Winter Olympic LOL.

LOL. Those who don't know--the North Korean bob in this photo is good ole' Soviet P-15 Termit (or some of its derivatives) anti-shipping missile from 1950s. 

This Guy Did More For Peace In Two Minutes Than Diplomats Did In Years.

Remember me writing about heroism of simple people doing their job when it is impossible to do it? Who in America today remembers T-4 Truman Kimbro? Who remembers today exceptional heroism of USS Samuel B. Roberts? Acts of ultimate sacrifice, such as Sasha Prokhorenko, burn themselves into national psyche. They make us recall what real men are. This week Russia honored her latest hero--Major Roman Filipov. Tens of thousands people came to honor him in a sign of spiritual and moral revival of Russia:

But it was this American former Air Force man who transcended borders by his pure humanity and did his small, in reality huge, part in conveying America which still is out there, which is down to earth, which understands:

Russian response was overwhelmingly positive and... human and it made all major networks' news. These are REAL news. 

We all ask ourselves if we would have guts to do as Filipov did. As long as we question ourselves this way--we remain men.    

PSYRUS Got It.

A band from St. Petersburg PSYRUS really got it--using traditional Western cliches of Russia--vodka, balalaikas, Russian dances--they clearly laugh at insanity of the Russiagate and do it in style. The only thing which is left at this moment is... laugh. 

P.S. Now you know where those proverbial Russian hackers are--they are on Mars. LOL. 

Not Really A Surprise.

Hindustan Times reported this on January 20th : 

800-km range BrahMos missile to be tested this year

As the newspaper reports:

“The Sukhoi has a range of 3,600 km. Arming it with an 800-km range missile will increase its reach tremendously, and even more, considering the option of midair refuelling,” the official said.

The missile’s land and naval variants are already in service. At least two Su-30 squadrons with 20 planes each are likely to be equipped with the air-launch variant BrahMos missile, 500 kg lighter than the land/naval variants.

Two Su-30 jets have been modified by the Nasik division of the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited to carry the 2.5-tonne missile that flies at nearly three times the speed of sound.

BrahMos, being a derivative of Russia's P-800 Onyx missile, pretty much demonstrates an inexorable step of anti-shipping missile weapons' development, in which range and speed will continue to increase dramatically. Part of the answer to this development is, of course, in fuels and materials. With hyper-sonic Zircon 3M22 being already in IOC stage and having new, very high impulse, fuels developed for it, it is no surprise that very soon, if not already, we will see high supersonic weapons such as Onyx being capable to cover distances in 1000+ kilometer range and that changes naval warfare completely. Just to give an idea what it means to search and "secure" (in civilian lingo) the area of operations for, say, Carrier Battle Group, we may say that it will require a coverage of the area: 3.14 x 1000^2= 3 140 000 square kilometers, within which the salvo of such missiles can be launched by a single or combination of platforms. This is about the size of India and only if the launch is done by submarine or surface ship.

So, you get the idea. Modern space and over-the-horizon reconnaissance systems can provide real time picture of the surface and targeting pretty reliably. And then, of course, comes the issue of missile-carrying aircraft's ranges and that gets us altogether into the very remote sea and ocean zones. For India and her Armed Forces such a capability comes very handy if one considers that India views Indian Ocean as her internal lake and is not very happy with China being present there.  In related news, as Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov stated two days ago, Russia's Pacific Fleet will get all four modernized Project 949A Oscar-II SSGNs by 2021, with the first modernized one, Omsk, delivered this year, one year earlier than planned. Each of those subs will carry 72 3M14 and 3M54 Kalibr-family missiles and who knows what else--we may only speculate.

   

Nunes Memo Revisited.

Things, as you may have noticed, are getting really interesting around this so called Russiagate story. I am not going to repeat points which many other, and way more competent than me in US Intelligence Community, people already stated. Among them are excellent pieces by both Publius Tacitus, at Colonel Lang's blog, and Phil Giraldi. I may add here only some points which I also already made on Colonel's blog. I repeat:

1. The significance of Nunes' (and not his only) Memo is not even in what is stated there--this to some degree was already known to many who had any brains left. Its significance is in staking out the framework of further development of the events and it is in making sure that they revolve around single and strategically crucial pivot of a clearly bogus contrived "dossier" which was the main reason for initiation of this whole anti-Russian and anti-Trump sabotage campaign. Now, after Memo was outed, no matter what amount of procedural and legalistic BS will be and is already being thrown around, the Memo, like those proverbial 95 Theses by Martin Luther, is nailed to the doors of a cathedral and can not be avoided. 

2. It is clear that the depth of conspiracy is astonishing and most of Russiagate is built on lies, rumors and shoddy "intelligence". I personally have all reasons to believe that the so called "Russian government sources" which Christoper Steele claims are not really Russian  government nor real sources. Steele's short stint in Moscow  in 1990-92 at the height of the post-Soviet collapse and chaos by definition limits his claimed "contacts", rezidentura or whatever one calls it (a "network") to a collection of odious and now largely absolutely irrelevant political and intelligence figures who only go by this title of "sources in Russian government" in Steele's fairy tales. Steele certainly has no access whatsoever to any political, military or intelligence level in Russia which matters in current Russian government for a very simple reason of the whole framework: as events starting from 2008 has shown Anglo-American Intelligence apparatus is, well, not good. If the whopping intelligence-political failure to "handle" Russia is not a proof, then I don't know what is. If they couldn't predict something what was happening openly, in their faces, why would they be any better on anything else. As Phil Giraldi stated himself, CIA simply unlearned how to spy.

3. Most (there are, I assume, some exceptions) HUMINT sources in Russia for people like Steele can only be limited to already well known uber-liberal pro-Western "tusovka" which, while being an openly anti-Russian, exhibited itself to be also profoundly anti-Trump during election season. Apart from some Ukrainian angle in this whole story, I wouldn't exclude at all that some of those "Russians" who helped Steele to concoct his cocktail of BS could, indeed, be involved for a number of Russian internal political reasons plus making a "favor" for who they perceived at the time to be a winner of 2016 US Presidential Elections, that is HRC. It is not a secret that there were some significant hopes pinned on Trump's victory among some segments of Russia's body politic too. I will merely quote Phil Giraldi here:

One truly very interesting aspect of the Republican memo that has been scarcely commented upon is that even though the mainstream media is continuing to exercise its dangerous obsession with Russia by demanding that the Russiagate inquiry should continue full speed in spite of the concerns raised by the Republicans, there is absolutely nothing in the memo itself that indicates that Moscow tried to recruit any Trump associate as an agent or interfere in the U.S. election. The raison d’etre for the Congressional and Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigations appears to be lacking. Perhaps it is all sound and fury signifying nothing, but Russia might in reality have done little beyond the usual probing and nosing around that intelligence agencies routinely do. If the alleged Russiagate conspiracy is never actually demonstrated, which looks increasingly likely, it would certainly disappoint the many American talking heads and media “experts” who have been making a living off of bashing Moscow 24/7.

4. Once the time for "review" of State Department, as Nunes indicated, comes we may begin to see not only legal, already clear, challenges to the American nation as a whole, we may start seeing a larger framework of truly global conspiracy to unleash Cold War 2.0 both for Clinton-Liberal-Globalist cabal reasons and for internal economic reasons too. One of those reasons manifested itself two days ago in rather "impressive" dive of the Stock Market--this is just a tip of an iceberg and it is not even the most important one. But about this--later. New bag of popcorn is in order as are safety belts.

 

OK, It Is Out!

As was expected: DNC ordered and paid for Steele's Trump "Dossier" which is a combination of obvious BS, hearsay and made up "facts". Steele was a desperate anti-Trump nutjob. But none of it mattered to DOJ which issued, time after time those FISA "permits" thus allowing to spy on Trump's campaign. All this legal atrocity was done with the blessing of not only DNC and Clinton's campaign but, as we may have guessed, of... Mr. Obama? In simpler terms it looks like that: 

1. Let's create BS about Trump;

2. Let use this BS as legal grounds to allow spying on him and his campaign;

3. Let's blame Russians for all that. 

Well, if someone is not going to jail for purely legal reasons, I don't know, then something is really wrong with America, and I mean really-really wrong, because in simpler terms, after the year of sabotage, media hysteria and lies, the only term which describes all that is a National Treason on part of Democratic Party. People behind this insanity are traitors to both US Constitution and to Americans. I am sure in coming days we will be hearing and seeing more and more "outings" of slime-bags from many agencies.  Clinton Clan is a criminal organization. So much is clear at this moment. It is bigger than Watergate--much, much bigger since the implications are geopolitical in scale, not just internal. Get the popcorn...    

UPDATE 02/03/2018:  

As Foxnews just reported, the NEXT Nunes memo will be on State Department. Is it getting warmer, folks? It is. This is just the start.  

A Rather Gassy Business.

I am no fan of Boston Globe, the rag which gives a tribune to such shitheads as Scott Gilmore, certainly, can not even pretend to be any reputable publication. Here they come again, spewing a lot of hot gas on the issue of Russian gas, which America bought and is going to eventually resell as its own gas, to Europe which is in dire need for gas, and is ready to accept Russian gas, through gas-pipes of both Turkish Stream and Nord Stream, but enough about gas. 

  

Arrival of Russian gas stirs Ukrainian community

After that a lot of smug self-righteous Bullshit is written in this editorial piece, which is expected from most American so called "journalists", but here is an interesting phrase:

Policy makers have imposed a double standard, rejecting domestic gas over solvable concerns while accepting, with apparently no questions asked, the need for foreign LNG shipments with troubling environmental and human rights implications.

If one discounts a traditional fake concern for "human rights", what is highlighted in yellow is actually a very correct statement. Here we have to abandon loony ignoramuses at Boston Globe and concentrate on the opinions of professionals in the field of hydrocarbons. I am no professional in that but I know a thing or two about SLOCs and its reliability and, what RIA (in Russian) Dmitri Lekukh calls a "transport shoulder". It is a very good piece which, unlike Boston Globe's sappy sentimental crap, should be attentively read and taken into account. The piece has a symptomatic headline: To Rob Europe: Why Second Tanker With Russian LNG Is Allowed Into the USA. Indeed, why? Here is a spread, which is even more interesting against the background of my two-weeks old piece on Russo-Chinese Alliance and Northern Sea Route (NSR), and, of course, China issuing, a week later, her White Book precisely on a huge significance of NSR for China.  

1. As Russia's Energy Minister Alexander Novak (BTW, the guy who actually worked a lot in real industries, such as metallurgy) points out: he is absolutely not "euphoric" about Russian gas arriving to the US. Since Novatek really doesn't care where  the gas goes as long as Novatek is paid. As he astutely noted: once the gas is sold and resold, the gas molecules remain "Russian" but gas does not. 

2. The issue, however, is in the fact of Russia's brand new immense LNG facility in Yamal changes the picture completely and, no matter how emotional some people in the US become about this fact--Russian LNG is competitive with the US domestically produced gas inside the US. Now we are going to Sabetta and this "transport shoulder". See the maps:

#1. European "shoulder" (for some reason "above" Novaya Zemlya).

#2 Asian "shoulder".

Is it getting "warmer"? Here Lekukh makes a very interesting conclusion: If Russian LNG is competitive inside US on a huge, trans-Atlantic, transport shoulder, what is it going to do to European LNG port facilities which are literally, in a global sense, positioned next to Sabetta. Remember American plans to sell American LNG to Europe? Well, good luck competing with Novatek.  Lekukh, however, goes further and states, and I think he is right, that Americans are no dummies--they know all that. The trick is in globalization of the LNG trade which will make price for American LNG competitive, but also will make already very high energy cost component in European goods, extremely high thus giving US goods an advantage over European ones. 

Here, the factor of Russian gas pipe-lines begins to weight heavily and Europeans know it damn well. It is not enough that French Total SA holds 16% of Novatek shares but even SovComFlot's first ice-class LNG supertanker bears the name of late Total's CEO, tragically killed in the air crash, Christophe de Margerie.  She even carries de Margerie's mustache on her bow. 

In fact, they know it so well, that Germany already issued permissions for Nord Stream-2 pipeline to be laid in her territorial waters. And then we have to take a look at those "European" LNG ports in.... sure--in Eastern Europe, that is in Poland, Lithuania and other US lap dogs of no economic weight or significance but who completely bought into this "diversification" scheme without doing even simplest arithmetic. One has to imagine the faces of their leaders when hearing and seeing the news of Russian LNG being shipped to the United States? Hey, Russian LNG is so competitive that who knows (and somebody knows, I am sure, wink-wink) that Poland and Baltic States eventually will have to buy Russian gas molecules as... an American LNG. Twice the price, of course. As they say "freedom is not free". The smell of failure is really in the air.

The situation is utterly comical and two main geopolitical questions today, especially after massive Russian intelligence delegation meeting with their counterparts in D.C., are this: 

1. Will Russia "play" with the US to allow US enter global LNG Trade and thus giving at least partial competitive edge which may help US to partially re-industrialize her economy. 

2. Will Russia, in the same time, back Europe to a degree needed to not let it lose to the US (and China), which, granted pathetic intellectual level and cowardice of European "elites" is entirely possible. 

These are no bad problems to be faced with. I wrote two weeks ago about Russia's strategic fork. This is one of them. Now imagine this factoring into the larger game with China which has her own 9% stake in Novatek and wants NSR really-really bad. Once these factors are considered one can totally understand why Massachusetts Ukrainian community is so worried and is full of... gas, as they should. In 2019 Ukraine becomes irrelevant in the larger scheme of things and if Trump releases... I am running ahead of myself here, let's just wait and see.    

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