By Alastair Crooke
[NOTE — The following is reprinted with the express permission of Mr. Crooke.]
The West now faces the task of de-fusing the landmine of their own electorate’s conviction of a Ukraine ‘win’, and of Russian humiliation.
Larry Johnson, an ex-CIA analyst, writes “I no longer hold clearances and have not had access to the classified intelligence assessments. However, I have heard that the finished intelligence being supplied to U.S. policymakers continues to declare that Russia is on the ropes – and their economy is crumbling. Also, analysts insist that the Ukrainians are beating the Russians”.
Johnson responds that – lacking valid human sources – “western agencies are almost wholly dependent today on ‘liaison reporting’” (i.e., from ‘friendly’ foreign intelligence services), without doing ‘due diligence’ by cross-checking discrepancies with other reporting.
In practice, this largely means western reporting simply replicates Kiev’s PR line. But there does occur a huge problem when marrying Kiev’s output (as Johnson says) to UK reports – for ‘corroboration’.
The reality is UK reporting itself is also based on what Ukraine is saying. This is known as false collateral – i.e., when that which is used for corroboration and validation actually derives from the same single source. It becomes – deliberately – a propaganda multiplier.
In plain words however, all these points are ‘red herrings’. Bluntly, so-called western ‘Intelligence’ is no longer the sincere attempt to understand a complex reality, but rather, it has become the tool to falsify a nuanced reality in order to attempt to manipulate the Russian psyche towards a collective defeatism (in respect not just to the Ukraine, but to the idea that Russia should remain as a sovereign whole).
And – to the extent that ‘lies’ are fabricated to accustom the Russian public to inevitable defeat – the obverse edge clearly is intended to train the western public towards the ‘groupthink’ that victory is inevitable. And that Russia is an ‘unreformed evil Empire’ which threatens all Europe.
This is no accident. It is highly purposeful. It is behavioural psychology at work. The ‘head-spinning’ disorientation created throughout the Covid pandemic; the constant rain of ‘data-driven’ model analysis, the labelling of anything critical of the ‘uniform messaging’ as anti-social disinformation – enabled western governments to persuade their citizens that ‘lockdown’ was the only rational answer to the virus. It was not true (as we now know), but the ‘pilot’ behavioural nudge-psychology trial worked better – better even than its own architects had imagined.
Professor of Clinical Psychology, Mattias Desmet, has explained that mass disorientation does not form in a vacuum. It arises, throughout history, from a collective psychosis that has followed a predictable script:
Just as with lockdown, governments have used behavioural psychology to instil fear and isolation to mass large groups of people into herds, where toxic sneering at any contrariness cold-shoulders all critical thinking or analysis. It is more comfortable being inside the herd, than out.
The dominant characteristic here is remaining loyal to the group – even when the policy is working badly and its consequences disturb the conscience of members. Loyalty to the group becomes the highest form of morality. That loyalty requires each member to avoid raising controversial issues, questioning weak arguments, or calling a halt to wishful thinking.
The ‘Groupthink’ allows some self-imagined reality to detach; to drift further and further from any connection to reality, and then to transit into delusion – always drawing on like-minded peer cheerleaders for its validation and extended radicalisation.
So, it’s ‘goodbye’ to traditional Intelligence! And ‘welcome’ to western Intelligence 101: Geo-Politics no longer revolves around a grasp on Reality. It is about the installation of ideological pseudo-realism – which is the universal installation of a singular groupthink, such that everyone lives passively by it, until it is far too late to change course.
Superficially, this may seem clever new psyops – even ‘cool’. It is not. It is dangerous. By deliberately working on deeply ingrained fears and trauma (i.e. the Great Patriotic War for Russians (WW2)), it awakens a type of multi-generational existential plight within the collective unconscious – that of total annihilation – which is a danger that America has never faced, and towards which there is zero American empathetic understanding.
Perhaps, by resurrecting long, collective memories of plague in European countries (such as Italy) western governments have found that they were able to mobilise their citizens around a policy of coercion, that otherwise ran wholly against their own interests. But nations have their own distinct myths and civilisational mores.
If that were the purpose (to acclimatise Russians to defeat and ultimate Balkanisation), Western propaganda has not only failed, but it has achieved the converse. Russians have coalesced closely together against an existential western threat – and are prepared to ‘go to the wall’, if necessary, in defeating it. (Let those implications sink in.)
On the other hand, falsely promoting a picture of inevitable success for the West inevitably has raised expectations of a political outcome that is not only not feasible, but which recedes further into the far horizon, as these fantastical claims of Russian setbacks persuade European leaders that Russia can accept an outcome in line with their constructed false reality.
Another ‘own goal’: The West now faces the task of de-fusing the landmine of their own electorate’s conviction of a Ukraine ‘win’, and of Russian humiliation and decomposition. There will be anger and further distrust for the Élites in the West to follow. Existential risk ensues when people believe nothing the élites say.
Plainly put, this resort to clever ‘nudge theories’ has succeeded only in toxifying the prospect for political discourse. Neither the U.S. nor Russia can now move directly to pure political discourse:
Firstly, the parties inevitably must come to some tacit psychological assimilation of two quite dis-connected realities, now hyped into palpable, vital beings through these psychological ‘Intelligence’ techniques. There will be no acceptance by either side of the validity or moral rightness of the Other Reality’s, yet its emotive contents must be acknowledged psychically – together with the traumas underlying them – if politics is to be unlocked.
In short, this western exaggerated psyops perversely is likely to lengthen the war until facts-on-the ground finally grind the contrasting expectations closer to what may be the ‘new possible’. Ultimately, when perceived realities cannot be ‘matched’ and nuanced, war rubs one or the other into more emollient form.
The degeneracy in western intelligence did not start with the recent collective ‘excitement’ at the possibilities of ‘nudge-psychology’. The first steps in this direction began with a shift in ethos reaching back to the Clinton/Thatcher era in which the intelligence services were ‘neo-liberalised’.
No longer was the role of ‘devil’s advocate’ – of bringing ‘bad news’ (i.e. hard-edged Realism) to the relevant political leadership valued; instead what was inserted was a radical shift towards ‘Business School’ practice of services being tasked with ‘adding value’ to existing government policies, and (even) of creating ‘a market’ system in Intelligence!
The politician-managers demanded ‘good news’. And to make ‘it stick’, funding was tied to the ‘value added’ – with administrators skilled at managing bureaucracy moved into leadership jobs. It marked the end to classical Intelligence – which always was an art, rather than science.
In short, it was the outset to fixing the intelligence around policies (to add value), rather than the traditional function of shaping policies to sound analysis.
In the U.S., the politicisation of intelligence reached its apex with Dick Cheney’s initiation of a Team ‘B’ intelligence unit reporting personally to him. It was intended to furnish the anti-intelligence to combat the intelligence service output. Of course, the Team ‘B’ initiative shook confidence amongst the analysts, and by-passed the work of the traditional cadre – just as Cheney had intended. (He had a war (the Iraq war) to justify).
But there were separately other structural shifts. Firstly, by 2000, woke narcissism had begun to eclipse strategic thought –creating its own novel groupthink. The West just could not shake off the sense of itself at the centre of the Universe (albeit no longer in a racial sense, but via its awakening to ‘victim politics’ – requiring endless redress and reparations – and such woke values serendipitously seemed to anoint the West with a renewed global ‘moral primacy’).
In a parallel shift, U.S. neo-cons piggy-backed on this new woke universalism to cement the meme of ‘Empire matters primordially’. The unspoken corollary to this, of course, is that original values of the American Republic or of Europe, cannot be re-conceived and brought forward into the present, as long as ‘liberal’ Empire groupthink configures them as a threat to western security. This conundrum and struggle lies at the heart of U.S. politics today.
Yet the question remains just how can the intelligence being supplied to U.S. policymakers insist that Russia is imploding economically, and that Ukraine is winning – against what can be easily observed facts on the ground?.
Well, no problem; Washington thinks-tanks have big, big finance from the Military Industrial World, with the preponderance of these funds going to the neo-cons – and their insistence that Russia is a small ‘gas-station’ posing as a state, and not a power to be taken seriously.
Neo-con claws tear at anyone gain-saying their ‘line’ – and think-tanks employ an army of ‘analysts’ to turn out ‘academic’ reports suggesting that Russia’s industry – to the extent it exists at all – is imploding. Since last March, western military and economic experts have been regularly-as-clockwork, predicting that Russia has run out of missiles, drones, tanks and artillery shells – and is expending its manpower throwing human-waves of untrained troops upon the Ukrainian siege lines.
The logic is plain, but again flawed. If a combined NATO struggles to supply artillery shells, Russia with the economy the size of a small EU state (logically) must be worse off. And if only we (the U.S.) threaten China hard enough against supplying Russia,then the latter will ultimately run out of munitions – and NATO supported Ukraine ‘will win’.
The logic then is that a war prolonged (until the money runs out) must deliver a Russia bereft of munitions, and NATO-supplied Ukraine ‘wins’.
This framing is entirely wrong because of conceptual differences: Russian history is one of Total War that is fought in a long, ‘all-out’, uncompromising engagement against an overwhelming peer force. But inherent to this idea, is its all-important grounding in the conviction that such wars are fought over the course of years, with their outcomes conditioned by the capacity to surge military production.
Conceptually, the U.S. shifted in the 1980s away from its post-war military-industrial paradigm, to off-shore manufacturing to Asia and to ‘just-in-time’ supply lines. Effectively, the U.S. (and the West) shifted in the opposite direction to ‘surge capacity’, whereas Russia did not: It kept alive the notion of sustainment which had contributed to saving Russia during the Great Patriotic War.
So, western intelligence services again got it wrong; they misread the reality? No, they didn’t get it ‘wrong’. Their purpose was different.
The few who got it right were mercilessly caricatured as stooges to make them seem absurd. And Intelligence 101 was re-conceived as the purposeful denialism of all off-Team thinking, whilst the majority of western citizens would live passively in the embrace the groupthink – until too late for them to awaken, and to change the dangerous course on which their societies were embarked.
Unverified Ukrainian reports (liaison reporting) served up to western leaders therefore is not a ‘glitch’ – it is a ‘feature’ of the new Intelligence 101 paradigm intended to confuse and dull its electorate.
How can the Russian public be demoralized (in the long run) if a potential Ukrainian victory is – contrary to Western intelligence -impossible. When Ukraine eventually loses indisputably, Russians won’t be demoralized anymore.
I love Alastair Crooke, if only because he reads my articles. He is an astute observer. He is correct about the new intelligence paradigm. But this paradigm is an evolution of something that has been around for a long time– the need for institutions to create mythologies, both for themselves and for the public.
We don’t want to fight, yet by jingo if we do,
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men,
We’ve got the money, too!
(19th Century, British ditty supporting intervention against Russia in the Russo-Turkish War, from which we get term “jingoism).
The Russians won. This is an excerpt from my recent article based on an WSJ article asserting that the US can win a “great power” war, if it throws enough money at it.
The NGAD promises to be twice as expensive as the F35, arguably the greatest boondoggle in US military history. and already obsolete since it was designed for a kind of war that no longer exists except in imagination. But how do you get money for that? You need a belief system to rationalize it. Facts from analysts like Larry are annoying contradictions. So they must be suppressed. The Russians and the Chinese are practical and pragmatic. “Intelligence 101” is delusional.
https://julianmacfarlane.substack.com/p/us-cannot-win-a-war-with-china-or?utm_source=twitter&sd=p
“the US can win a “great power” war, if it throws enough money at it.”
I’m sure the psychos who run our government will take that and run with it.
‘Throw enough money at it’
True to a certain extent.
The War Party can continue war fighting for decades as long as the Feds can sell cheap debt to fund said war fighting. De-dollarization ends this cycle.
Attaching some rough numbers to the question;
50% of Federal Gov’t expenditures have been for the last couple of years funded by selling debt. Low interest rates have kept interest payments on federal debt to a manageable ~9% of total expenditures.
Biden’s FY24 budget proposal calls for ~70% of expenditures to be funded with Taxes and ~30% funded by selling debt. Easy Enough.
But wait – interest rates are ‘normalizing’ towards 4-5%. That means in FY25; ~30% of Federal Budget will be devoted to paying interest on debt. THIRTY PERCENT !?!??!?
Throw in the mix; Chinese, Saudis, and Indians no longer buying Federal debt – and the War Party has got a real challenge.
De-dollarization ends this war. And only de-dollarization ends this war
Agree with you that de-dollarization is an Achilles heel here. I think gold and Bitcoin also constitute de-dollarization and explain gov’t attitudes and policies toward each. De-dollarization is something us citizens can practice as a political statement against the system. It also has practical purposes: we can diversify our assets across sectors (stocks, bonds, real estate, productive businesses), but if all our assets are denominated in dollars, we ourselves are exposed to the loss of purchasing power that will come with de-dollarization.
The failure of Silicon Valley Bank may a sign that the days of endless money is over.
I’m with you, Exile. Of course the Feds rely on the ignorance of the public that funding their government with enormous debt will and does impoverish them as surely as as an increase in taxes, the latter being obvious to all of us.
Agree.
Right now however dollar is very strong against global south currencies and oddly there is a shortage of dollars in some of these countries creating desperate demand for USD. No plan B yet
TempoNick, I like your characterization of today’s American and State Department officials who support our ongoing, continuous slaughter of the Ukrainian people as “psychos”. (Webster’s defines a psycho as: a victim of severe mental or emotional disorder.)
It isn’t enough that rivers of blood have flowed in their cause of worshipping at the altar and idol and false god of Western “Democracy”. It now seems as though there is no stopping these psychos.
The Republicans in the House and Senate (supposedly limited government advocates) ought to have known better. But, apparently, they are all mostly a bunch of heartless neocon warmongers.
George Washington and our great Founding Fathers would never have allowed such trash and foolishness to go down.
Alistair Crooke rises above all. Excellent, all encompassing analysis of the dynamics of the current clusterfuck.
Interesting origin of jingoism, thanks for that. From the Brits, no less….color me not surprised.
Since I’m fitting shoes here, I’d say since Biden likes to show off his homeboy shuffle and is one hell of a jingoist, Bo Jingles would be a good nick for him.
I’d like to hear more the immediate consequence to “change the dangerous course on which their societies were embarked”. In layman’s terms, since “intelligence” sharing in the public sphere is so blatantly one-sided. Anyone?
I view it in relation to the 2017 AUMF repeal vote. That is, the combined escalation hence of interference in other’s affairs.
Western Narrative Collapse – – –
Russian media and Government messaging prevailed over Western Mainstream Media targeting Russian audiences.
Western Leaders thus face into a dangerous moment when everything that attaches to a Russian loss does not materialize.
Such a loss of confidence threatens the stability of Western Governments and it is they and not Russia that face internal conflict.
And so . . .
Only when the last American artillery shell has been fired in The Ukraine, only when the last Ukrainian soldier has been killed in The Ukraine and only when the last of Ukrainian state territory has been irretrievably lost from The Ukraine will The Americans and Europeans finally realize that God Favours Russia . . .
https://les7eb.substack.com/p/ukraine-long-proxy-war-vi-god-favours
Sounds logical.
When does reality reassert itself?
Dog
When the supermarkets are empty for 3 days and everyone is hungry and cold, I reckon.
When a few US banks collapse and people (even neocons) will always prefer to keep their greed and not lose their money..nobody will suddenly cares of Ukraine.
You don’t have to be greedy to not want to lose your hard earned money. Keep me apart from that neoclan clan of jingoist junkies and others, please.
Europe went for a 1000 years basically ruled by a mythological story from the middle east. People can believe in things without a shred of evidence as long as the power structure tells them it is “true”. Orwell noted that the key is getting people to stop relying on evidence or logic for truth, but to simply believe Big Brother. Incredulous lies are better for conditioning people than plausible ones.
There’s been no greater “mythological story” than the one embraced by Modernity. It is the turning away from the Reality that has been historically expressed that is landing the Western “world” in such a pit of nonsense.
I think the following basically sums it up re this article.
THE problem is that we’re dealing with a Criminally Insane Administration in Amerika and a Uniparty Congress that supports it!
https://t.me/rocknrollgeopolitics/6440
“I think the Americans understand how this could end” – Evgeny Buzhinsky
“An aircraft is not a tank. It must be serviced before and after each flight. If it comes under enemy fire, it needs to be repaired, and usually at a suitable airfield. To do this, you need to create a base. It makes no sense to create this base in the face of Russian attacks. This means that it needs to be done somewhere, perhaps in Poland, but if the plane takes off from Poland, makes attacks against Russian forces in Ukraine and returns to its base, I am 90 percent sure that we will have to make attacks on Polish airfields. I think the Americans understand how this could end.This is the situation” – the expert said.
Evgeny Buzhinsky, retired lieutenant general of the RF Armed Forces, chairman of the Russian Center for Political Studies in Moscow.
The American’s obsession with its own Exceptionalism will be the cause of its self-destruction. It is this belief that USA is exceptional that narratives are literally created to support this belief. The belief in its exceptionalism spans from an innate “there is no way we can be wrong” which not only denies all contradictory realities but also doing whatever it can to ensure it is right, resulting in USA constantly doubling down on obvious mistakes. This exceptionalism also blinds USA to the possibility of any learning because “if we are the best, why would we need to learn from others? Others need to be like us!” And keep trying to force others into behaving like Americans, even to the extent of killing them.
Those that the gods seek to destroy, they first made mad. And what is the first symptom of that madness? Overbearing pride in believing oneself must be right.
After all, isn’t it Pride that caused Lucifer to fall from heaven?
Super comment, especially your last sentence!
Well said, sir! Pride is the main cause behind this and will lead to a downfall.
Not all pride. You can be humbly proud of your competence and accomplishments. You don’t need to brag about it or foist it on other people. It speaks for itself, and so do your customers and audience when they pony up to buy your goods or see your performance.
Yes. We should not confuse pride of this nature with arrogance and hubris.
A good article that explains a lot. Within any organisation there is a culture and an expectation that members ‘get with the programme’. The nails that stick up attract the hammer.
These folks usually leave or are expelled, thus reinforcing the groupthink and leaving the organisation populated with yes men and the spineless.
Mr. Cynic, I must disagree with your analysis. America doesn’t possess a monopoly on hubris. Every people takes pride in their culture. In addition, the US is currently top dog (but fading fast). Do you think the Roman’s looking at the barbarians in Germany thought their two cultures were on equal footing? The Chinese emperors looked at the West with disdain. There was nothing there good to be had.
In contrast, I would say what America excell in is self criticism. Although a small amount of self criticism is good, it is unhealthy when it become an obsession. The whole woke mentality is about tearing down American culture and tradition. It’s a simple divide and conquer strategy being imposed from above by a small minority who have zero interest in American values and tradition. It’s all about their tribe.
“It’s a simple divide and conquer strategy being imposed from above by a small minority who have zero interest in American values and tradition. It’s all about their tribe.” — EXACTLY RIGHT!!!
This tribe?
https://www.unz.com/article/the-zionist-coup-against-kennedy/
” The whole woke mentality is about tearing down American culture and tradition. It’s a simple divide and conquer strategy being imposed from above by a small minority who have zero interest in American values and tradition.”
You nailed it here.
The question, though, that everyone in the commentariat is avoiding like a plague is – Why????
Montenegrin?
A nice one, well done.
Americans don’t travel much outside their country, and their country hasn’t been invaded in forever by an overwhelming force, and all this time Americans were the ones doing the invading without any consequence. Which makes American think they are center of the universe. If Americans start traveling outside their country out of their own pocket(no CIA\NGO scums please), they will realize they are flesh and bone like the rest of us which would most certainly kill that arrogant exceptional attitude towards the world.
It’s ironic that Chinese tourists every year, in their tens of millions travel around the world and go back home, while most Americans don’t even have passport.
Here and many other sites like this one, the above is preaching to the choir. But to the ones who need to understand what was said. This will read like Mandarin Chinese. The scary thing is fools venture in where wise men and angels fear to tread.
Insightful article on Intel community but applies to US Military Officers also. I remember several times pointing out absurd assumptions in Theater OPLANS but the senior Officers didn’t want to deal with difficult situations and explain to Generals who generally were planning their next career move.
Years ago I read a list of comments made by UK military committee reviewing officer performances for possible promotions, one of which was priceless and read as follows:
“His men will follow him anywhere – but only out of curiosity”
Given the forced Covid jabs and focus on gender equality nonsense with transgender loonies being promoted to high ranks like general on top of all the other madness you point out, all the good competent people have already resigned or are getting out as fast as they can.
If US military personnel are ever ordered to fight in Ukraine then it will most likely end like the famous suicidal ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ in the Battle of Balaklava in the Crimean War 25 October 1854 which Alfred Lord Tennyson immortalized in that famous poem as follows:
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel’d from the sabre-stroke
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder’d.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
Yes, and Russian gunnery has only improved since 1854. This time round they’ll take out the horses before they’ve left the stables.
I love Alastair Crooke’s articles. Always look forward to reading them at Strategic Culture.
Despotism justifies exploitation and exploitation requires deception. Those are the three faces of evil. If you see one face, look some more and you’ll see the other two.
All forms of deception are converging and leading us towards a war with China to destroy our country. All features of the plan are in the open, you just have to look closely. The only question that remains is: are Americans going to dive headlong into another “patriotic” misguided war, or are they going to become locally vigilant and protect the railway tracks, the power stations, the water supply from the enemy within, the fifth column operating locally. Remembering the part from The Last of the Mohigans where the question came up: are we going to help Cornwallis or are we going to raise the Militia and defend the towns. The fifth column are the agent saboteurs, found in both parties, working for Davos, Soros and Billy Goat. They have infiltrated and are successfully destroying every aspect of our nation.
Politics is local. Some patriotic parents are taking over school boards and are stopping those who are destroying education. As Americans we need to take over from the grass roots all positions of power, it doesn’t matter which team you’re on because the whole stadium is under attack. Form alliances. run for offices and let us start creating friction to slow down, stop and eventually reverse the Davos/Obama/Zionist momentum. We have a great deal of work to do.
You are onto something, you and we in Europe, both, are ruled by the puppets of transnational corporations and money…
These elites managing all this do not need any country the size of Russia or the USA…they need to dinamite every huge country to medieval size counties or regions where to place their hugely compromised satraps to fullfill their goals on depopulation, deindustrialization, decivilization, and enslaving the remaining….
Ghost… please reflect on this for a few minutes. The Old European moneyed interests, through their propaganda outlet the WEF, have made it clear that they intend to become the world’s only central bank in an effort to control capital allocation. Which would make the US commercial banks, some of the most powerful banks in the world, realize that they would become obsolete under a one bank system. If what I am positing is not true, then why is the Euro taking it on the chin with brass knuckles?
WW3 has started and it is between the old European pyramid scheme that’s about to collapse and the US commercial banks to bring America back as a financial colony of European banking. They simply wish to keep investments out of America and into Europe. They are Communists and they are masters of infiltration and destructive revolution (look around! Right?) This is why America appears to the World as an amoral bully, with bad infrastructure and about to brake out into civil war. They will keep on painting by the numbers. Understanding this frees one from what seems to be an “every day” chaos around the world. Russia and China want no part of it, nor does the global south.
This is where regular Americans should concentrate their efforts and form those approved organizations that can help the local governments protect their infrastucture.
Here is good example of why we need to protect our infrastructure.
https://youtu.be/y0hL6twdHfY
The drivers were released. It is safe to say they weren’t Muslim terrorists.
The Palestine, Ohio derailment might be due to corporate negligent. However, the next three or four might be sabotage to inbed the notion that American infrastructure is bad for business. Remember what Rahm Emanuel said about not letting a crisis go to waste.
Well, that’s a very fine and detailed psychological account of what is known colloquially as drinking your own Kool-Aid.
Those whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad.
Director of national Intelligence, Avril Haines, beating the war drums, warns that the United States is ready to defend Taiwan, and that China should know this.
https://news.antiwar.com/2023/03/09/dni-haines-says-china-should-know-the-us-is-willing-to-defend-taiwan/
What if the People’s Republic of China averred that it was ready to defend South Carolina, which after all, declared itself seceded from the Union? Fair dinkum?
Yet the Senate confirmed this Neocon ninny, right? So now she has free rein to wriggle Americans into a nuclear war (since there is no doubt that the Pentagonians cannot so much as even commence a conventional industrial war of attrition, much less sustain the flow of arms, or support the thing’s logistic demands).
Of course, this means we only ever intend to go nuclear.
Where have Americans signed on to this?
Meanwhile Schumer and TurtleNeck demand that Tucker Carlson be silenced and fired. “Odd” priorities compared to averting WW III.
Superficially, this may seem clever new psyops – even ‘cool’. It is not. It is dangerous. By deliberately working on deeply ingrained fears and trauma (i.e. the Great Patriotic War for Russians (WW2)), it awakens a type of multi-generational existential plight within the collective unconscious – that of total annihilation – which is a danger that America has never faced, and towards which there is zero American empathetic understanding.”
Powerful observation, prophetic!
The film Alexander Nevsky is a worthwhile introduction to the Russian point of view
Downloaded. Will be my week-end film. Thanks!
To get a sense of the Russian psyche i would recommend COME AND SEE.They not only saw and lived that horror, they remember.The children,grandchildren,great grandchildren,great great grandchildren remember.Google”THE IMMORTAL REGIMENT”.
The Russian point of view is simple. We never colonized and never will. Don’t colonize us or we will die stopping you.
I remember Soviet troop stationed in my country of residence, from when I was born, till they left with the end of the USSR. Hardly seen them though. A BMP-1 rolled across town annually at nite – I had to see that as a kid, jumped from the bunkbed to catch a glimpse. The troop itself was NEVER let out to mingle. EVER. The officer core had it better.
As to the point of the OP, yeah, they know the facts on the ground. You ever go through one of those IRL targeting lists and coordinates – page after page after page…with instant updates—They know.
This is existential for the owners of “west” as well. They are all in – egro their retreats in New Zealand. I hope Putin is not a fool and he got a FEW jokers up his sleeve – we gonna need each and every one them against this crew of shysters.
if these scum hope their bunkers in New Zealand will save their sorry asses, as Escobar would say “Mr. Kinzhal might beg to differ”.
I hope Putin, given he always prefers quiet behind-the-door communications (rather than the American style bluster – loud and empty) did send a clear message to the ZOG tribe — we’ll skin you, your families, and the families of your families alive, and your banks, your billions, and your New Zealand bunkers won’t save your Satanic asses, rest assured.
The Soviets did in fact colonize, central asia is the prime example. Now if you are saying that was not the “russians”, you have a slightly more defensible perspective. But still one I would disagree with. BtW, I did my doctorate on central asia.
Goes with out saying. The first Soviet revolutionary council had 540 members, 500 were Jews. How many Russians died at the hand of the Bolshevicks. The New York bankers financed the Bolshevick revolution.
That’s not a Russian point of view. The Russian point of view would be: “Don’t try colonizing us or you will die as we stop you.”
I would add that hubris is the driving force, and there’s an inability to even comprehend “reality.” Propaganda requires a significant grain of truth to be effective, and this is missing. Fear worked in the COVID response because it was instilled in a dumbed-down populace incapable of critical thought. Now the truth is coming out exposing it all as lies, and most of the population now equates “disinformation” and “misinformation” as “truth.”
So far they’ve kept these accusations, and alternative reporting, away from the public, but it is starting to hemorrhage. In Russia, people are not so stupid and can see the attempt to at least neuter if not destroy their country.
Meanwhile the reductionist thinking is on display as nobody here seems to understand how systems are interconnected and work. They are trying to fight a war while simultaneously destroying the country from within, the financial system is coming unglued, the Fed is lined up against the Davos crowd, other countries are walking away and looking to new economic arrangements, and the approach is to deal with all separately when they’re all related.
Kamal-toe said kids should worry about climate change, not jobs, as they morph the “fear” operation to a new topic, believing they can apply the same social controls to supposedly fight climate change. I think they’ll be surprised when the economy tanks and people only care about jobs, food and shelter. Of course Schwab says we can “eat ze bugs.”
There’s no truth in any of it at any level, and thus the propaganda is doomed to fail sooner rather than later. As it plays out Russia will win decisively, and it remains what lies will be used to pivot and shift the blame. Now we’re hearing of pro-Ukrainian’s sabotaging the pipeline, and we’ll soon hear of Ukraine not using their aid properly, etc., and that China is emerging as a bigger threat, so there’ll be a new story line. And nobody will believe it.
At some point with propaganda at least some of what you say has to pan out in some obvious way. These woke juveniles, pathological liars and sociopaths/psychopaths all, have no concept of “truth.” They also have no shame. Look at Biden – saying MAGA Republicans are behind defund the police. Or Schiff, Swalwell. These people will lie when the truth’s better.
And, as we all know from the Viet Nam war days, “military intelligence” is an oxymoron.
Speaking of Nordstream there was a great comment today at The Duran regarding the “five guys and gal doctor” who allegedly rented a “yacht” from some Ukrainian guys in Poland then proceeded to blow up the pipeline with C4:
https://theduran.locals.com/post/3659719/thought-id-add-some-information-regarding-the-equipment-needed-to-destroy-a-heavy-wall-thickness-h
Yes like Larry, Alistair Crooke lives in and reports on the real world as opposed to the absurd Neocon fantasies.
Re what Alistair wrote as follows:
This framing is entirely wrong because of conceptual differences: Russian history is one of Total War that is fought in a long, ‘all-out’, uncompromising engagement against an overwhelming peer force. But inherent to this idea, is its all-important grounding in the conviction that such wars are fought over the course of years, with their outcomes conditioned by the capacity to surge military production.
Therein lies the rub.
There is no possible way Russia can ever again trust anything that America or UK-NATO nations say or promise. That will never happen again. Therefore there can be peace negotiations.
Russia knows like it did in WW11 that it must prosecute the war until the enemy is finished once and for all with no possible chance of recovery.
So there can only be one outcome and that is either a long protracted war resulting in unconditional surrender of Ukraine or by way of much superior Russian strategy, tactics and weapons systems arriving at the same outcome in much shorter time. Either way it has to be total annihilation of enemy forces resulting in unconditional surrender and elimination of any future threat from that region.
However long it takes one thing is certain. Russia will emerge, as it did from WW11, with a massive superior military industrial complex that will dwarf anything in America-NATO group.
China too now understands the urgent imperative for it pull out all stops in military industrial capacity. And that is a frightening prospect indeed in terms of scale.
We can only hope that when that day comes – and it will – that those military industries in Russia and China do not fall into the hands of regimes that might by then be dominated and ruled by a fierce class of hard-nosed war hawks hellbent not only on total annihilation of Ukraine Nazi regime but on the total annihilation and elimination of the Neocon Nazi traitors who have somehow managed to capture Western nations and turn their populations into herds of mindless group-thinking zombies who will do whatever they are told whenever they are told and never question the orders from above.
Absent some radical miraculous revolution in the consciousness and behaviour of the governments and people in the Anglo-American-NATO nations (which given past history over decades and the reality expounded by Alistair Crooke seems unlikely) both Russia and China know all too well that the real danger and threat to their existence lies beyond the borders of Ukraine in the NATO nations and way over the Atlantic ocean in America; and that is the threat Russia and China know that they must eventually neutralize and eliminate because they have learned the very hard way over decades that the power which resides there can never ever be trusted or relied on for anything but treacherous deceptions and waging wars against anyone and everyone who refuses to submit to their perfidious hegemony.
“. . . both Russia and China know all too well that the real danger and threat to their existence lies beyond the borders of Ukraine in the NATO nations and way over the Atlantic ocean in America . . . .”
I completely agree with your assessment. It’s just that it is funny, how NATO is the real threat when NATO is basically made up of dead nations — Europe, the EU, and the United States. How can something that is dead be a threat, let alone be “the greatest threat?”
It remains my sincere hope that one day I will see not the face of God but the face of “The Powers That Be.” Right out in the open, face to face. And then shoot them in the face.
Europe, the EU, and the United States may appear dead but they harbour some of the most psychopathic, amoral, satanic creatures this world has ever known. Russia now knows that this is an existential fight and China is quickly realising the same……but it’s not only about the survival of these two nations, it’s about the survival of we “humans” as a species. A little research into the Davos crowd, the WEF, the WHO, etc,etc, reveals a demonic plan to drastically reduce the human population….. and those remaining to be kept as bug-eating slaves. This is not fiction, their plans are readily available for all to read.
“… most psychopathic, amoral, satanic creatures this world has ever known” are hatched at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Berkeley, the Financial Times and the WSJ to name a few. Add to that the CIA guided by MI6. Is the rotting foundation beyond repair and has to be replaced?
Check out this web page for your answer:
https://dannyboylimerick.website/the-black-nobility-list/
If you ignore the more outlandish claims, the names and associations make sense.
I hear you loud and clear. I hope I am alive to see the criminally insane psychos who own and run Anglo-American-NATO nations tried and executed according to law for their treachery and mass murder.
I remain perpetually dumbfounded that they have not already been rounded up and dealt with – which has to be testimony as to how corrupt the system actually is. Were it not so corrupt and rotten to the core then surely there would have been enough good people in high office to have dealt with them long ago.
Radical miraculous revolution in consciousness, yes. That is ongoing.
https://www.humorousmathematics.com/post/guide-to-raise-your-vibrational-frequency-consciousness
The indians call them rishis.
I found this article revelatory. I hold Mr Crooke in the highest regard, he has always been very astute and perceptive. On reading this many things slotted together.
Donald Rumsfeld has always been near the top of my siht list and there’s no shortage of competition.
It saddens me no ends, but I feel compelled not to agree with your analysis on the underlying dynamics of the C19 mass psychology – and it’s successor, the “I hate Putin/Let’s have a war with Russia” attitude.
W.r.t. enforcing compliance people weren’t “convinced” or strong-armed into groupthink – they were openly threatened. Being slaves, they were and are all vulnerable, because they are dependent on salaries, i.e. cash money.
Many people were made an example of for their resistance to compliance. Democratic discourses were no no longer allowed.
It’s the vulnerability of slaves that made C19 possible. And now, the government is waging another war against their own people by means/proxy of Ukraine.
Be aware that CBDC is getting ever more essential in the western dictatorships to exert power over the masses. They will, again, single out every individual who dares to disagree and make an example of him – up to and including assassination (ATF, FBI etc.).
So please: don’t picture the oligarchs (i.e. government) as clever. They are outright nazis and mobsters (literally!). Their legacy is drug trade and organized crime. They know how to coerce. They despise democracy. And they despise their slaves (People).
However, with RUS and PRC now, they have badly miscalculated. Like Meyer-Lansky …
The alleged groupthink is just the carrot on the stick, to incentivize and thus accelerate compliance.
Pablo Ecsobar called it “Plata o plomo”.
There is no way to fix any of this except through total and complete annihilation of the species.
A planetwide reset is required. The situation has gotten too out of hand. Forget divine intervention. There will be no asteroids. You’re not going to win the lottery. You can’t even delete your browsing history anymore. And it’s not just one browsing history; it’s several, soon to be many. You can’t even turn off GPS. I recently turned off my smartphone. You would have thought I committed a crime against humanity — their humanity, which is inhuman, computer driven.
I went in to buy some new guitar picks and now ads for guitars have taken over my computer screen.
My taxes mean nothing. No matter how many taxes are collected, the IRS still comes up billions of dollars short. The government is funded completely by debt. If your taxes mean nothing than you mean nothing. There is no withholding your support anymore.
Tired of being scared and afraid all the time.
Press the button. Press it often.
Better a terrible end than horror without end.
“Tired of being scared and afraid all the time”.
I immediately wanted to support, reassure ..
Nothing, let’s break through. Together
“Geo-Politics no longer revolves around a grasp on Reality.”
Remember this? From Ron Suskind, back in 2004 –
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html
See also:
Ever since the start of this millennium there has been a chain of realities as prophesied by Karl Rove, enhanced by terrorist attacks, which may or may not have been the work of actual terrorists, but whose reality is not questioned without risking one’s reputation. The geopolitical picture that they have helped build in most minds appears fairly consistent if one can keep one’s curiosity on a leash and one’s sense of contradiction sufficiently blunt. After all, the details of the official reality are filled in and smoothed out all the time by crafty campaigns produced in the PR world, with assistance from think tanks and academia. But the question does reappear in one’s thoughts: do the politically prominent and the well-positioned editors, especially those known for having once possessed skeptical minds, actually believe it all? Do those members of the cabinet or parliament, who can get hot under their collar as they decry the latest revelation about one or other outrage committed by Putin, take seriously what they’re saying?
Not all of them are believers. I know this from off the record conversations. But there appears to be a marked difference between the elite in government, in the media, in prominent social positions, and ordinary people who in these recent times of anguish about populism are sometimes referred to as uneducated. Quite a few among the latter appear to think that something fishy is going on. This could be because in my experience the alert ones have educated themselves, something that is not generally understood by commentators who have made their way through the bureaucracy of standard higher education. A disadvantage of being part of the elite is that you must stick to the accepted story. If you deviate from it, and have your thoughts run rather far away from it, which is quite inevitable once you begin with your deviation, you can no longer be trusted by those around you…
The triumph of political untruth has brought into being a vast system of political intimidation. Remember then that the intimidator does not really care what you believe or not, but impresses you with the fact that you have no choice. That is the essence of the exercise of brute power. With false flag events the circumstantial evidence sometimes appears quite transparently false and, indeed could be interpreted as having been purposeful. Consider the finding of passports or identity papers accidentally left by terrorists, or their almost always having been known to and suspected by the police. And their deaths through police shooting before they can be interrogated. Could these be taunting signals of ultimate power to a doubting public: Now you! Dare contradict us! Are the persons killed by the police the same who committed the crime? Follow-up questions once considered perfectly normal and necessary by news media editors are conspicuous by their absence.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/karl-roves-prophecy-were-an-empire-now-and-when-we-act-we-create-our-own-reality/5572533
the MI6-HQ takes the cake in architectural atrocities.
American intelligence? How is that even possible?
In a discussion Andrei Martyanov just had called it Supermarket Intel, he suggested American intelligence are incompetent idiots.
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2023/03/my-latest-video.html
Come on now Tim, America doesn’t have a monopoly of stupidity. Most people believe what their elites tell them (as broadcast through the mass media). It’s just that Russia’s elites care more about the Russian people and Russian culture than the American elites care about the American people and American culture. But that’s because America has a new class of elites who run things for their greater good.
https://katehon.com/en/article/united-states-court-against-ideology-progress
“he suggested American intelligence are incompetent idiots.”
Mr. Martyanov is likely being forgetful.
“American Intelligence” is quite competent in facilitating opportunities for their opponents.
Read this yesterday’s BS and try to understand that a large part of the American and European establishment, all you Blinken, Nuland, Bearbock, van der Layen, Macron, are not able to read with understanding what Alastair Crooke writes at all. What can we say about their subordinates.
So…
The United States is looking for an agreement in which Russia would lose in the conflict in Ukraine, but at the same time they expect that the defeat will not be “too heavy” and will not harm global stability. This was stated by a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, Democrat Seth Moulton, speaking as part of a discussion at the Hudson Institute.
According to him, Washington “doesn’t want Russia to lose too much”, considering the issues of nuclear weapons proliferation.
“Therefore, to say that we want an embarrassing defeat for Russia is not what we really want,” Moulton said.
I think they’re laughing in Moscow like the actors in a Monty Python “deadly joke” skit.
Oh God!! This whole Ukraine mess has me spontaneously burst out in laughter every couple of days. What with Martynov and Alex Christoforou and the comments section there and here.
I feel guilty because in war people die innocents as well as combatants.
“The first steps in this direction began with a shift in ethos reaching back to the Clinton/Thatcher era in which the intelligence services were ‘neo-liberalised’ …”
Baroness Thatcher’s premiership began in May 1979 and ended in November 1990 …
Mr Clinton served as president of the USA from 1993 to 2001 …
Among conservatives in the US it’s not allowed to say anything bad about His Majesty the President Ronny Reagan.
Yea Nancy Raygun was the worst president in history
Dmitry Medvedev writes:
“The Supreme Kiev Nazi instructed to work out the issue of renaming Russia to Muscovy.
Well what can I say…
Our answer?
No, of course not Hohlandia.
And certainly not Little Russia.
Only Schweinisch Bandera-Reich. Exact!
“HOW COULD WESTERN INTELLIGENCE HAVE GOT IT WRONG, AGAIN? THEY DIDN’T. THEY HAD OTHER PURPOSES”
Mr. Crooke and the author of the title above, like many in “The West” are reliant on a degree of binary/linear logic as a function of their socialisation since such socialisation is perceived by “opinion formers/perception managers” as required to sustain the social relations within which they were socialised within acceptable tolerances (reformations), and hence that is their purpose.
A component of this purpose is to seek to personalise potential alternative ways of perception by assigning such as the sole opinion/religion of a deranged “not normal”individual, where normal is a construct of aggregates not an individual, an example of which being assigning the label “Marxism” to an ongoing lateral process designated as Dialectical Historical Materialism which transcends linear logic through using linear logics’ outcomes as objects of analysis and vectors of transcendence of linear logic, hence the additional example of “Putin’s War” to describe an ongoing lateral process of transcending colonialism, the colonial powers being transcended being The Russian Federation and The People’s Republic of China. .
Hence by serving their purposes “Western intelligence” simultaneously served and continues to serve the purposes of their opponents who are not like them restricted to sharing linear logic/paradigms/limited evaluation horizons and criteria, to serve their purpose.
Consequently the “Western” linear immersion in cui bono, winning/losing/ reliance on “authorities” such as Sun Tsu/Tsun Tzu and precedents of Tao, are facilitators and vectors of lateral transcendence of themselves, whilst perfection/The end of history/full spectrum dominance is never an option even nuclear warfare as a function of time, since lateral change is a constant process, whilst “war” is not limited to things that go bang.
Hence I suggest a more representative question to pose would read:
How could “Western Intelligence” become complicit in the transcendence of their own purposes?
By serving their purposes in interaction with others with different purposes and perceptions facilitating “How to drown a drowning man with the minimum of blowback ?” since “knowledge” is a function of posing questions, not a function of finding answers/precedents.
A vivid example of socialization for the purpose of serving the coercive social relations called “The West”, being current prime minsiter of Finland, Sanna Marin, highly likely conditioned from craddle to her current age to serve current purposes as a robot, not minding, less caring at all, the interests or future of Finland…Stepping at the front line for to sending weapons to Ukraine even whe not yet a NATO member…..One would say, by watching her trail, from Schwab´s WEF´s to NATO´s darling, that she was brought up to insert Finland into NATO to add for to circling of Russia….Since current policies are not in the least the effect of a man with dementia, but product of decades of planning….
http://youtu.be/EWRpjbMBCLY
The same example could be found amongst the “freedom fighters” in Tbilisi, btw, unable to understand that the viability of the Georgian nation state is only possible in partenrship with Russia as socio-economic partner, as it has been always the case of other neighboring tiny Soviet republics like Armenia….
Of course, few gays, lesbians and transgenders, or “their” progenie, ever go to war, at least you can find none at the very front, may be with the exception of Sarah Ashton-Cirillo….who is transgender as a matter of wig and atire
I believe you have something interesting to say, however, the way that you say it is so academic and convoluted that the meaning gets lost in a word salad.
“I believe”
But apparently don’t perceive that register is a choice and a conditioner/facilitator of communication, since you apparently believe that you are part of the target audience by seeking to assign a significance to yourself that others may not share, and hence seek to infer that my purpose and its register are understood by you.
That is quite emulative of illusions shared by “American Intelligence” facilitating their over-reliance on projections, interpretations and beliefs.
Thank you for your co-operation in illustration, and illustration in co-operation.
You’re an insecure egotistical pedant, attempting to awe others with your self-assumed loquaciousness and intellectual snobbery. Except it doesn’t wash. Not to even the simple minded. You just come across as a fragile child seeking the affirmation of others before you can have the confidence to love yourself. Sad. Grow up!!
Are you for real? Are you as confused and dizzy as the above gobbledygook suggests? Do you have the faintest idea of what you are trying to convey? I sure as hell don’t, and as a native speaker of the queen’s English and a very high scoring English student throughout my school career, and training as a lawyer, if I don’t understand it, it’s certainly nonsense.
Chat version 2 was a bloviating machine, that created text that sorta kinda hung together, except not really. Version 3 writes much better paragraphs. The interesting thing about their outputs is they have much “truthiness”. But sometimes fail to tell a coherent story. So far. But, with practice, and experience in the real world, they keep improving; and soon will be indistinguishable from real politicians’ speeches.
The Pentagon is wanting to use deepfake videos to obtain total control of the narrative. Obviously these need the capability of being able to generate blog responses at scale.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-special-forces-deepfake-misinformation-b2296080.html
Worse than the USSR, such bearing of false witness will destroy what’s left of America’s integrity, and you might take a look at #VIII on the tablets to see who’s going to be pissed about it. The idea seems to be to clog up the airwaves with so much smog that no one can think any more, and the population becomes idiots. We’re halfway there.
Bloviation can be discerned from autistic speech because the latter mostly deals with sensory perceptions, that do not cohere together into a narrative (check out “Infinite Jest”). Persons afflicted with schizophrenia are much harder to discern, as they like to make salad. See “graph or rhea”. Then there’s literary critics, and the two subsets are not necessarily disjoint.
Sadly, quite soon we won’t be able to tell the difference, the blogs will be stuffed, and discourse will be a thing of the past. But I think schizophrenics are to be pitied. What do you think, Mr. Black Mirror?
Excellent article. It reminds me about the Russian military journalist, Yuri Kotenok, who argues that Western minds have been shaped into thinking of Russia as a criminal, not an enemy.
It’s OK to incarcerate a criminal, to limit his ability to act (sanctions), take all his assets and destroy his home. You don’t need to negotiate with a criminal. It’s only your rules that matter. What the criminal thinks is of no importance. And whatever you do to him, including capital punishment, will per definition follow the law.
On the other hand when you’re dealing with an enemy you must face a threat head on. You must envision what he can do to you and your society. You must take care not to hurt him so that he will not hurt you in return. You must be creative and think up some framework where you and your enemy can coexist. And most of all you must be willing to negotiate.
So Kotenok thinks that Russia should behave so that the West perceives it as an enemy. I guess most people here understand what that means. I also guess most here understand that the Russians are fully capable of behaving like an enemy just like the Soviets did. But unfortunately most Westerners think that Putin’s soft approach is a sign of weakness. The West’s conception of strength is shock and awe, 78 days of bombing, impaling African dictators, Tom Cruise and A10s killing screaming civilians.
Since the West is incapable of changing their thinking, Russia must take it upon themselves to change Western minds.
” Russia must take it upon themselves to change Western minds.”
No, that would be emulative of “Western minds” attempts including but not limited to MKUltra replicating:
“Mr. Crooke and the author of the title above, like many in “The West” are reliant on a degree of binary/linear logic as a function of their socialisation since such socialisation is perceived by “opinion formers/perception managers” as required to sustain the social relations within which they were socialised within acceptable tolerances (reformations), and hence that is their purpose.”
” the Russian military journalist”
Yes a journalist as Mr. Crooke presently is in various degrees, and likely is the author of the headline.
In present context/conjucture using present evaluations of lateral changes including but not restricted to trajectories and velocities:
“How could “Western Intelligence” become complicit in the transcendence of their own purposes?
By serving their purposes in interaction with others with different purposes and perceptions facilitating “How to drown a drowning man with the minimum of blowback ?” since “knowledge” is a function of posing questions, not a function of finding answers/precedents.”
retains utilty, but this utilty will have a half-life requiring transcendent vector encouragement to facilitate the purpose in lateral changes of “How to drown a drowning man with the minimum of blowback ?” that “journalists” have limited facility to communicate, facilitate, implement, evaluate, and perceive.
Hence some ask why some don’t talk with “The United States of America” ? whilst the more pertinent question to ask is – who don’t talk with “The United States of America” the network of coercive relations real one – not the Potempkin village one hoped to be self-evident to “We the people?, despite even Cher realising that you can’t turn back time, despite hoping/wishing if she could turn back time.
Perhaps you should try not to be a strategist for The Russian Federation since you may not may make the cut, even if you believe you have wunderwaffen golf clubs?
Is it fun to post ChatGPT gobbledygook?
“Is it fun to post ChatGPT gobbledygook?”
Not fun – useful- as is your belief of gobbledygookness, so perhaps you should follow the advice of Mr. Freidman :
“That you (we) should thank your (our) lucky stars.
That you (we) are not so smart
As you (we) like to think you (we) are” ?
Thank you for your co-operation/service in your own transcendence even if not perceived.
every post you ever made here is just ChatGPT gobbledygook
whatever unfathomable point you are trying to make is rendered impenetrable to normal humans by the endless word salads and obscure allusions that no one gets, except you
which of course leads you to conclude that it’s not you that is the problem, it’s them, if only they could appreciate your innate secret genius, as you are the only one who can discern what these outpourings of arcane mental meanderings mean
your name says it all really
An illuminating piece from Mr Crooke. Thanks for re-posting Larry.
The reference to “woke narcissism” is particularly interesting, and lies at the centre of the West’s world view.
And self delusion.
Scott Ritter recalled a bizarre story from Germany last year where a man bought a an old hand-written letter of Dostoevsky’s outlining one of his books.
The man then invited his friends round for a ritual burning of the “evil” letter.
This looks like “woke narcissism” on steroids. An un-hinged fit of Philistinism against a valuable cultural artefact that belongs to us all.
It is odd that in a region of the world so obsessed with racism and “otherism” nobody is calling out this flagrant bigotry.
It can “looks” whatever you want, but IMHO it has nothing to do with being “woke” or anything like that. It has to do simply with being stupid in a scale that is beyond of measure.
If true, it was massively stupid. Human stupidity knows no bounds.
“If true, it was massively stupid.”
No, a facilitation of opportunities for others and partly why “How could Western Intelligence Have Got It wrong again? They Didn’t They Had Other purposes” ………….(which in attempted facilitation facilitated the purposes of their opponents vaguely perceived by some including journalists).
So many twists and turn in such a short comment. Are you an obscurist?
Fulano de Tal says
11 March 2023 at 06:51
“It can “looks” whatever you want…..”
That is co-operation including your own.
Are you an MI6 troll?
The pot calling the kettle black
Excellent article well worth the time to digest it. But I have seen no evidence the Russian public has ever felt demoralized (on the contrary,perceive elated ) since 22.2.2022 when Putin recognized the Independence of DPR & LPR within their full traditional boundaries . Sitting here in Europe it appears to me that Western propaganda aimed at Russians including those crass Boris Johnson commercials has served merely to demonstrate to the Russian people that the hubristic West lives within cretinous narratives and is in need of reality & economy resets that will be served up by Russian Armed Forces and their unstoppable conventional supersonic or hypersonic missiles
“In practice, this largely means western reporting simply replicates Kiev’s PR line. ”
How curious.
I was quite sure it was exactly the other way around: the puppets in Kiev say what they are told to say.
It’s a team effort. Washington could never come up with Ghost of Kiev, presidential sweatshirts, and other creative stuff.
“ Washington could never come up with Ghost of Kiev……”
That was quite literally 4chan.
Someone took a bit of game vid, did a bit of a rough edit. Posted it.
“Here’s some OC” (original content).
The post was taken to task for the sloppy graphics/edit.
But within an hour it had migrated to farcebook. It was then twitter by Renshaw and others …. And within a day Ghost of Kiev was “real”.
“I was quite sure it was exactly the other way around: the puppets in Kiev say what they are told to say.”
That was likely predicated on your conditioned expectations of agency and lack of rigour in analysing What are “The United States of America” and how are they facilitated? which Mr. Crooke observes as ” This framing is entirely wrong because of conceptual differences”, and then cites incomplete conceptual differences including incomplete lateral causations (plural), partly since presently Mr. Crooke is a “journalist” with limited opportunities of implementing and evaluating hypotheses except as “thought experiments”.
On the opportunities of the Kiev´s regime, just read this at twitter by a witness in Dobass circa 2016-2018…
Mariupol. A city militarily occupied by the neo-Nazi Azov battalion and which ran the city as if it were not part of Ukraine. Not even the Kiev authorities knew exactly what the Americans displaced to the city and the men of the Azov battalion, who occupied it, were doing there. The Azov battalion did not work for the Kyiv regime. He worked for those who orchestrated the “pandemic.” Their main goal was to protect Mariupol. But not from the Russians or the Donbass militias. His main mission was to protect Mariupol from “snooping eyes” like any factory bouncer would do.
Whatever you say. It is clear that you are the real expert here.
” It is clear that you are the real expert here.”
Perceiving yourself or being designated as an expert by others is a limiter of facility by encouraging the hubris of “We the people hold these truths to be self-evidentness” and precludes co-operation/interaction through competition.
Consequently some designate and perceive themselves as practitioners who co-operate/interact with those co-operation capable to enhance the facilities of all on the basis of from he/she according to her/his abilities, to he/she according to her/his needs.
The interactions of “experts” and “co-operating practitioners” thereby facilitate the transcendence of “experts” by “co-operating practitioners” who understood/understand that The End of History was never an option, despite the beliefs of the designated “expert” Mr. Francis Fukuyama.
Another example of this was the Damascene moment of Mr. Jeffrey Sachs in Russia when the no-bid contract given to Harvard University within which he was deemed the primary “expert” was withdrawn in 1993 if memory serves, as he and the contract were deemed not being fit for purpose by that point, since the “practitioners” were Russian it couldn’t be the Russians to blame, since they did not have the “expertise” to facilitate the unfitness of purpose of the contract.
Hence the question of Why do people not talk with “The Americans” ? would be more illuminating if the question asked was What kind of people don’t talk with “The Americans”.
Minor Geezer… you take all the fun out of reading.
You are both right.
Western “Intelligence” Agencies tell the Ukrainians what to say, and then they ensure that the West’s media quotes it.
Woke. The Killing Joke.
Who looks more likely to Balkanize, Russia or the USA?
In other news, Zelensky is donating his apartment in Crimea to a low-income family. 🙂
https://t.me/iEarlGreyTV/4902
The 50% of the population who are of above average intelligence realise that openly opposing the totalitarian State, (even by the verbal expression of dissent) is not a good survival strategy.
Public opinion is like an iceberg, the bulk of it is concealed.
As for newspapers, the public is very literally “not buying it”. I never see anybody buying a newspaper; their influence, (such as it is) is through links and quotes on the Internet.
The problem is mainly limited to the media, which finds itself required to perform a plausible 180 degree narrative shift without losing face or plausibility.
Those of us who are or have been married know that the almost universal response to conclusively losing an argument is to change the subject, sometimes in such an abrupt fashion as to require the other half to need a metaphorical seat belt.
As a sample, news came out recently on an Soth European mainstream paper selling currently just 10.000 items in a country with nearly 48 million inhabitants…
That is why they all turned into franchises of European Comission Ministry of Truth, so that to grabb state subventions, and announcers of experimental meds ( an activity previously forbidden by national and European legislation on grounds of health security..)…and took such trouble for turning into the “Radio des Mille Collines” in their criminal call against “unvaccinated” European people…Because they have long ago got bankrupt….in the internet era….
Records remain in the hands of average citizens for the case of future justice to be made….
Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings. The courage, the composure, the confidence; emotions and principles; every great and insignificant thought belongs not to the individual but to the crowd: to the crowd that believes blindly in the irresistible force of it’s institution and of it’s morals, in the power of it’s police force and of it’s opinion. But the contact with unmitigated savagery, with primitive nature and primitive man , brings sudden and profound trouble to the heart. To the sentiment of being alone of one’s kind, to the clear perception of the loneliness of one’s thought, of one’s sensations- to the negation of the habitual, which is safe, there is added the affirmation of the unusual, which is dangerous: a sense of things vague, uncontrollable, and repulsive, whose discomposing intrusion excites the the imagination and tries the civilized nerves of the foolish and the wise alike. Joseph Conrad “Outpost of Progress”
Thanks for reposting Crooke’s essay. I just rediscovered him recently.
I’m surprised that no mention is made of the need to convince the Western public to support the war. This is clearly one of the biggest reasons for the public lies. If there is little chance of Ukraine winning, then supplying weapons is nothing more than the cynical use of people as cannon fodder to harm Russia. Clearly, lies about the Ukrainians mopping the floor with the Russians greases the skids for more weapons shipments.
How does one know that the truth isn’t being debated behind closed doors? The shift in the public pronouncements of Gen. Milley clearly indicates that there is a party line that must regurgitate when facing the public. To take these party lines as evidence that the truth is not being discussed in private seems to be a stretch.
In addition, telling superiors what they want to hear is nothing new. One could argue it is now occurring to a greater degree, but, this can be attributed to the quality of the individual and leaders populating these institutions. Clearly sychopancy rules the roost in most government agencies.
Finally, telling lies to start and get public support for wars is a feature of Democracies. All this started in earnest back in WW1. It was grossly amplified in WW2, and because revisionist historians were vilified after the war, most people still believe the silly caricatures of Hitler as Satan and Churchill & FDR as Saints.
I would recommend the books, “Twas a Famous Victory: Deception and Propaganda in the War With Germany” by Benjamin Colby. It’s available in pdf form for free on the web.
“Twas a Famous Victory: Deception and Propaganda in the War With Germany” by Benjamin Colby. ”
Well some might say that Mr. Colby was not being rigorously discerning since they would suggest that :
“Twas presented as a famous victory: Deception and Propaganda on the War with Germany, The Soviet Union, and others including themselves.” would be a more illuminating title.
You have an interesting way of saying and framing things. “Twas a Famous Victory” is taken from the antiwar poem “The Battle of Blenheim” and thus presents you perspective in a more nuanced way.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45178/the-battle-of-blenheim
…
“It was the English,” Kaspar cried,
“Who put the French to rout;
But what they fought each other for,
I could not well make out;
But everybody said,” quoth he,
“That ’twas a famous victory.
…
““The Battle of Blenheim”
Apparently you missed the Mr. Churchill connotation, perhaps because not all register/communicate uni-dimensionally since translation is never an option merely interpretation.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/03/11/lessons_from_ukraine_many_dont_want_to_hear_886750.html
I read nothing from the defense “establishment”. Because it is always a joke. However, and Dear God, a Colonel and a General wrote this, and their brains survived their promotions. I will summarize.
1) You need lots of people, bullets and artillery. (Shocking right!) Your “precision” munitions don’t mean shit. And you’ll need a draft by the way for your fun little wars.
2) Naval operations are dead ducks. (Carriers = Pearl Harbor battlewagons) Hypersonic missiles.
3) Aviation is dead in close air support (Manpads)
4) Airborne and amphib operations are dead (Sorry Marines) To much satellite intel. They know you are coming.
5) AI computers see everything and there are no “surprise” attacks.
A shockingly good article by military officers. I am sure it will be ignored.
“AI computers see everything and there are no “surprise” attacks.”
That is incorrect and hence a potential Achilles heel.
AI which doesn’t exist is akin to stud poker – it depends upon the facilities of the facilitator within a closed system.
Valid point sir, and I defer to you. To try to explain what I meant? With AWACS, satellites, rooms full of NATO and US computer geeks, and sundry other intelligence? I was generically referring to that synthesized data flow as AI. But I do believe there will be no “surprise” big arrow offensives. They are impossible to hide. That is why the Russians are doing the probe and go along the whole line. It’s like scattered ammo dumps. What do you hit? Fuck, they are attacking everywhere. And when you have more men and artillery, that works. What will be interesting is the Ukrainians. Whether they have a spring offensive, or go all in on Bakhmut? The Russians know what is coming. They do not have our overwhelming data flow, but they have enough. The Ukrainians do not the manpower for the luxury of going everywhere. They have to husband their strength for specific strike points. And will the Russians hold? Or fall back and rope a dope them ala Kherson? I guess my main point is “Few surprises”.
“They are impossible to hide.”
That is not so, although those who can do will not publically explain how to.
There is a major fault line opening up. Just as many in Europe were frustrated at the satisfaction in influential social circles than Germany was under strong leadership and anti-Communist under a new regime after 1933 – and turned to Communism as the only viable opposition to the German , Italian, Hungarian, Romanian regimes – I suspect opinions are being formed today that will endure………
US deliberately unzipped the 1945 Settlement in Europe. – first by destroying the Helsinki Agreement 1975 in Kosovo and the bombing of a European capital – Belgrade………..because the USSR was imploding under Yeltsin’s weakness abroad and violence domestically.
Second – by pushing the Re-establishment of a Germany with its capital in Berlin remaining in NATO.
The elimination of the Buffer Zone Stalin had created in Central Europe was eliminated and Gorbachev and Yeltsin were bit players in a Washington script.
Third – using Ukraine as a cat’s paw against Russia to secure Crimea much as the US seized Pearl Harbor 1893 – again for port facilities
US has unzipped the 1939-45 War and all that preceded it………it has unleashed the demons and destabilised what Adenauer sewed together in Germany – leaving the German State hollowed out.
It has rendered the fiction created by Winston Churchill in UK adrift on a sea of turbulence. Having sacrificed British Empire and national economic solvency to fight for US interests and transfer national assets and sovereignty to Washington – he had to create a myth of “standing alone” to provide some ideological tint to a nation with food and coal rationing and coupons until 1951 for furniture and clothing………..and foreign exchange controls which lasted until 1979
Now the myth is gone. The whole edifice of illusion that wrapped postwar Britain is a hazy glow of acceptance is ripped apart. None of the European nations have national identity – certainly not France where Vichy was buried under Gaullism until EU hollowed out that construct.
Now that EU = NATO = USA and is focused on enmity with Russia, China, Iran – it is the destruction of Western European identity nurtured after 1945 and where West Germany became an embedded part of The Six. Now Germany is floundering and adrift with UK trying to weld France into an alliance with Poland to isolate Germany……..
Europe is headed for decades of turbulence and instability which will be intense as Labour seeks compensation for Food and Energy price inflation and Corporate Greed seeking increased margins at the expense of Workers.
Especially as the Covid Lockdown has accelerated the demographic time-bomb in the labour force leaving massive shortages in all sectors……………the basis of societal strife and radical political solutions will destroy what the US thought was stable in Western Europe
I wish I had your eloquence. That was frankly brilliant. Thank you!
Outstanding, I knew bits and pieces of what you wrote but never understood how these bits and pieces fit together.
Now go deeper. You have described a root dysfunction in which reality is intentionally distorted (read ignored) in favor of creating a nefarious illusion with malevolent purpose. No society can long endure by distorting and ignoring reality. Eventually, those chickens come home to roost and nature intends that species that acquire this misperception trait will soon become extinct. Which is our fate if we continue down this road. And once you recognize the existential nature of the dysfunction that currently afflicts us, you cannot content yourself with “just analyzing the problem ad infinitum.” At some point, brainpower needs to be allocated toward actual remedy. Where are the intelligent voices formulating such remedies?
I suggest that everyone here obtain a copy of the book The Rape of the Mind by Joost Merloo. Merloo had access to prisoners released from North Korea – the real Manchurian Candidates and used his experiences in analysis of the techniques of brainwashing.
The book was written in the 1950’s and the amazing thing is as you read through his expansive analysis of the technique used in North Korea, you can see these very same techniques used against the general population today.
These techniques are highly effective as we can see today. They convinced billions to take an tested toxic injection against a “disease” was not kind of of a threat, and the people who sicken and even die from it ARE STILL glad they took it. They are literally saying “It could have been worse if I didn’t take the vax”” as their last words!
The story of Ukraine a plucky independent democracy fighting against the evil empire ready to destroy the Death Star at any moment is as fictional in the NYT as it is on the movie screen, yet Twitter is littered with Ukrainian flags on profiles of people who assure me that Ukraine is kicking ass.
It would all be amusing except for what comes next. The general population is not prepared for what is coming. Will the powers be able to maintain the fiction? They won’t be able to. Then what?
Cue up a distraction. Another virus variant like Matt Hancock said, or the Russia is losing and ready to nuke us unless we do it first.
These are dangerous times.
The FTX debacle, now the SVB collapse, are these the first dominoes?
The current illegitimate administration will apparently do anything to maintain power. They have the perfect figurehead to take all the blame when it all goes wrong, so why not go for broke?
Who will blame an insignificant cockroach like Nuland or Blinken when you can hang it on a president who barely knows where he is most of the time?
I also don’t think we are going to be able to vote our way out of this.
You have very accurately stated the house of cards we live in. F16s that need 100 ground crew to operate. Grocery stores that empty in 24 hours. Banks that don’t “know” where your deposits are. People were shocked when the Soviets collapsed overnight. We have built a “just in time” technocracy that depends on everything working. Unfortunately? Unlike the Soviets we will not gracefully decline. We will destroy the world.
“Propaganda” by Edward Bernays is an earlier work. Heck most of the techniques were known to the Sophists in ancient Greece.
The general techniques are well know and taught in most marketing departments in business school. Modern Western culture is immersed in a sea of propaganda, both to sell products and for social engineering.
It is all very scientific, but the good part that the Red Pill metaphor truly works. Once you see it, you cannot un-see it and it can never fool you again.
I am very optimistic for the longer term future. Short-term is what we must survive first. No easy feat against lunatics and psychopaths with a God Complex, but we are better and stronger than they are.
Propaganda and brainwashing works until it doesn’t. I think we are rapidly reaching that point.
Tucker Carlson’s airing of Jan 6 footage is shocking many out of their trance.
Payback is coming, I firmly believe that.
I just read an important news.
Iran and Saudi-Arabia have decided to build up new relations and to stop their fights.
and who mediated this ? China !
Bad news for Biden and co.
Diplomacy is possible.
Diplomacy is possible.
Not in the US, it ain’t.
This whole business of multipolarity and its challenge to a single reserve currency $ is scaring me and my $ assets a bit.
Notice how banks classically fail, just recently SVB and rumblings in First Republic; by loss of faith in the bank ending in very quick and very devastating bank runs.
Extrapolate that to a loss in faith of the $ and a similar quick and devastating run internationally. Especially when that ‘full faith and credit’ business runs into the brick wall of unsustainable debt. It ain’t pretty.
The USD is strong and the Fed has cash and assets to cover any attack from outside.
Now with Obama trying to destroy the US for the Davos crowd through his ventriloquist’s dummy Biden, the dummy mentioned he was going to default on US debt. Another attack on the US’ reputation as the Euro house of cards collapses.
If you have any assets in Euro Dollars convert them before it’s too late. No more Libor defined contracts, Sofr is the new, more stable US based system and we say good riddance to the City of London.
Come this July, the US will celebrate US Financial Independence Day for the first time.
Fed chairman Powell said to Congress, lately, the US can handle the debt load. He added, the problem doesn’t arise from the size of the debt, but from what is the debt used for?, a question of guns vs. butter. If the money is spent on infrastructures that would be an investment paying dividends, but if it is spent on wars, that’s a waste.
The USD has strengthened because it finally rose interest rates in line with a healthy, functioning economy. But the rise in interest rates plus the bank run is what sank SVB. They, like most banks, park their cash assets in t-bonds & bills and those they bought were paying next to zero interest. Now they’ve lost a good chunk of value, which put the bank into a cash crunch when they had to cash them in to meet depositors cash demands (the run).
So, how many banks out there have diminishing value on their bond portfolios and how well could they weather a run?
BTW: Only cca 15% of SVB’s deposits were covered by the FDIC. That’s a lot of downstream business depositor cash crunches in the making.
Add to that, the FDIC only has enough cash to cover a few percent of all insured depositor accounts. About the same in its fund that Washington’s handed over to Ukraine.
I’m not a goldbugger like Peter Schiff that’s chicken littleing a total financial meltdown but the elements still are there for a perfect storm scenario and not a mere tempest in a teapot. They said 2008 could never happen again. Famous last words.
There’s something Orwellian about this; that delusion is now intelligence.
Shouldn’t we rename these organisations? Central Delusion Agency in the USofA, British Delusion – MD5 and MD6 departments of the Ministry of Delusion.
Back home, we could have the Australian Security Delusion Organisation that thinks it’s a good idea to pick a fight with China – now that’s a delusion!
this ridicules Australian policy quite well!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTCqXlDjx18
” that delusion is now intelligence.”
Well it’s one way to aid/encourage the self-destruction of “The United States of America” with their complicity to minimise external and internal blowback.
According to some researcher of a philosophical school, achieving a world government is a delusion, since that is impossible due the dialectic differences amongst the members of the human genre….
It may be because of that that those seeking to govern the world are looking for erasing humanity by wiping out the human genre…..
I’ve followed Alastair Crooke for some time, I find his insights useful, he publishes on the Strategic Culture site which I believe the USG is antagonistic towards and may well be blocked in the US, hence it’s good to see him reprinted here,
Patrick Armstrong used to publish on Strategic Culture and he had the Canadian Security Services come round and breath down his neck about it, he’s put his blog on hiatus because of the negative feedback from Canadian authorities,
https://patrickarmstrong.ca/
another observer I follow is M. K. BHADRAKUMAR an Indian career diplomat, he publishes at
https://www.indianpunchline.com/
and is republished at various Asian news websites, he gives another interesting viewpoint which is worth considering.
I continue to follow Jeffrey Sachs because he’s been very outspoken lately and has close contacts inside the beltway and other power centres and has an insiders view, he doesn’t use Twitter or Youtube but he collates all his media on his own website,
https://www.jeffsachs.org/
for an economist to be so concerned about war is a sign that politics is really about economics, it’s the economy stupid, and war is politics by other means, Clausewitz.
Sachs really spells it out in this recent interview naming neo-cons as being the driving force of the current insanity,
https://www.jeffsachs.org/interviewsandmedia/xcld6jhmwm69ra28hetklk6mewhxh5
I really have no time for the MSM, mainstream social media or Western Govt. statements these day.
Larry, you’re a star, I’m really glad they didn’t shut you down for good in 2017 over that Russiagate nonsense,
you really did disappear off the radar for a while until the heat died down,
your return to the public forum and your efforts over the last year or so are greatly appreciated!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H5uWRjFsGc
There is a certain “teaching the enemy how to defeat you” dynamic at work here. Pushing NATO toward Russia has forced the Russians to reform defense arrangements to counter the impending threats. Cornered and threatened with the destruction of their kin right in their front yard, they re-entered the Ukraine. The Russian state had been preparing for this likely eventuality since the 2014 coup d’etat in Ukraine. So Russia was already in a mode to compete and defeat US/NATO. The flurry of sanctions leading up to and subsequent to the start of the SMO has further repurposed Russian fiscal and energy policy to overcome these challenges.
We are creating, through our attempts to defeat and dismember Russia, a civilization state independent of the West which must be committed to undermining the West in every way in order to carry on its resistance to it. There is a certain beauty to it, really. Unintentionally, we are almost forcing the Sino-Russian Alliance to take over world leadership.
Alastair Crooke has been quoting Larry a lot lately. Team worker of two former Inteligencia assets. Bravo!
There will be anger and further distrust for the Élites in the West to follow. Existential risk ensues when people believe nothing the élites say.
Past that point years ago. Let’s see now. Rumblings began in the 90’s, first quake in 1999 following by aftershocks in 2008, 2012 and 2014. Pretty much a linear (or maybe even a logarithmic) response and now waiting for ‘the big one’.
PS: Silly albeit standard use of the word ‘elite’. In far too many cases to my liking, I’d be more inclined to use the other definition of that which floats to the top: ‘scum’.
“Existential risk ensues when people believe nothing the élites say.”
We are ALREADY there. Only brain-dead democrat sycophants believe anything coming from the “elites”. They have been wrong about every significant issue for decades:
– 20 years ago we were warned than in 10 years humans would all be dead due to global cooling, er, global warming, er climate change
– Iraqi WMD
– “winning” in Afghanistan
– covid vax means you can’t catch covid
– BLM/ANTIFA riots were peaceful but Jan 06 was an “insurrection”
– inflation doesn’t exist but if it does it’s transitory
– Trump Russian collusion
– the fake pee-pee dossier about Trump
– hunter biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation
– Ukraine is “winning” and Russia is “humiliated”
The opposite of whatever the “elites” say is more likely to be true, and everyone with critical thinking skills are waking up to it.
–>”It was not true (as we now know), but the ‘pilot’ behavioural nudge-psychology trial worked better – better even than its own architects had imagined.”
Ah, the “nudge” behavioral psychology trial. And the co-author/architect of the book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness” is none other than the husband of Samantha Power, director of USAID, recently in Georgia and Hungary stirring up Nudge.
In other news, Wagner boss Prigozhin announced running for president:
https://odysee.com/@RussiaInsight:a/wagnerboss:5
Prigozhin has put forward his candidacy for the presidency of Ukraine – please specify. Otherwise, the trollism of level 80 Ukrainians from Prigozhin turns into unscrupulous propaganda (intimidation) among Western partners.
That’s the joke. The guy has excellent delivery, and it’s better to watch the video without knowing the punchline.
Mostly for the neoconniver crowd. They’ll run to the announcement with bated breath and licked chops, then the punchline whammo.
Thanks Larry !
for this Awesome paper from Alastair Crooke !
Yes ! it would be huge, heavy responsibility to learn how to defuse ‘this’ landmine…
but then, today March 11, the respected and respectable ‘Wall Street Journal’ put this in the front page :
“How Beijing Boxed America Out of the South China Sea.”
“China incrementally built up military outposts, with little Pushback from the U.S., and has emerged as a power in the strategic waters through which trillions of dollars in trade passes. This article is part of a series examining the problems confronting America’s military.”
“China’s Model of a New Diplomacy Scores a Win With Iran-Saudi Deal.”
“The U.S. Is Not Yet Ready for the Era of ‘Great Power’ Conflict.”
The basis of a New Intelligence 101 paradigm requires an electorate that is easily molded to become unbelievably dull and confused. Consider the fact that 330 million people will , without protest, march in lock step and change their clocks and biorhythms , tonight, in an act that serves no purpose and that will produce no good. USA good, Russia bad, Ukraine is winning…that’s a piece of cake with such material.
There’s a reason founders wanted .gov very very small and states to do the rest. Basically only enumerated powers found in article 2 section 8 which is not much.
Power corrupts. And now the whole constitution including first amendment revealed by twitter files is trashed by corruption.
I’m not optimistic – empire never pull back excess so is no going back either until collapse and from the looks of things – both domestically and internationally we look to be very close.
Read Gustave LeBon. Psychology of the masses. Old book.
The UK/NATO plus the NEOCON Psychopaths have put out a map showing how they are going to divide and partition Ukraine.
They think they hold the whip hand even tho Russia has destroyed their 3 armies.
I do not think they are in a position to dictate anything.
Putin may stop at the Polish border.
https://warnews247.gr/apokalypsi-amerikanon-to-nato-tha-paradosei-ston-zelenski-schedio-oristikou-diamelismou-tis-oukranias-pou-tha-einai-ta-nea-synora-tis-choras/
The Soviets did in fact colonize, central asia is the prime example. Now if you are saying that was not the “russians”, you have a slightly more defensible perspective. But still one I would disagree with. BtW, I did my doctorate on central asia.
“The Soviets did in fact colonize”
” I did my doctorate on central asia.”
Well since you did your doctorate you may have defined and corroborated your terms of reference including “colonize” its presentation and period in which such presentations existed, unless of course you did your doctorate through some universities in Central Asia during the 1990’s whose certificates in certain disciplines were often issued on the work another wrote and submitted on your behalf for a fee a part of which was shared with the university.
It is true in a certain period The Soviet Union attempted to colonize Central Asia using cetain forms both de jure and de facto and in other periods different forms both de jure and de facto, except “Soviets” which tended to exist de jure but not de facto, which the Central Asians sought to undermine thereby changing the forms and hence the definitions of “colonize” de jure and de facto.
In the Russian Federation before The Russian Federation was created de jure, the forms attained more co-operative presentations and practices which continue to change laterally, since you did your doctorate ON Central Asia whilst others co-operated with Central Asians to an increasing degree IN Central Asia.
“But still one I would disagree with.”
It may come as a surprise to you, but some who co-operated with Central Asians in Central Asia in facilitation of the current de jure Russian Federation don’t really care what you agree and or disagree with.
Thank you for your illustration of “The American Way”.
Central Asia was incorporated into the Russian Empire long before the Soviets came along. Where was your doctorate from?
https://www.deviantart.com/thefalconette/art/The-Russian-Empire-Administrative-Map-750963417
“Existential risk ensues when people believe nothing the élites say.
Our buddies will agree with us when we talk about the lack of credibility of either party, because we all learned from the lies we’ve been told in the past. Then they’ll look at us like we came from another planet when we apply that principle to any current situation. It’s unbelievable! But CNN & NBC & Fox have got to be right this time, right?
Mama Mia!
And, I’m guilty to an extent as well. I believed the doctors and got the shots. But, now I scoff at the idea that they can correctly guess what’s wrong with me when I have a knife stuck in my neck.
American resources report that during a recent strike on Kiev, Kinzhal missiles hit the control center with NATO officers, among whom there are dead and wounded.
That’s what happens when you march on Moscow/Bryansk. Can’t say I’m crying. Also note that NATO’s reply wast to simulate a nuclear attack on St. Petersburg:
“The B-52H Stratofortress strategic bomber of the US Air Force, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, entered the position of launching cruise missiles at St. Petersburg in the Gulf of Finland just 200 km from the northern capital. ”
I agree with Scott Ritter that it’s time for Russia to put out a few rabid dogs.
MirrorGazer has now polluted this thread with 15+ AI-generated gobbledygook posts. Why on earth does Larry allow this? It’s no better than the proverbial 1000 monkeys hitting the keyboard. At best it’s regular spam. But if Larry wants his forum destroyed, well that’s his right. I just don’t understand why.
It is rather transparent isn’t it? I engaged to evaluate the response.
thanks for featuring this author. always enjoy his writings.
And now comes the SVB bank closure. 19th largest bank in USA but it has all of Silicon Valley’s money. What is a vicious fascist Empire to do when the money runs out?
Regime change in Russia was about stealing those sweet assets for pennies on the dollar. So we could keep the Ponzi going for another decade.
But those fucking Russians have not folded and ARE costing us money!!
As Jackie Gleason would say:
HOW SWEET IT IS!!!!
And now the Fed quits raising rates in panic and inflation resumes. And of course money printing to bail out our bankster overlords. Which will pour gasoline on the inflation fire.
Remember how the Soviets collapsed overnite? Yeah. A good history lesson to review right about now.
“…not a ‘glitch’ – it is a ‘feature’ of the new Intelligence 101 paradigm intended to confuse and dull its electorate.”
Deliberately misleading, optimistic against all odds, promising victory where it is not feasible and inspiring heroism, it may also be intended as a propaganda strategy to kill and maim as many Ukrainians as possible, so that after the war there is no chance of reconciliation between the neighbors.