, with its crimes, its follies and its tragedies, flashes away. I see the Russian soldiers standing on the threshold of their native land, guarding the fields which their fathers have tilled from time immemorial. I see them guarding their homes; their mothers and wives pray, ah yes, for there are times when all pray for the safety of their loved ones, for the return of the breadwinner, of the champion, of their protectors. ... Let us learn the lessons already taught by such cruel experience. The Russian danger is therefore our danger and the danger of the United States just as the cause of any Russian fighting for his hearth and home is the cause of free men and free peoples in every quarter of the globe.

Sadly,  this was fast forgotten in 1945... This is the announcement of Levitan to Soviet people.

What happened after that... Churchill was right: But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding(c) The greatest war in human history unfolded and what happened on the Eastern Front resonates even today both in crushing globalist world order and denazifying the combined West.

Larry's Speech In Moscow...

... at the conference a few days ago.  

 

Sergei Naryshkin's Speech.

Yes, yes, this very Sergei Naryshkin, the Director of SVR (Service of Foreign Intelligence) of Russia. His speech (in Russian) at Moscow International Security Conference on April 25, 2019 is rather remarkable. Here is the piece which speaks volumes:

Россия, пережившая за последние сто лет три опустошительные войны, не устает призывать других участников международного сообщества к совместному поиску решений накопившихся проблем. К сожалению, даже в тех сферах, где подобные переговоры ведутся, таких как борьба с терроризмом или информационная безопасность, западные партнеры продолжают держать в кармане зажатую фигу. Это не означает, конечно, что нам надо прервать всякие контакты, уйти в самоизоляцию или изолировать их. Диалог необходимо продолжать, хотя бы для того, чтобы не допустить окончательного распада действующей международной системы, которая все же обеспечивает стратегическую стабильность. В нынешней напряженной ситуации нужно идти по пути не разрушения, а укрепления глобальных и региональных форматов, попутно совершенствуя и трансформируя их в интересах мира и безопасности на всей планете. Если Западу во главе с США не хватает зрелости и мужества для того, чтобы двигаться в указанном направлении, остальным центрам силы придется проектировать глобальное будущее без него. На смену изжившему себя либеральному универсализму должен прийти новый миропорядок - справедливый и устойчивый. Его необходимо создавать на тех условиях и в тех формах, которые обеспечат совместное существование государств и региональных объединений с сохране¬нием за каждым из них права на самобытное развитие. Уверен, к этому процессу будут все активнее подтягиваться и те здравые силы в западных странах, которые осознают стоящие перед мировым сообществом риски и элементарно заинтересованы в самосохранении. Контуры грядущей миросистемы все еще покрыты туманом неопределенности. Будет ли она обеспечивать подлинное единство в многообразии или снова станет прикрытием для власти узкого клуба избранных, во многом зависит от нашей с вами работы.

Translation:  Russia, who survived three devastating wars in the last 100 years, tirelessly keeps calling on other members of international community for cooperative search for the solutions to accumulated problems. Sadly, even in those spheres where such negotiations are being conducted, such as fight against terrorism or informational security, the Western partners continue to keep their fingers crossed behind backs (in Russian--keeping fig in pocket). This, of course, doesn't mean that we should interrupt all contacts and isolate either them or ourselves. Dialog needs to be continued, even if to prevent a final disintegration of the present international system, which still provides for some strategic stability. In the present, tensions filled, situation one should follow the path not of destruction but of strengthening of global and regional formats, along the way perfecting and transforming those to the benefit of the world and security on the whole planet. If the West, headed by the United States, lacks maturity and courage for moving in this direction, other centers of power will have to design such global future without them. Instead of outdated liberal universalism, new world order--just and stable--should come. This order must be created under such conditions and in such formats, which will allow coexistence of states and regional formations, each of them having the right for own unique development. I am positive that healthy forces in the West interested in elementary self-preservation will gravitate towards this process, with those forces understanding risks which arise for the international community. Will this (new) system provide genuine unity in diversity or will again become merely a cover for the power of the club for few selected, to a large degree depends on yours and our work.  

It is a very interesting speech, which, considering who Naryshkin really is, his real weight, tells something of note. I would say decisions which made Russia turn on "Turbo" regime. It is especially remarkable when one considers that immediately after talking to Putin on the phone four days ago, Trump decided to raise tariffs on Chinese products. This attempt fizzled out--China remained unimpressed--and this means that there is a consensus between Russia and China on what to do both with the US and the West in general. It also means that the conditions for surrender are also mostly worked out--that is what Naryshkin articulated in his speech. But even more so was a direct informing of the combined West that Russia really doesn't need it anymore as she doesn't liberal model. I can already hear squealing of the pigs in Russia's liberal pigsty. As Meatloaf sang:

 Can't you hear the choir now?
Listen to the animals sing!
Can't you hear the slaughterhouse bells?
In the land of the pigs the butcher is king!
       In the land of the pigs the butcher is king!        

Lavrov's Missed Message?

On March 23rd, Russia's Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, spoke to  "students" (in Russian they are slushateli--listeners, a title of officers attending such institutions as General Staff Academy), officers of Russian Armed Forces, who continue their study in the Academy Of The General Staff (VAGSH). Lavrov's speech was grand in a tradition of Russian diplomacy of the past two centuries. There was a lot of Count Gorchakov in it.  It was also a very Russian speech. 

Lavrov's definition of (real) power was sharp and, without unnecessary humbleness on my part, the one I wrote about since the start of this blog (in reality much-much earlier):

Of course, it takes more than just the size of a country’s territory for it to be considered “big and strong” in today’s world. There is also the economy, culture, traditions, public ethics and, of course, the ability to ensure one’s own security and the security of the citizens under any circumstances. Recently, the term “soft power” has gained currency. However, this is power as well. In other words, the power factor in its broad sense is still important in international relations. Its role has even increased amid aggravated political, social, and economic contradictions and greater instability in the international political and economic system. We take full account of this fact in our foreign policy planning.

Remember Correlli Barnett's definition? Definitions which real, not self-proclaimed, realists operate with. 

But, within Russia's grand vision of a new global order, which Lavrov so calmly and firmly articulated, was one point which I find to be one of the main pillars on which Russian vision is based and which concisely defines the main global trend. Here it is:

The world is really changing fast. Another “industrial revolution” is unfolding, and a new, more technologically advanced way of life is taking shape.  Uneven development, a wider gap in the wealth of states and nations, and the battle for resources, access to markets, and control over transport arteries are exacerbating differences. Competition is acquiring civilisational dimensions and becoming a rivalry of values and development models.

How many times have we heard before from US "elites" that we all live in a post-industrial society? Well, we don't. We never did, in fact such a preposterous construct, courtesy of all those faux-scholars in economy, does not exist. We live in a full blown industrial world where the only currency which matters are not some balance sheets of some investment bank or brokerage firm, much of them being virtual money, but a sequence of enclosed technological cycles which spreads from extraction of resources to R&D and manufacturing of a final, often very complex, product. But this is not what was an American view of economy for the last decades. Today, we all can observe some of those, rather dramatically bad, results of living in make-believe world. Lavrov, of course, is being too... diplomatic when speaking of "becoming", there is no becoming--the rivalry simply exists and always existed. Today, in the age of internet, it is simply impossible to block and sabotage easily the values which still appeal to a majority of decent people of the "West". We saw which values deindustrialization brings, the values of an office plankton--from a mindless consumerism, lousy work ethics to a totalitarian ideologies of SJWs, ranging from promotion of sexual perversion to a destruction of a family, to mobs of tattooed pot-heads and drug junkies who are good for nothing. We also see what happens to public education in US (and Europe) which is dominated by social indoctrination at the expense of valuable social, scientific and aesthetic skills. We have too many young kids who are ready to talk about global "problems" and can not solve a simple quadratic equation or basic mechanics problem in Physics course. Wait, they do not teach Physics as a separate subject in most public schools in US. These are not "values" which work, they never did, those are "values" of decay and eventual death.

Restoration of an industrial base of any nation can not happen on the foundation, or lack thereof, of a financial capital and "values" it, together with Wall Street, promotes. Yes, one needs money to jump-start re-industrialization but at this stage it is yet to be seen if President Trump will be able to convince nominally American, in reality supranational and not bound by any interests other than own, capital to start to invests in the US. This investing may provide, now desperately needed, arresting impulse to an unfolding American catastrophe whose features, sadly, are becoming clearer and clearer with each passing day. New industrialization is not a panacea but an ultimately necessary condition under which any kind of workable new deal, a new social contract, may be worked out. This contract's pivot will be jobs, normal ones, in manufacturing, with decent pay, with decent safety net. Present system can not provide this. It is obvious that the system doesn't work anymore and it may resort, albeit Trump's presidency so far makes it less likely, to an insane last ditch attempt on "saving" itself--unleashing a major war. I can not see how it can reform. So, the choice for this system is not even a Boolean: it is to die and let new (in reality old) productive forces take its place. If not, US is doomed for steady decline and eventual disintegration--what it means in a nuclear superpower with her citizens armed to the hilt? I do not even want to contemplate. Lavrov, however, offers Russia's vision, and a hopeful one:

It is clear that there simply isn’t any other way except painstaking daily work to achieve the compromises necessary to peacefully overcome the numerous problems in the world. History shows that betting on hegemony and one’s own exceptionalism leads to greater instability and chaos.        

In general, listen to the speech. it is a great one.