Puffy Putin and His Long-Long Tables

Note has been taken among the Western Propaganda Media -- and some others -- that Vladimir Vladimirovich is looking distinctly unwell with a very puffy face and an odd for him demeanor. His fury at Ukrainia is really uncharacteristic. Yes, I realize there's this whole "projection of strength" thing, but this guy has been around for practically ever, and most observers have taken his measure and got his number, and his recent appearance and actions are just "not like him." Something is going on. 

And then there is the whole business about those long-long tables in those gigantic white-white rooms in the Kremlin at which he has his meetings and conferences. He sits at one end and those who wish to speak with him sit yards and yards away from him. And then what? Yell? It's very odd. Commentary suggests he's paranoid of catching the Covid. But... why? We've seen Trump, Boris, and Bolsonaro among others get it and get it bad and come through with the kind of treatments that are only available to the rich and powerful, and so, Vlad should be fine even if he gets it. 

But then, there's the whole "puff-face" business. That is often a consequence of taking cortico-steroids like prednisone and such, and there are other meds that do it, like cancer drugs. So.... could there be something going on where his immune system is all bolloxed (such as with cancer treatments and other conditions) and thus his wariness of sitting near someone who might be a carrier? Has he been poisoned? 

And then there's the question about his behavior. I was certainly surprised when he ordered a full-on invasion of Ukraine. From the outside looking in, it was stupid, and he is not stupid. There is no clear objective -- "demilitarize and denazify" is all well and good, but this isn't even close to doing that. And why now instead of in 2014 when it was more doable if you will? And actually, it was expected then. 

Instead, he just sat back and watched.

Hm.

What gives? Dunno.

It's not just Putin, tho. Far from it. 

Paul Jay did and interview with Lawrence Wilkerson wherein they discussed some of the oddities of this latest round of conflict. They correctly see it as a contest of oligarchies -- American, European, Russian and Ukrainian. This is not, at all, about "Democracy vs Autocracy." Jeeze, whoever came up with  that one must have been on drugs. It's oligarchs against oligarchs. The working class has no say. Very much a la WWI. Which is not a good thing. Far from it.

There are strategic military objectives, but regime change in Kiev/Kyiv (the correct pronunciation of which  no one quite knows or agrees on... the best one seems to go something like "KREE-iv") isn't one of them. Occupation of the whole of Ukraine isn't one of them. Destruction of Ukraine isn't one of them. Strategic military action would focus essentially entirely on "Novorossiya", the east and south, and essentially ignore the rest ("Banderastan")

And yet from appearances, Russian troops are flailing around, sort of trying to "take" the big cities in the north -- Kiev, Kharkov -- and advancing on Mariupol and Odessa in the south without really defending Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas. 

We keep hearing about the Siege of Kiev/Kyiv, but that doesn't really seem to be happening. The airport was apparently taken by Russian troops. And every now and then a missile is lobbed toward the city hitting sort of randomly, but there doesn't seem to be a "siege." Same with Kharkov. 

In the south, there's little word, so it is not clear what the Russians are doing. It has been reported, maybe true or not, that the Ukrainians are fiercely shelling the breakaway republics and there is little or no Russian counter offense or defense. 

And now we hear veiled references to "nuclear deterrent" from Moscow. The USandNato have never disavowed First Strike with Nukes, so Moscow is understandably concerned, yet...

It reminds me a bit of all the people running around screaming that Hillary was going to start WWIII with her talk of a No-Fly Zone in Syria. Huh? No. Not gonna happen. All out nuclear war takes two to tango, and from all appearances what they were screaming about was that Putin would respond to a No-fly Zone with nuclear weapons, and there was no sign at all of him doing that.

So was the screaming just partisan bullshit? I think so, yes. But with current events in mind, I wonder. Was there something else going on?

Was there a plan in place to goad Russia into doing something.... erm... unwise (like a full on invasion somewhere) that would enable the implementation of the Russia-Project (ie: its dismemberment and de-nuclearization among other things) as a "defensive" measure, a plan to be executed with Hillary in the Oval Office?

A plan that was interrupted but not cancelled by the unexpected installation of Trump.

So now with Biden in office it is being executed "at last". Putin has done his part by invading Ukraine -- and flailing around and now by "talking nukes."

The point from The West is to destroy/dismember Russia. This has been a goal since the 1990s. Once that's done, move on China.

But the whole plan started with destroying the Middle East. Followed by Iran -- which still hasn't been done. Then Russia. Then China. With the idea that China would surrender rather than be destroyed.

Well. 

Here we are.

Spring's coming. So at least there's that...

The Russian Invasion of the Ukraine -- or Something

I'm just catching up with some of the overnight news on matters Russian and Ukrainian. No, I really didn't expect what I've been seeing, and what I'm seeing is not (quite) the "all out invasion" that has been predicted in Washington, London, and Brussels for months. It's something else. A sort of Russian net thrown over the Ukrainian Republic (as it came to be styled in Soviet times) to be reeled in -- or not -- at leisure. In other words, it seems the Kremlin/Putin is seeking to control Ukraine from afar, but not to possess its rotten hulk.

Hmm.

Putin's recapitulation of Russian/Ukrainian historical connections seems pretty accurate to me. Revisionism is strong in the West, and the assumption of long time Ukrainian full "independence" from Russia is simply absurd. There never was such a time. Russia and Ukraine are so intimately intertwined historically that it is all but impossible to disconnect them. 

But the Kagan clan (including that Horrible Nuland Person) at State (and similarly minded colleagues in London and Brussels) together with a passel of NGOs (some funded by Pierre Omidyar) and a vicious cohort of Ukrainian Nazis (I mean the real thing) and fascists have been hard at work trying to do just that. 

Why?

For the Horrible Nuland Person, it seems to be very deeply personal. I don't know what the deal with her is. She has Ukrainian Jewish ancestry, and I can well imagine that her Russophobia comes from ancestors who faced pogroms during the fading days of the Russian Empire, but... damn all. Hooking up with actual Ukrainian Nazis to de-Russify the Ukraine? It doesn't make sense. The pogroms were horrifying, but the Ukrainian Nazis were loading Jews into the transport trains when they weren't machine gunning them on the spot. These people exterminated Ukrainian Jews in great numbers and way too recently to be "forgiven." 

The Russians in their Soviet garb did not. If anything, they were much rougher on the Orthodox Church; something not happening now.

It was pointed out in some post I saw recently that much of the current Ukrainian oligarchy and government including Zelensky is Jewish, and in effect, the Nazis and fascist militias and security forces have been operating to protect them and on their orders. Turn about? I don't know.

So whatever the Kagans and the Horrible Nuland Person are doing, it isn't (quite) out of an implacable historical need for revenge for things done to Jews in Ukraine and Russia. It's something else, something even darker. But I don't know what.

The Vindman Twins (also Ukrainian Jews) might have some insight, but they've been holding it close to their chests. I think they know what is going on and pretty much why, but for whatever reason, they stay pretty quiet about it. They are as anti-Russian as the Kagans, though not so belligerent.

Both Ukraine and Russia are effectively captive to oligarchs who managed to steal everything of value as the Soviet Union collapsed. They hold on to their ill-gotten gains very tightly. It is my (limited) understanding that though Ukrainian oligarchs and Russian oligarchs are rivals, they are also interrelated, and both sets of oligarchs launder their money in the US and Britain and elsewhere, and they are deeply tied into the Western looting and finance economy (and the Trumps as well as -- apparently -- the Bidens). In other words, they're all kleptocrats, and for some unknown reason (at least to me) they all expect to profit handsomely from this war, if war it is.

I won't say it's a Phony War, but it was really unexpected by me. I thought Putin was smarter than this. Russia and the United States and Nato do not need a physical (what do they call it? "Kinetic"?) conflict right now. There are too many other pressing crises. Or....? Are the other pressing crises the reason for this diversion? Is it a diversion?

Russia, Ukraine, Europe and North America (US and Canada) are all facing crises that could conceivably lead to disintegration. The underlying crisis is irreversible climate change forcing huge population and economic disruptions that can't be stopped or avoided. We long ago passed the tipping point, and there's no way out now. The West and Russia have not taken these matters seriously -- at least not for most of their populations. On the other hand, China among others in the East is taking it seriously and has been taking mitigation actions. 

Putin was mighty angry as he announced his intentions the other day. Mighty, mighty angry. He had his reasons, but still. What is this really all about at bottom?

One thing it obviously is is "catapulting the propaganda." The messaging war may be the most important factor. Detaching or reintegrating Ukraine from/to Russia seems the least of the interests. Who can tell the most compelling story, create the most believable narrative seems to be the underlying motivation. The Western version strikes me as simply revisionism,  but isn't Russia's story revanchist,? Are they tussling over territory or is it legitimacy? Or both?

I wish it weren't happening. There are too many other things that need to be addressed. Our political leadership chooses not to address those things and instead has decided that "warfare" is the most important thing. They're mad, quite mad. And that goes for Vladimir Vladimirovich as well. They need to back off, sit down and shut up.

As The Russia Thing Metastasizes

I've never made much of the Russia Thing because it has always struck me as a stupid and very marginal effort -- to the extent it was an effort at all -- to affect the US elections. I'm sure that some of it had a slight effect here and there, but for the most part, it seems to have been more of an exploratory expedition than anything else.

It was mostly a propaganda effort that salted the internet with both real and fake "information" primarily about Clinton and her corruption and nastiness. There were other elements, of course, but dissing Clinton and the "Democrat" Party apparat appeared to be the primary objective along with seeding Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) about the validity of the election itself (on the assumption, of course, that Clinton would win, and therefore the election must have been rigged, right?)

One of the biggest items in the anti-Clinton kit bag was the  absolute certainty that if she won, she would start WWIII by attacking Russia. This would lead to nuclear annihilation, no doubt about it.

Many people still believe it with utter certainty though there has never been the slightest evidence that it is/was true. In fact the evidence points in the opposite direction, and if anybody had critical thinking skills anymore, they'd realize that if Clinton was expected to win by everyone in the wholewide world, then the likelihood of nuclear war with Russia was judged to be slim to none by... nearly everyone. Despite all the certainty of the hoo-hah.

Nevertheless, Russian involvement in spreading  anti-Clinton propaganda and memes should not have been an issue. In other words, so what? The domestic political propaganda industry is quite capable of coming up with endless falsehood, lies, fabrications, and satire about candidates. They are experts at oppo-research, and yes, they'll use or make up anything at all to destroy the other candidate. It's politics, it's the way it's been done in this country for practically ever. Russian or any other foreign participation shouldn't matter.

But apparently we are to launch into a phase where the Russia Thing is to become All Important, as important as Watergate. So they say.

Of course back in the day, Watergate wasn't intrinsically that important at all. The break-in was dastardly and illegal to be sure, but given its political nature, it hardly mattered in the vast eternal scheme, and at first few had much interest in it. It metastasized, however, once it became clear that the White House was intent on covering up the fundamental fact of White House and Presidential involvement. Of course there was also WaPo publisher Katherine Graham's vendetta against Nixon, precisely why we don't know.

That sort of thing seems to be taking place again, and tomorrow's testimony by James Comey is supposed to blow the whole thing "wide open". Expectation managers have put a whole lot on the Comey testimony, and I think they're in for a disappointment.

That aside, however, the permanent government (aka "Deep State") seems to believe that the Russia Thing will lead to the legal removal of Trump from office, whether or not "collusion" took place or is proven. Because, after all, Americans hate Russians, particularly Putin the Devil, right? And legally, it's the hatred of Americans that drives Presidents from office, right?

It's not so much what Trump has done in and out of office that will do him in, oh no. It's the Russia Thing -- and only the Russia Thing and how much hatred for Putin can be whipped up -- that matters.

I'm dismayed.

This won't end well, of course, but in the meantime, the obsession with Russia serves as a distraction from whatever is really going on.

I've said it before, Trump is the apotheosis of the neoLibCon paradigm. It will survive and flourish no matter what happens to Trump and his gang of thieves. The idea that Trump is not one of them, and that Trump will bring it all crashing down is fantasy more than reality. Yes he's a gangster and a conman and a buffoon and a liar and an abuser. Yes? So are most of the members of his class and so are most of those most fully aligned with the neoLibCon paradigm.

Gee.

Getting rid of Trump is getting rid of the Googly-Moogly, the Boogey-Man. Not at all getting rid of what he and his kind represent or want to do.

Basing his removal on the Russia Thing is idiotic. And doing it to enable Pence to ascend to the Throne is sick.

So here we are.

Tomorrow is another day...




The Continuing Russian Thing

Hot horny Jeebus. This is stupid.

Why in heaven Our Rulers -- or a faction of them -- continue to press this Russian Thing defies reason. They're out of their minds. It should have long ago been over.

Yes, perhaps some of it is true, but it doesn't really matter whether the Ruskies were trying to influence the election. One would -- or should -- expect various foreign interests to attempt to have their say in who gets to sit on the Imperial Throne after all, and it should make little difference to the American electorate.

There are other problems with our elections that are far more significant and important including unverifiable voting machines and growing levels of voter suppression. The fact that Americans have to choose between what Hugh at Ian's Place calls "shit-sandwiches" for president -- sandwiches chosen by their Betters for their malleability and their likely service to the High and the Mighty while keeping the masses entertained and tame -- is much worse in the end than any propaganda and poison that is injected into the mix by inside and outside influencers.

Our elections have been farces for many years. For people of my generation, November 22, 1963, was the only "election" that really mattered; every one since then has been a farce. The situation has gone from bad to worse, and there is really nothing the People in their multitudes can do about it through regular order.

As long as we accept the regular order of elections and transfers of power and observing the constitution (although not), things cannot change for the better. We started down a rathole in 1964, and we cannot emerge, because there isn't a light at the end of that tunnel. That way leads directly to Hell.

We can break out of the confines of that tunnel, though, and as soon as we do, voila! A new day dawns. Or rather, its always dawning, we just can't see it for all the garbage and horseshit we're surrounded with.

That's why, among so many other things, the Russian Thing strikes me as so stupid. It doesn't matter. But a faction of Our Rulers is intent on making things as fraught as possible with the Ruskies, because they miss the Cold War. Or something.

Of course the Other Faction, apparently aligned with Trump, is just as desperate to get it on with Iran and China and who knows who else, as well as that shadowy metastasizing 'threat' called ISIS or whatever the Brown Menace du Jour might be.

They are creations, essentially fictions, brought forth and flogged to provide an enemy to fight. For without enemies, Our Rulers have no meaning.

Deny them their enemies and you deny them their power.

Think about that...

The Russian Thing

Unbelievable.

That is all.

Obama Has No Agency

I see this over and over again in the chorus of denunciations of Hillary Clinton.

She and she alone is responsible for every foreign policy disaster and every act of war committed by Our Rulers, if not since Time Began, at least since she was elected to the Senate.

The President has no agency whatever; he is merely a bystander of the raging warmongering and disastrous foreign policy decisions of La Clintoon.

This would be silly of course -- were it not for the fact that Darth Cheney was authoritatively asserted to be the deus ex machina of all the warmongering and foreign policy disasters of the Bush 2 Regime. Ergo, it's only natural that La Clintooooon is the originator of all the foreign (and no doubt domestic) policy catastrophes of the Obama Regime.

The idea is that Presidents are merely the tools of others whose nefarious and bloody schemes they give the nod to but have no input into. They don't even have to give the nod to these schemes, they just have to stay out of the way.

In this manner, The Hag is blamed directly for Iraq, Libya, Syria, Honduras, etc., while no mention is made of Presidents Obama or Bush or the various other departments and agencies in the Executive Branch or Congress and their involvement - if any - in these disastrous and bloody efforts. Hm.

In fact, the implication is that neither Obama nor Bush 2 (nor apparently Darth) had anything to do with them. It was solely Mrs. Clintoon who brought them on. And if The Hag is elected to the Presidency, all bets are off; there is a very high probability that she will start a nuclear war with
Russia. God save us all.

Such absolute power The Hag has been wielding since Time Began. Gee. Who knew?

This is a partial transcript of a speech delivered by Mr. Trump on Hallowe'en which illustrates the point:

Hillary led us to disaster in Iraq, in Syria, in Libya. ... Hillary and our failed Washington establishment have spent $6 trillion on wars in the Middle East, and now it’s worse than it’s ever been before. 

Had Obama and others gone to the beach, Obama could have gone to the golf course, we would have been in much better shape. 

We shouldn’t have gone into the war, and she thinks I’m a hawk. Oh, Donald Trump.
...
Imagine if some of the money had been spent, $6 trillion in the Middle East, on building new schools and roads and bridges right here in Michigan. 

Now Hillary, trapped in her Washington bubble, that’s blind to the lessons, wants to start a shooting war in Syria in conflict with a nuclear armed Russia that could drag us into a World War III. 

Okay, folks. She – I’ll tell you what. She will get us into World War III. She will get us into World War III. I will tell you that. She’s incompetent. She will get us into World War III. 

The arrogant political class never learns. They keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. They keep telling the same lies. They keep producing the same failed results.

It appeared at b's place, "Moon of Alabama," one of the leading objectively pro-Trump sites on the ostensibly "progressive" InterTubes.

I generally like b's analysis of the Syria conflict and the other conflicts which the United States Empire is tangled up in, but he fails badly when he -- and others -- blame them all on Hillary and denies (or almost denies) any agency to the President and the Foreign Policy Establishment and War Department shops which come up them and implement them. Hillary has never had the powers imputed to her. No president or cabinet member does.

If she were President, she would not have the kind of absolute power that is imputed to the Presidency -- power imputed only if she or Trump occupies the Big Chair, not when Bush 2 or Obama is in the office.

I realize this is political rhetoric, not a genuine understanding of how the government works, but still, it's jarring.

The rhetoric says that Hillary -- the Hag -- is directly and solely responsible for every war and every foreign policy disaster in recent history, and she will start World War III on top of it if she is allowed to ascend to the Throne. Mr. Trump, on the other hand, it is asserted, has been an active opponent of every war and every foreign policy disaster in recent history and will prevent World War III from his perch in the White House once he ascends to the Throne.

This is because he's just a businessman, and she's a warmongering neoCon hawk politician and grifter, don't you see?

Well, no. That's not quite how it is and has been. Nor are the assumptions of who will start and who will prevent the ultimate annihilation particularly accurate.

The President's powers and authorities are considerable, but they are also constrained by Congress, the Constitution, precedent, and custom. The Bush 2 Regime broke a lot of the historic constraints on Presidential power and authority, beginning with its lawless installation by the Supreme Court. That lawless act enabled much of the lawlessness to come. The lawless legacy of the Bush 2 Regime still reverberates, and the Obama Administration has utilized aspects of Bush 2's lawless legacy in its own pursuit of national/imperial goals.

Not all constraints on Presidential  powers and authorities were lifted with the installation of the Bush 2 Regime, but it's truly shocking how much was transformed by Bush and his appointees including Darth Cheney.

Nevertheless, with some exceptions, none of them had independent authority. Not the President, not Darth, not Rummy or Condi or any of the rest of them. They were all linked together and they had to operate as a team, with the connivance of Congress and a compliant media, or the whole thing would have fallen apart. Bush 2 was the coach, the man in charge, and he was the one who set and enforced policy -- on the advice and counsel of his team, but also on his own directive.

This is how Presidencies operate, even when they go rogue as Bush 2's Regime did. They have to. For the President, despite all, is not an autocrat.

Came Obama and he was rather quickly disabused of independent notions of what he could and couldn't do in office. The constraints on him were interestingly much greater than those on Bush 2, who seemed to be able to do whatever he wanted at home and abroad. The situations were different of course, but more than that, the Bush 2 Regime was intimately tied into existing permanent power structures within government. These were the players and the practices that were baked into government from long before. Cheney, for example, had been part of the governing clique -- whether he was in or out of office -- for decades; so too Rummy. Colin. Not so much Condi or some of the others, but Bush himself was the son of a President who understood how the machinations of power within government worked and knew who to call on to get things done the way he wanted them done. In other words, the Bush 2 Regime came into office as Members of the Club of Rule/

Obama had no such advantages. Good heavens, no. He was a neophyte newcomer -- and a Negro for gawd's sake. He had to be -- and was -- put in his place right quick. He had few or no allies in the permanent government, and he found out that his freedom of action was strictly constrained, not only by his youth and inexperience, but by opposition in both parties to pretty much anything he wanted to do. Biden could run some interference with the Senate, but Biden fell under many of the same constraints Obama did, as he was never a full member of the Club.

So that brings us to The Hag and her position as Secretary of State. According to the current myth, She had unlimited and total power to do as She wanted in Her position, and Obama had none. According to the myth, She was operating Her foreign policy independently of the White House and Obama didn't even know what she was doing. Or something like that.

She, as Big Dog's Woman, had all Power -- just as Big Dog did -- from the moment she entered the Senate if not before. Why, She might even have been the True Power behind Big Dog's Throne. Imagine it.

This is nonsense. She could not operate independently any more than Colin or Condi could when they were Secretaries of State, nor can Kerry do so now. They are the creatures of the White House, and they follow the policy decisions made in the Oval Office. Even Maddy Albright had to do that when she served Clintoon I.

They have input into those decisions, of course, but they don't make those decisions independently.

She -- the Hag -- did not start or lead the wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria or any other place, nor could She have done so as a Senator or Secretary of State. And as President, She cannot start World War III independently.

Much as one likes to believe She can and will, that's not how these things happen, if they happen.

There is a whole series of agreements that have to be reached within the administration and the permanent government (aka The Deep State) before a -- say -- nuclear war can begin, particularly if it is a war of aggression which it would almost have to be given Russian reluctance to engage in mutual annihilation.

In addition, the public has to be convinced that nuclear annihilation is the preferable course of action, because reasons.

The anti-Russian/Putin propaganda campaign is in full swing, of course. It appears to be designed to induce Regime Change on the model of so many others since the destabilization and collapse of the Soviet Union, but it's not entirely clear what's going on. There are elements of pure ridiculousness and pretend in it that make little or no sense. Trump's contrariness over it doesn't mean he doesn't go along with it. He may simply have a different -- and more personally profitable -- view of how to exploit it. Exploit it, believe me, he will, whether or not he ascends to the White House.

What he says on the campaign trail about not going to war with Russia is essentially meaningless -- as he is well-known for re-negotiating deals after closing the sale to get out of whatever it was he promised to make the sale. That's his way, and it's the way of his class. Nothing these people say is confirmed until they actually do something, and what they do is exploit every weakness they can find for personal gain and profit. If that means lying to the rubes, so what?

In government, though, you have to play the game more subtly. You can say anything you want on the campaign, but in office you have to follow certain rather strict rules or... you're out or at least you will be tied up in knots. Examples there are many. Some quite recently, too.

In other words, Presidents have to get along with, and likely go along with the permanent government and their own administration. The President's ability to start or stop something is therefore limited.

But it does not mean Presidents have no agency at all. Far from it.

Yet Obama is asserted to have no agency in his own Presidency. Clintoon controlled it and still does, The Hag, and were she President, I guess she would control the whole wide world from her perch in the Oval Office.

Amazing.

But there you are. That's what happens in hotly contested elections in which a Clinton is a candidate (it happened during the Clinton I Regime, too. And we know what a rollercoaster/game show that was.)

I would say that as a general matter, Presidents are not as directly powerful as they are made out to be. They are not monarchs nor are they autocrats, though the Presidency itself is modeled on heads of state and government of historic Britain and Rome.

Compared to many other heads of government, Presidents have both too much power and too little. Their constraints have mostly to do with their advisers, cabinets and the inertia of the permanent government (Deep State). Congressional constraints are limited, but they can operate either for or against Presidential prerogative. A prime minister, on the other hand, operates in conjunction with his or her party and the party's majority in parliament. Their party is always part of the permanent government, so the constraints put upon the prime minister  by the permanent government are somewhat less than those put on a president from either party (parties function a little differently in a parliamentary system.)

A prime minister will generally have a less rocky road in office, but there are exceptions. On the other hand, there are some things a prime minister won't do that a president might.

They say a president has a completely free hand in foreign policy and war powers, with no constraints at all. It certainly looked that way in the Bush 2 Regime, but what they did required an amazing amount of coordination and cooperation between branches of government and TPTB up and down the line. Were it not for the media's complicity and lies, much of what the Bush 2 Regime did, including the disastrous war of aggression on Iraq would not have been possible.

I wonder whether the permanent government and the neoLibCon Overclass have learned any sort of lesson from that debacle or if they are capable of Lessons Learned. If they have learned, it might be the wrong lessons.

The idea that The Hag has had ultimate power since her Senate days is of course ridiculous. But what she would do in office is a valid concern as it ought to be with any President. I doubt she would instigate a nuclear Armageddon with Russia, partly because of the conditioning she and almost everybody else of her generation (my generation as it were) got regarding the permanence of nuclear annihilation and the results of instant incineration. The United States has never gone mano a mano against a nuclear armed power partly because of that conditioning.

Cold War brinkmanship was another thing altogether, and aspects of it have been revived to assert American hegemony over rivals. For how many years was the US Government threatening war against Iran, for example? Note how it was resolved. That was brinkmanship in action. Much the same procedure is taking place with regard to Russia, with interesting results. Both sides are operating cautiously, though the rhetoric out of DC is hot. Not so much out of Moscow, though. That's how the game is played, and it was played much the same way during the Cold War. And as was the case during much of the Cold War, there are constant backchannel communications between the Kremlin and DC -- partly in order to keep things from going nuclear.

Hillary actually made a comment during one of the debates which clued me into what is probably going on: she said that a No Fly Zone over Syria would only occur as a negotiated agreement between the US, Syria and Russia, it would not be imposed unilaterally. Its purpose would be to provide a safe-haven to civilians attempting to escape  the conflict zone.

It makes sense, and it is likely that just that sort of negotiations are going on right now. The rhetoric is warmongering, but that is not necessarily what the discussions are about. The Russians and Syrians have temporarily halted air attacks on East Aleppo, for example, as a means of fostering dialog and allowing the escape of civilians who wish to leave. It's a difficult process because of the nature of the conflict and the many disparate parties involved, but it appears to be taking place nonetheless.

It will not lead to WWIII under the circumstances.

And yet the fear being whipped up is all about the impending nuclear exchange between Superpowers.

And everyone knows that's what The Hag intends to do once she's in the Big Chair.

That's not how these things work.

The President has agency, but it's not that of an autocrat.

Obama is in charge of the current regime, just as Bush 2 was in charge of the previous one, but their authority is and was not absolute. At some point, it would be nice if Americans understood how their government actually works.

Oh well....

Nuclear Annihilation! Instant Incineration! Run For Your Lives! We're All Gonna Dieeeeeee!

Jebus.

The fear and frenzy over Our Impending Doooooom! has reached fever pitch. So many online commentators are certain that The Hag will get us into a nuclear war with Russia -- over Syria, Ukraine or someplace -- that they are literally freaking out over it. We Are Doomed!

Now stop, I say. Stop. It. Right. Now.

The fear of Nuclear Annihilation time-honored tactic for control of domestic populations used by both the US/NATO and the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, though neither power had any intention of using nuclear weapons against the other -- except in the most extreme circumstance, a circumstance that never arose.

But boy was the fear of what might happen ever useful and effective.

What we're witnessing right now is a classic example of Cold War style Brinkmanship and propaganda which is being exploited to the max by both sides with the undeniable implication that one or the other will engage in a nuclear first strike --- and we're all gonna die!

Over Ukraine. Over Syria. Over... well, something, somewhere, somehow, some time.

And Putin is a Madman.

This whole frenzy depends on the underlying belief that Putin is a Madman who will sacrifice Mother Russia and the Russian people to demonstrate how low hanging and clangy his big brass balls are...

Right.

No. That's not how Brinkmanship works.

Yes, there are plenty of neoCon cage rattlers in the US/NATO governments who appear to want to engage in a Nuclear Holocaust with the Soviet Union, erm, Putin's Russia. Russia Hate is that strong, and "destroying" Russia is their aim.

But that can only happen if Putin is the Madman the propagandists try to make him out to be. I say he is not. Nothing like it.

And he has absolutely no intention of sacrificing Mother Russia to slow or stop the Imperial Juggernaut.

The cage rattlers will not get their Nuclear Holocaust, not this time, and with any luck, not ever.

But the fear of what might happen will continue to be ratcheted up, the better to control domestic populations, not so much to strike fear in rivals.

The propaganda campaign against Russia started up in earnest as Edward Snowden settled into what appears to be a very comfortable exile as the guest of the Russian Federation. I have long felt that the Snowden Thing started out as a Black Op -- part of a rivalry between The Agencies, meant to provide an upper hand to one faction of security/spy agents over another. The initial exposures of domestic spying by the NSA, for example, didn't tell us anything (much) that we didn't already know or suspect. Greenwald, et al., had to scramble to point out that this was confirmation of what we knew/suspected and that was the main point of the revelations, and that was good!

Whatever. There was little more than proforma outrage from the powers that be, styling to be seen as responsible adults and all that. But when details of foreign spying operations were published, everything changed. What The Agencies were doing to foreign governments was not supposed to be released, I guess, and at that point -- starting before then, of course -- Snowden became a real persona non grata, and his protector Putin became The Evil One as far as the propaganda machine was concerned.

In addition, WikiLeaks, which once seemed like a Honeypot to snag various malcontents, but as Snowden accomplice and helper, was subjected to increasingly intense pressure from all sides.

I think that much of the anti-Putin and anti-Assange propaganda is due in large measure to the continued presence of Snowden as guest of the Kremlin, and that (temporary) resolution to the current Brinkmanship will be found in withdrawing the Russian welcome extended to Snowden.

He's the card Putin can play to bring a (temporary) end to the present state of affairs.

That doesn't mean that it won't happen again (it most likely will; the Imperial Project is relentless, and the dismemberment of the Russian Federation is a long-ago announced goal); but its current iteration will become inoperative.

In the meantime, it's worthwhile to review how Brinkmanship works, and to understand that Putin at least is no Madman.

See all of this as a shadowplay, not as reality.

The Anti-Putin Racket

I've been curious about this for quite a long time.

Russia and the United States have a long and complex history with one another, on the one hand putative enemies due to differing value systems, on the other friendly rivals, and on yet another level, close allies to overcome existential political, economic, social, or power threats.

When I was a child, of course, I was indoctrinated with all the anti-Communist/anti-Soviet propaganda everyone else was. We lived through endless iterations of the looming nuclear annihilation game, the repetitive duck and cover drills, the frequent measurements between our happy homes and likely targets for ICBMs and long range bombers. Of course, the enemy du jour was Joe Stalin and after he died, it was still Stalin until the Kremlin sorted out its power structure and Nikita Khrushchev got to the top of the heap.

That was a bit disorienting because we'd been taught to believe Stalin was the Devil, and Khrushchev just didn't seem to be all that threatening. More like a somewhat crazed uncle.

And the stories we were told about the appalling conditions in the Soviet Union either lacked context or were outright false. For some reason, I don't recall how it happened, I became aware of the falsehood of the anti-Soviet propaganda we young were indoctrinated with very early on. I'd like to think it was through anti-anti-Soviet propaganda organs like "Soviet Life" which was distributed fairly widely in the late Fifties, but I can't recall seeing it before my eyes were opened to the fact that we were being fed fabrications and lies.

I may have learned of the propaganda and lies through a teacher instead. Mr. Beeson was my fifth grade teacher, and I recall he was being "investigated" for God knows what, but I think it was for "Communist Sympathies" among other things. He was gone from the classroom for several days, perhaps weeks, and when he came back, he was very subdued. But I think he was the one who clued us to the fact that propaganda of any kind wasn't "fact," it was meant to sway our minds and build up loyalty and patriotism toward our own country and animosity and hatred toward -- THEM. It was perhaps my first lesson in critical thinking.

I see many echoes of that indoctrination in the New Hitler/Boogeyman, anti-Putin, anti-Russian propaganda we're being flooded with these days. Putin-The-Devil is everywhere, inescapable, and yet I see very little that even makes sense, let alone has any sort of evidence to back it up or factual basis whatever.

But even if there were concrete facts to back the propaganda -- there aren't -- the correct approach is skeptical disinterest, a "so what?" rather than the increasingly shrill and belligerent demands and ultimatums.

What's really going on here, in other words?

The Official CT (if you can call it that) is being driven by the same internal government faction that drove the drumbeats that led to the Iraq invasion and the subsequent catastrophe, and the demonization of Putin, the Otherization of Russia and its people, is right out of the neocon playbook which has been known for almost 20 years (Project for the New American Century, etc.) The point being to establish the USofA as the unrivaled global hegemon by destroying or absorbing any and all rivals.

Including the Russian Federation (aka "New Soviet Empire") and China. The destruction of the Middle East and Arab North Africa fit right in to the Plan as it was announced years and years ago.

It's an Anglo-American-Israeli plot to Rule the World for ever and ever, rAmen.

These people are relentless, they don't give up, and they will have their way by hook or by crook. Hillary is fully on board with their evil plans, according to the common CT understanding, whereas Trump, for all his many faults, is not.

OK.

I don't buy that Trump is not on board, but that's a side issue.

The issue for me is that this faction within the government (and those who own said government) is playing with fire, and it seems to have a Bourbon level inability to learn from mistakes or even to acknowledge them. Iraq was a great success according to them; the ruin of Syria is going according to plan; the rise of rebel jihadist groups and their terrorist accompaniment is useful to keep domestic populations in line and uncomplaining; the flattening of Yemen is necessary for the Saudi regional hegemony and to teach a lesson to anyone who would challenge the mighty-might of the Empire;
periodic Gaza flattening likewise.

India and Pakistan going at it is part and parcel of the Imperial Project; the chaos in much of Africa is meant to be. The economic turmoil in China is a precursor of Imperial Will to Power. It's all been gamed out, and the Hegemonic Axis of Anglo-American-Israeli power always comes out the winner.

Except when it doesn't. Which apparently the military has found is the case in any direct conflict with a fully engaged major or minor power. In other words, the Imperial Axis can't win against, say, Iran or Russia, or even a determined group of rebels unconnected with a nation-state. Thus the current efforts at subversion and undermining such states and rebel groups, much like the Color Revolutions of the 80s and 90s or the more recent Arab Spring/Maidan uprisings.

It's all part of the Imperial Project.

It's disturbing to say the least.

There is much hoo-hah over the likelihood of a nuclear exchange with Russia should The Hag assume the Mantle of the Presidency. I don't think it will happen. More likely in my view is a "non-aggression pact" between the two supposed Super Powers. In other words, some imitation of what has long been going on between US and Russian/Soviet rivals. Russia will bluster but back down in the end, and the US will step back from the brink. Nevertheless, it's a dangerous and a fool's game that shouldn't be played at all. Easy for me to say, right?

Of course, Russia is no longer a "super-power" and is unlikely to use its stockpile of nuclear weapons except in defensive extremity. Despite the propaganda barrage, things haven't deteriorated that far. Not yet, anyway.

And too, it's all a racket, meant to enhance the power and authority of a certain bloodthirsty faction among Our Rulers -- and theirs (the Russian ruling elite)  as well, it would seem. For profit. For gain. For ultimate glory.

It's sick.

But it's built in to the way our government and its owners believe and act. There is little or nothing one can do about it from outside. Not much the other factions can or will do from inside.

We're fucked no matter which way we turn, much as was the case during the previous anti-Soviet  churn.

Bah.

Double Helping of Ick

Last night I had more on my mind than listening to a double helping of Ick on the television. Maya Angelou was dead, and I was more moved by her passing than I thought I would be. In trying to compose something of a memorial, many memories were triggered, both of her and of times gone by. She represented something that had the power of good, I think. A curative, even a cleansing power.

But then the teevee was dominated last night not by thoughts or memories of Maya Angelou, not by any mention of her come to think of it -- though there must have been and I missed it -- but by two rather bizarre appearances or apparitions, one on Charlie Rose of the execrable Victoria Nuland-Kagan, in which she went on and on about all the "opportunities" Russia has "missed" to join "the community of nations," the other, of Edward Snowden canoodling with Brian Williams in Moscow (cameo by Glenn Greenwald) that seemed like yet another scripted sales pitch -- or training lecture -- from this man.

I found I was not able to listen to either of them closely. Their words and their bearing struck me as false from the get-go, in Nuland's case partly because of her artificially courtly "diplo-speak" and her distracting hand movements and her constant pushing/catapulting the propaganda; in Snowden's case because of his apparent forthrightness that I've seen too often among government types, a forthrightness that masks layers of lies, deceptions and sub-rosa threats. I said at one point to Ms Ché, "I find I don't believe a word this man is saying."

Both had foils. Nuland's was not Charlie Rose, who was on vacation or something, but the New Yorker's David Remnik who actually comes at the topic of Ukraine and Russia from a position of (some) knowledge, having been the Washington Post's Moscow Bureau Chief during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, understanding and speaking Russian, and personally knowing some of the players on the current Russian/Ukrainian stage including Vladimir Vladimirovich. Remnick wasn't necessarily gentle with Nuland-Kagan. He challenged a few of her daft notions about Ukraine and Poroshenko and Russia's "invasion." She was able to parry by fluttering her hands and arching her brow at his temerity, but as I say, he knows something about what's going on and who the players are. She can't bullshit him the way she can bamboozle Congressmembers, for example. But when he had the advantage over her, he didn't pursue it, no doubt in order to preserve Charlie Rose's access to her and her ilk in the future. Challenging her lies last night was not worth upsetting that applecart.

Brian Williams and NBC had been shamelessly teasing and promoting last night's apparition of Young Snowden for a week, the final tease before the reveal being the statement by Snowden that he was "trained as a spy" by the CIA. Something that has been disputed by former CIA operatives, one of whom is featured in the video clip I posted yesterday. "Everybody" is supposed to have been talking about Snowden last night, at least according to Williams and NBC, as if somehow this hasn't (quite) become a stale story, its sell-by date having long passed.

I was rude last year by calling it a "Summer Shark and Missing White Boy" Story, not really "news" at all, more an entertainment for those so inclined to fill the summer news hole. It was marketed exactly like every other Summer Shark story had been for years, and its content was almost as slight. We knew about the presence of sharks in the water -- and most of us knew it was fairly rare for anyone to be bitten. We knew that people, mostly white and mostly women, went missing sometimes, and finding them or finding out what happened to them was constant summer news fare (remember Chandra Levy?)

We knew too, or at least we should have, that there was a vast and growing corporate-government surveillance state that could and did track our lives online, in intimate detail. Many of us knew that "assurances of privacy" were bullshit on stilts. Not that necessarily anyone in a position to do anything about it cared a whit about what you were doing or saying online.

We knew, or we should have, that cell-phones were essentially radio transmitters and communications via cell-phone are easy for government and corporate droogs to intercept and analyze if they should care to.

We knew, or we should have, that elements of the corporate sector and the government keep voluminous dossiers on every single one of us they can find.

The Snowden Trove offered up some of the details of how the NSA, seemingly in a vacuum, accomplishes some of this domestic and overseas surveillance, and as I pointed out over and over again, the NSA is hardly the most important or pervasive factor in domestic surveillance, that we are being watched by layers and layers of corporate and government surveillance entities (there is often no difference), and the obsessive focus on the NSA alone is and was counterproductive -- assuming anyone actually wanted to do anything about domestic surveillance overreach. Initially, but for a few voices on the margins, there was no mention at all of the intricate interweb of surveillance we are subject to. It was all NSA, all the time.

Later, as the summer faded and the story seemed to languish, mention now and then was made of the way Google and Facebook and other corporate players collect and analyze mountains of data on users and non-users alike -- and how they share this information with the government. When Omidyar entered the picture, there came some stories about how he and his companies, especially eBay and PayPal, are intimately interconnected with government and law enforcement, how he is personally no stranger to the White House, and how his companies' surveillance of users and their data is interlinked with government surveillance activities.

It took quite a while, but eventually, it was pointed out in the mass media that the surveillance state is pervasive, and surveillance data is widely shared between all kinds of public and private agencies and interests, not solely by law enforcement, either.

So here's Young Snowden in a sit-down at an Unnamed Moscow Hotel with Brian Williams, flogging the NSA story once again, and supplementing it with his personal saga of a man on a mission, still working for the US Government, and a patriot to the core.

Of course, Greenwald has a book out, and that seems to be the impetus to a whole lot of these stories, but Greenwald -- though his book was flogged briefly during a segment -- was definitely the bit player in this drama. He was barely there at all.

I found myself not listening to Snowden much of the time, in part because his delivery is so artificial and scripted. I recognized the style of his presentation right off, back in the Summer Shark period, as that of a government trainer, which Snowden says he had been for the DIA (a fact that wasn't widely known until recently). As a trainer, you learn -- or you read -- a training script and you deliver it the same way every time. Pausing for questions, you answer carefully, conscious that what you say needs to reinforce rather than refute the script, and if the script is factually in error, you make note of it and pass that on to your superiors, you do not make an issue of it with the trainees, and certainly not with the public.

That was his initial style, that is his current style. I call it a sales pitch because in essence, that's what it is. As a government trainer you are selling a product: the correct way to do things according to the standards and procedures of your agency.

The fact that Snowden adheres to this style of presentation rigorously despite the fact that he is supposedly this great and amazing whistleblower has always disconcerted me. It's as if there is no "real" person there at all, almost as if he's a robot of some sort -- which in fact he has been during some of his presentations. What he has to say is almost identical in every apparition, there is no deviation from the script, and his personal narrative has been cobbled together and is maintained with great rigor. That as they say is that. Who knows whether any of that narrative Snowden presents is true or not? Much of it is disputed by those who ought to know, but they're in a strange position vis a vis Snowden in that they may "know" but they can't truthfully "say." There is little dispute over the veracity of the material from the NSA trove that's been released so far, though interpretations may vary somewhat. But the tale Snowden tells of himself -- which is a big part of the narrative -- is murky at best.

For his part, Brian Williams was soft-balling the entire time, following a script of his own. It was almost as if the whole encounter had been carefully rehearsed beforehand. Maybe it was, I don't know. But Williams broke no new ground, and he did not challenge Snowden's narrative.  In fact, he constantly reinforced it.

Perhaps the worst thing about both the Nuland-Kagan and Snowden appearances last night is the "normalization" factor. They were conditioning exercises -- among so many we're subjected to these days. They weren't illuminating, they were normalizing a kind of monstrousness. Monstrousness in terms of American international relations with Russia, Europe, and the Ukraine. Monstrousness in terms of the Surveillance State which we're immersed in and which Snowden says he wants to "improve."

The media served the role of courtier in both interviews, more so in the case of Snowden. At least Remnik challenged some of Nuland's bullshit. Williams never challenged Snowden's -- or Greenwald's for that matter.

We the Rabble are just supposed to believe, I guess, and henceforward never question unless given leave to do so by our betters.

Sickening. And more than a little bit frightening...

Riding the Ukrainian Tiger

There's been little or no mainstream news coverage of Ukrainian matters for many weeks, as the so-called military operations of the Kiev coup-regime continue in the East and South, supplemented by all kinds of militia and "privat-armi" action, including the phenomena of death squads, so beloved of our own government's adventurism abroad.

So far as I can tell, the mayhem and chaos is confined to the "separatist" regions, but it is bloody and nasty and is meant to terrorize the locals into complying with the demands of the Freaks in Kiev -- whatever they may turn out to be. There is, after all, supposed to be a "national election" tomorrow that is intended to endorse and confirm the Kiev Freak-Regime in power, and to assert one or another of the "Western" oligarchs as President, probably the so-called Chocolate King, Poroshenko.

Someone the West can do business with at any rate.

It must be said that Russia has stayed pretty much out of this mess of growing proportions on its western border. Despite all the propaganda and hysteria about "Putin-Hitler" and "Putin-Stalin" and the nonsense about "reviving the Soviet Union" and all the constant baiting of the Kremlin by Anglo-American and EU interests, Putin and the Kremlin have remained remarkably calm and restrained. They have not intervened on behalf of their Russian-speaking Ukrainian brothers and sisters, in fact they seem to have shunted them away as the death and destruction from Kiev continues unabated.

So far as matters can be puzzled out from afar -- and the lack of "news" from the region is as telling as if there were actual news being reported in the mainstream -- the Kiev coup-regime is as freaky as The Saker makes them out to be. Though curried by Anglo-American and EU imperialists, they are massively incompetent to actually govern -- not that anyone else is on tap who might be better.

Since independence in 1991, Ukraine has been ruled by a succession of incompetents and kleptocrats, leaving little or nothing in their wake. I've been struck by the videos I've seen of various parts of Ukraine, from Kiev eastwards. Practically every building is a legacy of the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union. It appears that almost nothing has been built -- at least from Kiev eastwards -- since independence, and programs on the Vremya Odessa channel continuously highlight the deterioration of housing and other buildings from the Imperial and the Soviet eras -- which are almost the only buildings there are in any case.

The place is falling apart, at least those parts that are not being deliberately destroyed by the Freaks in Kiev and their henchmen.

Of course this civic deterioration and lack of infrastructure construction and maintenance activity is widespread throughout the West as well. In Ukraine, it's no surprise that a handful of kleptocrats, styled "oligarchs" hoovered up all of the valuable properties and industries as soon as they were offered by Kiev and that is a major reason why little or nothing is or has been done on behalf of the public interest, and nothing resembling a government of the people has ever taken root in Kiev. It can't so long as everything of value is in the hands of kleptocrats and oligarchs and everyone's deteriorating well-being is dependent upon them rather than on the will of the People themselves.

While the situation in Ukraine is far starker than what we see in the West, they mirror one another. Oligarchic control isn't as complete in the West, but it is getting there, the goal being more like the Ukraine (minus the civil unrest) than not.

It's dreadful.

But that's the world these global oligarchs and kleptocrats want for the rest of us; what they want for themselves is another matter.

The Ukraine is turning into another Yugoslavia or even (God forbid) another Libya, and this has got to put some fear into the minds and hearts (such as they are) of the oligarchs and kleptocrats and their servants. Profits can still be made, of course, if the situation deteriorates completely, as it did in the Former Yugoslavia and Libya, but the amounts extractable -- and on whose behalf -- are seriously diminished under such conditions than they would otherwise be.

Stability may not be a short term objective, however. More wealth can be looted faster under conditions of chaos and warlordism than under any stable regime, so if the short-term objective is to steal as much as possible from the Ukrainian people -- and to destroy what can't be stolen outright -- then maintaining the current conditions are much preferable to having an actual national government in Kiev. Note, for example, how the sham of national governance is maintained in Baghdad  while the wealth of the nation (such as remains after wars and occupations) is pillaged and what can't be taken is destroyed day in and day out...

Having an unstable Ukraine on the borders of Europe and Russia would not seem to be in the interests of either Russia or the EU over the long term, however. What's there now is a tiger that isn't being ridden very well by anyone, not the Freaks in Kiev, not the oligarchs and kleptocrats, not the Kremlin, and not by the sponsors of the coup.

The mess gets worse daily.

The Ukrainian people are being used and abused badly. Their attempts to take matters into their own hands are understandable, but as we've seen so often elsewhere, the people who are actually capable of taking control of the chaos are the rightists, the Fascists and the Nazis, not the socialists/communists and democrats. This is what happened in Europe during the interregnum between the World Wars, and in a sense, it's what's happened throughout the West and East during the Post - Soviet Era.

In other words, power has devolved since the expiration of the failed Soviet experiment into a re-animation and revision of the supposedly destroyed Fascist/Nazi experiments of the post-WWI era. Since the Soviet version of Communism and the Fascist/Nazi version of Capitalism were essentially mirror images of one another, both totalitarian and in competition with one another -- eventually at war with one another for supremacy (or survival as the case may be) -- the absence of the Soviet model together with the resurgence of the Fascist/Nazi model means gross imbalance at the very least. Specious claims that Putin-Russia are the mirror image of the Soviet Union, and thus the mirror image rivals of the West are ludicrous. Putin-Russia are integral aspects of the Western rightist resurgence. Compared to the EU, Russia today is more like Poland in comparison to Germany in 1937 or 39. Poland was just as Fascist as Germany at that time though not quite as dominance-minded. Their governance and economic regimes were practically the same.

So it is with Russia and the EU; they're hardly distinguishable.

Ukraine is a tiger being ridden by the EU and US, but without grace or skill, and Russia seems content to see it falter and even die.

Putin-Russia have the Crimea and that's sufficient unto the needs of the Kremlin.

There can be no sufficiency, though, in the eyes of the West under its current neo-Fascist/Nazi regime. It's either all or nothing.

"All" means the end of rivals like Russia and China. Not their incorporation into the Western Realm, their extinction.

India has just elected a Fascist government, interestingly enough. Perhaps that assures that India doesn't fall into the "rival" camp. I don't know, but could be. Meanwhile, China is declared a rival and indeed cyber-enemy. While name-calling the West and particularly the USofA "mincing rascals" is cute, I'm sure the Chinese know very well what is up and are taking appropriate steps to protect themselves.

Ukraine is not a rival, it's a resource to be exploited, nothing more or less, and what can't be exploited is to be destroyed. Depopulation is already under way -- has been a feature, not a bug, of Ukraine's independence from Soviet/Russian control.

Russia doesn't seem to be interested in participating in either the destruction or the exploitation of Ukraine and seems content to let the locals fight over the debris, and let the EU/US/NATO axis try to make something other than a giant mess of what's left.

And every time I see the claim that the West is "supporting" Nazis and Fascists in Ukraine, I shake my head and think, "No, the West IS Fascist and Nazi." The Anglo-American/EU Imperial Project isn't something "other than" Fascist/Nazi, it IS the Fascist/Nazi project made manifest once again.

Did Putin Just Blink?

Reports are coming in that Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian troops to withdraw from the Ukrainian border and the Russian government is urging the so-called "separatists" in the East and South to postpone the referendum on Ukrainian federalism they had scheduled for May 11.

These are extraordinary developments if true.

The main story on the matter that I've read so far is this one in the New York Times (I know, I know...)

Putin Announces Pullback from Ukraine Border

[An excerpt:]

Mr. Putin said he wanted the authorities in Kiev to immediately halt all military actions in southeastern Ukraine, referring to them again as “punitive operations.” He also welcomed the release of militants the Ukrainians had been holding, particularly Pavel Gubarev, a “people’s governor” in Donetsk who had been detained by the Ukrainian security services.

“We think the most important thing now is to launch direct dialogue, genuine, full-fledged dialogue between the Kiev authorities and representatives of southeast Ukraine,” he said, standing next to Didier Burkhalter, the president of Switzerland and the chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is coordinating the mediation effort.

“This dialogue could give people from southeast Ukraine the chance to see that their lawful rights in Ukraine really will be guaranteed,” he said. Mr. Putin also left the door open to Russia accepting, under certain conditions, the May 25 presidential elections, which Moscow had previously rejected.

“Let me stress that the presidential election the Kiev authorities plan to hold is a step in the right direction, but it will not solve anything unless all of Ukraine’s people first understand how their rights will be guaranteed once the election has taken place,” Mr. Putin said.

Mr. Putin was basically demanding that the mediation achieve what Russia has been seeking since the rebellion in Kiev overthrew Ukraine’s leader and Moscow’s ally, President Viktor F. Yanukovych, on Feb. 28: that Kiev grant some level of autonomy to the regions, including electing their own governors and directing their own foreign policy with their immediate neighbors.

Such a change would allow Russia some measure of control over the future direction of Ukraine and a possible veto over Ukraine’s attempts to join the European Union, or worse from Russia’s viewpoint, NATO.

“We all want the crisis to end as soon as possible, and in such a way that takes into account the interests of all people in Ukraine no matter where they live,” said Mr. Putin, according to the official Kremlin transcript of his remarks.

Putin has consistently behaved like the firm but ultimately conciliatory adult in the room during the Ukrainian upheavals that commenced when ousted president Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign a partnership agreement with the EU in November of last year.

While the coup-regime in Kiev has become more and more brutal and authoritarian toward resistance among Russians and Russian speakers, particularly in the East and South of the fragmenting nation, indeed launching military operations against refusniks and rebels in the East and precipitating a horrific massacre of civilians in Odessa, the Russian Federation president has been remarkably calm and deliberate in his arguments and actions, despite the increasingly shrill and bellicose rhetoric out of Kiev, Brussels, Berlin, London, and especially Washington, DC.

If indeed Putin has "blinked", I would regard it as a potentially devastating misstep for him and for Russia, let alone for Ukraine.

Yanukovych, too, was conciliatory, accommodating and willing to negotiate with the rebels and the protesters who were in the process of destroying his regime. He ultimately agreed to practically all their demands. The problem -- he realized too late -- was that the rebels demanded more and ever more and would not agree with Yanukovych. In the end, it meant that his government could not be sustained and collapsed. Yanukovych had to flee for his life, and Ukraine has been riven with strife ever since.

Surely Putin understands this and how his own government in the Kremlin could be vulnerable to a similar dynamic. It strikes me as odd that he might follow the same course as Yanukovych. And yet, with these apparently conciliatory gestures, after so much death and destruction by the Kiev coup-regime already, he may be setting his government up for a similar fall, and he may indeed be laying the foundation for the ultimate goal of the EU/NATO/US axis: the dismantlement of the Russian Federation.

Why would he do that?

It's too soon to know what's really going on, but at the moment, this particular step doesn't feel very positive...

Additional Ukrainian Matters

As Putin-Hitler Stalin-rules the revivified Soviet Union, bulling his way into Europe and re-erecting an Iron Curtain around Crimea and his Russian cronies, enslaving the multitudes and subverting the nations, the cries for even greater ridicule of Romney and Palin and the dreaded Turtle increase.

They love Putin! Therefore, their time in the spotlight is nearly at an end. Well, it would be if they weren't so fun to ridicule. And what about those Duck Dynasty guys? And the Missing Plane? Hmmm? What about them?

Speak not of Young Snowden, however, for his case under HitlerStalin-Putin's fulsome wing is different. He says nothing, he knows nothing, he merely tries to open a debate about the nature of our society and what we and only we want it to be, not about the Soviet Union, which is different. Like he is. So stop saying that. And besides, there isn't any Soviet Union any more, so stop saying that, you look like a fool.

In fact all this hoo-hah does make one wonder. All this hoo-hah, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing but masking plenty. What could it be, what could it be? Huh. It's just so puzzling.

Truth is, more and more people are recognizing the real Game here, the Game being obscured by all the hoo-hah and propaganda. By keeping the Rabble uninformed and propagandized to death about the situation faced by Ukraine, its dismemberment -- shall we say, even if it stops with the return of Crimea to Russia -- is simpler. Domestic unrest over economic and social issues is channeled into patriotism and nationalism (it always works, until it doesn't) and anti-enemy-of-the-day OUTRAGE!!!!™.  This shall not stand!!!!

Etc.

From the signs, it's looking more and more like Ukraine will be carved up into enclaves, the easier to exploit its resources and further impoverish its people. The national government of Ukraine has never really worked out well for anyone except the kleptocrats and oligarchs, some of whom are behind the Maidan thing. As much as the Yatsenyuk government is dancing to the tunes of his EU and US "partners," I'm not sure it's playing all that well on the street. The problem which can't really be handled is that of the Nazi shock troops who were used to incite violence and control the crowds in the Maidan and who have been given the "Law Enforcement" and "Justice" portfolios in the self-proclaimed "Interim Government." These people tend not to take well to the diktats of their Betters in Kiev, Berlin and Brussels. They have their own agendas, after all. Ahem.

And there are plenty of separatist interests throughout the rest of Ukraine. The rather elaborate coup that brought down the Yanukovych regime appears to be backfiring. How it was engineered is not entirely clear.

There are more than a few signs that neither the EU nor the US was prepared for what happened when Yanukovych refused to sign away Ukraine to the loving embrace of Europe and NATO in Vilnius last November. They encouraged the demonstrations that arose in response, they may have even planned and helped some of them. But demonstrations along the lines of "Color Revolutions" -- which this one might have been too, as the tactic has been used in Ukraine before (see: "Revolution, Orange") -- but it quickly got out of hand.

The Ukrainian Nationalists, Fascists and Nazis, though relatively few in number, were able to take charge of the course of events. They weren't afraid to use their limited numbers in a forceful and at times violent way, something that was being documented by the Kremlin, but which was largely ignored in the West, although the engineers within the EU and US couldn't have been unaware. They had to have known. They had to have given at least tacit approval.

This was no "nonviolent" Color Revolution. This was an engineered take down of a non-compliant regime, something that was attempted in Syria but has so far failed. How to do it seems clear enough: present the appearance of a mass-revolt through well-attended protests in a significant public space. Inflate the numbers of protesters well beyond the actual numbers present. Tightly control that crowd so as to keep them intently focused on a limited range of "reasonable" issues (in Kiev it was to be European integration, government corruption, and popular dissatisfaction with economic prospects) while the behind-the-scenes operators focus on subverting the government and making it impossible for officials to govern.

The Nazis were the wild card-enforcers, and it doesn't look like it is working out well.

The government ("") that replaced Yanukovych is on a knife-edge. It is unlikely to survive in its present form for much longer. It appears to have little or no control beyond the Palace in Kiev, and the efforts of the US and EU to prop it up are looking more and more dishonest and pathetic. The frantic efforts to solidify agreements with western corporate and EU interests for the prompt exploitation and "economic reform" of Ukraine are unseemly at best, further cause for revolt if the plans are carried out.

The assignment of pro-Yatsenyuk oligarchs to rule the restive Eastern Sektor is simply gob-smacking in its simplicity and obviousness.

The total disinterest of the Powers in the well-being of the People is striking.  This of course follows the same pattern as has been employed already in the EU's near-Periphery, particularly in Greece but not solely there. If the People suffer, according to this Iron Law of Economics, it is their own fault. If they protest their impoverishment and ruin, they are to be suppressed with whatever force is necessary. If they starve and die, too bad, so sad. If this Iron Law is not followed or is resisted in any way by native governments, they are to be replaced, forthwith. That is all.

We've seen it happen over and over again, even in an EU Core country like Italy, where the prime minister was replaced with an unelected technocrat when he attempted to mitigate some of the harsher provisions of the Austerity diktats out of Brussels and Berlin.

As more and more are recognizing, however, it will be worse -- far worse -- for Ukraine, for the simple reason that Ukraine is the Far Periphery, not an EU member, and at best it will serve as a EuroAmerican Colonial-Corporate enterprise zone. At best.

Few among us want to imagine the worst-case scenario, but the embrace of the Ukrainian Nazis and Fascists and Nationalists by the West is a sure clue to where this whole thing may be headed.

"Stalin-Hitler" Putin ought to be concerned.

On the other hand, as always, the people caught in the middle are conscientiously forgotten by all sides in the Pageant of Power.

Hideous.

Stalin-Hitler!!!!®©@™

I'm just a bit too young to recall either Hitler or Stalin in the flesh -- Hilter, of course, didn't survive WWII ("they say"/s) and Stalin was dead before we got us a teevee at our house, so the only time I saw images of them was in the newsreels and the propaganda movies -- which were ubiquitous in those days.

I've written many times about American propaganda in the 1950s-- primarily anti-Communist/anti-Soviet -- but it's hard to imagine what it was like if you weren't there or don't recall living through it. People who have no memories of those days like to think we're living in the most oppressive and propagandized era of American history, and it's just not so. It's laughable, really. Practically every previous era in American history has been worse when it comes to matters of oppression, conformity and propaganda.

That's as may be, and it doesn't mean we are not living in a heavily propagandized, surveilled and controlled society. Of course we are. The point is that, as bad as it is, this isn't the worst of all possible worlds, and it isn't in part because we have so many informational tools -- and the freedom to use them -- which we didn't have in the 1950s and early 60s, and if we have any critical thinking skills at all (sometimes I wonder), we are far more likely to recognize propaganda as such now than we were able to then.

The question is whether we can think critically any more and whether we can ask the right questions when we question authority.

Since the advent of the horror show called The Great and Glorious War on Terror(ism), Americans have once again been immersed in propaganda which has involved some of the most egregious lies and deceptions we've been subjected to in generations, lies and deceptions leading directly to international catastrophe after catastrophe.

One of the recurring features of this propaganda campaign is the declaration that this or that dictator who must be removed is the modern equivalent of Hitler or Stalin, sometimes elided into a hybrid creature: "Hitler-Stalin" or "Stalin-Hitler" depending on whether the Evil One is more Nazi or more Communist.

Right now, the prime candidate to be the modern "Stalin-Hitler" is Vladimir Putin, "dictator" of Russia, aka the "Soviet Union." It's hilarious in some ways. I saw Ray McGovern defending Putin and Russia on DN! last night, but referring to the "Soviet Union" quite unconsciously as if it still existed. People of a certain age do this all the time. They cannot let go of what they were socialized and propagandized to believe in earlier times, and the notion that there is no Soviet Union any more doesn't compute. McGovern ran the Soviet Desk at the CIA under Bush the Old, and even though he didn't see the Soviets as enemies then and he doesn't see Putin as an enemy now, he's unable to let go of the "Soviet" images he was immersed in when time was.

Many anti-Putinists and anti-Russian commentators, especially on the so-called "left," seem more than eager to pretend that Putin is a reincarnation of Stalin who wants to re-constitute the Soviet Union entire or in stages, and his "invasion" of Ukraine is "only the first step." Well except for the others. Before this one. That is.

In fact, there was a fellow droning on and on about this very thing while McGovern was trying to figure out what's wrong with saying "Soviet Union." It was funny and sad at the same time.

As far as I'm concerned, Putin is not Stalin and he's certainly not Hitler. The comparisons and conflations are stupid. The Soviet Union no longer exists, it's gone, and there is no way I know of to reconstitute it, especially given the fact that a) Russia today is far more in sync with its Tsarist predecessor, and b) it is suffused with religious nonsense.

They hide Lenin's Tomb during parades in Red Square, as if the Communist era never happened. That seventy years has been largely erased from Russian history -- except when it is convenient to recall it, typically as something too horrible to believe. There is no going back to Stalin, let alone Lenin. The idea is absurd.

Instead, if anything is a revival in Russia, it is a semblance of the last phase of Tsarist rule, say from Alexander III through Nicolas II as if, somehow, WWI had never happened and the Revolutions that followed had not succeeded.

That's what I see in Russian culture and psychology today. It's imperial, yes, but not at all what our propaganda interests want us to believe it is. It's not Soviet, it's not Fascist. It's royal and imperial, something we haven't seen on the world stage since the collapse of the British Empire.

And Another Thing

I watched the opening pageant of the Sochi Winter Games -- and I was mesmerized. Of course it was all propaganda on an enormous scale, but wow, what a show. Breathtaking.

What was so interesting to me about it, at least in the abstract, was that it had been preceded by days, perhaps weeks, of negative news coverage of Russia, Sochi, and Putin, just on and on and on about how dismal and threatening and incomplete the situation was, over and over and over and over. Everything negative possible about Russia, Putin, and Sochi was highlighted in the American media on a pretty much continuous loop, in every imaginable outlet.

The underlying theme was "Terra! Terra! Terra!" -- because, after all, Sochi is in that strange borderland on the Black Sea where Russian Terra!™ lives. You know? Like the Boston Marathon Thing? The point of all the propaganda -- apart from ritualistic denunciations of the Enemy (which Russia is, according to many pundits who apparently never heard about the collapse and disappearance of the Soviet Union) -- was to make Americans disgusted and afraid of the Games' host country, terrified in fact, that something AWFUL would happen to our valiant athletes in such a dismal, horrifying, disgusting place.

And so the Russians put on this opening pageant, and it was stunning, absolutely astonishing -- and it was surprisingly informative and entertaining as well. It's propaganda, of course, as the Olympics are and have been for most of their history. But even propaganda can hold one's attention or be extravagantly artistic, even gorgeous. Much of Soviet propaganda strikes me that way. So it's no surprise that the successors to the Soviets can do it, too.  American propaganda, by contrast, tends to be overtly false, when it is not ugly and pessimistic. The contrast is striking.

Well, now the propaganda narrative about Russia, Putin, and Sochi has apparently changed. The opening pageant was so impressive, it seems, that the current narrative is focused on Russian art and culture, achievement, can-do attitude, etc. Almost like Russia and the US are siblings of different mothers, unified in many more ways than we ever knew, yadda yadda yadda, and Putin ("for all his faults") is the one who made it so. He is being fluffed far more than denounced, for having masterminded such an "incredible show." Indeed. Sochi's incomplete and inefficient aspects haven't been forgotten, to be sure, but they are quickly fading from the narrative, and all the neat things about the venues and the city are being highlighted and promoted.

It's quite a turn about.

But these whip-saw changes in narratives and attitudes are part of the practice of propaganda.

It's something to be aware of, but knowing about it doesn't actually do you any good!

Things Fall Apart (Question Mark)

The Snowden Saga has more twists and turns than practically any spy novel or movie would have by this point. Well, I'm assuming. I'm not really into the genre, preferring as I do history and science fiction/fantasy. Chacun à son goût, n'est pas? Si tu veux.

And it seems to be falling apart.

What has been revealed of the domestic and international surveillance programs run out of the NSA shop by its corporate partners is interesting to be sure, and the documentation so far supplied by the Guardian may prove useful in providing standing for those who have been trying to launch legal challenges against the Surveillance State on 4th and other Amendment grounds, but it's hard to say at this point whether any court in the land is prepared to allow such suits given the "national security" arguments of the Government.

They've been reluctant to provide a path to litigants against the Surveillance State for the simple reason that the surveillance serves the interests of the courts as well. When we are told that  "all three branches of government have signed off" on the surveillance programs, what we should be hearing is "all three branches are convinced that the surveillance programs are in their interests and are protecting them."

From whom, you may ask. Yes, well. That's fairly obvious, isn't it?

It has nothing to do with protecting you. Never did. It all has to do with protecting them from you. And with profiting from your fears.

It's all really quite cynical.

Nothing Young Snowden has revealed has undone any of that. It's merely brought some of it into the light of day.

The Ars Technica story about Snowden's chat logs c. 2009 seems to have started the unraveling of The Narrative that had been so carefully constructed by the Guardian and (apparently) WikiLeaks about Snowden and his heroism/bravery or what have you; the "traitor" narrative is the other side of the same coin.

While Ars Technica tried to present it in the best light possible for Snowden, anyone who is exposed to the chat records that they published would likely say, "Wait, something ain't right here." People may disbelieve the logs -- they could be fabricated, after all -- but neither Snowden or anyone connected with him has denied them, so it's likely they are legit. If so, then it's no wonder that the situation seemed to change for Snowden almost immediately after the Ars Technica publication. The tone of the bluster changed, for one thing. Putin seemed to be smirking quite a bit over his catch. The White House pretended not to be particularly concerned about Snowden's attempts at defection, nor did they appear to be all that upset about his revelations.

They did not, however, appear to want him to receive asylum in any state. The Russian "offers" of asylum seemed to ring particularly hollow once Putin explained that Young Snowden might be granted asylum so long as he stopped his "work" harming Russia's American partners. It's an interesting locution given the pre-eminence of the Agencies' corporate partners.

The chat logs show someone who is all in with the Surveillance State. His advocates have had to turn themselves into pretzels in order to get past this narrative roadblock. For the most part, they've just ignored it -- publicly. In the background, though, it seems obvious that the Snowden in the chats has been a highly perturbing element in the story. Not only does it not fit The Narrative (Hero! Traitor!), but it is an indication that Snowden himself may have been trying to put one over on his handlers and the public.

Ergo. There he sits. Supposedly in the transit zone at the Moscow airport. Friendless. Alone. Trapped. With no place to run. But apparently plenty of places to hide. There have been no verifiable sightings of him in Moscow nor on the plane to Moscow from Hong Kong. Whether he is actually in Moscow -- or ever arrived in Moscow -- is subject to some dispute. It's not even certain that his WikiLeaks handler is there. It is fairly obvious that the recent "statements" from Snowden, such as his letter (said to have been written in Spanish) to Rafael Correa in Quito and his "I am unbowed" statement released by WikiLeaks were not written by him. Who did write them, I don't know nor does any skeptic, but they don't scan as being directly from the Whistle Blower himself.

This is not unlike the news articles revealing the surveillance programs bylined Glenn Greenwald (and somebody else) that don't read like Greenwald wrote them at all. Compare and contrast the news articles with his columns and the stylistic differences should be immediately clear. The news articles are not written in Glenn's style or voice; they are far too journalistically tight and succinct. They were clearly written by (or so heavily edited by they may as well have been written by) professionals at the craft of newspaper writing which Glenn is not.

Apparently Glenn tweeted the other day something to the effect that Snowden is now out of the story altogether; further revelations will come from Greenwald and the Guardian, not from him. Who? Snowden? Never heard of him.

That sounds an awful lot like they (Guardian/Greenwald) are washing their hands of Snowden now that they've got everything they want out of him. Of course, it's Twitter, and you can't make too much of it, but given the extraordinary silence at the Guardian about the Ars Technica chat logs, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they've decided to drop kick him into the ozone.

On the other hand, there is another whole layer to this at play. Greenwald appears to me to be a political actor in this drama, just as Judith Miller was in the run up to the Iraq debacle (she who is avidly supporting Greenwald these days, much as Howie Kurtz does... Howie who is also a political actor...)  Greenwald plays for a particular faction on behalf of, shall we say, seizing the rulership. I call it the Koch Faction. He's not a neutral observer -- any more than Judith Miller and/or Howie Kurtz are.

It seemed to me that Snowden was playing on the same team as Greenwald, but not in the same way, and with the Ars chats, it was unclear whether he was even playing for the same goal.

Could it be that Snowden is actually a "Statist?" OMG!

Meanwhile, supposedly Snowden has withdrawn his supposed request for asylum from Russia and has supposedly expanded his list of countries from which he is said to be trying to obtain asylum, all according to WikiLeaks which appears to be running the Snowden Operation these days. Little wonder, then, if the Guardian has severed its ties with him. WikiLeaks and the Guardian are supposedly not the best of friends...

I thought it was interesting that the Guardian editors told Charlie Rose they vetted Snowden by interviewing him in person in New York before he went to Hong Kong, and further having Ewen MacAskill interview and vouch for him there. Greenwald hardly appears in their account of what happened at all, even though Greenwald has been at the center of the story from its first publication and has remained there.

This is yet another indication that there is a whole other level of this story that is being hidden from the public, and how it all shakes out is anyone's guess.

Whatever the case, there is no sign that the National Surveillance/Security State is jeopardized in any way, nor that domestic surveillance will be curtailed.

But there is quite an active debate about it all, isn't there?

Nightmare over the Caucasus

Just read this over at FDL, a post taken from the Guardian article by Ian Traynor.

The basics are simple: Georgian troops and artillery attacked the South Ossetian capital, killing many and routing most of the civilian population. Russian troops responded, driving the Georgian forces back. The Georgian government in the person of its president, hollered to the heavens that Georgia was under attack. The United States government, and the Republican candidate for president of the United States, condemned Russia and urged a ceasefire and withdrawal. Eventually there was a ceasefire, but no withdrawal yet as Russian forces continue their occupation of key locations inside Georgia, and there is nothing the Georgians -- or the United States -- can do about it.

If anything, the United States has been humiliated by this little war, in a way that will have lasting repercussions.

Our Media has been incapable of reporting what is going on or the context of what is going on, because they are completely bound to a Narrative, a Narrative that appears to have been produced out of whole cloth in the right wing think tanks and was rolled out complete by all the Heritage Foundation talking heads sent out to do PR for Little Georgia.

Except this neo-con Narrative about Little Innocent Georgia being trounced by the Big Bad Bear Russia is viral and global. It is the Narrative of practically all "news" -- at least in English -- where ever it comes from.

Consequently, not only do Americans have little or no useful knowledge about what has been and is going on, world citizens have almost as little. Russia is the Bear, the resurgent Soviet Union, or the reanimated Russian Empire. Putin is the New Hitler. It is 1938 all over again. "Remember the Sudetenland!"

Well...

One might wonder why the constant neo-con focus on the New Hitler, 1938, Chamberlain, appeasement, and the Sudetenland. Why does this continue to move them so? It's got to the point where everything that happens is seen thought that prism, even though fewer and fewer alive today remember the events of 1938, and it was the conservatives of 1938 who were so anxious to "appease" Hitler. Some were actually in league with the Nazis. Conservatives.

Those who were most upset by this constant appeasement were the Communists. Ah. There we will find the neo-con motor. The neo-cons ARE the "subversives" we were warned about in the '50's.

Meanwhile, the Georgian Mistake, as it will come to be known, has destroyed Georgia as a functioning national independent entity, has enhanced the power of Russia, has put Putin into the first rank of international leaders, has humiliated George W. Bush and Condi Rice, has made mock of the very idea of borders, has helped revive imperial pretensions and Great Powers shenanigans -- quite apart from those of the United States -- and has pretty much check-mated any move in any direction the United States might choose to make, now or in the near future.

Cheney and his puppet are confined to quarters for the duration.

And McCain? Soon enough, he'll just appear silly.