The Russian Navy destroyer Admiral Vinogradov ordered the destroyer USS McCain to leave Russian waters, the Bay of Peter the Great in the Fat East, or be rammed. How could the US whine if it went down in THEIR waters? It fled.
On 24 November 2020 there was a confrontation in the Far East between the USS John S. McCain (named for the bastard who covered up the USS Liberty massacre by Israel) and Russian naval forces in Peter the Great Bay, on the Sea of Japan.
The McCain had sailed the bay to demonstrate the US claim that it did not belong to Russia. From the Russian side this was viewed as an illegal intrusion, and only the threat of ramming by the Russian destroyer Admiral Vinogradov caused the American ship to retreat (which the lying US regime denied).
RFS Vinogradov
With “Biden” in the White House, the Kremlin now needs to change gear
[This analysis was written for the Unz Review]
First, a clarification. When I speak of “Biden” I don’t mean the fungus (to use Tom Luongo’s apt expression) which was recently planted in the White House. I am referring to the “collective Biden” which I defined here https://thesaker.is/terminology/. With this caveat, now let’s see why Russia might want to change gears in 2021.
First, let’s begin by the basics:
Russians often say that US politicians change, but US policies don’t. There is much truth to that, and we saw that very clearly with Obama and Trump: both promised sweeping changes and both pretty much continued the policies of their predecessors, at least on the foreign policy front.
In a way, you could argue that this is normal and even desirable. A shill for the regime would say something along the lines that “well, that is normal, US national security priorities don’t change with each administration, so all this proves is that no matter what any candidate promises during his campaign, once in office he/she becomes aware of the hard realities of this world and then acts on it just like their predecessors did“.
This argument is deeply flawed, however, because it completely ignores the will of the US people (who, let’s not forget that, voted for change every time they got a chance to, be it with Obama or with Trump). And it assumes that only those “in the know” realize and know what they have to do. This kind of “logic” is typical for the elitism of the US ruling classes.
It also ignores the fact that US Presidents are really puppets, figureheads, even if during their campaign they pretend otherwise. As for the elections every four years in the USA, they are nothing but a grand brainwashing show whose sole purpose is to give the illusion of “people power.” They could have presidential elections every two years, or even every year, but none of that would change the fact that the US is a plutocratic dictatorship with much less people power than any other state in the collective West.
In fact, the argument above is just a tiny fig leaf trying to conceal the undeniable fact that the USA are not ruled by a person, but are ruled by a class, in the Marxist sense of this world. Personally, I call this ruling class the “US Nomenklatura“.
And while both Obama and Trump pretended to want real change, they both lost that chance (assuming they ever wanted this is the first place, which I doubt) when they did not do what Putin did when he came to office: crush the Russian oligarchs as a class (some fled abroad, some died, some lost it all, and some agreed to play by Putin’s new rules).
*** JdN
Putin and (((Khodorkovsky)))
***
Obama, being the vapid and spineless car salesman that he is, probably never even contemplated any real move against the US Nomenklatura. As for Trump, being the pompous narcissist that he is, he might have even entertained some thoughts of showing “who is boss”, but that lasted only one month, until the US Nomenklatura forced Trump to fire Flynn (and after that, it was all free-fall…).
Anyway, the point is that we should not expect immense, sweeping changes from *any* administration. Since the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, we should assume that mostly we will get “more of the same, maybe even worse”.
What am I talking about here?
Here is a (partial) list of these “more of the sames”:
- Further vilification of Russia, Russians and everything Russian by the entire western media (which is even less diverse and more uniformly lying than anything Goebbels or Suslov [hardline Soviet ideologue] could ever had dreamed up!). You can think of it as “full spectrum Russophobia”.
- Even more “sanctions” against all Russian interests (economic, political, etc.) worldwide. The US sees this as a pure zero-sum game, any loss by Russia, no matter how marginal and puny, is a victory for the Anglo-Zionist Empire.
- A return to Obama-era style military missile and air strikes. Probably not on Russian targets (yes, Hillary advocated that, but now this would be much more dangerous than five years ago), but definitely on Russian allies like Syria (including attacks on Iranian and Venezuelan vessels on the high seas).
- A return to Obama-era petty harassment of Russian diplomats and citizens. The goal here is not to achieve anything meaningful, but rather it is to show that “Russia is weak and cannot prevent us from treating her like a third-rate power”. There is nothing the USA could do which would really hurt Russia, so Uncle Shmuel will turn his rage on those few diplomats and even civilians it can kidnap, jail, expel, sanction, extort, threaten etc.
- Even more sabre-rattling all along the Russian borders. I fully expect that US forces will be deployed in the Baltic statelets on a permanent basis (not on a rotational basis). USAF aircraft and USN ships will continue to harass Russian defenses under the pretext of “innocent passage”, “freedom of navigation” and the like.
- Since the Biden Admin is a “who’s who” of Jewish and Ukrainian extremists (some combo!), and since Biden is personally implicated in the Ukraine (along with Hunter), we can also expect a rapid degradation of the political situation in the Ukraine and even more provocations than under Trump. As they say, these folks will “fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian”.
None of that will have any direct impact on Russia (for a detailed discussion, see here). However, this does not mean that Russia should continue to pretend like this is “business as usual” and take blow after blow after blow. Why? For a number of reasons:
- There is plenty of evidence that the Russian people are getting fed-up with what they see is a rather weak, if not lame, attitude of Russian officials, especially against the constant flow of petty harassment measures against Russian interests. Folks in the West are never told this (after all, informing is not the mission of the corporate media), but the “patriotic” opposition to the Kremlin is much more dangerous than the hopelessly discredited pro-western “liberal” one (more about that below). The calls for a much more energetic “push-back” are now regularly heard, including from rather mainstream politicians.
- There is also plenty of evidence that the “Biden gang” will want not only to fully resume Obama-era policies towards the Ukraine (trigger more violent incidents & support for the Ukie Nazis) but that these policies will now also be extended towards Belarus. The fact that these policies are unlikely to succeed does not mean that Russia’s best response to them is to maintain a “wait and see” position. It is pretty self-evident that any form of restraint by Russia is immediately explained away as “weakness” by the western propaganda machine. Any more such “restraint” will only make things more dangerous and more difficult for Russia and Putin personally. In other words, at this point in time, “restraint” only invites more aggression.
- Furthermore, 2021 is an election (Parliament) year in Russia. Now, irrespective of anything Russia does, no matter how transparent or un-falsifiable Russian elections are, the West will use that opportunity to try to get violent riots in the streets of Russia before the elections and, after the election, the West will declare that the Russian elections were “undemocratic” and go on about “supporting the just democratic aspirations of the Russian people” (especially Russian homosexuals, of course!) and the like.
- Anti-Putin demonstration in Moscow
- Finally, it is pretty clear that the Biden Cabinet brings together the crème de la crème of Zionist russophobes from the US deep state. These people are characterized by the following and very dangerous characteristics: narcissistic and messianic racist self-love, a “God ordained” racist hatred for all of mankind, a personal/family history of hatred for Russia, deep involvement in many Ukie corruption schemes, an almost total failure to understand that consequences and nature of war combined with a delusional belief in invulnerability and impunity (while the former is false, the latter has been true, at least so far), etc. This is a very dangerous combination, to say the least!
The truth is that pseudo-liberals are amongst the most dangerous creatures out there. Yes, their current “geopolitical toolkit” (the USA and the AngloZionist Empire) is weak, but that does not mean that Russia (or the rest of the world) can simply ignore these dangerous psychopaths.
The good (or even excellent!) news is that Trump gave Russia four more years to prepare for what is coming next, and that the Russia+China tandem is in much better shape today than it was 4 years ago. For example, the Russian internal security situation is now the best ever, as witnessed to by the fact that the Russian federal “wanted list” does not include a single Chechen national; the self-styled “last Emir of the Caucasus”, Aslan Byutukayev, was killed on January 20th, which made it possible for Ramzan Kadyrov to “declare a total victory over terrorism” in Russia). In plain English this means that every single Chechen who has ever committed an act of terrorism in Russia has been identified and is now either dead (most of them) or jailed (only a few). Despite these achievements, I am not sure about the “total victory over terrorism” because there are still violent groups in several regions Russia. Besides, if the “Axis of Kindness” (US/Israel/KSA, sometimes joined by the country many Russians think of as “Puny Britain”) special services decide to reignite an insurgency in Russia, they might have at least some success, especially initially. The FSB/FSO better not let their guard down, especially in Dagestan, the Far East, Crimea and the Moscow region!
In purely military terms, Russia is completely “out of reach” for the United States armed forces, even with the EU/NATO thrown in. I have written a lot about that, and I won’t repeat any of this here. Suffice to say that Russia now has the best armed forces she has had in decades while the US has an immense, truly grotesquely bloated, military, but not one that can get anything done other than killing (and, at that, mostly civilians). Even if we look just at nuclear strategic forces of Russia they are at least a decade, if not more, ahead of the West. This is the first time since WWII that Russia is that powerful, and now she can reap the many advantages of being militarily secure.
All this being said, I have personally always defended what I called the Kremlin’s “restraint” for the simple reason that when I look at the aggregate power (not just military!) of Russia and the AngloZionist Empire I still see the latter as much stronger. However, I have do admit that the trend of this relationship is a positive one, that is to say that over the past decade or so Russia has become much, much, stronger while the USA and the Empire have become much, much, weaker. Under Biden, this trend will only accelerate.
The time has now come for Russia to adapt her own policies to this new reality.
And the very first thing the Kremlin ought to change is its language, its rhetoric. Yes, “restraint” is good, especially when escalation into a full-scale war is amongst the possible outcomes of any crisis, but “restraint” cannot be a goal in itself. For example, while the USA+NATO does, objectively, represent a major anti-Russian threat (if only because they are weak and can only count on their nukes to protect them!). Likewise, the ugly “Banderastan” which the Ukronazis turned the good old Ukraine into is not a threat to Russia whatsoever. So why not seriously turn down a few economic screws to make the Ukronazis feel that their never ending stream of insults and (empty) threats can have consequences?
Next, the Kremlin needs to mix strong words with strong actions!
Just this Sunday, January, the 24th, the US Embassy in Moscow was involved in openly coordinating the (small, but violent and illegal!) riots in Moscow, just the same way the NEXTA Telegram channel has done in Belarus. So what did the Kremlin do in response? The Russian Foreign Ministry did order US diplomats to the MID building and… … gave them a note of firm protest.
And that’s it?!
I don’t think anybody in the US Embassy in Moscow gives a damn about Russian protests. If anything, US “diplomats” probably get a good laugh each time they get such protests. And everybody knows that, including the Russian diplomats. So why do they hold to such a lame “communications line”?
The Russian Navy recently gave a very good example of how a good word can have much more effect when backed with some good action: remember when (of all names!) the USS John McCain recently breached the Russian maritime border? The Russian Navy did tell the McCain to withdraw, but it added that the Russian large antisubmarine ship (a “destroyer” in western terminology) Admiral Vinogradov would “ram” the McCain if his warnings were not heeded.
Needless to say, the McCain got out really fast (the USN already has experienced this kind of situation in the past, see here).
The problem with ramming, at least for the USN, is that you can hardly reply by opening up with your weapons, which would be truly suicidal inside Russian waters and near the (heavily fortified) Russian coastline.
As for the Russians, they are “crazy” enough to do that, even when their ship is smaller. (Ask any US sailor who served in the US submarine force — they know!).
The simple truth is that the Russian sailors “mean business” (the one of defending their motherland) whereas the US sailors, well, how shall I put it? They do very much want to “show the flag” and “defend principles”, but not if they might get seriously hurt.
That’s just a fact. From the Russian point of view, joining the military means accepting that pain and death come with the territory. 1000 years of warfare have truly imprinted that on the Russian collective psyche.
[Sidebar: by the way, a lot of US Americans love to repeat these famous words by General Patton: “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country“. This is a neat aphorism, and it very much caters to a typically US view of warfare. It is also almost perfectly wrong, as any Russian, Iranian or Hezbollah fighter could tell you – that is *not* how you win wars. In fact, this is how you lose them. And this is why putative “dumb bastards” beat the crap out of US forces over and over again…]
At the very least, it is high time to reduce the number of US officials in Russia: I am talking about diplomats, of course, but also the entire menagerie of “volunteers”, “NGOs” and, most definitely, US “journalists” accredited in Russia. Reducing their numbers will also make it easier for the FSB/FSO to keep an eye on the rest of them.
Next, I would also show a large number of EU “guests” to the door: after all, why keep them in Putin’s nightmarish Mordor? Let’s send them back to the “freedom” they, apparently, care for so much (at least when in Russia; when in Paris, Berlin or Rotterdam – not so much).
[Sidebar: Frankly, they EU rulers have gone completely insane. Now the EU is seriously considering cancelling the almost completed North Stream 2 over the Navalnyi nonsense! Sacrificing a multi-billion dollar project crucial to the EU economy over the fate of one particularly uninspiring and fake pseudo-dissident whose support in Russia is less than one percent (as shown by the miniscule crowds which violently rioted on is behalf). What the EU leaders fail to appreciate is that Russia needs NS2 much less than the EU does, as Russia’s main gas plans are fully focused on China. There is a good Russian expression about the kind of threats the EU makes: to “try to scare a hedgehog with a naked bottom!”. The EU really needs to be placed on a suicide watch, imho.]
Frankly, this entire western “fauna” has become accustomed to living in Russia while making a living hating on Russia. They mostly got away with it in the 80s, they totally got away with it in the 90s, and for the past twenty years the Kremlin has done precious little to change this.
I think that the “message” (westerners love “messages”) from the Kremlin should be simple: living and working in Russia is not a right; it is a privilege. If you can’t behave, then you have overstayed your welcome. In the current context, the West has much more to lose from this kind of policy than Russia (especially since Russian diplomats were already expelled, and Russian consular buildings illegally closed).
Next, Russia needs to respond to the US zero-sum-game, but not by accepting such a logic for herself. The main problem with the zero-sum-game mindset is that it is extremely wasteful: the side engaging in it has to spent a lot of time and efforts trying to deny *any* victory, or even mildly positive development, to the other side.
What Russia should do instead, is define a list of vulnerable and important targets/goals of the Empire, and then focus her resources and energy denying them to the USA. Such a fully focused effort is much more efficient than the kind of “full spectrum pestering” the USA typically engages in. The good news, at least for Russia, is that the USA is both vulnerable and weak, economically, militarily, culturally, socially – you name it.
As for the Empire, it has been dead for a while already: it simply ceased to operate as an empire a while ago already. Again, this reality is carefully hidden in what I call “Zone A“, but in Zone B everybody knows it, even if they pretend otherwise.
[Sidebar: the perfect place for Russia to really make a difference would be Iran. Though the Iranians are extremely sophisticated players, both their diplomats and their military, they badly need Russian help, especially in such fields as early warning systems, targeting, over the horizon radars, air defenses (ground and air based), antisubmarine warfare, coastal defenses, etc. – you name it!
Iran is, by far, the most important country in the Middle-East and Iran is therefore constantly under threat by the “Axis of Kindness”. Russia has not, so far, taken the strategic decision to give Iran the means to be safe, at least in part to be able to put pressure on Tehran when needed. (Russian and Iranian goals in Syria are similar in some ways, but also distinct in others.)]
Finally, the Kremlin needs to become much more attuned to the arguments of the “patriotic opposition”.
For one thing, many of the arguments of this patriotic opposition are correct, so listening to them is simply common sense.
Second, some of these arguments are flawed, but they cannot be ignored: these arguments need counter-arguments.
Simply assuming that the Russian people will always support the Kremlin. no matter what, is delusional and dangerous. Finally, some of these arguments are based on fallacies and only serve the interests of the USA/EU/NATO block. The fact that some Russians sincerely repeat them is a dangerous sign of how susceptible some segments of the Russian society still are to US PSYOPs.
For all these reasons, the Kremlin has to change its PR policies which are, frankly, becoming stale and sometimes even toxic.
[Sidebar: right now, there are three basic kind of opposition in Russia: the fake opposition in the Duma, which talks a lot, but basically supports the Kremlin, the non-systemic pro-US/EU opposition which probably speaks for about one percent of the Russian people, and the non-systemic “patriotic” opposition, which is also rather small, but which really needs to be represented in the Duma and become “part of the system of institutions” (as opposed to the current “one-man show”) of Russia]
I am in no way suggesting that Russia should become confrontational or provocative. All that is needed is for Russia to be less “diplomatic” and much more forceful in the defense of her interests. That, in turn, means two things: Russian officials need to change their rather demure tone when dealing with western imperialists and, second, Russian officials needs to back their words with real, measurable actions.
Conclusion: learn from your mistakes
Russian history is filled with cases when diplomats simply wasted the efforts and successes achieved by the Russian military. This is why the Russian military has a saying “the blood of some is spilled because of the incompetence of others” (another version: “Some had to become heroes to undo that which cowards did“).
Finally, if there is one thing which Russian history has shown beyond any doubt, it is that the internal enemy is much, much more dangerous than the external one.
I have always maintained that the Empire and Russia have been at war since at least 2014. This is not the purely military WWIII, of course, but a war which is 80% economic, 15% informational and only 5% kinetic.
This is, nonetheless, a total/existential war which will end with only one side standing, and the other will vanish. For Russia, this is a war for the survival of the Russian civilizational realm, hardly a minor matter.
Besides, this 80/15/5 percent war could quickly turn into a 0/0/100 kinetic one.
Thus, Russia needed to be very careful indeed. Now, roughly seven or eight years later, we can see that Russia has been winning, which is very good. But this war is far from over, such processes are very slow, and Russia simply cannot assume that “more of the same” from her will be enough to be victorious.
All in all, the Russian policy towards the collective West has been both sound and very effective, but now the time has come for meaningful change. Should the Kremlin ignore these changing circumstances, then Russia might, yet again, be forced to solve with her military that which the diplomats failed to protect and preserve.
God willing, Putin will heed the lessons taught by the history of Russia.
The Saker
140 Comments
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Hi Saker
I am glad to see that you aknowledge ( albeit diplomatically) that Putin’s appeasement policy can only go so far. Calling the rabid dogs of war in the west “our partners”, is an euphemism that has long lost the power to convince anyone (Vlad Vladimirovich including) that serious dialog can be developed with any of the current NATO leaders.
Time for Russia to show some teeth and bite…. long overdue. You can only delay so much the inevitable. I think a really show of force somewhere may give the NATO hot heads some pause.
Reclaiming the entire Donetsk oblast for Novorossia in 24 hour operation might be a good start.
Also concur that idea of helping the Persians. Leasing the Iranians an Iskander missile regiment ( manned by Russians) with the aim at all US based on the middle east would also give them second thoughts on attacking Iran. After all, Russians cannot a afford western-friendly regime in Tehran just 1 hour flight from its strategic long-range aviation regiment at Engels (near Saratov)-
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“Leasing the Iranians an Iskander missile regiment ( manned by Russians)” so that they can sit in them and do nothing like the S-400 Syria.
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Whoa cowboy-:)
I love our Lady.
Truly magnificent.
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If an Iskander regiment in Iran is as effective as an S300 regiment in Syria, then the Empire has nothing to fear.
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Russia is doing fine.
1. Russia is playing the long game and is winning on every front.
a: Secured Crimea and has made it permanently part of Russia.
b: Removed the most industrialised part of Ukraine, the Donbass region, from the control of the Kiev government.
c. Russia won in Abkhazia.
d. Russia won in Transdniestria
e. Russia won in Georgia 2008.
f. Russia won in Syria in 2015.The Saker’s general suggestion is that Russia should adopt a more ‘muscular’ approach. But how more muscular and robust can you be when you have the Russian air force, navy, army parked in Syria and rendering Syria as unofficially under the Russian nuclear umbrella?
2. The US is severely overstretched.
This week they sent a carrier to the South China Sea after China in what may well be a probing action to test the new Biden administration or even a ‘welcome’ message of sorts apparently:
a: Flew Chinese fighter planes in Taiwanese airspace (note as per Chinese law, Taiwan is part of China, though everyone knows it’s a separate ‘country’ i.e. government)
b: Told coast guard ships they have the right to shoot any ships threatening to Chinese sovereignty.
Can the US really engage in a two-front lukewarm war (intermediate between cold war and hot war, with the use of actual military forces but not firing at each other but breathing down each other’s necks e.g. the US carrier sent to the south China sea this week) with the Sino-Russian axis indefinitely?
3. The US will not have a war with Iran and its impotence is on display with the Iranian military and its surrogates (who are far weaker than either Russia or China) able to target US assets in Iraq.
So can the US really take on Russia, China and Iran at the same time?
There *is* a war and it’s a war of attrition and the Sino-Russian axis + allies (Iran etc) are slowly but surely dripping the US dry including denying them the ability to launch another ‘much-needed’ (as per MIC) once in a decade major war to fuel their economy.
4. The west is weakening.
a: There is serious talk of Scotland separating from England this week and thus the knock on impact on the northern Irish and Welsh later down the line. One could be forgiven that secretly some in the London establishment are resigned or indifferent to the possibility that northern Ireland will become part of a united Ireland in the future, in fact it is arguable that some in the English elite would actually welcome that as they don’t see the Northern Irish really as their countryman with their ‘foreign accent’, different culture and history, bordering on being alien at times.
The disintegration of the UK weakens England and also how much power it can project overseas including on issues such as the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Hong Kong etc (the latter obviously not being under UK control unlike the former two).
b: France is not in a good state, and Covid has suspended the ‘yellow vests’ riots, but the French economy is heading for far worse times in the future as is the previously mentioned UK too where 1/3 children may be living in relative poverty by 2024.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/third-kids-relative-poverty-2024-23354843
So if the French economy follows a similar path to the British economy, the far more volatile French could explode even further and the least thing on their minds will be ‘Putin’ or far away places such as ‘Odessa’ (Ukraine), Shiraz (Iran) or Qamishli (Syria) etc.
c: The US…well, it’s obvious.
We are in a state of cold civil war sometimes boiling over and producing tiny bubbles of ‘lukewarm’ civil war including the storming of Capitol Hill.
If someone had said 25,000 soldiers were needed to guard Saddam Hussein or Gaddafir for his inauguration and only hand-picked members of the elite were allowed to attend, they could be forgiven for thinking it was some despotic regime afraid of its own populace or a large segment of them.
Polarization is only going to increase in the US and the prospect of a potential ‘civil war’ or some sort of internal conflict looms ahead and this idea carries far more credibility now than it did before with the concrete example of the Capitol hill storming.
The US economy is also doing badly and millenials and others know that the US economically is post-peak and not going to experience the continuous linear progression in wealth that happened from WW2 onwards.
There isn’t much the US can do to Russia.
a: Threaten the territorial integrity of the Russian federation? No. Not even going to go in to detail as it’s not worth it, it’s obvious.
b: Undermine regions adjacent to Russia? Well they’ve tried e.g. Ukraine and they’ve been rewarded with the loss of Crimea and Donbass (plus Maidan was heavily connected to the idea of a Ukraine orientated towards the west e.g. EU + US, because these two entities represented success and modernity back in 2014 but since then with Brexit, Trump, yellow vests and increasing poverty they don’t, or far less so).
Putin is here to stay and he is winning. Why change a winning formula?
The key is often in moderation, being in the middle between wimpish passive behaviour (having thousands of Russian soldiers in Syria isn’t that) and overly aggressive hawkish behaviour, overly confrontational.
Russia has survived Napoleon and Hitler, even when Hitler was on the gates of Moscow, the Russian leadership decided that even if Moscow fell they would regroup and continue the fight with the Nazis and use a base elsewhere. The US is not in the least comparable to Napoleon or Hitler and like those two will also perish in any futile and pyrrhic campaign against mother Russia.
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Muslim_Dude
Excellent analysis. Many thanks.
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@Muslim Dude: “Russia has survived Napoleon and Hitler, even when Hitler was on the gates of Moscow…”
Napoleon’s troops even occupied Moscow:
“The [1812] invasion [by the forces of Western Europe] ended after six months with the last French troops leaving Russian soil. The reputation of Napoleon suffered severely, and French hegemony in Europe weakened dramatically.” (Wikipedia)
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Sending the carrier to the South China Sea is as perfect an example as can be imagined of the “threatening a hedgehog with a bare bottom” strategy.
Only perhaps we should see China as a large porcupine.
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you are absolutely correct Muslim _dude!
When Gerasimov stated to NATO that if there were missiles that could claim Russian lives in Syria, that the missiles will be shot down, the platforms firing these missiles and the decision centres will also be destroyed…..NATO listened and stopped their White Helmets charades as it had become extremely dangerous. Of course, they have continued attempting it with proxies for deniability sake but Gerasimov/ Putin laid the law of the land in the Eastern Mediterranean. If the new crew tries anything rambunctious, they will meet the Gerasimov / Putin law enforcers.
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Yes, one can bet that every time the Russian military used cruise missiles, it was not only for testing (although that’s probably included), and not only for demonstration purposes of stand-off capacity (which is an important thing to demonstrate so to control escalation), but also it targeted and destroyed particular important and high-level CIA/Pentagon/etc. assets and positions. It’s extremely hard to believe that Russia would have had any major successes in this war without forcefully removing and devastating assets that were clearly way too stubborn and unwilling to retreat under the pressure of reality. Well, in that case reality came to them to hunt them down.
There were unhidden “temptations” and verbal boasting and threads to respond and destroy the Russian presence in Syria. Or course, those did not turn into anything substantial apart from talking, because it collides with the logic of escalation dominance. They had to unavoidable realize (even if not talking openly about it) that trying to follow up on any of their threats would immediately result and complete and permanent destruction of the US standing in the entire Middle East, effectively tearing apart the Empire. Moreover, there were clear demonstrations that Russia would not buy into “plausible deniability” charades either. All this without much talking.
It’s interesting to observe the US leadership class response when they get seriously hurt but their ego denies them the possibility to respond. This actually weakens them even more and opens them up to more punches at which they have no means to respond either because this would expose their weakness (in two ways: one is in the very fact that they were capable of being damaged and another in the failures of their consequential responses) or because they are playing as the “axis of kindness” and cannot admit openly about the things they are doing, leaving a lot of their assets hidden and secret, not allowing to get social support of responding to the losses with force. This leaves them like hyenas looking and hissing from the side. Their specific apparent reaction is denial: “the Iranian ballistic missile fell in the desert”, “Russian cruise missile failed in the desert”, etc. You can count such reactions literally as indications and admittance that they were directly hurt but they simply cannot face it because of inner weakness of a fragile ego of an empire.
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Agreed with all your comments.
The US is quite polarized and getting worse every week. This is one area where events are accelerating and the establishment visibly and surprisingly losing control. I know many of you may regard this with contempt but I think the Gamestop situation will have huge repercussions. The mask is coming off more than ever.
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I will add my approval of your post, Muslim_Dude. Thank you very much. Some day, if not yet, the world will be a better, if not perfect, and more peaceful world because of the patient attention being given by Xi and Putin to the long arc of history in which each of us has a part to play, even if only an infinitesmal one. I personally am honored to be in such company and would not dream to do anything other than be very thankful they are who they are. It is a pleasure to read or listen to their speeches.
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Yes, Saker… it is not so much that the deep state/nomenklatura see Russia as weak. Obviously, someone in the top echelons of the military has some knowledge and respect for the competence and confidence of the Russian campaign in support of Syria. It is that those who are in ultimate command have a compulsive need to “win” so they have a need to constantly “up the ante” which is what they plan to do not just with Russia but also with the American people in the next two years at least.
What they do not really understand because they are Schweinehunde is that the basic soldier ( no wars can be won with just special forces and drones—at least not yet) fights to preserve democracy at home. So 70,000, 000 voters who were robbed quite blatantly in the last election and then shamed and shut down for asking for investigation and recount in some very questionable races have sons and daughters in the military. 70,000,000 people are doing a lot of buzz and talking and communication one-on-one and not on social media particularly.
Is this rumble quantified? No, but nonetheless there is a dialectic of quantity to quality inherent in this mere fact of human communication and also in how p-ssed off the nomenklatura out of hubris continues to make these millions of people. why? because- sigh -they are schweinhundt,–simply put.
https://summit.news/2021/01/27/gamestop-wall-street-rattled-at-populist-takeover/
It is time to become creative and united in our internal opposition like the Wall Street Reddit small fry who together crashed a big hedge fund. Think outside the box. beat them at their own game, keep shifting the terrain like doing a political-social economic-cyber guerrilla warfare and by keeping it legal….The system is so corrupt, inept with so many holes here in Looneylandia that it will shoot itself in the foot with a bit of encouragement.
The same for Russia—get creative. Or throw a party ? The soccer cup was awesome. Make package deals to St. Petersburg. if upon landing you take Sputnik V and isolate for a week at some very nice forested resort… Or
do an international contest—maybe just among young scientists–of proposals for the exploration and colonization of the Arctic. After all, Russia by merit of its huuuuge coastline lays claim to great swaths of it. The Arctic must offer up some challenges similar to the terra forming of Mars.OK. seriously. we as a species must think outside the box. If we cannot do so then the machines might as well run us on their preprogrammed track of taking the plutocracy to outer space with all of us slaves ( slavs) on earth paying for it.
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schweinhundt Correct spelling Schweinehund
The term used is btw unsuitable in the context you used it.
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“Make package deals to St. Petersburg. if upon landing you take Sputnik V and isolate for a week at some very nice forested resort… ”
Great idea! I would do it in a heartbeat.
In fact, I have been wondering how to get to Russia in the spring and get a shot there, then finally take a long-fantasized trip down the Volga . . .
I would even break out my Russian tapes.
Dobroye utro, Rossiya! Ya zdes’ za vaktsinoy!Seriously, are there any travel organizers out there?
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I have enquired. They are so far only giving the vaccine only to the residents in possession of a Russian health insurance. Alas…
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An excellent and enlightening article. The installment of neocon puppet Joe Biden is quite simply a return to neocon policies that existed prior to Trumps election (yes, we had neocon policies even under Trump, but I think somewhat milder versions. Perhaps we should give Trump the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he really wanted to improve relations with Russia, but he certainly did not have the strength to drain the neocon swamp).
As The Saker has stated, “… the Empire, it has been dead for a while already”. However, I have my doubts if the neocons have fully grasped this fact. They are still living in the past, although they have certainly grasped the fact that things are not as they used to be. A dying empire plays dirty, even more than when it is at full strength. The neocon bankers cannot accept the existence of Russia in its present form. How many times has Russia been invaded, each invasion backed by banker money ?
As The Saker pointed out, we can now certainly expect neocon activities in Ukraine, directed against the Donbass, as well as neocon activities on the Belarus and Russian borders. The most volatile situation will certainly be created in Ukraine, as the neocons will not be able to resist starting another war against the Donbass. However, as I have written before, any such activities would have severe repercussions inside Ukraine, which has already been weakened politically, economically, financially and psychologically, and which could easily implode as a political entity. As for Crimea, I have no worries, it being transformed into a fortress which even NATO could not take. Before any overt activities are seen on the frontier with the Donbass, we can certainly expect covert, destabilizing activities in Belarus and Russia, especially during the Russian Parliamentary elections, which the West will certainly try to sabotage one way or another.
As for the EU, it is of secondary importance, and one can argue if it is of any importance whatsoever. As I have written before, it is a banker creation, just like the US. It is also the civilian component of NATO. Nothing it does should come as a surprise.
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Hopefully Saker is right. Russia is full of fake America friends who want to “work” Biden’s butt. Their number and importance is decreasing, hopefully Russia also limits the power of Internet giants on its territory.
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Saker,
The broad outline is good. But I’m searching beyond the vague, and I can’t find much.Russia throws out Americans and EU destabilizers. Good.
Russia helps Iran withstand the menace of Israel (with her new Arab “allies”) and the threats from the US. Good.
But, what domestic actors who are patriotic and not part of the government are out there? Name some of these who Putin and the leadership should be paying attention to.
I see Russia as becoming domestically all about nationalizing control of all business sectors, and launching massive mega projects that develop the undeveloped regions and propel the high tech and export sectors to greater productivity.
Roads, gasification, medicine, education and R&D (AI, Block Chain, and digitization) heavily emphasized.
The big thing I read about that many complaints land on domestically is the lack of ideology. Many Russians are starved for what they had with USSR, an ideology that they felt served them and made the USSR a SuperPower with friends all over the globe (third world, actually).
Of course, we know the ideology ran its course and the USSR died because ideology handcuffed the government. It crippled the economy, even though it delivered education at the highest levels and medicine for all.
What Russians have been deprived of (until the Syrian War) is an awareness of the admiration of much of humanity at their leader’s geopolitical stature, the excellence of their military weapons systems, the heroics of their military and humanitarian people. Now, they know all this, plus the reliance China has on what Russia creates, and how Putin and the diplomatic corps handle the challenges the Empire throws at the Russian Federation.
It’s natural that Russians want to force outcomes. However, Putin has had no setbacks, only delays, following his judgment which is based on avoiding the need or use of forced outcomes. This has bought maneuver room and time to grow stronger.
Look at all the influence Russia has accumulated in the last seven years. Doing it Putin’s way works.
Has he lost the young people?
I think he has lost far fewer young people than any leader in any country, except China which has a unique society.
The Liberals have worked since 1991 to turn Russian society Westward, and they possessed the media, most of the mass culture sectors, the educational system and Billions of Dollars from the West to massage minds.
Putin has put more power in the hands of the Legislature under the New Constitution. This moves the government closer to the people. They have to chose more responsive representatives to get the results from government they desire.
One key measure of young people’s mindset is the conscription law. All young men have to serve their nation. So far, there is little evidence that this is an issue in Russian society.
Throughout much of the governance of Russia Putin has brought younger, more technically educated leaders to govern the provinces. Though the head of state will be in charge for many more years, the government officials closest to the people are a full generation or more younger than the President.
The Information War is where Russia really needs a complete overhaul. It needs it externally and internally.
I would like to see a list of recommendations with specific designs and media that will power the Russian Information effort. This is the hole in the donut in the only war Russia is losing.
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Failing to pardon Assange and Snowden completely destroyed Trump’s legacy as far as I am concerned. I wonder what Putin’s final legacy will be. You brought up the USSR. I’m curious to know how Russians would vote if Putin set up a referendum asking the people if they would like to see the return of the Soviet Union. Of course, the referendum would also extend to Russia friendly former soviet republics as well like Kazakhstan etc. Forget the Baltics and Western Ukraine.
And of course, Putin could envision are more streamlined USSR based on current principles, spiritual values but a more economically driven focus like that of China. In fact, a new Soviet Union based on the Chinese model with Russian characteristics combining the positive features of it’s tsarist and communist past.
The people of Russia and most of the other former states are nostalgic for its return. The old USSR can be improved, made better if the will is there. This I think is Russia’s only true defence and would be Putin’s greatest legacy. I’d love to know what other readers here think.-
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Absolutely….and not just Russians are nostalgic for the USSR!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO6q_mFjEUg
A renewed USSR would greatly energize a much needed resurgence of anti imperialist, and socially oriented government, which would greatly improve the lives of all the peoples of the US and EU countries, who have been attacked by oligarchs ever since the USSR fell.
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The last thing Russia needs in this universe is another USSR.
Strong russian role in post Soviet world is OK, but another USSR would kill Russia permanently.
Russia should MAYBE take back some territories given to some other republics by Bolsheviks, Belarus and Ukraine without western part … but even for that is not time yet because Russia is not strong enough economically for that.Another USSR, it would be huge deadly mistake.
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Even amongst many other post communist states there’s nostalgia for the good days of free health care, free education, a roof over every head, food for every belly and a job for everybody’s hands, now those are real human rights, not this fake ‘political freedom but we ban genuine opposition’ a la Ukraine, Latvia, Poland etc etc, cheap fast food available on every corner that kills before have to even consider unaffordable medical care, ‘democracy” but almost half of population unable to vote due to ethnicity like first Estonian election, even when communists allowed to run and win like in Bulgaria 1990 the capitalists harass them out of their victory, tell me, how is it free and fair? When yankee secret services and media harass, intimidate and assassinate civil rights movement, whistleblowers, moderate reformists all is gravy but that’s evil oppression when Soviets tackle greedy capitalist traitors under their actual out in the open for all to see state’s laws? Besides, a study in 1995 in Russia based on actual historical records of gulags found the westerners and their literal far right, nationalist propagandist puppets had massively exaggerated the figures, but the mud still sticks. It’s time to be stopped playing around, either take this threat far more seriously or give in and let the bastards colonise you like everywhere else, this is getting silly, take back historical lands, yes, but also reinstate something people can believe in, a beautiful USSR indeed, and don’t give in to this nonsensical propaganda campaign so meekly, that is unless Putin isn’t simply Yelstin with a mask, king vor. Бойцовский время.
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Unfortunately Larchmonter, I see Russia losing on one of the most vital fronts – that of maintaining a strong sense of Self Identity.
I was bitterly disappointed today, to hear Putin tell that arch Cultist of the EU, Schwab, that Russian and Europe are “one culture, one people, from Lisbon to Vladivostok”. I mean, he said that to Schwab, of all people.
So who are Russians to identify with at this years Victory Parade? The French who invaded twice? The Germans who killed 25 million of them? The English who have vilified and sought to destroy them for the last 250 yrs? To be told “you are Europeans”, and identify with Roman Catholic Church, not the Orthodox; with nations who invented the concentration camps, the burning alive of rebels against the system?
Once you have destroyed all sense of National Identity, you might as well pack up and submit – you are gone. All we need now is to see a Dunkin bloody Donuts outside the Kremlin Walls, and that will be that>
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What makes you think that when Putin was referring to ”the former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, saying that if we want European culture to survive and remain a centre of world civilisation in the future, keeping in mind the challenges and trends underlying the world civilisation, then of course, Western Europe and Russia must be together. It is hard to disagree with that. We hold exactly the same point of view”, it was a sign that Russia is losing its sense of identity?
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If you saw how many US fast food restaurants are in Moscow, you might think that capitulation already occurred. There are Dominoes, Papa John’s, KFC, Burger King, McDonald’s and all the fat bodies that go along with it.
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Excellent comment Pamela. I think the Saker is far too optimistic about the current situation in Russia. The young people clamour for the Western lifestyle, freedom, gadgets, etc.
Although Putin is trying to revive Russia’s cultural heritage, the young are not jumping onboard.
Strelkov believes that Putin will be overthrown this March. I hope he is wrong.
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Strelkov has been wrong on everything since 2014. He got the war in Donbass wrong, lost most of the two oblasts, nearly got all his men and himself killed, saved only by Motorola guys holding the rear as Strelkov ran for Donetsk.
He was ejected as leader and has spent his time since in the safety of Putin’s generosity while pissing at the Kremlin and all who followed him in Donbass.
He’s the Mitt Romney of Russia. An ungrateful lout responsible for the bad position of the militia that ultimately cost thousands of lives.
There would be Novorossiya if Strelkov was half the military leader he thinks he is.
Odessa and Mariupol were bloodbaths because of this egomaniac’s foolish leadership.
Both Motorola and Givy chose Zakharchenko over Strelkov.
Now “Shooter” is wanted for the downing of MH-17, mainly because he has a big mouth and foolishly talked over open communications.
He’s a military dilettante, not a military leader, and certainly knows nothing about leading a nation.
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Hi Larchmonter445, you make excellent points.
Strelkov is saying that the last turnout at the Navalny protest was huge. But it was not the Navalny supporters that were the majority in attendance, but the ordinary folk who were venting their frustrations with the current situation.
He said the police were demoralised likely due to conflicting orders from above.
He believes it is the Russian magnates that are behind this and believes the demonstrations will only get larger until they trigger a Maidan style colour revolution.
Anyway thanks for your detailed reply. Much appreciated.
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“But it was not the Navalny supporters that were the majority in attendance, but the ordinary folk who were venting their frustrations with the current situation.”
Are you implying here that Navalny is kind of a Trump analogue, channeling dissatisfactions of various sorts?
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Thanks, Larchmonter 445. I remember those terrible times, and how difficult it was back then to get an understanding of Russian politics here in the west. Great strides in communication have been made since then, and that is a great accomplishment Russians should be extremely proud of. We have been able to see Russia and envy her progress, as our own policies diminish what was once democracy for all. Of course times are hard , but I hope the people still stand with their leaders because we all need them to do so.
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Pamela, I believe everyone misses the obvious on Putin. The Saker has written about the U.S. for example taking Syria’s oil fields, and saying “Watcha gonna do about it?”
Well, why is it that only Iran sends oil and gasoline to Syria? What if Russian tankers escorted by Russian Navy went? Oh, well, the answer is that Russia only needs to look out after Russia and can’t risk war.
Look at the Swiss Tunnel ceremony, overt satanism. And Putin reaches out to Germany and even sends Navalny there? He’s that stupid or is he like Trump playing a part?
Putin in response to Trump using Russian prostitutes (Sputnik article) said they’re the best in the world. He didn’t have the diplomatic tact to respond with a wife as beautiful and bright as Melania I’m sure these are all lies. If these women aren’t human trafficked and forced into it, does he as a “Christian” understand what he says? He’s worldly and desires a seat at the table with the other powers. How can he not understand with the small ember of Christianity lit in Russia that demon possessed people like Schwab, with their public depopulation agenda, are not to be associated with?
When Oliver Stone interviewed him for his film, did he discuss the thousands of innocents massacred by the Ukranian Nazis? Why not play the victim card when it’s real, it’s only his dear friend Bibi on the 600 billion billion victims? Does Putin care?
Why should Putin be trusted any more than Trump? You think Russian weapons, no matter how good, will defend against satanic treachery?
It’s obvious who’s in charge of this world, and I don’t trust Putin; this is why he is deferential, it’s like The Godfather, he just wants his seat at the table.
With the Suez crisis, the old Soviets opened their silos and stopped it. The military overruled his pandering to Israel after the shootdown of the IL observation plane, from the later Prof. Cohen’s sources; the Saker defending Putin was pitiful.
My opinion is perhaps he’ll allow limited nuclear strikes, which he’ll trust won’t affect key areas, and return the favor to depopulate the West to please Schwab, Gates, et al.
He goes along with all Western lies, from 11 September, to COVID, to climate change. And the satanic A.I. Will Russian transhumanism be pushed in the future.
Russia is on probation for its past; just as Americans, they should be ware the wrath of God. Have faith in God; no princes in this world, Russian, Chinese, or fungus are worthy of trust.
Russia needs a real Christian leader, who doesn’t snuggle with satanists, who helps restore the faith, and is willing to fight. Putin could’ve developed defensive weapons instead created 200 megaton cobalt warhead to destroy all of North America: is that Christian? You think Soros would care or would be there when the bomb goes off, if Poseidon works?
Time will tell; Saker speculates, I theorize based on observations. But I see disaster on the horizon, for America and for Russia.
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That’s a very thought-provoking comment.
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You’re exactly the type of ‘ultra’ nationalist that Saker is referring to in this article.
A leader doesn’t need to respond to every move of his enemy. As Sun Tzu himself said ‘don’t disturb your enemy when he’s making mistakes’
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>> I was bitterly disappointed today, to hear Putin tell that arch Cultist of the EU, Schwab, that Russian and Europe are “one culture, one people, from Lisbon to Vladivostok”.
It has been the goal of Russia’s foreign policy for a long time to become part of Europe again. Europe is a much more natural ally than China and it is the cultural world to which Russia has always been most connected.
However, the US is strongly against such a connection. If Russia is no longer the enemy there is no longer a need for NATO and American military influence. Even worse, connected with Russia the EU would be much stronger economically than the US and no longer dependent on oil and gas imports. And that would rob the US of a lot of leverage.
Much of what are seen as anti-Russian policies are in fact American policies aimed at preventing any improvement in the ties between Russia and the EU. Skripal, MH17, Maidan, Navalny: every time something happens that can be used against Russia you will America’s minions inside the EU pushing for more hostility.
As an “ally” the US has a lot of access in European societies and it uses that to exert a lot of influence. And the last decades that influence has only increased. So it controls much of the public narrative. That is the reason why for example initiatives to evade America’s Iran sanctions were much slower realized than promised.
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The Russian government ought to hire the Saker as their Public Relations and media advisor.
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Larchmonter445
Do you think US/UK will put intense financial pressure on Russia?
I read an interesting article on Stalkerzone which suggested the US/UK are threatening the financial assets of the Russian oligarchs deposited abroad. The idea being this will force them to support a domestic campaign against the Putin government. Evidence of this, the article argued is the fact that none of the big projects outlined by govt. has been committed to or supported by the Russian money men -their reluctance caused by fear of western sanctions against their financial assets abroad.
Definitely feel we are coming to a decisive moment in Russian history.-
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Oligarchs in UK who meddle in politics in Russia will be criminalized, go to prison if they return, and lose their holdings inside Russia.
They are hated by nearly all citizens, so they have no influence.
Money spent on color revolutions has totaled billions so far, and to no noticeable effect.
Russia, by all outside business, economic, financial standards is ready to grow better than most developed nations. It is doubtful there is any issue domestically that will suddenly change the government.
Putin has billions he can use to calm any social necessity. Funds from the revenues of the resource sales are fungible. Russia has no debts. It has all forms of sovereign funds, gold, currencies and soon digital currencies.
Since every Russian knows that the most fanatical enemy of Russia is the UK and has been so for 250+ years, a UK-based oligarch-funded revolution would seem quite fanciful if not laughable.
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I agree with you on Russia stepping up in the information war. Whether they realize it or not, Russia is the enemy of the US. Most average americans, especially democrats in my opinion, think Russia is evil. It is very sad, as an american, to see this disgust conversing with people. I cannot talk to people, old or young, about Russia and expect to have an intelligent conversation.
The information war has destroyed Russia’s image as it was intended to do and now anything Russia may say against the propaganda is taken as propaganda. It is time for Russia to realize it is not going to change the opinions of americans or its government.
The time has come for Russia to change the opinions of the people and governments of the rest of the world. It is time for people outside america to be shown what america really is and be able to make up their own minds about the true going ons in the world. RT is not doing this and is seen as unreliable by the mainstream. The people of the world deserve the truth and with out Russia fighting a real information war that will never happen and propaganda will continue to rule the world.
Russia’s reputation is tarnished and it is time to tarnish the reputation of the US. The only way to do this is show the truth to the world and let them judge for themselves who the real terrorists are. All of Asia, Africa and South America need to know there is another side than just what america spews out and they need to hear it from somewhere besides conspiracy theorists. They need to hear it from a government that is clearly hated by the most trusted government in the world. They need to hear the atrocities that have truly been carried out and blamed on others.
Not everyone is going to believe the truth. But surely Russia has secret information and it is high time they quit playing games and start releasing it. If they are going to be accused of hacking and spying, let them deliver to the rest of the world what they really know. If they do not the rest of the world is going to continue doubting Russia instead of beginning to doubt the US.
Between WADA and Skripals and MH17 the Russians should have surely realized they have not a foot to stand on in the information war and for one I find it truly unacceptable that one narrative can resound uncontested around the world. If their government is afraid to tarnish its reputation more by putting the truth out to other governments and their people they will find soon no one will listen to them.
People throughout the world want to see the truth but we can’t go around quoting conspiracy theorists and expect to be believed. Try talking to a british ex-pat about the truth of Cecil Rhodes and and the conspiracy of the british government trying to subversively control the US and you get a sound “you need to check your research”. All of us are sick of it but Russia sits back as if the truth will eventually come to light. Well it won’t unless they start releasing all the info their secret services has on the five eyes.
Not sure of the real answer here, but talking about overhauling Russia’s information war which is simply non-existent to the US’s is a good start. I don’t comment here but do read regularly and this post inspired me that there is a war and it is high time Russia started acting on global public opinion, forget about US and European, their majority is done and controlled. The rest of the world is still open to the truth and it needs to be given to them from an entity they want to believe but hear nothing from except denials. Show the world the truth about terrorism and maybe the world will change, keeping silent for the world to wake up will change nothing. Hoping for a collapse is fine, giving the people the knowledge of their deception is better than hoping.
-Cheers
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Yes. This is exactly correct. Since the Big Tech is really the Big Intelligence, the way the censorship is heading, any talk outside the accepted scripts will be banned and eventually criminalized. This is, of course, CYA for those who actually killed the Kennedys and who actually conducted the 9-11 & subsequent anthrax attacks. Surely Russia knows. It may be the right time to let the cat out of the bag. All the writings about the censorship discuss things in terms of the actions of private companies. These discussions are red herrings, leading people away from the base reason for the censorship, which is to keep the public ignorant of their government’s crimes.
The problem for Russia is that there are a million Russians living in pissrael, thus Putin’s hesitancy to lay the blame where it belongs. But Russian Intelligence may be naive: they warned the FBI of the Tsarnaev brothers long before the Boston bombing. Did Russian Intelligence really think the FBI was an honest organization dedicated to ‘fighting crime’? And, no, I don’t think the Tsarnaev brothers had anything to do w/the actual Boston bombing, other than being set-up. They were, however involved in the Waltham triple murder of their dojo buddies.
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Personally, I’d sit tight, shut up, and let China take some of the heat. That would slow the rate of new sanctions. China is also pretty well placed with a growing middle class for internal consumption (against sanctions), and I would guess a military able to defend her near shipping lanes. (I should defer to those much more knowledgeable than I!)
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Something needs to be done about Russia Today (RT). Something not quite right there.
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I agree Makedonia. During Putin’s WEF address, the Western trolls completely hijacked the RT live chat.
Such live chats would never be allowed during Biden’s or Obama’s address.
It is in technical things like this that Russia is behind and will pay for it dearly.
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” Besides, this 80/15/5 percent war could quickly turn into a 0/0/100 kinetic one.”
The end for everybody.
“Thus Russia needed to be very careful indeed.”
Yep. And not only Russia; it’s the end for everybody. But do those others see that? Suppose that they can’t. The responsibility for doing something about it then rests with those who (1) can see it; and (2) have the power to do something about it.
” Now, roughly seven or eight years later, we can see that Russia has been winning, which is very good. But this war is far from over, such processes are very slow, and Russia simply cannot assume that “more of the same” from her will be enough to be victorious.”
What’s the definition of “victory” in this case? Maybe, just getting out alive. The US is a very dangerous entity in free fall and a soft landing needs to be urgently arranged by those who could possibly manage it.
” All in all, the Russian policy towards the collective West has been both sound and very effective, but now the time has come for meaningful change.”
Maybe the change should not be in the direction of confrontation, but more towards managed guidance by imperceptible (by others) nudges and incentives.
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I honestly think that domestic problems are going to force Biden to forget about provoking Russia.
As an American, I can tell you that commerce here is starting to “seize up,” the same way an internal combustion engine “seizes up” when it does not have oil.
Some of the things that are happening.
1) The “internet of things” movement in the United States is going into reverse. At first, everyone thought it was great. Now that people realize that law enforcement, other government entities and private corporations are using these wifi connected gadgets to spy on people’s homes and private conversations. People are trying to get rid of these gadgets (I just gave away and iPad) and are not buying new ones.
2) Many business computers are being hijacked for ransom. The result is more restrictions on use of computers and more software to protect from hijacking. Computers themselves – burdened by antihijack software – are themselves slowing down to a crawl. Due to fear of hijacking, sometimes workers are advised not to touch a computer when something suspicious appears on the screen until a IT tech person comes and looks at it. That can be 5 or 10 minutes or more. Work is slowing down in one office after another.
3) Many companies have outsourced customer support to a combination of automated telephone systems and/or poorly trained customer representatives in India and Mexico who can barely speak understandable english. People literally spend hours on the telephone trying to get customer support and end up frustrated and angry at the uselessness of it all. More and more people are buying only necessities and forgoing anything that might need customer support.
4) Many companies have “inclusion initiatives” which cater to “identity politics.” Hours are wasted trying to make sure that every work group is “inclusive.” This is not only wasting huge amounts of time but infuriating people who were not biased against minorities in the first place.
5) Anything that requires a government permit has become a nightmare. And more and more activities require a permit. The “permit grantors” act like the owners of feudal fiefdoms, rather than public servants. Even getting permits for the simplest of things is a nightmare.
6) The quality of goods and services are dropping as businesses often look to maximize profit by minimizing cost by cutting back on training, paying minimum wage, using inferior materials and so on.
7) Much of the investment activity in the country serves no legitimate social purpose at all. Here is an example:
In a nutshell, short sellers borrow another’s stock and then sell them, betting that they will go down in value so they can buy them back later for cheaper and then return the share to its original owner while keeping the difference for a profit. It’s a fairly straightforward process that happens all the time on Wall Street.
Hedge funds believed that with brick and mortar shops closing up all across the world because of the Covid-19 pandemic, GameStop would be no different. After all, large online retailers like Amazon are where the real growth potential is because of the overhead involved with physical stores. It’s merely a consequence, hedge fund managers would say, of a process that started well before the global pandemic.
Surprise BOOM: GameStop stock spikes as Reddit-based effort to spite short-sellers triumphs
So hedge funds moved to drive GameStop’s stock (GME) down, profiting as they continued to short sell before Redditors took notice and mounted a pushback. They purchased as many GME shares as possible to drive up the price, knowing that these hedge funds still had unaccounted shares to buy back. It meant that these hedge funds would be left paying huge sums for GME shares and hemorrhage cash without a choice.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/513839-gamestop-reddit-wallstreet-panic/All of this stuff is not intermittent at this point, it is constant. I honestly think that the country is going to seize up in the foreseeable future.
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That is my expectation as well. Things will just continue breaking, seizing up like in supply chains – a constant trend of deterioration accompanied by a constant pretense that all is well. I don’t think the Bidenites are going to prove themselves very competent – case in point Jen Psaki who is making one blooper after the other, lipstick and ponytails in the military and ‘choose your pronoun’ in the halls of government. Boeing is a very good example of this trend of not being able to produce much of anything that actually functions.
The other side of this coin is that some people become strong in this kind of adversity and start solving problems outside of the system.
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‘It also ignores the fact that while US Presidents are really puppets, figureheads, even if during their campaign they pretend otherwise.’
Such as with Joe Biden I see as a sad figure a Don Quixote tilting at windmills to the end.
Thus I did the short video. See if you can indentify the other players such as ‘Sancho’ and ‘Justice’ ….
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It is still early days to assess the Biden administration, but the signs are not good. The establishment has a legitimacy problem. Even a dictatorship needs a basis of support in the population. Internationally, the U.S. system of “alliances”/satellites is on life support. There are visible cracks, and less visible, but more serious damage to the roots. The U.S. economy is in trouble and is struggling to overcome the COVID epidemic. So the Biden administration is in a weaker position then earlier presidencies. Instead of dictating to others as they please and deciding what is “true” and what is “false”, they will need to be more careful– if they aren’t completely reckless. Where will this caution manifest itself?
What interests does the Biden administration represent? I would say finance, silicon valley, zionists, war profiteers, and other wealthy groups. The public has faired poorly under the governance of this establishment and is reaching the limit of what they will tolerate. Assuming the collective “Biden” are not completely blind and obdurate, they will need to make some policy concessions to the public. What will they try? Presumably, they will try to find a formula which doesn’t undermine the agendas of their constituencies– chiefly the wealthy and the zionists. So far they seem to be trying to use identity politics, but I doubt this will suffice. The public needs a real improvement in their living situation, not just a show. Will other concessions be made? The caliber of people in the administration doesn’t seem high; they seem to be what Richard Nixon called “first rate second rate men”. If they are not able to formulate effective strategies to tackle America’s problems, how will events play out? They will not be in control of these events.
The Europeans are contemplating a separation from America, although the EU seems beset with problems. I read somewhere that Germany had proposed to Biden to support the U.S. anti-Russia campaign, in return for U.S. agreement to an independent EU military. So the EU hostility to Russia could reflect some hidden deals we are not privy to.
Some U.S. policies don’t make much sense on the surface, so you have to wonder what the real agenda is, which cannot be stated publicly. For example, does “Biden” really think we can replace Venezuela’s government with Juan Guido? I have a hard time believing this. My guess is Guido is just a pretext for economic warfare against that country.
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There is plenty of evidence that the Russian people are getting fed-up with what they see is a rather weak, if not lame, attitude of Russian officials, especially against the constant flow of petty harassment measures against Russian interests.
Tell me about it. I was feeling the same way already a decade ago, by the beginning of the so-called Syrian civil war, especially concerning world chess master Vladimir Putin. I even remember having said more than once that his foreign policy was leading right to a situation where the US NATO would be camping their military forces on the grounds of Red Square and demanding he leaves his offices so they could establish there their Command Center while he protests that his partners are not being fair. I said that 10 years ago and I see that image as relevant now as I saw it then.
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Far too many Putin worshippers are determined to explain away all his spectacularly failed “restraints ” – every one of which was detrimental to Russia – as “5 dimensional chess” or whatever. Their tactic seems to be to wait until the Amerikastani Empire stumbles over its own shoelaces and claim that “Putin knew this would happen “. Well, the Amerikastani just gets up and continues advancing.
At this point a genuine regime change in Russia which put a nationalist in power, rather than a neoliberal Yeltsinite owned by the zionist entity, would be more than welcome.
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I couldn’t agree more. People seem to forget or to have never known that early in this game Vladimir Putin made abundantly clear that the most desirable world order for in his eyes was one ruled by Washington and the U.S. dollar, a world order in which Russia would find her ‘rightful” place as a secondary power and a U.S. vassal state as the UK, France and Germany and that what torpedoed his dream wasn’t even a change of heart of him but the fact that they made abundantly clear to him that “this is a big club and you don’t belong in it”. People seems to forget also that he didn’t flinch in February 2014 when the cookie munching Fascists in Kiev were destroying Ukrainian democracy and constitutionality, oblivious to president Yanukovich’s calls for help, busy as he was trying to look good in front of his Western partners at the Sochi OGs, all that for nothing except for achieving more Western sanctions against Russia and getting NATO troops only a few hundred miles from the Kremlin, yielding to them in the process hundreds of miles of a territorial shield that had cost the blood of many thousands if not millions of Soviet citizens to obtain. They seem to forget also that he had practically abandoned Assad to his fate, letting the door opened for NATO to reach Damascus and then Iran and the Caucasus and the heartland of Mother Russia (as he openly stated then that his main priority in Russian foreign policy was “to have the best possible relations with Washington”) and that it took for the martyred Iranian general to plead him for intervention after explaining him how dire the consequences for Russia would be if he allowed that to happen. Looking at the events of the last two months precious little seems to have changed in that foreign policy. Putin followers can say whatever they want but for one I will feel great relief when the man is gone and the West had finally to face, after many decades, a real rough hombre in the Kremlin.
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…..Putin followers can say whatever they want but for one I will feel great relief when the man is gone and the West had finally to face, after many decades, a real rough hombre in the Kremlin…….
That’s right. The idolatry and propaganda are so great that it is incredible to read that there are more Putin fans among Westerners (Russians abroad) than in Russia itself. From my point of view, he would definitely win the elections in Serbia. After Tito, Putin. No God and orthodoxy, no racio or intelligence.
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Great piece!
I only have one question: Which country is being hinted at in the passage ”sometimes joined by the country many Russians think of as ’Puny Britain’” ? Gównopolska?
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Overcomplicating things, LOL. Britain is left out at the beginning of the quote ”US/Israel/KSA, sometimes joined by the country many Russians think of as ’Puny Britain’”.
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Nussiminen,
After Scotland and Northern Ireland leave the UK, Britain will go from being America’s lapdog to being America’s lapmouse.
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Mr. Saker,
From France. You say very true things, things which are a pleasure to read. But, still, I cannot bring myself to believe in the total sincerity of Mr. Putin. Is he a real defender of Russia and the Russian people ?
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It seems to me that Russia has been doing extremely well over the past 20 years, so on the one hand I would say if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. Keep doing what you’ve been doing.
That said, one crazy idea that occurred to me…I don’t know if it’s feasible or not…but it seems like a winner to me: Offer to trade Navalny for Julian Assange. Full pardon for Navalny in exchange for full pardon and freedom for Assange. First, I hate the idea of ever equating a hero like Assange with foreign Intel tool like Navalny. But the reaction of the west when such an offer is made would be priceless. Really curious what they would say.
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Navalny is totally useless to West outside RF. And I am also sure that Assange, being anywhere but
in western jail, is also totally useless ( must keep western journalist ‘in line’). Exchanging Snowden for Assange has been tried but, so far, RF refused to step into this ethical trap.Regards, Spiral
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“Exchanging Snowden for Assange has been tried but, so far, RF refused to step into this ethical trap.”
When has this been tried? And why would it be an ethical trap? Snowden keeps on critizising Russia in general and Putin in particular and more than once let everybody know, that he would prefer to live in a Western country. He hasn’t even bothered to learn Russian up to now.
Besides he owes his freedom if not his life to Assange (besides Putin). It would be an ethical trap for HIM.
But that’s all speculation. No country except the USA would want him, and “at home” he’d reside in one of those wonderful places Assange is being kept in.
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That would be like trading a pawn (Navalny) for a King (Assange).
Given the fact that in the West, everything is expendable, I’m not sure they’d be willing to trade a Navalny, who is of limited value, against an Assange, but it’s a worthy idea.
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Several years ago I wrote an article which I began with the following cautionary tale:
“Our hero is a certain man, we’ll call him Mr P, who lives in a large house with a front garden and a gate. Some way down the lane there lives a Mr A, who is a known Mafia criminal with a history of violent crime. Mr A has paid off the police chief, so there is no point complaining to the law about Mr A’s crimes. He owns the law.
Now, Mr A covets Mr P’s nice house and garden. He doesn’t need either, but he covets them. Also, the fact that Mr P doesn’t obey his every whim, like everyone else on the street, rankles with Mr A. And Mr P is not unaware of any of this.
One of the reasons that Mr A can get away with his crimes is that he has a gun. It is a big gun, a machine gun of 14.7mm calibre, and just about everyone else on the street is either unarmed or has only muzzle loaders. The only exception is Mr P, who happens to own a machine gun himself. Not as big as that owned by Mr A, 12.7mm rather than 14.7, but not far behind.
Now one day Mr A comes out of his house carrying his machine gun, comes up the lane, and uses it to shoot the lock off Mr P’s gate. Mr P, watching from his window, does nothing. Mr A, seeing that his actions have brought no punishment, walks into the garden, trampling over Mr P’s flower beds, and shoots Mr P’s pet rabbits. Mr P still watches, doing nothing.
Then Mr A begins hammering on Mr P’s front door, to which Mr P’s response is to….pull down the shutters on his windows and shout that Mr A’s activities are unacceptable and an affront to society.
What would you think of Mr P, here? Would you commend his restraint in not starting a gunfight that would shoot up the street? When Mr A breaks into his living room, isn’t Mr P going to have to start that gunfight if he isn’t to be robbed of hearth and home?
And what if, as soon as Mr A had emerged on to the lane, Mr P had come out of his house with his machine gun, leaned casually on his gate, and pointed the gun in A’s general direction? Would or would not have A got the message?”
Mr A is, of course, Amerikastan, and P is, well, there isn’t any need for me to explain who he is.
I think the Saker is wrong to claim the Amerikastani Empire has been at war with Russia since only 2014. The war has been going on since at least 1999 when Putin, then new at the job, began the process of liberating Chechnya. I still recall the Ameriganda about the “massacre of Grozny” and how the “Chechen movement is regarded by most authorities as a nationalist struggle”. This when Akhmad Kadyrov and Beslan Gantamirov’s Chechen militias were in the forefront of the liberation battle on the Russian side. That Russia persevered until Chechnya was liberated put a spanner in the works for approximately five years, roughly 2005-8.
The next shots fired were when Medvedev became president and the Georgian Saakashvili regime immediately attacked Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia. Medvedev however didn’t back down and made Saakashvili eat his tie on live television.
You’ll note that these two were attacks on Russia, first directly and then via South Ossetia, and that resolute Russian action defeated the Amerikastani Empire both times.
Defeated in these attempts, the Amerikastani Empire focus shifted to attacking Russia indirectly by destroying Russia’s friends and allies. In 2011, Russia stood by and watched while Libya was destroyed; Syria would have fallen as well but for Iranian and Hezbollah assistance and the fact that Syrian minorities and secular Sunnis, knowing exactly the fate that awaited them under a Wahhabi theocracy, fought Obama’s headchoppers back from within sight of Assad’s presidential palace (“Operation Damascus Volcano, 2012) all the way back to Daraa. Russia stood by and watched while Ukraine was openly destroyed and handed over to Nazis in 2014; but the war was going on long before that. And it goes on now, harder than ever before.
I regular read the Canadastani propagandist Gwynne Dyer to find out what the enemy wants its people to think; Dyer, a bone deep neoliberal Cold War Reagan worshipper, regurgitates every single propaganda piece against Russia, China and Belarus as incontrovertible fact (such as “Navalny was poisoned”, “Tikhanovskaya won the Belarus election”, “Putin is a thug”, etc etc). Russian “restraint ” against people totally brainwashed by Dyer etc al is pointless. They already think Russia is utterly evil, they can’t be unbrainwashed, they don’t want to be unbrainwashed, and Russia should no longer try.
I have over and over attacked Putinist “restraint”. It has achieved nothing except emboldening Russia’s mortal enemies. And Russia’s enemies are the world’s enemies so it’s our war as well.
If Putin isn’t ready to abandon “restraint” now, then Russia must abandon Putin. Nothing short of that.
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However, your thoughts are typical Western ones.
You forgot: Mr. P has already put his gun into direction of Mr. A. He confronted directly.
Mr P has actually more advanced military equipments/machines/supersonic etc.
Mr. P confronted with it Mr. A last year already.
The next confrontation is: debt. Mr. P is almost debt free whereas Mr. A is overloaded with debt.
The third confrontation is that the economy of Mr. P is neither too excellent due to extraordinary burdens nor in such a great distain as is Mr A’s.
I think these are more than enough confrontations.
Only one confrontation is (much to my regret) missing: Mr. P’s propaganda is weak whereas Mr. A’s propaganda is extremely strong.-
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Since I’m not Western your first point is moot.
Mr P isn’t yet barricaded in his house, but Mr A is at the gate. Whether Mr P is financially better off than Mr A is irrelevant at this point since nobody dares to demand that Mr A, who buys all his stuff on credit, ever pays his bills. And Mr P has to move fast if Mr A is to be kept outside the gate. He’s already trying to open it.
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The war has been going on since at least 1999 when Putin, then new at the job, began the process of liberating Chechnya
The war hasn’t stopped for a century, but if you’re looking for a start to the war after Berlin wall collapse, then it was a proxy war in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and above all in Yugoslavia long before the second war in Chechnya.
As for Putin….he is only a good actor and the so-called Valdai manager, but he is certainly not a statesman. He may also be a Chess player. He finished off Rodina. That’s why he was brought. While setting up Vladimir and giving a speech on national television the oligarchy’s money on the way to London and New York kept going.
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“Finally, some of these arguments are based on fallacies and only serve the interests of the USA/EU/NATO block.”
Oh? What are these arguments? Let’s hear them and decide how they’re “based on fallacies” instead of just being told that they are.
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Yes, the cultural invasion of Europe (including Russia) has been a victory for the Anglo-Zionist Leviathan. This is just as important as economic and military conquest. Many Russians, especially of the liberal frame of mind have swallowed this cultural assimilation with apparent alacrity. I remember when I was being shown around the city of Donetsk (which strictly speaking is not in Russia, but is Russian in every respect) with my future wife who pointed out the crowning feature of life in Eastern Ukraine – MacDonalds! There was a lengthy queue to sample the goodies of the Anglo-Zionist monolith. I was actually shocked. I commented that if I wanted to eat at MacDonald’s I could easily do so where I live in London. Europe from Lisbon to Valdivostock has been totally Americanised. It is totally subservient to American rule; vassal states to the core.
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Culturally it’s Pax Americana worldwide. This is not just a Russian problem.
But it’s coming to end….The US culture has greatly diminished. I have noticed that it’s the lower socio- economic classes that are the most “americanised”.
People are waking up to the fact that American culture, like American fast food, is no longer good for them.
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Never underestimate the power of Hollywood/social media propaganda brainwashing Russian youth. Russia also has its own snow flake generation of foolish brainwashed lonely hearts believing there is honey growing in streets of Detroit and Chicago.
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While speaking loudly about people’s rights, destroy them. It is written several hundred years ago.
While talking loudly about Patriotism, destroy it. Donald J. Trump. He was the provacateur in power. What actually did he accomplish, if anything ? I go for nothing. Broke. destruction. That is the correct answer.
They will build on that. The new corporate national socialism for the World.
So the Biden administration would be worrisome for Russia? I think not. There is nothing more to destroy in international politics by the way. The talk is now on reestablishing ties. Extend the Start Treaty. Iran’s nuclear deal. These two policies show that Biden’s administration has nothing new to offer. They will join the World Government without any national opposition. Their worry will be the national opposition. The People (of the U.S.A). Not Russia.I think Russia has been very patient during the destructive period led by U.S.A. The terrorist forces doing the globalist warfare led by U.S.A. The knowledge of this has come out in the open, even the leaders and people in Euorpe and elsewhere and of course in Russia is aware of the precarious situation U.S.A. has painted themselves into in widely accepted condemnation of their policies. The European leaders are slowly disappearing having been deeply involved.
Russia may be even more patient than before.
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Ken Leslie, where are you? This is your cue to enter stage left. The master has spoken, wisely, and it is clear that he has heard his acolyte, listened attentively, ruminated upon the acolyte’s words and reached a new understanding. Of course, the acolyte was scolded by Boadicea and, perhaps, has been made timid. No, to be so chastised by a strong woman is a blessing and a mark of respect. All is forgiven. So Ken, tell us what you think. We are all ears.
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Simon,
Ken and I will always have great respect for each other. Ken possesses a brilliant, analytical and questioning mind and that is an absolute rarity nowadays. I can think as well. What surprises me, even on this blog, is a rather common assumption that Russia, by not responding to Every stupid provocation, turns itself into some kind of a punch bag for the “West”. I said this before and I will say it again – Far From It! When will the shoe drop with these people? Russia Does Not need to respond to every sodding provocation; it responds selectively – with minimum effort and maximum result. That’s how you do it. And if you people would care to look a bit more closely, you will realise that. The only problem, and here I would totally agree with Larchmonter445 – is the lack of a proper, well-placed and effective PR. Sometimes you just need to crow a bit about your achievements – it does not hurt to bring that to other’s attention and then, perhaps we can stop this constant harangue with regard to Russia’s perceived “inaction”. As some people on this blog have pointed out – Russia Is winning and will continue this winning, so chill out. The demise is not going to happen – Ever!Please stop using capitals its screaming and breaks site policy – amended on this one occasion. Thx. Mod.
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Thanks to the Moderator for giving me a chuckle, as your amendment made Katerina’s comment an enjoyable one – which does comport with what she is saying about Russia’s low key approach to provocations – the site policy here being also in accord with success on the part of Russia and China, both of whom continue to take the gentle approach of dialogue and compromise in international affairs that is not a weakness but a strength. As a country with people of diverse opinions and needs the US is not going away; it is part of the world. And even as it belittles itself to the ranks of a second rate power, the potential is there for it to rise again in the estimation of other countries.
Just as Russia itself did.
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‘Russian history has shown beyond any doubt it is that the internal enemy is much, much more dangerous than the external one.’
This I believe is the key to Russian thinking. That the US will destroy itself internally given a little time. What is that period of time is the critical question and will those in charge in the US try and avoid such by starting some international conflict to engage the US people and distract them from their obvious internal strife.That capitalism is showing its ulgy head in the US by the divide of rich and poor does not mean it is finished. It only needs the promise of another profit to rise again and war is profit for many a capitalist.
Something amazed me the other day. It was that Biden signed an order to close private prisons. I did not know there was such a thing and I have never seen any state or country counternance such a situation of having private prisons for profit apart from Egypt over 2000 years ago. It would be similar to having the state charging for enjoyng a religious conviction like to be Buddist or smoking Hemp.
So the theory is that all conditions of the human being such as having a crap or sucking on a mother’s teat can be made profitable to someone. In such a civilization there is no need for government. Which is nearly what the US has embraced as a ‘get out of jail card’.
Such folly as hundreds of years of estimating human society will point to a seriously defective brain disfunction even among the mentally challenged or rabid narcissists.
Now I am not a political devotee and I look at the family then the villiage I live in and how that works then the town then the city then the country. Not the reverse. Should the country need to treat the families differently then that is a problem. Capitalism is more destructive than most top down systems as it predicates that the individual make a profit from even members of his or her own family. Otherwise run a prison system that profits the company, shareholder or individual over any moral consideration.
That capitalists say the moral imperative is part of the human condition and will naturally succumb to the more important profit motive, is not an argument I would like to embrace as a condition for a lasting and happy future.
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@John Hagan: “Biden signed an order to close private prisons. I did not know there was such a thing and I have never seen any state or country counternance such a situation of having private prisons for profit apart from Egypt over 2000 years ago.”
I would be surprised if that order takes effect. Only yesterday I was bitterly reflecting that someone arrested for protesting against the U$ regime would be put in a private prison to make profits for the regime.
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“The people of the world deserve the truth. [Unless Russia fights] a real information war that will never happen and propaganda will continue to rule the world.”
Agree.
Does Russia have a service analogous to Voice of America? I.e., Voice of Russia?Russia needs to develop a c omprehensive plan that borrows the best propaganda/PR ideas from the cold war USA:
##Voice of Russia info service with many documentaries in multiple languages; also with daily news service in English and other major languages
##Russia House libraries in major cities;
##Russian Council cultural centers (anal. to British Council) with films, language classes, exchange programs;
##subsidized educational travel for foreigners eager to learn Russian, do internships, etc;
##fund a national scholarship/fellowship program anal. to German DAAD whereby foreign students spend a year in a Russian high school and college grads can apply for fellowships to study in Russia for a year after graduation;
##Etc.Surely Russia has the cash to pay for such a “soft power” informational program.
Katherine
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The largest problem is cultural,modern culture worldwide is considered Western. And the youth of all these countries want to appear modern. If Russia and ,China as well, don’t stop letting their young go to schools in the West they will lose this war.If Russia and China don’t get a handle on their internal situation they will lose this war.
All my life I’ve heard that the Soviet Union was defeated by their economy not being able to provide the modern lifestyle their population could see was available in the West.The classic “guns and butter” argument.I’ll tell you a story that I’ve seen.I follow on YouTube this Russian gymnastic trainers blog. He trains kids in gymnastics in a middle ground Russian city of a little over a million people.The team he trains has won a bunch of medals and they are pretty good,though not at the top.He seems like a really good trainer,the kids like him and work hard.The city looks very modern,all and all a middle class city.
But here is the problem in my eyes.When they shop in the stores a lot of the goods are Western they buy.They go to the movies to see Western films.The restaurants are clones of Western ones.And many times the kids dress in clothes with Western brands ,or that have US cities or sports team names on them.
The trainer likes to divide the team into 2 teams at times and they compete against each other.The winners get some little prizes at the end.And at holidays they all exchange gifts.Nothing wrong with all that,its good in fact.Except when you see the prizes and gifts,socks with either US cartoon figures on them.Or maybe with Ironman,Captain America,the Hulk,etc on them.No Russian cartoon figures,no Captain Russia,etc,etc,on them.T-shits with US emblems sometimes even the US flag on them.Now these people aren’t traitors,or anti-Russian.But they are mesmerized by Western branding,and without even knowing it, equate Western with quality and modern. That is a horrible sign for the future.
And that was only one small example.If you watch other reality films about Russian youth you see the same type of thing.And its not just ,by any means Russian youth,its worldwide.Russia must not allow her youth to be lost to Western propaganda installed by Western globalist branding.Instead of sending their youth to study in the West,bring good teachers to Russian colleges.Instead of clothing with Western icons on them,make clothing with Russian icons on it.Allowing Western products to infest your stores should only be if there isn’t a comparable Russian product available.Russia,China,and the rest of Zone B is in a war for the hearts and minds of their people.And that war must not be lost if they are to survive.-
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I agree Uncle Bob.
But I sure hope the lustre has dulled somewhat, but that would be optimistic.
Without the strong cultural bond and the gravitation of the youth to the Western lifestyle, Russia could soon lose it’s identity. Why support a old way of life when the Western promise has so much to offer?
Coupled with the sanctions, the Russians are getting fed up with Putin turning the other cheek all the time. The sanctions are finally affecting the ordinary folk and they want some action.
Unless Putin acts soon, he may be overthrown by March 2021 according to Strelkov.
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To Uncle Bob
Russia will never lose it’s identity just because of some t-shirts or socks from the States. Yes, it is obviously needed to be addressed and local manufacturers can get on the act, but it’s not what influences the Russian youth. It’s their parents and grandparents. In Russia, unlike in the West, family ties are much stronger, as family unit has a lot more emphasis in Russian social structure. This is what makes Russia strong and able to survive through everything thrown at it by the West that is hell-bend on trying to destroy it.. You people, not being Russians, find it difficult to understand – the Russian mindset, the mentality, the psyche, the culture – you compare it to what you know – the western template. Wrong. On so many levels. My advise would be not to pre-judge or anticipate or draw some conclusions – Russia came a long way since the 90s, some very hard lessons have been learned and, believe me, Russians are a good learners. What happened before, would never be allowed to ever happen again. Russian youth, it’s younger generations would be guided on to the right path, despite every effort from the enemies and ill-wishes. It will be just helpless gnashing of teeth on their part. Russia is going to become a guiding light for the rest of this world. Keep this in mind.
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I certainly hope you are right Katerina, but I have my doubts and I realize that for the second time I am talking to you as a son of the First Rome to a daughter of the Third Rome, как если бы я был твоим дедушкой
Your description of family values in Russia, is very familiar to the grey-haired Italian in me. We used to be like you say you are, but it is gone now. Beware of cultural colonization, a process I refer to as Anglo-balisation. They, and you know who they are, will do to you what they did to us.
не забывай уважаемая Катерина: Si vis pacem, para bellum.
дед Роберто-
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So it is with struggling families in the US, Roberto. Our system has failed us, or rather those who took power here have done so. I believe we will all benefit from Russia’s example. Katerina is right.
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To Juliania
Juliania, I really feel for you people, living in a distopian USA at this present time and being subjugated to the absolute madness coming from the so-called “establishment”. As a Russian I, fortunately, have no ill-will towards Americans, who I believe have simply became victims of, first of all – a brainwashing campaign, and secondly, a constant reinforcement of that brainwashing in the form of your so-called Mass Media, owned and controlled by you know who.. Lots of Americans are totally ignorant and completely indoctrinated when it comes to Russia; I can see that, but at the same time, harbour no negativity or hatred – I understand how hard it is to get away from this constant brainwashing and propaganda if that is all one is exposed to.. So, no – I do not wish that you, Americans, would disappear into dustbin of history. You do not deserve that. What I wish would disappear is your Zionist Masters that had taken over your country and are calling all the shots. You, Americans, most certainly, deserve better than that. There are lots of families there that have absolutely same hopes and aspirations for their families and their children as anyone or any parent in Russia – at the end of the day we are not that different from each other. We just need to overcome this insidiuos, never-ending brainwashing and get some actual facts, called Truth. The more people do that, the easier it will be to get rid of this global “parasite” that has taken over your great country.
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I give you another small example.
Last time I visited the RF, (apart from being annoyed by all the American fast food resaurants) I lost my woolen cap in St.Peterburg and had to by a new one. All I found were caps “Made in China”.
Can’t they even make caps any more? I’m almost 80, and wondered……and mayby some old Russian ladies wonder too……
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Ha, last time I was in St Petersburg I wanted to buy socks for my girlfriend and they were all made in India. I might as well j just have gone to the corner shop before catching my flight.
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It’s more of a problem with local businesses. Availability of foreign products doesn’t mean that the culture is changing. Companies such as McDonalds are present also in China, and sports entertainment franchises such as WWE is very popular there, but it doesn’t necessarily indicate that people are changing towards the western culture blindly
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I think there is one commenter on this blog who has a virulent dislike for me as Ben Samson/Anon because of my distrust and lack of faith in Putin. not that I do not recognize the reorganization and advance of Russia after the fall and such as Yeltsin.
but yet! Russian so called general restrain now under Putin/Lavrov now admitted above, never made much sense to me. such restraint makes less sense now and made no sense even back then. and it opened Putin up to suspicion of being a Zionist agent. I mean Putin was ‘selected’ by Yeltsin as successor was he not?
what I want is not Zionist expansion but the end of Zionist power in the world period! and any suspicion of such complicity among world leaders I note. imagine the American/western presence in Russia as listed, described by the Saker above. how in the hell can a leader sit back and allow his nations enemies such access to his nation, home and hearth, talking restraint, ‘the race is not for the swiftest etc.’
the race is also not for idiots.. so don’t be one
I don’t hate Putin but I want to see Russia really strong and inviolate from the way Zionists corrupt, destabilize and control nations. my own chances in the world fades by such a reality and that is my interest also from a purely self interested angle. Russia, in the most full expression of its own nationalist interest, supports my own chances in the world to be free of Anglo/Zionist impunity relative to my nation and people…
I agree 100% with the Saker here!
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A good essay but already a bit outdated, as the “Navalny nonsense” it refers to has since morphed into US-encouraged (and probably US-coordinated) pro-Navalny protests in several Russian cities. I imagine that Putin will survive, and better than Lukashenko has (to say nothing of Yanukovych), but it’s clear the US has upped the ante significantly in just the last couple of days.
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PCR on the same subject…(…)
President Putin needs to realize that to pursue normalization with Washington would make him appear naive and gullible to Washington. (…)The Kremlin should make it clear to Washington that when Washington stops demonizing Russia and her leader and requests a better relationship, Russia will consider it at that time. Putin should avoid behavior that makes him look weak to Russians as a person who accepts endless insults and false accusations from Americans. (…)
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And the story (that never stops giving) goes on, …
Can anyone ‘fact check’ this? Accuracy? Relevance?
“”It’s widely known that Trump—profoundly insecure, highly suggestible, and exceptionally susceptible to flattery—was anxious to acquire intellectual validation. In In that regard, the KGB would have been delighted to humor him.
“It was like he was created to be recruited,” said Shvets. “Everybody has weaknesses. But with Trump, it wasn’t just weakness. Everything was excessive. His vanity—excessive. Narcissism—excessive. Greed—excessive. Ignorance—excessive.”””
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People create these historical fictions and readers who want to believe the tale embrace them and then push them on to others as if multiplication of fiction equals truth.
Trump and his organization were rejected by Russia.
If you think or believe he was recruited or even recruitable, you know nothing about him, his personality and his track record (very public).
It’s like talk about his bankruptcies and bank loans. Only ignoramuses rave on about those topics which are very common US real estate practices. He was trained by his father to be a lone wolf, not a pawn.
On what basis could a KGB officer recruit him? He needed nothing in those early days. It was totally antithetical to the myth he was building, the brand he was creating of Trump, the Donald, Trump as Gold. No one was an influence on him except the words of his father.
His personality was the exact opposite of the type an Intel officer would target.
Glory? Riches? Ideology? All non-starters.It is a tale as bogus as the prostitutes in Moscow pissing on the bed. Another British contrivance packaged for Trump-haters to embrace.
Get real. The man has flaws and foibles, defects and weaknesses. But he is nobody’s fool.
What happened to him took all the power of Big Tech, the CIA, the FBI, Big Media, tens of Billions of dollars, a rigged election, the collapse of the honor of the Supreme Court, a defiant Pentagon and all the influence of the Obama machine, the Clinton machine, the Bush family machine, the unifying ideology of the Cult of Liberals and many inside the Oval Office who misled him in briefings about the campaign and what the Dems were doing in the key swing states.
Name a President who could survive that alliance set against him every day of his Presidency.
And he won with a landslide!
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Not to mention : destroying the economy with covid to lay blame on Trump.
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“Get real. The man has flaws and foibles, …” — thank you for your reply. I (the annon above) posted it here to get the opinions of others. It came to my attention via a very intelligent and highly educated person whom I know personally, but who seems to have swallowed the Blue-team pill (literally in this case) in regard to much of this DC Matrix BS. I personally find Putin to done the right thing for the Russian civilization — but I also reside (not in the US) in a satrap where Russian demonisation is a daily diet supplement. My disappointment with these folk is not that they hate Trump etc on the red side; but rather that they don’t hate the same criminal level gangs on the other blue side with equal disdain. My view is one of ambivalence.
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why didn’t they just assassinate Trump?
look at the massive trouble they took just to leave him alive and possibly run again?what in heavens name could possibly have held them back…His daughter with that Kushner husband of hers up in there?
that seems small change! what else…..? are they losing their penchant for assassination as solution also?
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Both Russia and China must now increase their support for Iran. In turn, all oil/gas exports from the Persian Gulf region will be exchangeable using a basket of currencies that would include the Russian Ruble and the Chinese Yuan. That is a nice strategy. We will then just watch how Biden heads to Moscow and Beijing begging for forgiveness. Thank you.
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That s something that we, anti empire people , were feeling for some three yrs now, but could hardly have the capabilidty to express in any way close to the saker’s savoir fair and experience.
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Well, I cannot get how and why you folks and russian history experts make it now — (in the present world and Russia ‘s geopolitical circumstances) – – make it so complicated.
No need to.
Examine the odds of Xi and bad Vlad, at any given menace, convince the Iranian parliament to approve , yes, just approve, the granting of a naval base in the bottom eastern part of the HORMUZ strait and persian Gult , to jointly China and Russia navies. And reserve by decree a special port
compatible stretch of shore for it.
For just 15 years, renewable for five more.
And both Beijing and Moscow declare that they don t plan the least to use it but accept with gratitude the kind offer nonetheless. And say they would be just happy to have a refueling facility available for ships out there.
Well, that would be more than enough to calm down most of the hot heads in the fungus’ vicinities.
The collaterals would mean rendering the Indian ocean, the Red sea plus Mediterranean a secure place for tankers, cargoes and visitors and the horn of Africa’s piracy a chapter of the past.
But… they would at once ramp up and boost and raise up the Pentagon 750 billion share to the stratosphere, right?
Yes, of course but so much the bettter for their demise.-
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Iran does not give up its sovereignty in the way you suggest.
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Brilliant-what a cogent magisterial outline of the situation facing Russia-Hope that we see some of these enacted
upon
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There is nothing russia can do to improve relations with the western union.
If Russia does not respond to western provocations then the western propaganda machine will say Russia is weak we can do more provocations.
If Russia respond to western provocations then the western propaganda machine will say Russia is threatening the west and they will do more provocations anyway.
Russia should reduce western presence in its territory including personnel in western ambassies, foreign agents, journalists, western social medias, NGOs…. to reduce to zero the domestic threat. On other fronts keeping the same path seem a good idea.
The rise of China is the main threat to the US empire so I expect a huge increase of sinophobia from the western union using the same method (propaganda provocations threats and sanctions).
We are focusing a lot on what the US will do with the bidenis in power but Isreal itself may push the situation out of control. It seems the israeli military is asking 1.2 billion dollars to prepare a strike on Iran to destroy iranian nuclear facilities.
I would like to know if the last statements coming from the israeli military are PR of if they are serious.
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As a 65 year old American, the Saker is right on about most American Jews hatred for Russia. Cossacks! Pogroms! and they have never heard about all the largely Jewish Bolshevik atrocities against the Russians and Ukrainians.I have heard their diatribes since high school back in 1970 on up to the present day. It will definitely be a negative factor in US-Russian relations. And most Americans are afraid of being called racist, so they can say the most idiotic untrue things about Russia and never be called out on it.
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The rationale behind Russia’s conciliatory approach to the West was partly also to engage with Europe.
They did manage to get the Bulgarians to build & finance BalkanStream after cancelling South Stream. This is probably the most goodwill they will receive from any EU Europe country. The US is so firmly entrenched in Germany, UK, France Italy that they will probably all go down together.
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Pretty much spot on. The path to victory is to let the U.S. bleed to death trying to achieve supremacy.
1. Russia has the advantage of locality.
2. The U.S. has now been shamed into a Cold War w/China and the one w/Iran will likely continue.Instead of trying to be the peacemaker, try to use #2 to help bleed us dry more quickly. Russia should have some joint energy project w/China in the South China Sea, or w/Cuba or Venezuela in the Caribbean. Make a low or zero interest loan to Iran to buy jet fighters or naval assets to escort their tankers. We in the U.S. will spend 10 or 100 times more money going crazy trying to counter these moves.
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It was just three weeks ago on the Orthodox calendar that we celebrated the birth of Christ, our Lord and Savior.
Yet the world returns to the geopolitical ruminations of verbal thrust and parry to find a weakness in the “other side” to exploit for selfish reasons of conquest, economically and martially.
Dear Heads of State of the nations of the Earth. I challenge you to collectively give of yourselves in tournament competition to benefit your favorite charity and restore the esteem and philanthropy of your respective sovereignties.
A friendly chess match between six country leaders: Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, General Secretary Xi Jingping of China, President of India, Ram nath Kovind, President of Hungary, János Áder, President of France, Emmanuel Macron, President of Poland, Andrzej Duda.
The bet: Each leader offers a treasure of some value to the winner of the match; it can be a historical artifact or a favor to be called in at a later time. Each ascending winner takes possession of the previous winner’s fortune. The grand winner of the chess tournament will be crowned Chess Master Head of State and donate a sum of gold to their favorite charity.
Big deal, so what, it’s a dumb idea, no leader will consider doing this, what is the gain?
Besides the charitable aspect, it shows the rest of the world that leaders are human who are capable of exhibiting compassion for their fellow man without seeking political recompense. Goodwill is not outside the realm of man, sometimes it needs spiritual encouragement with a challenge to do what should be done.
Бо́гу моли́сь, а добра́-ума́ держи́сь.
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It doesn’t matter where you live as a citizen, Russia or the U.S the story is the same, you live under the rule of a select few rascals.
All this world conflict between the tribes is about which bunch of rascals become supreme world leaders.
The people are pawns through their own inertia of interest.
Trying to collect the masses into a coherent force is like trying to herd a single mind of cats, the only thing that sharpens this mind is the rumbling of the belly.
This site shows me this, everybody is talking and nobody is listening.
You want a different better would, then is time to put away the point scoring of “I told you so” and start organising and acting as one.
The world you live in is only limited by you, the criminals will always be there ready to take advantage of the lack of vigilance of all.
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It looks that Putin is in Catch-22 situation. He can’t fight war outside and inside of Russia at the same time. If he stands up to the West and promotes patriots at home, he will plunge Russia into civil war of patriots and liberals. The pseudo-liberal opposition you mention is laughable, but the true liberals who hold power from Yeltsin years are not.
There is a former Gaidar wing (Chubais, Nabuilina and her husband, which is the head of Moscow school of economics that for decades educated thousands and thousands students in liberal management of economy.) Then there is Siluanov and the whole ministry of finance diligently working against any improvement of Russian economy. Gref that was proclaimed “The best banker of 2020” by some West magazine I forgot. It is Gref who is pushing for degradation of Russian education by going exclusively on-line. Voloshin who is rumored to be behind the theater with Navalny. Connected with Voloshin is Shuvalov.
They are powerful and they have had successes of getting rid of Roghozin and Glazyev. On the other hand they lost spring 2020 coup against Putin. Shoigu stud by Putin and then nation supported him with a strong referendum.To withstand the pressure from the West, Putin needs unity at home. He even said so himself when arresting of Furgal blew into demonstrations in Khabarovsk.
Khazin said that if Putin doesn’t do something, it’s because he cannot, yet. Putin can’t attack Russian liberals while West is still strong. On the other hand liberals are trying really hard to get rid of him. He is walking a very thin line.
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Even if we look just at nuclear strategic forces of Russia they are at least a decade, if not more, ahead of the West. This is the first time since WWII that Russia is that powerful, and now she can reap the many advantages of being militarily secure.
The Americans can fly over in B52s, while Russians laugh and do Slim Pickens impressions.
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Dear Saker,
You know we are all keen here….
“I have always maintained that the Empire and Russia have been at war since at least 2014. !”
Excuse me, but “Russia” and the “West” have been at war for hundreds of years! Just go back to Napoleon or more recently Hitler… I know thats not what you meant,,,
Regards
David(off)
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The ‘West’ is at war with Russia at least since… Saint Vladimir!
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“Dane-geld” is a poem by British writer Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936).
When the Romans left Britain the inhabitants were subjected to raids, plunder, murder and rape by Viking and Danish invaders. In order to keep these barbarians away they were paid a ransom, which become known as the Danegeld. (Geld being the German for money).This relates to the unwisdom of paying “Danegeld”, or what is nowadays led blackmail and protection money. The most famous lines are “… once you have paid him the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane.”In other words the more you concede the more that your enemy demands. This strikes me as the position of Putin and Lavrov vis-à-vis the Anglo-Zionist marauders from across the Atlantic. The barbarians will not stop until they are forced to stop. There will be more poking and probing for weak spots – military, political, economic and cultural, but the Russian response seems insubstantial and unconvincing. Russia is being surrounded by the barbarians from the west. Has there been a sufficient deterrence? The question seem moot.
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What did Russians actually ‘concede’? That they refuse to descend to street bullies talk? They have no reason to do it. They simply show that they don’t care about the bluster of the ‘barbarians’ who talk like that to masque their impotence. ‘Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself.’
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Having read some of the comments I want to chime in again. As Saker himself said past history helps us to project forward and see what may happen later.
Let’s look at the 2014-2020 period.
Let’s start from 2014 as that’s the year of Maidan, an event of huge importance in the nation the second dearest to the Russians after Russia itself, Ukraine. With Russians seeing Ukraine as spiritually a part of the wider Russian realm and with millions of Russians having Ukranian ancestry, (every surname ending in ‘-enko’ is of Ukranian origin).
This has what has happened since 2014.
1. Reunification of Crimea with Russia. – Russian victory – US loss.
2. Russia parks itself in Syria in the eastern Mediterranean right under NATO’s second largest military, Turkey, the Americans unable to remove Assad – Russian victory – US loss.
3. Brexit – Russian victory, an indirect US loss, because with the weakening of the EU, the propsect of joining a smaller, weaker EU is less appealing to those in Ukraine who want to discard their ties with ‘retrogressive’ Russia in favour of the ‘modern west’ (US, EU etc).
Not to mention the continental non-Anglophone powers of the EU such as Germany and France are suspected at times of flirting with some form of pan-European axis (which the US opposes and seeks to prevent by constantly fermenting conflict and Russophobia, a Russia + Franco-German axis is seen as a threat to the US), with America’s Anglophone cousins in the UK out of the EU, the same country that fought in the Crimean war of the 19th century against Russia, the Russians find one less nuisance in terms of shoring up their western flank e.g. Ukraine because the Brits are not that interested.
4. Trump – Trump though not a complete peacenik and dove as some might think i.e. the US continued support for Saudi bombing of Yemen, he was definitely not as belligerent to Russia as the other faction of the US elite e.g. he could care less about neo-con adventurism in Ukraine and he also got rid of Bolton.
5. The Yellow vests in France. France with its own deep internal problems is also less able in trying to meddle with Russia and it’s just generally indicative of the post-peak west.
6. Turkish coup of 2016. It’s reputed Putin saved Erdogan and the Turks have been moving somewhat away from the US and NATO e.g. the Turkish purchase of the Russian S-400 and various tensions between the US and Turkey e.g. Turkey’s fierce opposition to the Kurdish para-state in northern Syria which is backed by America.
7. Venezuela, the Russians have won there. Maduro is there to stay and Guido will not replace him. The Russian, Chinese, Iranian axis won there. Bolton, very keen on regime change in Venezuela was removed by Trump. – Russian victory, US loss.
8. The petro-yuan in 2017. This is to be a long term challenger to the petro-dollar and work on the long-term strategic goal of de-dollarization.
“News.Bitcoin.com reported in August last year that Russia and China had been collaborating to reduce their dependence on the U.S. dollar, and trade settlements in USD between the two countries had fallen below 50%.”
https://news.bitcoin.com/gold-exceeds-us-dollars-in-russias-reserves-putin-de-dollarization/
De-dollarization starts ‘at home’ between the two nuclear giants, Russia and China and is then slowly duplicated elsewhere until there is a steady but non-traumatic or dramatic ending of dollar hegemony.
9. The US’ ability to project power abroad is clear e.g. Libya where it’s bordering on being completely absent, unimaginable 10 years ago. Russia is more of a player in Libya than the US is.
This is a sign of the weakening US.
10. Post-maidan in 2015 the Chinese economy overtook the US economy as the biggest in the world in terms of GDP PPP, though it’s GDP nominal which is the main measurement and more important but still it’s showing how China is catching up.
11. Even in the recent Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Russian strength was in full display and it’s Russia that both the Azeris and Armenians turned to and has peacekeepers there. The Americans are nowhere to be seen.
They simply do not have the power projection that they did and any attempt by the Biden-Harris administration and figures in it like Victoria – F*** the EU – Nuland are completely futile. The US is a weakening power and has to station tens of thousands of troops from having its capitol and key national government/legislative buildings from being overrun by ‘militants’, ‘insurrectionists’, ‘opposition forces’, whatever you want to call the pro-Trump MAGA crowd of January 6.
12. The RCEP has been signed and the US is not part of it. The biggest trading agreement in human history with 1/3 of the world’s population included in this.
So that’s what’s happened in the 6-7 years post Maidan. The next 6-7 years will see all these things continue but perhaps at a faster pace.
Remember every little knock the US takes from its conflicts or tensions with China, Iran, Venezuela etc is ‘good news’ for Russia as it weakens the US.
NEXT 6-7 years.
1. China overtakes the USA as undisputedly the biggest economy in the world as predicted by economists in 2025, along with that is the attendant increase in geo-political power
2. De-dollarization continues and accelerates due to the rise of China.
3. France’s economy gets worse, with greater social unrest.
4. The UK has problems socio-economically thus reducing appetite for overt adventures abroad (though the Brits are still involved in a lot of covert meddling).
5. The ‘lukewarm’ civil war in the US heats up. We have AOC (Alexandria Ocassio Cortez) a US congresswoman refusing to attend Biden’s inauguration saying she may be killed and that fellow Congressmen/women are a threat to the lives of Democrat legislators. We have Hillary Clinton calling for a Republican Congresswomen, Marjorie Taylor Greene to be put on a ‘terror list’. We have some in Texas calling for secession.
You had American cities on fire during the post-George Floyd riots and craziness in Portland long after that.
Russia and Putin are totally fine. They’ve been under US sanctions since 2014 but that doesn’t affect their ability to maintain a massive military force in Russia, station peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh, be involved in Libya, be involved in Venezuela and just watch as the Titanic that is the USA continues to slowly sink.
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Since 2014!!!???
West and Russia are at war for 300 years. Even much longer probably.
The West under Anglo-Zionist rule will not allow Russia live in peace normally, and the day of final decision will come sooner or later.
How can Russia live and exist normally with this UK-USA satanic alliance…no waySo, either the West will destroy Russia or Russia will have to destroy such a West and to put it under russian control
Unfortunatelly, it seems to me that there is not third solution of normal coexistence.
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Kursk + Yalta in Davos 2021
Probably the best answer to Saker’s article and some of the comments here comes from
R. Ischenko, certainly one of the most astute analysts today, on what happen in Davos.https://www.stalkerzone.org/munich-esque-davos/
Putin’s invitation to “world leaders” at Davos, which can not be lightly refused, reminds me
about his invitation to Yeltsin-era oligarchs in 2000. Analogy is profound as these two sets
of people have almost identical mindset.Regards, Spiral
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Young Russians are in huge percentage fascinated and obsessed with the West.
And it is very dangerous tendency.There is only one cure for that – to rise life standard in Russia to level of Western Europe, to eliminate powerty and to make quality infrastructure like in Western Europe.
Russia MUST achieve those goals in next 9 or 10 years…
Otherwise, Russia will lose game with the West. Because incomes stagnate and powerty level not going down for last several years.
And it is not good…not at all
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The subject of this article is complex and it took me some time to clarify my point of view. Yes, I very much agree that the West remains dangerous. On the other hand, look at the speeches of Putin and of Xi at the Virtual World Economic Forum. Both presented an authoritative look of the world problems as well as a way of making progress. Both showed that they are real world leaders, without any intention of dictate. This is very much in contrast to any Western leader.
I certainly support the Saker’s call for a more consequent diplomatic attitude of Russia against the West. But I also feel that this aim goes not far enough. Russia must be and apparently is, at least what concerns Putin, more aspiring. The world needs new leaders, in a new sense, and who, if not Russia and China, is able to „provide“ them? Of course, others are and will be here, in particular in the Middle East. But they definitely need China and Russia.
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There is only one cure for Russian youth of that stupid naive belief in “American/western dream” – huge economic demise in west. Jabloko youngsters should visit destroyd British working class ecosystems. There is Great 21st Century Depression looming behind the corner and when it really starts to beat the shit out of Western Freedom this dream will be all over. No brainwashing pop “music”, no football, no Netflix “film stars” can change the tune. Heck during last Great Depression even Ronald Reagan was socialist.
I think China has keys for this process. It is giving 3% of its huge income to Western 0.001% and let the Western working and middle class wonder: what happens to our Western superiority. As we should know Koreans, Chinese, Japanese and even Mongolians have on average higher IQ than any Western nation. They have far superior competence to meet pandemic and Chinese Communist Party has ridiculed whole idea that at the end “all people will be Americans” . Nor will Muslim world never buy that stupid wet dream so popular among pro west especially in 1990s.
The point here is that young people are naive with very black and white mindset. They not yet know much of life and global diversity. One of the biggest sorrow in west is lack of history and lack of culture. I’m shocked how fast this whole downfall has happened. And lot of blame goes to popular culture. Older generation warned 50 years ago of that bullshit sub-culture but they were ridiculed. It has played big role decimating and degrading Christianity, family, parenthood, femininity, masculinity, honour, science, dignity, behavior – culture itself.
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Let the young people of Russia be very proud of Russian culture and discriminatory of what they find admirable in western culture. The danger is not that they buy blue jeans and sing Beatles songs- some of those songs are classics. It is dangerous to refuse to see what another culture can bring to the world’s enjoyment of diversity in a good way, when that diversity is to be encouraged. One culture should not overwhelm another- I love Russian literature even in translation, and that has as Putin has pointed out, a European,( even British! )antecedent. And Russian classical music builds on those same traditions and brings them to their fulfillment with Orthodox majesty in a Russian cathedral which had Italian archectects, right there in the Kremlin itself.
I think they, our youth, can think for themselves how to continue the path of multipolarity. We stand, when we do, on the shoulders of the world’s giants, and they come from every culture in this beautiful world.
Thank you, Saker; this has been an enjoyable read! Thank you, all.
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I am actually reminded of an ISIS video I once watched where a white, blond, blue eyed ISISsy character warned Syrians and Iraqis fleeing ze Caliphate for Europe that there they would be sleeping in the public parks and chasing “infidels” to beg for work. My own suggestion is to give a window, say six months, during which all Russians wishing to emigrate can do so, after which all emigration will be banned and exit visas reinstated for foreign visits. Watch the rats stream for the exits then. But, no, Putinist “restraint ” will never permit anything like that.
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Let’s not forget what Johan Galtung predicted long time ago and sharpened his prophecy in 2016: in 2021 we are living in the world where USA has even officially lost it global hegemony. Trump revealed how corrupt Deep State was. Biden tries to turn clock to past. Of course its failury. EU and US have debt clock ticking. It’s just question when China, Russia and rest of Asian regimes will kick the step behind the goner. Because its the real economy which will change the world, not brainwashed younger generation. I can make true confession: during my long life I have never faced as weak western world and as weak& lame western folks as now. Because this sheep herd no longer has no real culture at all. Think about human with no cultury, no dignity, no soul, no faith.
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China Will ‘No Longer Recognise’ UK-Issued BNO Passport for Hong Kongers
China leads the way.
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at war since at least 2014
I have a date stuck in my mind: September 3, 2014
At the moment I have not been able to Google any references – so purely from my recollection:- on or around this date depending on the time-zone – there was an incident in the Mediterranean where a US ship fired some cruise missiles towards Syria – but they never arrived.
And it was from this date with Russia’s overt support for Syria, that there was a very perceptible change towards Russia echoed in the MSM.
I don’t save notes or anything, and as some things do get memory-holed, I would appreciative if someone has a link to some reference to this incident.
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As I do remember anti Russia hysteria started quite soon after Munich speech, even before Georgia. Our own national radio and tv suddenly after 2007 changed from neutral to demagogic. Obama era fueled it more.
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WoW!
Where to start…?Thank you, Saker, for bringing this analysis to me and all of the other readers/commenters.
Judging from the large volume of comments, in a short period of time, this subject and discussion is very pertinent.I disagree with your position that Russia/Putin need to “raise the ante in their dealings with the Empire of the Rainbow Alphabet Hatred of Humanity, the ERAHH, for short.
As you have noted, correctly, several times before, the Empire is doing a very effective job at essentially wiping themselves out.
Clarification: it is clear that the majority of the populations of both NA, EU, and the Oceanic provinces are not necessarily evil, and if this large majority, were to have a meaningful choice to “end the madness, I believe, very strongly, that we would!
That being said, it is clear that there is a problem, even at the individual-level.
We’ll get back to this point shortly, because, this problem is not limited to the peoples of the ERAHH.
Your suggestion for changes to Russian (ostensibly) Foreign policy are a little vague:
“I am in no way suggesting that Russia should become confrontational or provocative. All that is needed is for Russia to be less “diplomatic” and much more forceful in the defense of her interests.”
“Russian officials need to change their rather demure tone when dealing with western imperialists and, second, Russian officials needs to back their words with real, measurable, actions.”
“The Russian Navy recently gave a very good example of how a good word can have much more effect when backed with some good action:…“hmm…… I don’t know….
I am in complete agreement with the statement, “Russia needs to respond to the US zero-sum-game, but not by accepting such a logic for herself.
”
Hmmm… okay:
I’m very wary of the Zombie that is the ERAHH, infecting Russia with its zombie virus, and Russia to start behaving like the Zombie (even if in a more Russian way).Back to the zombification of the ERAHH:
That’s what it is, isn’t it?!
It has been internally balkanized, and you refer to the danger of Russia suffering a similar internal fate.I think this is a grave concern!
We might benefit from backing up and looking a bit more into how and why the ERAHH was zombified!
A classic divide and conquer strategy seems to have been deployed.
But by who?
I suggest that it is the rarefied, minority that sees themselves as separate and above the sprawling masses of humanity.
This group, behaving as an ideological collective, has systematically assumed all positions of policy creation, policy implementation, and sundry authority positions, reifying a control position in the greater global society, principally by secretive means.Lately, big tech/big data have been mining all data from the willing acolytes of self-worship via social media platforms, enabling a very precise, micro-targeting capability for purposes of behaviour control of all individuals self-supplying the data needed to enable.
Humans have been hacked!
This is the problem that I said I would come back to.
The big advantage that the Axis of Resistance has over the ERAHH is a cohesive common baseline understanding of what the independent participating Axis of Resistance societies’ are, they have a functioning culture!
They don’t have the same cultures, we can certainly see variation across Rus, Chin, and Iran; but they share, respectively, within their own cultures, a shared understanding across each of the societies.
So far, the majority still want to retain their own cultures, rather than be absorbed into the fragmented, unfocused, inherently corruption-enabling uber-zombie opposite-of-culture Empire of the Rainbow Alphabet Hatred of HumanitySo what does Russia, and in fact all of the Axis of Resistance, countries need to do?
1. Maintain the greater sense of self, respect for their own cultures
It seems simple!?
It seems … easily doable?!
But all of the Axis of Resistance countries are failing!
Why?This is never going to be an easy pill to swallow.
As they say, once the genie is out of the bottle…..It is this capacity to stimulate humans, and gather response data at such a detailed, intimate level, which enables the destruction of cultures by usurping individuals’ very perceptions of reality!
This boils down to limiting the capability of data-mining and perception management techniques, which are primarily enabled by the rampant, uncontrolled, and in most cases, obsessive uses of personal information devices (PIDs) aka smartphones!
I know that this will not be popular, but Russia will fall, if it cannot mitigate this threat to humanity!
This is the root of the issue.Russian foreign policy has been clearly stupendous, balancing strategic deficiencies, overcoming the raping of the country, the fifth column, etc., etc.
I’m not suggesting that it is perfect, but as you mention, the best forecast for future performance, is past performance, and I believe we agree that the past 20 years of Russia in comparison to the word around it, has been nothing short of phenomenal!
That’s not where the bigger threat is, and, again, as you have mentioned, the Russian military is prepared as well as it could be to defend the country, from external threat!Thanks again for the platform,
dc
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I have heard that the following members of the Biden regime have 2 passports. Sec. of Treasury, Atty. General, Sec. of Homeland Security, Dir. of National Intelligence, Chief of Staff WH, Sec. of State, Dep. Sec. of State, Sec. of State for Political Affairs(!), Office of Science & Technology, Dir. of CIA.
These are reportedly all from the same country, so all these personnel have dual citizenship. The country does not matter, really, except sort of – it is the dual citizenship that is the problem, IMO. It would seem to me more appropriate to know the the loyalty of all the members of our country’s highest administrative offices have one loyalty and one loyalty only and that is the the United States of America.-
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I agree absolutely, and I think these “duals” should be relentlessly pursued and outted until they give up their second citizenship and/or swear a *detailed* oath of allegiance to the United States of America.
Detailed to be sure to cover all eventuallities and situations where the dual citizens could overtly or covertly undermine American interests in favor of their “mistress/boy toy”
In fact, the issue might actually be framed in these terms: Who is your wife? Who is your mistress/gigolo?
Then the public who pays these people salaries, benefits, and perks would have a much clearer lens through which to analyze our elected and appointed employees’ actions.
This really makes me mad.
Is there a database anywhere of all appointed or elected public servants with dual citizenship?The most egregious example I was aware of in the past was Rahm Emanuel.
Katherine
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As counterpoint to the assessment that Russia has been getting royally rolled by the bully boys to the point where someone in power in the Russian Federation needs to step up and shift gears (get tough) in handling foreign affairs, and especially vis à vis yon Empire ’pon Which Sun Don’t Set, a somewhat different view of the Great Game scoreboard was offered by Rostislav Ishchenko here:
https://www.stalkerzone.org/munich-esque-davos/Speaking of Putin’s address to the Davos Conference, he writes:
Putin proposed a way out of the crisis, drew the outline of the “post-Yalta world” (guaranteed by Russian power) and suggested that we begin discussing its final format.
And look, 80 people from among the most influential people on the planet did not laugh in Putin’s face, as it was in 2007 in Munich, and without noise and dust immediately after his open speech signed up for a closed conference with him.
Honest liberals and ordinary urban lunatics can laugh quite sincerely and free of charge at the claims (and evidence) of Russian power and global authority. This queue of those who run the global economy for a private meeting with Putin is the best evidence that what seemed incredible yesterday has become obvious today. Russia has put the terms of a new world on the table. And the world reached out to discuss these conditions.
I want to draw your attention to the inconspicuous feat of the people who prepared this speech of Putin. In terms of scale and impact on historical processes, this is steeper than the Battles of Stalingrad and Kursk combined. In addition, the victory was achieved with little blood and on foreign territory. The effect of the bomb explosion is achieved by surprise. This is already the corporate identity of Russia. Putin’s speech in Munich was sudden, and the crushing defeat of the presumptuous Saakashvili regime in August 2008 was sudden. The return of Crimea was sudden. And now the same sudden Davos.
The late Viktor Stepanovich Chernomyrdin would have remarked with satisfaction: “This has never happened before, and here it is again!”
Maybe the meek are gonna inherit the Earth after all.
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We see a lot of comments about Russia,I make some myself. But very few from people actually living today inside Russia. Here is one I saw today from someone I’ve had as a friend since 2014. He is commenting on how people feel about events in Russia with Navalny:
Let’s be frank… as a former citizen of Ukraine I will say – Russians are tired of ′′ Putin’s stability “. Well, they are tired without action, without hype, people lack drive. They hate Putin, why and how did it work? It doesn’t matter., enough ′′ for ′′ and ′′ against “. People without movement are tired. I, as a Crimean, am tired of all this: the collapse of the USSR, the orange mujnya, mujdan (I am grateful to him for bringing my Crimea home). Navalny, in my opinion, is an absolutely stupid zombie bio-robot. The absolute enemy of all Russian. Is Putin friends with his castles and friends? The question is, of course, rhetorical, but Putin is closer to me simply by coincidence, much closer than Navalny. I would like to still live in the era of Putin’s stagnation (life is basically not bad and, in general, satisfyingly), let them rule as long as they have enough health, there we will already decide what to do with their castles.
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The comments are interesting but difficult to understand/follow.
Your friend is tired of Putin? Or tired of Navalny? Or tired of what?
Katherine
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It’s how the translation shows up. But what he is saying is that people are tired of Putin’s government stagnation,not doing much.As you can see he didn’t go into details.His posts are made for fellow Russians (I’m one of the only non Russians on the page),so I guess they would easily understand what he means.He said he personally would always be grateful Putin brought Crimea home to Russia.And that he liked Putin far more than Navalny,him he didn’t trust at all.And the last part was saying that even the stagnation under Putin wasn’t bad for most people.And they didn’t care if he and his friends were rich with palaces or not as Navalny claims. So basically he’s saying people like Putin,but want him to do more for the economy.That they are in a period of stagnation.But that that is still better than it was before Putin,so they tolerate it.That people do not like Navalny,and don’t trust him. Hope this explains it better.
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ATHENS, January 30. /TASS/. Russia is gearing up for a tough conversation about the very nature of its current relations with the European Union during EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell’s upcoming visit scheduled for February 5, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said in an interview with Russian journalists late on Friday. According to the senior diplomat, the agenda of the visit is clear. “It is dictated by life. We are getting ready for a very serious conversation about the very nature of the current Russia-European Union relations taking into account the new global realities, taking into account the fact that the world has already become multipolar. Naturally, all international problems and regional issues will be also touched upon,” he said. Grushko noted that Russia did not discuss with the European Union the sanctions imposed by it. “We condemn them, and our stance is clear, but we do not discuss them. They impose these sanctions, and they must understand the full extent of responsibility for the consequences of these sanctions that will follow as a result of our steps or as a result of the direct impact of these sanctions on their citizens, their businesses and so on. These sanctions are, in many ways, tantamount to shooting oneself in the foot. How long the European Union will adhere to these sanctions, again, that’s the European Union’s business. However, it is obvious to us that Europe’s strategic interests cannot boil down to impairing relations with Russia,” he stressed.
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É realmente a valente RÚSSIA precisam ser mais rígidas em suas respostas ao Império ANGLO-ZIONISTA, bastam ver as reações da CHINA as arrogância do Império. De igual para igual.
Machine translation:
It is really brave Russia need to be more rigid in their responses to the ANGLO-Zionist Empire, just see the reactions of CHINA the arrogance of the Empire. Equal to equal.
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It looks like Russia’s rhetoric about their “Western partners” was not sarcasm but actually a (desperate) desire be join the same Imperialist West that has been attacking Russia for the past decade–not to mention bombing, raping, balkanizing, and colonizing nations from Serbia to Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya to Syria rationalized by West’s Goebbelsian Big Lies about promoting freedom, democracy and human rights!
It seems that Putin is not only good buddies with the infamous Klaus “Great Reset” Schwab but is fully on board with Schawb’s Great Reset agenda.
This is the West that Russia want to join?
Sick.
The Schwab-Putin Relationship: Putin’s WEF Davos Speech Defined the “World War C Era”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/president-putin-davos-speech-defined-world-war-c-era/5735845?print=1
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Unfortunately, the majority of young urban Russians just want to be good consumers just like their counterparts in the West.
The patriotism exists only in words, but in reality, the life of the most young people is around status en consumerism.
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on January 27, 2021
· at 8:12 pm EST/EDT
Saker is wrong.
Now that “tinea Bidenis” (tinea is a sort of fungus), has lifted the ban of LGBTQ joining the military
The Empire will be much stronger: imagine sharing barracks with transgenders, just the recommended thing to make strong warriors, these guys will melt the enemy with kisses, and other more smelly things.
Spetsnaz have met their match, not the Navy SEALS but the transgender Biden army,
on January 27, 2021
· at 8:31 pm EST/EDT
:-))
I fully concur!
on January 28, 2021
· at 11:49 pm EST/EDT
The Saker
Secretary of state Antony Blinken has already stated that “the US is “deeply concerned about jailed opposition activist and politician Alexei Navalny”. In other words, the US is preparing to give Navalny the role of little Guaido from Venezuela, namely that of interim President. Blinken also said the US administration is now mulling “actions in response to his detention in Russia.” Well, it didn’t take long for anti-Russian policies to be instigated.
on January 28, 2021
· at 6:04 am EST/EDT
Today I read that the strong US warriors are to be permitted to wear lipstick and ponytails. Maybe their “adversaries” will be incapacitated with laughter.
on January 29, 2021
· at 2:34 am EST/EDT
Laughter has been ‘weaponised’ before:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Funniest_Joke_in_the_World
https://vimeo.com/99619706
on January 28, 2021
· at 7:48 am EST/EDT
Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu smiles. He knows there will never be a real anti-war movement in either major party. Israel did 9/11 and is ready for a redo, this time blamed on Iran instead of the Arabs. That will be the pretext for the next war. All the pieces are in place for a nuclear attack on Iran. It makes no difference whatsoever who is actually president.
on January 28, 2021
· at 11:56 pm EST/EDT
Another outstanding article from The Saker.
I’m also somewhat dismayed by Russia’s tepid responses to provocation. Maybe it’s part of a strategy. Wouldn’t be the first time.
Russia is much stronger economically than most suspect. It has the best balance sheet of any major economy in the world by far: negligible debt, almost total self-sufficiency, massive resources, largest producer of wheat in the world, one of the largest gold reserves in the world (and recently the largest single gold deposit in the world was discovered in Russia).
Plus it has now most likely displaced Saudi as the global swing producer of oil, which is huge. It has probably just passed Germany in PPP. Russia is unmatched in its ability to survive an economic crisis. Years of sanctions by the west — and Russia is unscathed.
I also don’t understand why Russia doesn’t help Iran become unassailable. Maybe they don’t want to antagonize Saudi? If they teamed up with Iran anf Qatar they would easily control 80% of the natural gas reserves in Eurasia, in the future this will be much more important than oil.
I also think Russia could benefit being more closely allied to Pakistan. Pakistan is already a close ally of China, and has been quite neutral towards Saudi and Iran, a position that Russia also shares. The two countries could be quite complementary.
I also don’t understand the sale of S-400 to India. India has clearly shown that it sides with the US. Delivering the S-400 only helps to hurt Russia’s ally in China. Maybe this is part of the same strategy it is pursuing with Turkey – enemies into neutrals, neutrals into friends, but I think the stakes are higher when it comes to China.
on January 30, 2021
· at 10:52 am EST/EDT
I don’t think that it would be that much easy for the transgender people to change policies in the military even if they join it. It’s not the US and the PC culture is absent