Friday 15th of November 2024
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the game of the century...

blame russia

The rules of the game is that there is no rule, only shifting agreements from one day to the next. It’s a minefield that demands careful observation and footsteps.



Had Putin not been the winner of the Russian presidential elections in 2000, we would probably have a different world today. Russia would have come back into the hands of the communists after a short stint at destructive capitalism with no experience in how to tame this beast (we still fluzzle like dorks about it) — or after a few upheavals, such as becoming a vassal of the United States, a full-on war might have destroyed this strange planet of humanoids. It’s impossible to know. 

So how come a little guy, called Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, managed to change history, or at least make the “history” we now have — which apart from a few US loonitudes — is reasonably calm and peaceful — a state of thing that we, in the West, do not like. We like war. We LOVE WARS.


By all account, someone like Putin would never cut it in the Western culture. Though he has some incisive traits of Napoleon, he is much smarter. Not that Napoleon was dumb, but his ambitions were way over the top. Putin is a more reserved intelligent person who understands the complexity of human nature and above all he understands Europe and Russia, at all level of the checkered history. 

Presently, our leader in Chief in the shithouse, is Donald Trump. Trump is also a smart guy, but he shoots willy-nilly with his small dick and deranged brains. In Russia, only a Putin and his level-headed team could deal with such brashness, while still keeping a keen eye on the military manoeuvres of NATO and the US's 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th fleets.

So, apart from unusual circumstances and coincidental happenings, what made Putin come to be? In the West, we tend to dismiss him as megalomaniac, repressive, corrupt, despotic, but these epithets only describe ourselves — our western attitude, our own lies of the empire, our psyche of thieves that we paint with a thin glossed veneer of religious righteousness — in order to cope with our mirrorred reflection. 

Putin is an expert on international trade. This was his thesis at University. Dumbdumb is an expert on making money through bankruptcy or by charging exorbitant student fees at a Trump University which was subsequently closed down due to his use of the word "university” found to be misleading and violating state law. 

As well, his University of Columbia educated predecessor, "Bomber" Obama, was not hesitant in discreet arm twisting for regime change such as Libya, and preferential commerce… But Obama did it with panache, an elegant twist which is in this case only once removed from brashness — but with finesse.

"After Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014, military intervention in Syria in 2015, and the interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Obama's Russia policy was widely seen as a failure. George Robertson, a former UK defense secretary and NATO secretary-general, said that Obama had "allowed Putin to jump back on the world stage and test the resolve of the West", adding that the legacy of this disaster would last…" 

Hang on a minute. "Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014?” Bullshit. Crimea was a Russian territory "gifted" to Ukraine 50 years ago by Russian President Nikita Khrushchev. When Ukraine, deviously and overtly helped by the USA, threw out the elected government and replaced it by Nazi thugs, the Russians organised a legitimate referendum in Crimea which is populated by more than 90 per cent Russians and where the Russians “leased” the harbour of Sevastopol till 2024 with renew option, to give cash to Ukraine — though they did not have to. The result of course was swift and clear. Crimea did not want to have anything to do with Ukraine and voted emphatically to rejoin Russia. End of story. Do not try to say rigged elections, corruption or crap like this. So, the West still resents this act of normality — which nearly happened in Scotland a couple of years before this. 

In regard to "Russia’s influence on the US Presidential elections", try Rupert Murdoch, Israel, the “evangelicals” and the shocker that the DNC put forward in the hypocritical person called Hillary, before mentioning a couple of Russian bloggers from Brooklyn. Please!

And let’s talk about Syria. We’ve already mentioned how the US “created” ISIS etc, all designed to destroy a perfectly elected government… Ah, I see, Assad is a socialist "dictator"… unlike the rabid Saudis, our friends, who are religious king/dictators with ruthless beheading behaviour. Nuf said… Just a minute. All this US crap is about OIL and gas, like the Iraq war. Putin knew exactly what was happening. As a world commerce expert and a former KGB officer, he could not escape being aware of the drip-feed bullshit from the Obama administration.

Some nasty “bitch” claimed that Putin’s time spent in the KGB was to collect press clippings… Masha Gessen, a Russian-American who has authored a biography about Putin claims, "Putin and his colleagues were reduced mainly to collecting press clippings, thus contributing to the mountains of useless information produced by the KGB [in Dresden, East Germany]"

I have news for you. Press-clipping collection is one of the most important job should you need to know what’s what, especially if you work in a spy organisation. The media tells porkies and keeps the truth behind bars at most time. If you are smart enough, which Putin is, you can read the truth by cross-referencing the media’s self-bloated importance. We call this “reading between the lines” and this can only be done unless you collect articles and such reports and cross-reference them. 

How do you think an old kook like Gus can manage his huge universal knowledge? Basically I know nothing, but I have a cross-referenced library of stuff,  some printed — but mostly electronically stored on more than 7 terabytes, which is pitifully small, I admit. I would not dare use the “cloud”. I also have a collection of books — a library — which takes up several rooms from floor to ceiling, and more than 60 filing cabinet drawers in the office, plus about a ton and a half of "old" press clippings in the attic. There is a difference between collecting all the junk and selecting junk. Any self-respecting SERIOUS journalist would also do “press clipping”. It goes with the territory. Any philosopher does the same as they would have to know what the monkey next door is thinking. That Putin burned the KGB files to prevent demonstrators from obtaining them was smart. It prevents loonies from knowing what you are thinking — or interpreting what you are thinking, which 10 times out of ten would be wrong — not “your" thinking, but their interpretation....

So how Putin came about? Like Medvedev, he came to know Anatoly Aleksandrovich Sobchak, a very clever man who died too soon. 


After the collapse of the Communist East German government, Putin returned from Dresden to Leningrad, where he was born, in early 1990. He worked for about three months with the International Affairs section of Leningrad State University, reporting to Vice-Rector Yuriy Molchanov. He looked for new KGB possible recruits, watched the student body, and renewed his friendship with his former professor, Anatoly Sobchak, who eventually became the Mayor of Leningrad. 

In May 1990, Putin was appointed as an advisor on international affairs to the Mayor of Leningrad Anatoly Sobchak. On 28 June 1991, he became head of the Committee for External Relations of the Mayor's Office, with responsibility for promoting international relations and foreign investments and registering business ventures. 

Putin says he resigned from the KGB with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel on 20 August 1991, on the second day of the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt against the Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Putin said: "As soon as the coup began, I immediately decided which side I was on", although he also noted that the choice was hard because he had spent the best part of his life with the system.

Within a year, Putin was investigated by the city legislative council led by Marina Salye. It was concluded that he had understated prices and permitted the export of metals valued at $93 million in exchange for "foreign food aid" that never arrived. Despite the investigators' recommendation that Putin be fired, Putin remained head of the Committee for External Relations until 1996. 

This episode would have taught a young Putin not to trust the West at face value. We bullshit and sell two-bob watches as gold timepieces, because “we can get away with it”. This is the purpose of a our “trade agreements”. Try to rob someone else on a daily basis, rather than make a proper solid agreement.

In March 1994, Putin was appointed as First Deputy Chairman of the Government of Saint Petersburg. In May 1995, he organised the Saint Petersburg branch of the pro-government Our Home – Russia political party, the liberal party of power founded by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. In 1995, he managed the legislative election campaign for that party, and from 1995 through June 1997, he was the leader of its Saint Petersburg branch.

So one does not rise through the ranks by being dumb. Putin in fact is a practical idealist who knows that the time of revolution is passed. Through his knowledge of "press-clippings” and international trade, he would have been aware of the US intervention in the internal politics of Russia. But as a former KGB officer, he knows to keep his mouth shut and drive his little truck through the rubbles that started to become Russia, under this “influence”. He would have to know that people, oligarchs and overseas capitalists, were going to rob Russia via overt and covert means. He would be clever enough to have his antennas in all places. His “press clipping” days would have sharpen his ability to quickly assess “what’s what”. Trust me. He knows he cannot trust the official versions of events. Events ARE NOT PEOPLE. People who are involved in events have complex allegiances and purposes. He has shown time and time again his ability to know stuff before anyone else and this pisses off the hawks in the US.

End of part one
Putin — savior of this planet


By Gus Leonisky
Your local bloggerator.

----------------------

Under Putin's leadership, Russia has scored poorly in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index and experienced democratic backsliding according to both the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index and Freedom House's Freedom in the World index (including a record low 20/100 rating in the 2017 Freedom in the World report, a rating not given since the time of the Soviet Union). Experts no longer consider Russia to be a democracy, citing the lack of free and fair elections, purges and jailing of opponents, and curtailed press freedom.
This all Western bullshit. We are jealous pricks, proud to tell porkies and happy that our own governments take us for fools. 

I found he is a solid man...

putin

 

Advice from Yetsin to Bill Clinton... Putin has politcally outclassed Clinton, Bush, Obama and is way above Trump. And trump is clever enough to know this. 

a few events on the way...

by george...

naked

chuck


no more kremlin leaks...

According to New York Times intel leakers, “informants close to” Putin have “gone silent.” What can it all mean?

For nearly two years, mostly vacuous (though malignant) Russiagate allegations have drowned out truly significant news directly affecting America’s place in the world. In recent days, for example, French President Emmanuel Macron declared  “Europe can no longer rely on the United States to provide its security,” calling for instead a broader kind of security “and particularly doing it in cooperation with Russia.” About the same time, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin met to expand and solidify an essential energy partnership by agreeing to complete the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia, despite US attempts to abort it. Earlier, on August 22, the Afghan Taliban announced it would attend its first ever major peace conference – in Moscow, without US participation.

Thus does the world turn, and not to the wishes of Washington. Such news would, one might think, elicit extensive reporting and analysis in the American mainstream media. But amid all this, on August 25, the ever-eager New York Times published yet another front-page Russiagate story – one that, if true, would be sensational, though hardly anyone seemed to notice. According to the Times’ regular Intel leakers, US intelligence agencies, presumably the CIA, has had multiple “informants close to... Putin and in the Kremlin who provided crucial details” about Russiagate for two years. Now, however, “the vital Kremlin informants have largely gone silent.” The Times laces the story with misdeeds questionably attributed to Putin and equally untrustworthy commentators, as well as a mistranslated Putin statement that incorrectly has him saying all “traitors” should be killed. Standard US media fare these days when fact-checkers seem not to be required for Russia coverage. But the sensation of the article is that the US had moles in Putin’s office.

Skeptical or credulous readers will react to the Times story as they might. Actually, an initial, lesser version of it first appeared in the Washington Post, an equally hospitable intel platform, on December 15, 2017. I found it implausible for much the same reasons I had previously found Christopher Steele’s “Dossier,” also purportedly based on “Kremlin sources,” implausible. But the Times’ new, expanded version of the mole story raises more and larger questions.

If US intelligence really had such a priceless asset in Putin’s office – the Post report implied only one, the Times writes of more than one – imagine what they could reveal about Enemy No. 1 Putin’s intentions abroad and at home, perhaps daily – why would any American intel official disclose this information to any media at the risk of being charged with a treasonous capital offense? And now more than once? Or, since “the Kremlin” closely monitors US media, at the risk of having the no less treasonous Russian informants identified and severely punished? Presumably this is why the Times’ leakers insist that the “silent” moles are still alive, though how they know we are not told. All of this is even more implausible. Certainly, the Times article asks no critical questions.

But why leak the mole story again, and now? Stripped of extraneous financial improprieties, failures to register as foreign lobbyists, tacky lifestyles, and sex having nothing to do with Russia, the gravamen of the Russiagate narrative remains what it has always been: Putin ordered Russian operatives to “meddle” in the US 2016 presidential election in order to put Donald Trump in the White House, and Putin is now plotting to “attack” the November congressional elections in order to get a Congress he wants. The more Robert Mueller and his supporting media investigates, the less evidence actually turns up, and when it seemingly does, it has to be considerably massaged or misrepresented.

Nor are “meddling” and “interfering” in the other’s domestic policy new in Russian-American relations. Tsar Alexander II intervened militarily on the side of the Union in the American Civil War. President Woodrow Wilson sent troops to fight the Reds in the Russian Civil War. The Communist International, founded in Moscow in 1919, and its successor organizations financed American activists, electoral candidates, ideological schools, and pro-Soviet bookstores for decades in the United States. With the support of the Clinton administration, American electoral advisers encamped in Moscow to help rig Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s re-election in 1996. And that’s the bigger “meddling” apart from the decades-long “propaganda and disinformation” churned out by both sides, often via forbidden short-wave radio. Unless some conclusive evidence appears, Russian social media and other meddling in the 2016 presidential election was little more than old habits in modern-day forms. (Not incidentally, the Times story suggests that US Intel had been hacking the Kremlin, or trying to, for many years. This too should not shock us.)

The real novelty of Russiagate is the allegation that a Kremlin leader, Putin, personally gave orders to affect the outcome of an American presidential election. In this regard, Russiagaters have produced even less evidence, only suppositions without facts or much logic. With the Russiagate narrative being frayed by time and fruitless investigations, the “mole in the Kremlin” may have seemed a ploy needed to keep the conspiracy theory moving forward, presumably toward Trump’s removal from office by whatever means. And hence the temptation to play the mole card again, now, as yet more investigations generate smoke but no smoking gun.

The pretext of the Times story is that Putin is preparing an attack on the upcoming November elections, but the once-“vital,” now-silent moles are not providing the “crucial details.” Even if the story is entirely bogus, consider the damage it is doing. Russiagate allegations have already de-legitimized a presidential election, and a presidency, in the minds of many Americans. The Times’ updated, expanded version may do the same to congressional elections and the next Congress. If so, there is an “attack on American democracy” – not by Putin or Trump but by whoever godfathered and repeatedly inflated Russiagate.

READ MORE: Russiagate’s ‘core narrative’ has always lacked actual evidence - Stephen Cohen

As I have argued previously, such evidence that exists points to John Brennan and James Clapper, President Obama’s head of the CIA and director of national intelligence respectively, even though attention has been focused on the FBI. Indeed, the Times story reminds us of how central “intelligence” actors have been in this saga. Arguably, Russiagate has brought us to the worst American political crisis since the Civil War and the most dangerous relations with Russia in history. Until Brennan, Clapper, and their closest collaborators are required to testify under oath about the real origins of Russiagate, these crises will grow.

Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at NYU and Princeton, and John Batchelor continue their (usually) weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fifth year, are at TheNation.com.)

Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University and a contributing editor of The Nation.

This article was originally published by The Nation.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/437226-russian-spies-meddling-election/

the yeltsin records...

Boris Yeltsin lied when he said that he had been looking for a successor in the person of Vladimir Putin for a long time, historian Andrei Fursov told Pravda.Ru.

Declassified transcripts of Bill Clinton's phone conversations with Boris Yeltsin in 1999 show that the late Russian president says that it took him long to find the man who would be in charge of Russia in 2000. "I came across him eventually, this is Putin. You will work with him," Yeltsin told Clinton promising that Putin would continue his line of Russia's democratic development and expand Russias contacts. 

Historian and political scientist Andrei Fursov noted in an interview with Pravda.Ru that Boris Yeltsin was reporting his decisions and ideas to Bill Clinton. "He informed his boss about his choice. It brings up the memory of Yeltsin's call to George H. Bush after the decision to disintegrate the Soviet Union. Bush was the first man whom Yeltsin called. Gorbachev was hurt by that. In another episode, Yeltsin tried to assure US Congress that communism would never be back on the Russian territory. This transcript is another evidence to prove the fact that Russia used to be a semi-colony during Yeltsin's presidency," the expert said.

"I think that Yeltsin lied when he said that he had been searching for a successor for a long time. From what I know about the events of the late 1990s, Yeltsin did not intend to quit his job, but there were several aspects that forced American masters to put pressure on him. First, there was a conspiracy in the army led by Rokhlin to remove Yeltsin from power. Rokhlin's murder ruined the plan, and people in Yeltsin's team realised that there was serious discontent brewing in the army. 

"Secondly, not long before that, the parliament had nearly impeached Yeltsin. In addition, Russia suffered a default in 1998. Those three events drew the line under Yeltsin's rule, and he had to quickly search for a successor. Apparently, he counted on Stepashin at first, but then it turned out that the latter was ready to compromise with the Primakov-Luzhkov team, so a need in another candidate arose. 

"Today, the Russian leadership should give a moral assessment to Yeltsin's rule. In today's Russia, many tend to despise Gorbachev a lot, but they dislike Yeltsin to a lesser degree. Yeltsin was a product of Gorbachev's rule. Yeltsin was working within the corridor of opportunities set by Gorbachev. Gorbachev is still alive, and the man who destroyed the USSR should be held accountable for that. At the same time, I understand that Putin does not want to criticise Yeltsin because it was Yeltsin who made Putin his successor," the expert told Pravda.Ru. 


See more at http://www.pravdareport.com/history/31-08-2018/141507-yeltsin_clinton_pu...

 

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flipping russian pancakes

WASHINGTON — In the estimation of American officials, Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with close ties to the Kremlin, has faced credible accusations of extortion, bribery and even murder.

They also thought he might make a good source.

Between 2014 and 2016, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department unsuccessfully tried to turn Mr. Deripaska into an informant. They signaled that they might provide help with his trouble in getting visas for the United States or even explore other steps to address his legal problems. In exchange, they were hoping for information on Russian organized crime and, later, on possible Russian aid to President Trump’s 2016 campaign, according to current and former officials and associates of Mr. Deripaska.

In one dramatic encounter, F.B.I. agents appeared unannounced and uninvited at a home Mr. Deripaska maintains in New York and pressed him on whether Paul Manafort, a former business partner of his who went on to become chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaign, had served as a link between the campaign and the Kremlin.

The attempt to flip Mr. Deripaska was part of a broader, clandestine American effort to gauge the possibility of gaining cooperation from roughly a half-dozen of Russia’s richest men, nearly all of whom, like Mr. Deripaska, depend on President Vladimir V. Putin to maintain their wealth, the officials said.

 

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/us/politics/deripaska-ohr-steele-fbi.html?

 

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Let me laugh... It's quite ludicrous, really... Anyone playing this game, would be well aware that information is often given specifically (wording, style, info) to one turncoat (double agent) and should this information "surface", then the powers in charge would know who the "leaker(s) is (are). It's normal practice in the world of deceit. Do you think that multi-billionaires who supposedly are making a mint out of being "friends" with Putin would risk loosing everything and spend the rest of their life in prison? And have their families banned forever? Just to topple Dumbdumb? 

 

Is the NYT serious?

the art of squandering...

Donald Trump might have his own assessment of Mike Pompeo’s “undiplomatic” remarks about Russia, Moscow has suggested, referring to the president’s recent Twitter rampage aimed at his last secretary of state, Rex Tillerson.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov went on the offensive after Pompeo accused Moscow of “squandering” public funds by sending two strategic bombers to Venezuela. Describing Pompeo’s comments as unbecoming of a diplomat, Peskov slyly pointed out that Trump has a habit of airing his own opinions of those who hold the reins at the State Department. “Perhaps such an assessment will follow in respect to Mr. Pompeo’s undiplomatic speech,” Peskov quipped.

 

Read more: 

https://www.rt.com/usa/446165-peskov-trump-pompeo-tillerson/

 

 

Meanwhile, squandering more on the Pentagon:

 

In a decision that should surprise absolutely no one, the president agreed to an increase to the already exorbitant military budget:

President Donald Trump has told Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to submit a $750 billion budget proposal for fiscal 2020, in a reversal from his pledge to trim defense spending, two people familiar with the budget negotiations have told POLITICO. 

Trump’s “pledge to trim defense spending” was nothing of the sort, and anyone that thought that he would actually cut back on military spending has not been paying attention for the past several years. Even before he was elected, Trump has been fixated on the idea that the military was supposedly “depleted” under Obama, and he has been determined to undo the non-existent harm that he thinks his predecessor did. Of course, the military was not really depleted, but hawks always like to claim that they need to spend vast sums to “rebuild” what their predecessors allowed to fall into desuetude. 

Persuading Trump to throw more money at the Pentagon must have been the easiest assignment in Mattis’ life, because the president has been inclined to give the military as much money as he can whether it is necessary or not. The military budget is already far too large by at least several hundreds of billions of dollars, and a further increase is an absurd waste of money. Since Trump knows nothing, and his instinct is to favor a larger military over a smaller one, it could not have been difficult to convince him that more money was the answer. Now that there will be a Democratic majority in the House, it is possible that Congress won’t simply act as a rubber stamp for unnecessary increases in military spending, but they will need help from those Republican members that understand that the U.S. doesn’t need to be spending three-quarters of a trillion dollars a year in order to be secure.

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/trump-throws-more-money-...

 

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See also:

rock, scissor, paper... civilities between rogues...

protecting the russian soldiers...

 

Smartphones and social networks not allowed in the Russian Army

 

The State Duma of Russia has given the third reading to the law that prohibits Russian army servicemen and conscripts from using mobile phones and other portable electronic devices that allow them to connect to global networks and transmit information.


408 MPs supported the bill, no one voted against. The measure is deemed necessary because of difficulties in organizing control for informational restrictions. In other words, draftees and military personnel may open public access to undesirable information, such as their location.


The right of Russian servicemen to use social networks is going to be limited as well. For example, they will not be able to post any information that may indicate their location and affiliation with the armed forces.


The bill also prohibits servicemen from contacting the press, talking about their colleagues or details and peculiarities of their service. The authors of the draft law explained that such measures were introduced in connection with "special" attention that foreign special services and terrorist organizations were paying to the Russian army.

 

See more at http://www.pravdareport.com/news/society/142263-russian_army/

 

 

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