PT and all,

Western ignorance of the role of the Red Army in defeating Hitler is particularly unfortunate in relation to our policy towards Ukraine, because of the key role of Sevastopol.

On this, some remarks in a piece on the ‘War is Boring’ site in June last year, entitled ‘Sevastopol’s Soviet Defenders Helped Save Stalingrad’, may be to the point.

For seven crucial months between December 1941 and July 1942, its defenders tied down the Eleventh Army under Erich von Manstein (misspelled Mainstein in the piece) – the architect of the fall of France, and one of the great German masters of mobile warfare.

(See https://warisboring.com/sev... .)

The ‘War is Boring’ piece compares the role of the Sevastopol siege in buying time for the Russians, and so facilitating the Stalingrad victory, with that of the defence of the Alamo in contributing to the decisive defeat of the Mexican Army at San Jacinto in 1836.

While both the devastation, and the stakes, were some orders of magnitude higher in the Russian case, this comparison does at least have the merit of pointing to the symbolic role of the city, a fact which those in the West who thought it a good idea to co-operate with ‘Banderistas’ in trying to bring the whole of Ukraine into NATO seem to have been too stupid to appreciate.

I was somewhat gruesomely amused to read this morning a lead article on the ‘American Conservative site’, entitled ‘The Coming American-Russian Alliance Against China.’ Its author, Harry J. Kazianis, is apparently director of defense studies at the ‘Center for the National Interest’ and executive editor of ‘The National Interest.’

(See http://www.theamericanconse... .)

This is an article he should have written a decade ago – it is now quite simply too late.

I vividly remember the way in which the ‘institutniki’ who were central to Gorbachev’s ‘new thinking’ were, thirty years ago, infatuated with the West: many of them thought they were rejoining civilization.

Today, one has only to visit the website of one of the most significant such figures, Sergei Karaganov, to find, in English, articles entitled ‘Ideology of Eastward Turn’ and ‘From the Pivot to the East to Greater Eurasia.’

(See http://karaganov.ru/en/ .)

A form of ‘Eurasianism’ – not at all the natural inclination of Putin, who is very much a product of the city created by the first great Russian ‘Westerniser’, Peter the Great – has gone from being marginal to being mainstream.

It may be a bit of an exaggeration to Karaganov’s articles as celebrations of the end of the Petrine period in Russian history, but it is not I think much of one.

excellent piece by PT and your comment Sir,
you mentioned Sevastopol during WW2, defended by Soviet Russian soldiers, a lot of blood spilled in that place, too much to give it up. Also, not to forget - the blood spilled by czarist Russia in the 1854 war to defend Sevastopol - and how reporting from that siege launched the career of no lesser than Leo Tolstoy.

You wrote: "many of them thought they were rejoining civilization..."

This orientation, I believe, permeated many strata of the Soviet (and Russian) society - they had completely absorbed the salient claim of the Western Diocletian Civilization to be the one and only (Universal) Civilization which, in the ripeness of time, would encompass the globe.

SmootheirX12 fervently considers Russia to be Western and for decades the Kemalists desperately wanted to join Europe - (re-)join the one true civilization, in lieu of the one true religion.

I think the empirical evidence of the last 200 years clearly has established that while new technical civilizations are being built on the carcass of the old ones, these new civilizations are not Western - and will never be Western in the sense that one understands it in a place such as Bologna.

In Algiers, after 130 years of French rule, the side-walk cafes, a legacy of France, are bereft of women - it is a space for men.

China is a good example of what I have in mind - a technical civilization informed by the ideas of Newtonian Mechanics; devoid of the Humanism of old China - with pieces of the pre-revolutionary culture and state being grafted into it. Japan is another example - non-Western and not attempting to do so either; not since their reach for power was crushed by the United States.

Much of Western states' foreign policy is directly predicated on the eventual triumph of the Western Civilization; this fallacy permeates the minds of policy makers as well as the electorate - in my opinion. A pernicious consequence - among many - of this belief structure is that no state that does not accept the tutelage of Western Fortress is exercising Legitimate Authority.

Another one is that any female who bears children outside of Fortress West is committing a crime against that child by causing that child to be raised in what Aldus Huxley called "savage reservation". Here Trump is clearly departing from this nonsense by trying to expel such women from the United States.

Babak Makkinejad,

A key organisation of British ‘neoconservatism’ is the ‘Henry Jackson Society’, founded in 2005.

Its ‘Statement of Principles’, signed by among other the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, explains that the Society:

‘Believes that only modern liberal democratic states are truly legitimate; and that the political or human rights pronouncements of any international or regional organisation which admits undemocratic states lack the legitimacy to which they would be entitled if all their members were democracies.’

(See https://en.wikipedia.org/wi... .)

Among the few really good British commentators on international affairs are Dominic Lieven and his younger brother Anatol. Descended on one side from Baltic German servants of the Tsars, on the other from Catholic Irish ones of the Raj, both have a strong sense of the complexities and ambiguities of ‘modernisation.’

In a notable article in ‘The National Interest’ in January last year, entitled ‘Is America Becoming a Third World Country’, the younger Lieven noted that:

‘In his famous work on nationalism, Elie Kedourie drew attention to the terrifying innovation of the French Revolution in asserting that only a republican or “national” state enjoys real legitimacy – not just internally but on the world stage. All other forms can legitimately be undermined and destroyed by republican states; and treaties between republican and non-republican states are not fully binding on the legitimate republican ones. This approach recalled the attitude of both sides in the Catholic-Protestant struggles between the Reformation and the Peace of Westphalia, that (in the catholic version), “agreements with heretics are not morally binding”. As Kedourie pointed out, this approach challenged a previous European state order (both in medieval times and the 18th century) in which the continent was composed of a wide range of different state forms, including constitutional monarchies, federal quasi-monarchies, absolute monarchies, confederal republics, and patrician republics, all of them according full legitimacy to each other.’

(See http://nationalinterest.org... .)

Although practice could be more moderate than theory, the Soviet Union – as also Communist China – were in this regard the direct heirs of the French Revolution. As Lieven notes, this was ended by Deng Xiao-Ping and Mikhail Gorbachev. As however the ‘Statement of Principles’ of the ‘Henry Jackson Society’ well illustrates, it is now the Western states who have taken over the mantle of the Jacobins.

A further irony is that the following October, Anatol’s elder brother Dominic was expounding his analysis of the origins of the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution to a gathering of the Russian élite at the annual Valdai Discussion Club meeting.

(See http://valdaiclub.com/a/hig... .)

A crucial moment in what I take to be a remarkable ‘tour de force’ was his recollection of how, at the age of 12, his uncle Leonid – ‘a child of old Russia and the White emigration’ – gave him a copy of the famous memorandum presented to Nicholas II in February 1914 by Petr Durnovo, the former police chief and Interior Minister who had played a key role in suppressing the 1905-6 Revolution.

This, as Dominic Lieven put it, ‘warned that in Russia in that era the triumph of liberalism was impossible and that entry into a European war would almost certainly result in socialist revolution.’ Bitterly opposed to the alliance with England, Durnovo advocated collaboration with Germany, and also warned about the dangers of revolution in that country.

Ironically, views rather similar to Durnovo’s were prevalent in the German Moscow Embassy of the interwar period. Leading figures there were prone to believe that the abandonment of abandonment of Bismarck’s emphasis on avoiding war with Russia had led to a disaster, which should on no account be repeated.

All was not however lost. In the view of key figures in the Embassy, Trotsky’s ‘The Revolution Betrayed’ was essentially right, and Stalin was turning into a kind of ‘fascist.’ The conclusion drawn by the then German Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Werner von der Schulenberg, was that the appropriate strategy for his country was to modify the ‘Anti-Comintern Pact’ of Germany, Italy, and Japan, by including in it the power against whom it had been directed, thus forming an invulnerable ‘continental bloc.’

Ironically, we now appear to be moving towards a new version of the ‘continental bloc.’ It would seem to me that, for a whole range of reasons, the Islamic Republic is likely to be regarded both in Moscow and Beijing as an important part of this.

Ideologically, a key element in this ‘continental bloc’ is, quite precisely the repudiation of any form of universalism, liberal as much as Marxist-Leninist. There are few indications of any realisation on the part of American and British élites that, in the wake of the catastrophic outcomes of the neo-Jacobin strategies they have pursued in recent years, the kind of insistence that different systems are appropriate for different states which is central to Putin’s thinking can pose a very formidable ideological challenge.

Very good, thank you; Truth from the horse's mouth, as it where.

You cannot do business with such people.

Yes indeed, thank you David H.
Have you seen "The Unknown War"?
Soviet footage, 20 episodes x 48 minutes, narrated by Burt Lancaster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

Thanks! So many excellent points. I sure wish someone would create a television network that did provide good historical analysis of current topics. I'm so tired of screaming at my television. Fox News is no exception. It may not be as stupid as the others, but it certainly isn't unbiased as it claims to be.

During my late teenage years The Ugly American was a must read. I'm sad that it may have had some influence in creating the mindless progressive lefties. But I am even more upset that it didn't make the right smarter and less defensive and also self congratulatory (for little reason) about the U.S.'s involvement in the rest of the world.

I will have to print off your post to carry with me when I am confronted about foreign events. Sadly, however, few people now ever do discuss politics or current events both national and foreign. Everyone is afraid to become involved in an unpleasant confrontation.

I had not seen the Levin interview of Shelby Steele when I posted this earlier. I was happy when Steele also used The Ugly American as a possible reason the Left in the universities has gone so weirdly stupid in the way it is handling the issue of diversity, race relations, and in the instituions of safe places and micro-aggression.

I've just watched the press conference with Trump and Putin. Can't wait to get your analysis of that.

The world really does have two major Leaders who have no fear of making reporters seem like ridiculous seventh graders working for their school newspaper.

I am beginning to wonder if the Nazi's shifted west. Operation Paperclip of course, but they already had support from people within the US and the UK. Is the current US/Russia conflict a phase 2 of WW2 between the descendants of Nazi's that inflitrated the West and Russia?

Not just the Nazis but right wing, often extreme, nationalists who had supported the Nazis in Eastern Europe who became refugees in Canada and the United States and went on to infiltrate their governments. Chrystia Freeland, Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs, is an example of that occupation.
As for the UK, the British establishment has a long and glorious history of Russophobia although we expected them to fight and die for us when needed. For example, Winston Churchill harboured a dream of re-arming the Nazi war machine and sending it back east with Anglo-American forces to attack the Soviet Union even before the war in Europe was over and had the British Army start planning for it (Operation Unthinkable) after the war in Europe was over but while the war against Japan was still going on.

> Winston Churchill harboured a dream of re-arming the Nazi war machine and sending it back east

Not merely a dream.

UK officers commanded Wehrmacht units in Greece after the V-day to suppress Greek grassroots resistance until more UK forces arrive and set the "democratic" government that would ascend to "civilized" institutions, violating Yalta agreements by the way.

Stalin gave Greece to Churchill https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

There were the Arctic Convoys. A relative captained a ship on them. Said those runs were very tough indeed. So there was some fellow feeling. Could always put that help down to self-interest of course.

Not forgetting that according to some the war effort in the UK got a real boost when the Russians became allies. Miners etc got more enthusiastic then. I'd always thought Russophobia was a product of the English political classes, and group think Middle England who still take the media seriously. Never got the impression it goes much further than that. Could be wrong. But some time ago I looked at the comment sections in some of the popular papers and if the comments there were genuine there seemed to be quite a few who knew the score.

" In fact, U.S. and British intelligence operatives played a crucial (albeit covert role) in organizing the Euromaidan:"

I'm surprised more hasn't come out on that from the Ukrainians who fled or from the Russians themselves. Or have I missed something? The Italian story didn't seem to amount to much.

A long-dead uncle of mine was a tank commander in the British Army in northern Europe during World War 2. He was no fan of Communism but I found copies of The Road to Stalingrad and The Road to Berlin by John Erickson stuffed away in a bookcase in his house. I asked him if at the end of World War 2 Churchill had decided to turn and attack the Soviet Union , what he thought the British Army would have done. His response was "mutinied". Americans often can't believe that the British would dump Churchill towards the end of World War 2, but they'd had enough of war , wanted change and remembered what hadn't happened at the end of World War 1.

A detailed look at Churchill's attitudes towards Bolshevikism and National Socialism is in the book
Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War
by Patrick Buchanan.
Some very provocative ideas.

Operation paperclip wasn't moving political scientists to the US. I would say Trotskyism not national socialism. There are lots of former Marxists of all stripes in the West.

I am struggling to see how the self-reinforcing orgy of hysteria gripping America can be reversed. Trump's term is another 2.5 years and he is determined to restore US-Russia relations. His adversarial nature, together with the counter-establishment narrative which propelled him to power, do not hold out much hope for de-escalatory moves on his part.

On the other side, his enemies appear to be willing to go to any lengths to stop the rapprochement, including it now appears, giving away an enormously valuable counterintelligence capacity. Brennan, Comey & others with much to lose have joined the chorus of incitement - and why? Because Trump & Putin agreed to put bilateral relations ahead of attempts to portray the sort of 'interference', which the US doubtless conducts on a daily basis, as tantamount to an act of war. I fear we have moved beyond derangement into insanity.

Unless Russiagate can be publicly debunked soon, this looks likely to end either in civil unrest & martial law or, God forbid, an assassination attempt & far worse.

Loved DJT at the presser today responding to yet another question on "Russian interference" by immediately asking where the DNC server was.

It's hopeless. CNN and the major networks are CIA State media. They might as well have a portrait of Joe McCarthy in their studios. The sad thing is that I don't even think they realize it. If one is honest, Fars News produces better journalism.

I long ago gave up taking politics intellectually seriously. Trying to confront human impulses is like trying to cool a stove by putting your hand on it. We are driven by the same organic impulses as the dinosaurs, just with a few million years of expansion/consolidation feedback to create more layers of complexity.
The essential issue is that people are linear, but nature is circular. We seek ideals and perfection, but the reality is polarities, so we find ourselves pushed into corners and the vast middle ground shredded by the more simple minded.
Eventually the dust will settle and we will build our little worlds back up again.

Now they have charged a Russian national with espionage for trying to set up meetings between Trump and Putin during the campaign.

This is very, very bad. Somehow, a very flawed country, the United States, with a very flawed system of government, has fallen under the influence of an extremely malign force. All governments are flawed, all systems of government are flawed. Our system was designed to protect the institution of human slavery, which is a horrific flaw.

But now? Now, something modern and extremely dangerous and sinister is afoot. Espionage? Forsooth! The last time I looked, Russia was not a slave state.

What is going on? I continue my first interrogatory. Where does all this emanate from? The editorial offices of the NY Times? No. The Justice Department? No. Something else. The Borg? That's like saying Voldemort. Meaningless. Real people with real names sitting in real offices are directing this. Directing it.

Their apparent premise is that the defeat of Hillary Clinton was a crime. But had Jeb defeated her, we would not be seeing this.

Muckraking news sources have been around since the beginning of the free press. The country is not flawed if CNN, FOX, the WaPo or the NY Times make wild accusations. It is only a problem if they are taken too seriously.

There are many who are desperate to deflect attention from the Obama administration`s failures. The structure of the Republic under the Constitution as it existed in 1789 and all the modifications by amendments since, including the one ending slavery, are not the cause of the current state of affairs.

Not the first time. Remember the McCarthy Era? The Hollywood Blacklist?

Without the incredible stands at Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad, the West probably would have lost the war and we would be living under a true fascist regime.

Isn't it past time people let go of propaganda/Hollywood versions of evil Nazis and started applying "accurate scholarship" to the events?
How do we explain to ourselves that
a. in 1918, Wilson sent US forces to vanquish Bolsheviks; they failed;
b. In an early 1933 volte-face, FDR chose to finance and partner with Bolshevik Russia, that was killing millions of its own people, against Germany, that was no threat to USA and whose idee fixe, according to Herbert Hoover, was to destroy Bolshevik Communism;
c. that after having committed crimes against humanity in US complicity in deliberately firebombing German civilians, US & Allies continued the destruction of the German people and culture for perhaps five years post-'hostilities,'
d. which Morgenthau-inspired program ended only after US military & other leaders realized they needed West Germany as a bulwark against Communist Russia; and that
e. USA spent the next ~50 years spending and fighting the Cold War to defeat Communist Russia!

USAians desperately need to rely on actual facts & logic rather than Hollywoodism in their understanding of why it went to war in Europe and who was the real enemy, who posed the real threats. Key influencers of war against Germany were Communist agents -- Harry Dexter White -- or zealous zionists working on behalf of a foreign entity while pledged to US institutions -- Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, Bernard Baruch, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and a score of others.

Pre-WWI, large areas of USA spoke German and German language & culture were taught along with English as 'American' in USA schools; post-wars, German language education has disappeared from US education systems and the German people and communities that contributed so much to development of American institutions and culture have gone underground, relentlessly shamed and vilified.

Machiavelli admired the orderliness of German communities that he visited; they were formed around the Benedictine monasteries that taught Germans to value self-discipline and labor -- ora et labore; in a speech at Library of Congress on the correspondence between Benj. Franklin and Gaetano Filangieri, Marcello Pera said that "European Christianity is the essence of western civilization," and Germany was the center and protector of that Christian culture. Thank goodness, the combination of Allied firebombing and Communist Russian fighters -- and rapists-- destroyed that Germany.

Do you actually, rationally think German "fascism" would have infected USA in a malign way, and that it would be in any substantial way worse than the path the combined forces of the Borg and zionists have led USA down?

Isn't it past time people let go of propaganda/Hollywood versions of evil Nazis and started applying "accurate scholarship" to the events?

Yes, for starters buying a ticket on CheapoAir (or Expedia) and flying to Russia to visit Poklonnaya Gora (Mount) in Moscow or Piskarevskoye Cemetery in St. Petersburg to get into this "accurate scholarship" mood. I am sure hotel prices have come down after the end of the World Cup.

It might help if he toured some of the US beforehand.

How nice that the Russian people honor their dead. Germans are shamed into denying that millions of their people were incinerated, raped -- by Russians, encouraged by Ilya Ehrenberg -- and dispossessed in the greatest ethnic transfer in recorded history. Surely you saw the movie?
EDIT/addendum: My understanding of Russia/Russian history etc. is limited. I hold the overall view that the Russia of the Czar, Bolshevik Russia, and Putin's Russia are radically different places/cultures; I believe Putin is attempting to revitalize a Russian culture that more like Czarist Russia than Bolshevik.
In my simplistic view, Bolshevism was the bad actor, and zionists in USA & elsewhere, as well as FDR & Churchill acting with/for them, supported Bolshevism. Benjamin Ginsberg's "How the Jews Defeated Hitler" is forthright that Jews "won" the war against Hitler by maneuvering a partnership with Communist Russia on multiple fronts.
It is painful to think about the humanity that was destroyed in that war -- Russian, German, my own Italian paisanos. It is physically painful to think about it.
That can't be changed, but it is my belief that similar forces are engaging similar strategies to destroy Iran other places. I don't want that to happen. I believe exposing the real 'bad actors' who got away with mass murder in the past, is one of the ways a 'keyboard warrior' can prevent the repeat of such outrages.
Pace, Smoothie.

I think the German culture that you are writing about was severly damaged World War I, a casaulty of Junkers and Prussians and the War. What was left of that was destroyed by the adoption of NAZI ideas and ideals by the Germans. Not much of that pre 1914 magical place called Germany remains. That is how wars destroy a millenia of work.

I agree wholeheartedly. Watching the US media coverage of the Putin - Trump press conference in Helsinki is really turning my stomach. They are nuts. Cracked in the head.

Russian suspension of the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PDMA) was because USA breached the agreement.

Here's a decent summary:

quote

The
decision to suspend the agreement had been expected. The US was
supposed to fabricate MOX fuel from its plutonium costs for building a
facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina but costs spiraled
out of control. It prompted the administration to use a cheaper
reversible process instead - a «dilute and dispose» alternative that
would simply mix the plutonium with inert materials and store
underground making it more difficult to recover and dispose of it as
waste.

According
to the «downblending» method, the Savannah River Site facility would be
used to dilute plutonium and dispose of it at the waste isolation pilot
plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico, instead of transforming plutonium into
nuclear fuel. There is a problem here - the disposal approach would not
change the mix of isotopes in the plutonium to make it more difficult to
reuse in weapons. Changing the disposition method requires formally
amending the agreement, which cannot be done without Russia's consent.
In an open breach of the agreement, Moscow has not been consulted.

Unlike
the United States, the Russian Federation has carried out its
obligations. Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom has already
started producing MOX fuel. A MOX fuel facility in the city of
Zheleznogorsk in Eastern Siberia. BN-600 and BN-800 fast neutron
reactors have been built to use MOX fuel made of weapons-grade plutonium
and ensure it is unusable for nuclear warheads.

Russia had warned the United States about the violation. The Russian president expressed its concern over the US unilateral move in April, shortly after a nuclear security summit held in the US.

Back
then, he noted that that the United States was not honoring the
agreement by disposing of plutonium in a way that allowed it to retain
its defence capabilities. Washington was warned.

https://www.strategic-cultu...

Zbig giving a lecture. His views on Russia start at the 10 minute mark. If this is what is being taught - a cultural hatred, blind hatred of Russia - at universities and places of higher learning in the US.....

Zbig is Pole. It explains his views...

A Polish nobleman with ancestral estates in Galicia, no less.

and also the ancestry of Peter Strzok.

Makes perfect sense.

PT, spot on analysis. Loved the rocks in glass houses and virginity loss lines.

Wish Trump had said that he and Putin discussed interference in elections and both the US and Russia promised not to do so in the future in each other's elections (obviously the rest of the planet would remain a free-fire zone). Or something to that effect.

Meanwhile, the media is in full propaganda mode over the insight that nations attempt to spy on each other. But propaganda has a corrosive effect over time, and is very strongly pushing to a confrontation with Russia the US cannot win (humanity loses, the cockroaches win) in the name of patriotism.

At least Trump respects Putin. He may have learned some reality (as you posit could have happened), which he seems not to be getting from his (largely swamp creature) advisors, were he to listen to them.

When did "moral equivalence" become part of international relations?

It's all nonsense.

Russia Derangement Syndrome is part and parcel of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Just like the Deep State is above the rule of law and can act with impunity, the Borg believes that it is above international norms and rules and can act with impunity. What is good for the goose is not good for the gander. The hypocrisy of the US ruling elites is so obvious and the rest of the world is no longer buying it.

I am not at all surprised at the vitriol of the punditry on the Trump-Putin meeting and their subsequent public remarks. I am glad Trump and Putin had a one-on-one. Hopefully it will lead to lowering the potential for escalation of conflict. Bravo to President Trump for bucking the hysteria of the media and pundit class.

the hysteria is mind boggling; the NPR is probably one of the most hysteric voices

Many thanks to Publius Tacitus for an excellent post.
It would, however, be appropriate to note that Western “appetites” with respect to the lands settled by Russian-speaking populations long predate the Nazi invasion, the Napoleonic campaign of 1812 or even the ill-fated incursion of the King of Sweden Karl XII that ended at Poltava in 1709. The whole stature of the Russian state in the history of the East Slavic territories is one long struggle to preserve its freedom from foreign domination in the context of fairly constant military emergencies on its borders, including but not limited to, the rule of the heirs of Ghengis Khan (1238-1240 to 1480), and the repeated attempts of the crowned heads of the various Swedish, Lithuanian, Polish, Polish-Lithuanian entities, and the Teutonic orders based in Livonia (modern-day Latvia and Estonia), to absorb lands long settled by Russian-speaking populations. The earliest (semi-legendary) chronicle accounts involving the “invitation” to the founder of the first Riurikid princely dynasty in the 9th century was organized by the local tribesmen following upon their forcible ejection of Swedish tribute takers from the Russian northwest. Thus, the entire authoritarian ethos of the Russian state as a garrison state – in many ways perfected in the reign of Grand Prince Ivan III Vasilievich (1462-1505) – was forged in the crucible of an almost constant struggle for national sovereignty. The Russian historian Kliuchevskii (1841-1911) characterized such a state as one in which the “state interest” (gosudarstvennyi interes’) was supreme and while the population consisted of commanders, soldiers and laborers, there were no citizens in any modern sense. That this arrangement -- and a deep distrust of the collective "West" -- persists in the national mentality until the present time is, for me, not at all surprising.

People who like PT's analysis above (like me) should also enjoy "sundance" 's analysis:
https://theconservativetree...

Also, regarding the videos on "The Unknown War", they are accumulated in a YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/pla...

Critical responses to the Mueller indictment of twelve alleged GRU officers in the alleged DNC "hack" are beginning to appear.

Mark McCarty offers this take:

Mueller’s New Indictment — Do the Feds Take Us for Idiots?!
https://medium.com/@markfmc...

He references Adam Carter's initial take. Carter has done most of the work on exposing the alleged Guccifer 2.0 entity as a likely false flag.

Mueller’s Latest Indictment Contradicts Evidence In The Public Domain
https://disobedientmedia.co...

Quote:

This author is responding to the indictment because it features claims about Guccifer 2.0 that are inconsistent with what has been discovered about the persona, including the following:

Evidence was found over 500 days ago relating to the Guccifer 2.0 persona that showed they had deliberately manipulated files to have Russian metadata. We know the process used to construct the documents was not due to accidental mistakes during the creation process.

The original template document that Guccifer 2.0 used has been identified. It is also the source of the presence of Warren Flood’s name, and can be found attached to one of Podesta’s emails (it has RSIDs matching with Guccifer 2.0’s first couple of documents).

The Trump opposition research, which CrowdStrike claimed was targeted at the DNC, apparently in late April 2016, isn’t what Guccifer 2.0 actually presented to reporters. It also didn’t come from the DNC, but was an attached file on one of John Podesta’s emails – not the DNC’s. This specific copy appears to have been edited by Tony Carrk shortly before it was sent to Podesta. The fact that Guccifer 2.0’s initial releases were Podesta email attachments was even conceded by a former DNC official.

It appears that Guccifer 2.0 fabricated evidence on June 15, 2016, that coincidentally dovetailed with multiple claims made by CrowdStrike executives that had been published the previous day.

Guccifer 2.0 went to considerable effort to make sure Russian error messages appeared in copies of files given to the press.

Evidence – which Guccifer 2.0 couldn’t manipulate due to being logged by third parties – suggests he was operating in the US.

Additional evidence, which Guccifer 2.0 would have been unlikely to realize “he” was leaving, indicated that the persona was archiving files in US timezones before release, with email headers giving him away early on.

Virtually everything that has been claimed to indicate Guccifer 2.0 was Russian was based on something he chose to do.

Considering that Guccifer 2.0 had access to Podesta’s emails, yet never leaked anything truly damaging to the Clinton campaign even though he would have had access to it, is highly suspicious. In fact, Guccifer 2.0 never referenced any of the scandals that would later explode when the DNC emails and Podesta email collections were published by WikiLeaks.

End Quote

He goes on to substantiate these points.

In particular, to Mueller's point that the "Conspiractors" took efforts to hide their identities, Guccifer 2.0 did just the opposite:

Quote:

Guccifer 2.0 certainly didn’t make a genuine effort to “conceal a Russian identity,” far from it. The persona made decisions that would leave behind a demonstrable trail of Russian-themed breadcrumbs, examples include:

Choosing the Russian VPN Service (using the publicly accessible default server in France) in combination with a mail service provider that would forward the sender’s IP address.

Creating a blog and dropping a Russian emoticon in the second paragraph of the first post, something he only ever did one other time over months of activity (in which he used “:)” at a far higher frequency).

Tainting documents with Russian language metadata.

Going through considerable effort to ensure Russian language errors were in the first documents provided to the press.

Probable use of a VM set to Russian timezone while manipulating documents so that datastore objects with timestamps implying a Russian timezone setting are saved (in one of the documents, change tracking had been left on and recorded someone in a PST timezone saving one of Guccifer 2.0’s documents after the documents had being manipulated in the Russian timezones!)

The deliberate and inconsistent mangling of English language (which was actually inconsistent with aspects of English language that Russians typically struggle with).

Guccifer 2.0 claimed credit for a hack that was already being attributed to Russians without making any effort to counter that perception and only denied it when outright questioned on it.

End Quote

By the way, I believe the bit about the alleged Russian hackers using a server in the Central Time Zone was explicitly inserted into the indictment to counter the fact that at least some of Guccifer's documents had time stamps indicating the Eastern Time Zone, this as a result of The Forensicator's analysis which the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity relied on (mostly incorrectly) to assert that this "proved" the alleged "hack" was actually a leak.

While it is no surprise that hackers of any stripe would acquire access to servers or PCs in their target country, either by compromise or by legitimately leasing using anonymous means, the indictment has them going all over the place to locations in Arizona, Malaysia, none of which were discussed by CrowdStrike or anyone else over the last two years.

This, as Larry Johnson points out in references in the next article, indicate that much of the indictment's source has to be the intelligence community, and not the FBI. Only the NSA is likely to have this sort of information, as we know from Snowden and Bill Binney that the NSA has the capability to track almost every packet on the Internet that crosses the US network (minus local, short-range wireless.)

Clinging to Collusion: Why Evidence Will Probably Never Be Produced in the Indictments of ‘Russian Agents’
https://consortiumnews.com/...

Quote:

“When you dig into this indictment … there are huge problems, starting with how in the world did they identify 12 Russian intelligence officers with the GRU?” said former CIA analyst Larry Johnson in an interview with Consortium News. Johnson pointed out that the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency was not allowed to take part in the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on alleged interference by the GRU. Only hand-picked analysts from the FBI, the NSA and the CIA were involved.

“The experts in the intelligence community on the GRU … is the Defense Intelligence Agency and they were not allowed to clear on that document,” Johnson said.

“When you look at the level of detail about what [the indictment is] claiming, there is no other public source of information on this, and it was not obtained through U.S. law enforcement submitting warrants and getting affidavits to conduct research in Russia, so it’s clearly intelligence information from the NSA, most likely,” Johnson said.

End Quote

Or, of course, it could just be total BS cooked up out of whole cloth precisely so it can be presented without any expectation of having to produce actual evidence in court...

Stephen McIntyre, of the ClimateAudit Web site, who has done a lot of articles on the alleged DNC "hack" (he has links to them in his Twitter posts), has a long multipart post on Twitter analyzing the indictment. He has been going over his articles to see what might have to be updated and he's not finding much that changes his mind about anything.

https://twitter.com/Climate...

Quote:

Stephen McIntyre‏ @ClimateAudit 6h6 hours ago
21/ re-capping: nearly everything in the indictment pertains to hacking of uninteresting and unimportant DNC and DCCC documents which no one was interested. Podesta hack was very first event, was simple spearphish, no exotic malware. No new details on DNC email hack.

End Quote

While following up on various leaks, I ran across this interesting article suggesting that the motives behind some of these events might not be what everyone assumes...

DCLeaks was a conspiracy to get Trump elected, but wait until you hear these Russian hackers’ motivation!
https://www.databreaches.ne...

The story is about a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office deputy who set up a Web site to embarrass the Palm Beach Sheriff and subsequently sold the site to some "Russian friends" (before fleeing to Russia himself) who continued to run it and then apparently set up the Web site DCLeaks referenced by the Mueller indictment. These "friends" included a guy going under the handle “BadVolf,” and supposedly Guccifer 2.0 - or someone masquerading as Guccifer. BadVolf showed the author his logins which included logins as root to DCLeaks.

He also provided (alleged) login credentials to Hillary Clinton's email server!

Quote:

In any event, according to BadVolf, there were three people involved in DCLeaks: him, Guccifer2, and a third party that he didn’t name. And while it was Guccifer2 who purportedly provided me with all the DNC emails, they both provided me with what
they claimed were the email logins to Clinton’s email server back in April (before the hack had been detected and passwords changed). The passwords were never published on WikiLeaks or anywhere else. And wait until you see the login credentials they allege they used to gain access to Clinton’s email server and to Democrats.org...

Passwords to Hillary Clinton’s email accounts allegedly included “LeadTheSheeple2016", while Former President Bill Clinton’s password was allegedly “Saxaphone1994%”

End Quote

Quote:

I will not post all the screenshots and evidence BadVolf provided to prove his claim that they were responsible for DCLeaks. I will only say, for now, that he was unable to
provide the kind of proof that is generally sought such as a file uploaded to the web server confirming access. Except, as he explained, he’d always said that his role/access was to the database server, not the web server. So although he provided me with a lot of statements about the three servers, their router, and port forwarding, he couldn’t – and Guccifer 2 reportedly wouldn’t – do the one thing really needed:
for BadVolf to prove he had access to DCLeaks.com by uploading a file or message that could be verified.

So there it was….. this wild story claiming that DCLeaks was an operation designed and/or run, in part, to get Trump elected so that he might pardon Dougan and Dougan could return to the U.S. without fear of prosecution by the DOJ.

End Quote

I'm not sure what to make of this piece, but there seems to be no evidence that any of these hackers were connected to Russia's GRU or any other Russian state organization. BadVolf in particular was concerned about their getting arrested by the Russian government or having an "accident". As the article points out, nothing is provable - but it certainly seems interesting.

My favorite is, "Russia hacked US elections in favor of Trump," declaimed right after the declaration, "Hillary won the popular vote."

Great counterpoint to all of the sophistry and pearl-clutching [faux] hysteria from the Usual Suspects. Thanks!

And you did not mention Afghanistan, NATO's great adventure.

The degree of hostility today against Russia in the United States, the UK, France, etc. is almost beyond comprehension. The lights burn late at the New York Times twisting and folding the news to conform to the Russophobe propaganda machine... the Times that great hero of a free press.

Where is the epicenter of that machine? Where can you hear it's cogs turning and it motors humming the clearest? What does it seek to achieve? Who does it intend to benefit? In the words of Falstaff, a question not to be asked.

When Putin sic'd his dog on Merkel

I heard multiple times about an infamous incident when Putin brought his savage Labrador to a meeting with Merkel despite her well known fear of dogs in order to intimidate her. There must be more to the story than this because it would be stupid. Even if Merkel got scared, it would only serve to infuriate her. It's not like Russia is in a position to harm Germany. If anything, Russia needs to improve relations with Germany, not tick them off.

I'm curious if anyone knows if there is more to this story other than the 'KGB thug tactics'?
(btw sorry for posting twice in one day, I am aware that this is moderated. I just thought that some may find this interesting.)

Savage + Labrador = Oximoron.

Putin's love for dogs is well known, he owns some.
That's the reason why Japan presented him an Akita breed specimen.
Rumors circulated that he (the monster!) had suppressed her and (OMG!) nobody had seen the poor dog for some time (the horror!).

So Putin introduced Yume to a bunch of Japanese journalists, unleashed and evidently pissed off (the dog, not the journos).
She barked a lot, had them hysterically smiling out of fear. Putin let her do that for a sizable amount of time, smiling as well.
Then explained them that Yume had been trained for watch, was a no-nonsense, brave watchdog that aims at strangers (i.e. not the dog you want around in official meetings, but this bit was left out for being inferred by the journalists - Russian humor).
In a later visit, he introduced Yume to Shinzo Abe, too. This time in her doghouse, where she was less unhinged, to show him that Yume *can* be showed to foreigners *when feasible*. (Warned Abe she's bitey, just in case)

Putin is a dog master, knows dogs and knows exactly what he's doing when/if he shows them.

Now
Is Merkel's "well known fear" documented where?
And has it been "well known" before or after the dramatic meeting with Putin?
And Putin knew about it "because he's a KGB thug and knows everything of everyone" (including pee-showers on businessmen that may or not became POTUS years later)?

BTW here is the mauling brutus, please note the killer gaze
https://amp.businessinsider...