Reality Check: The Guardian Restarts Push for Regime Change in Russia
Kit Knightly
Mark Rice-Oxley, Guardian columnist and the first in line to fight in WWIII.
weapons lab that might not even exist anymore.
Simon Jenkins gamely takes up his position as the only rational person left at the Guardian, before being heckled in the comments and dismissed as a contrarian by Michael White on twitter. More and more the media are becoming a home for dangerous, aggressive, confrontational rhetoric that has no place in sensible, adult newspapers.
For example, Mark Rice-Oxley’s column in today’s Guardian:
Oh, Russia! Even before we point fingers over poison and speculate about secret agents and spy swaps and pub food in Salisbury, one thing has become clear: Russia appears lost, a global menace, a moral vacuum, a far greater threat than it ever was during the cold war.
Read this. It’s from a respected “unbiased”, liberal news outlet. It is the worst, most partisan political language I have ever heard, more heated and emotionally charged than even the most fraught moments of the Cold War. It is dangerous to the whole planet, and has no place in our media.
If everything he said in the following article were true, if he had nothing but noble intentions and right on his side, this would still be needlessly polarizing and war-like language.
To make it worse, everything he proceeds to say is a complete lie.
Usually we would entitle these pieces “fact checks”, but this goes beyond that. This? This is a reality check.
Its agents pop over for murder and shopping…
FALSE: There’s no proof any of this ever happened. There has been no trial in the Litvinenko case. The “public inquiry” was a farce, with no cross-examination of witnesses, evidence given in secret and anonymous witnesses. All of which contravene British law regarding a fair trial.
…even while its crooks use Britain as a 24/7 laundromat for their ill-gotten billions, stolen from compatriots.
TRUE…sort of: Russian billionaires do come to London, Paris, and Switzerland to launder their (stolen) money. Rice-Oxley is too busy with his 2 minutes of hate to interrogate this issue. The reason oligarchs launder their money here…is that WE let them. Oligarchs have been fleeing Russia for over a decade.
Why? Because, in Russia, Putin’s government has jailed billionaires for tax evasion and embezzling, stripped them of illegally acquired assets and demanded they pay their taxes. That’s why you have wanted criminals like Sergei Pugachev doing interviews with Luke Harding, complaining he’s down to his “last 270 million”.
When was the last time a British billionaire was prosecuted for financial crimes? Mega-Corporations owe literally billions in tax, and our government lets them get away with it.
Its digital natives use their skills not for solving Russia’s own considerable internal problems but to subvert the prosperous adversaries that it secretly envies.
FALSE: Russiagate is a farce, anyone with an open-mind can see that. The reference to Russians envying the west is childish and insulting.
The 13, just thirteen, Russians who were indicted by Mueller have no connection to the Russian government, and allegedly campaigned for many candidates, and both for and against Trump. They are a PR firm, nothing more.
It bought a World Cup,
FALSE: The World Cup bids are voted on, and after years and years of investigation the US/UK teams have found so little evidence of corruption in the Russia bid that they simply stopped talking about it. If the FBI had found even the slightest hint of financial malpractice, would we ever have stopped hearing about it?
…invaded two neighbours…
False: A European Union investigation found that Georgia was to blame for the start of the (very brief, very humiliating) Russo-Georgian war. It lasted a week. That a week-long conflict started by the other side is evidence of “global threat” in a world where Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have happened is beyond hypocritical…it is delusional.
Regarding the second “neighbour”: Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia are not at war. Ukraine has claimed to have been “invaded” by Russia many times…but has never declared war. Why? Because they rely on Russian gas to live, and because they know that if Russia were to ever REALLY invade, the war would last only just a big longer than the Georgian one.
The “anti-terrorist operation” in Ukraine was started by the coup government in 2014. Since that time over 10,000 people have died. The vast majority killed by the governments mercenaries and far-right militias…many of whom espouse outright fascism.
…bombed children to save a butcher in the Middle East.
MISLEADING: The statement is trying to paint Russia/Assad as deliberately targeting children, which is clearly untrue. Russia is operating in Syria in full compliance with international law. Unlike literally everybody else bar Iran.
When Russia entered the conflict, at the invitation of the legitimate Syrian government, Jihadists were winning the war. ISIS had huge swathes of territory, al-Qaeda affiliates had strongholds in all of Syria’s major cities. Syria was on the brink of collapse. Rice-Oxley is unclear whether or not he thinks this is a good thing.
Today, ISIS is obliterated, Aleppo is free and the war is almost over. Apparently Syria becoming another Libya is preferable to a secular government winning a war against terrorists and US-backed mercenaries.
And now it wants to start a new nuclear arms race.
FALSE: America started the arms race when they pulled out of the anti-ballistic missile treaty. Putin warned at the time it was a dangerous move.
America then moved their AEGIS “defense shield” into Eastern Europe. Giving them the possibility of first-strike without retaliation. This is an untennable position for any country. Putin warned, at the time, that Russia would have to respond. They have responded. Mr Rice-Oxley should take this up with Bush and Cheney if he has a problem with it.
And before the whataboutists say, “America does some of that stuff too”, that may be true, but just because the US is occasionally awful it doesn’t mean that Russia isn’t.
MISLEADING: America doesn’t do “some of that stuff”. No, America aren’t “occasionally awful”. They do ALL of that stuff, and have been the biggest destructive force on the planet for over 70 years.
Since Putin came to power America has carried out aggressive military operations against Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Syria. They have sanctioned and threatened and carried out coups against North Korea, Ukraine, Iran, Honduras, Venezuela and Cuba. All that time, the US has also claimed the right to extradite and torture foreign nationals with impunity. The war crimes of American forces and agencies are beyond measure and count.
We are so used to American crimes we just don’t see them anymore. Imagine Putin, at one his epic four-hour Q&A sessions, off-handedly admitting to torturing people in illegal prison camps. Would we ever hear the end of it?
Even if you cede the utterly false claim that Russia has “invaded two neighbours”, the scale of destruction just does not compare.
Invert the scale of destruction and casualties of Georgia and Iraq. Imagine Putin’s government had killed 500,000 people in Georgia alone, whilst routinely condemning the US for a week-long war in Iraq that killed less than 600 people. Imagine Russia kidnapped foreign nationals and tortured them, whilst lambasting America’s human rights record.
The double-think employed here is literally insane.
Note to Rice-Oxley and his peers, pointing out your near-delusional hypocrisy is not “whataboutism”. It’s a standard rhetorical appeal to fairness. If you believe the world shouldn’t be fair, fine, but don’t expect other people not to point out your double standards.
As for poor little Britain, it seems to take this brazen bullying like a whipping boy in the playground who has wet himself. Boycott the World Cup? That’ll teach them!
FALSE: Rice-Oxley is trying to paint a picture of false weakness in order to promote calls for action. Britain has been anything but cooperative with Russia. British forces operate illegally in Syria, they arm and train rebels. They refused to let Russian authorities see the evidence in the Litvinenko case, and refused to let Russian lawyers cross-examine witnesses. Britain’s attitude to Russia has been needlessly, provocatively antagonistic for years.
Russians have complained that the portrayal of their nation in dramas such as McMafia is cartoonish and unhelpful, a lazy smear casting an entire nation as a ludicrous two-dimensional pantomime villain with a pocketful of poisonous potions…Of course, the vast majority of Russians are indeed misrepresented by such portrayals, because they are largely innocent in these antics.
TRUE: Russians do complain about this, which is entirely justifiable. The western representation of Russians is ignorant and racist almost without exception. It is an effort, just like Rice-Oxley’s column, to demonize an entire people and whip up hatred of Russia so that people will support US-UK warmongering.
Most ordinary Russians are in fact also victims of the power system in their country, which requires ideas such as individual comfort, aspiration, dignity, prosperity and hope to be subjugated to the wanton reflexes of the state
FALSE: Putin’s government has decreased poverty by over 66% in 17 years. They have increased life expectancy, decreased crime, and increased public health. Pensions, social security and infrastructure have all been rebuilt. These are not controversial or debated claims. The Guardian published them itself just a few years ago. That is hardly a state where hope and aspiration are put aside.
Why is Russian power like this: cynical, destructive, zero-sum, determined to bring everything down to a base level where everyone thinks the worst of each other and behaves accordingly?
MISLEADING FALLACY: This is simply projection. There is no logical basis for this statement. He is simply employing the old rhetorical trick of asking WHY something exists, as a way of establishing its existence. This allows the (dishonest) author to sell his own agenda as if it solves a riddle.
Before you can explain something, you need to establish an explanandum…something which requires explaining. This is the basic logical process that our dear author is attempting to circumvent. We don’t NEED to explain why Russian power is like this, because he hasn’t yet established that it is.
I think there are two reasons. The most powerful political idea in Russia is restoration. A decade of humiliation – economic, social and geopolitical – that followed its rebirth in 1991 became the defining narrative of the new nation.
MISLEADING LANGUAGE: Describing the absolute destruction caused by the fall of the USSR as “rebirth” is an absurd joke. People sold their medals, furniture and keepsakes for food, people froze to death in the streets.
At times, even the continued existence of the Russian Federation appeared under threat.
TRUE: This is true. Russia was in danger of Balkanisation. The possibility of dozens of anarchic microstates, many with access to nuclear weapons, was very real. Most rational people would consider this a bad thing. The achievement of Putin’s government in pulling Russia back from the brink should be applauded. Especially when compared with our Western governments who can barely even maintain the functional social security states created by their predecessors.
Compare the NHS now with the NHS in 2000, compare Russia’s health service now to 17 years ago. Who do you think is really in trouble?
The second reason is that the parlous internal state of Russia – absurdist justice, a threadbare social safety net, a pyramid society in which a very few get very rich and the rest languish – creates moral ambivalence.
PROJECTION:…he actually makes this statement without even a hint of irony. The Tory government has killed people by slashing their benefits, and homeless people froze to death during the recent blizzards. The overall trend of British social structure has been down, for decades. Poverty is increasing all the time, food banks are opening and people are increasingly desperate. We are trending down. 20%, one in five British people, now live in poverty.
In that same time, as stated above, Russia’s poverty has gone down and down. 13% of Russians live in poverty, almost half the UK rate. In 2014, before we sanctioned Russia, it was only 10%. Even the briefest research would show this. Columnists like Rice-Oxley go out of their way to avoid inconvenient facts.
What is to be done? I wouldn’t respond with empty threats, Boris Johnson. No one cares.
Here we come to the centre of the shrubbery maze, up until now the column was just build-up. Establishing a “problem” so he can pitch us a “solution”.
There are only two weaknesses in this bully’s defences. The first is his money. Britain needs to do something about the dodgy Russian billions swilling through its financial system. Make it really hard for Kremlin-connected money to buy football clubs or businesses or establish dodgy limited partnerships; stop oligarchs from raising capital on the London stock exchange. Don’t bother with sanctions. Just say: “No thanks, we don’t want your business.”
FALSE: This shows not even the most basic understanding of the way money works. Money being made in Russia and spent in London is bad fo Russia. Sending billionaires back to Russia would inject money INTO the Russian economy. Either Rice-Oxley is actually a moron, or he is being deliberately dishonest.
What he REALLY means is that we should put pressure on the oligarchs, not to the hurt the Russian economy, but in the hopes the oligarchs will turn on Putin and remove him by undemocratic means. He is pushing for backdoor regime change.
And if you think I’m reading too much into this, then here…
The second is public opinion. The imminent presidential election is a foregone conclusion, but the mood in Russia can turn suddenly, as we saw in 1991, 1993 and 2011-2012.
Notice how quickly he dismisses the democratic will of the Russian people. Poor, stupid, “envious” Russians aren’t equipped to make their own decisions. We need to step in. “Public opinion” turning means a colour revolution. It means US-backed regime change in a nuclear-armed super-power. Backed by the cyberwarriors paid to spread Western propaganda online.
Maybe it’s time to try some new digital hearts-and-minds operation. In the internet age, Russians have already shown how public opinion can be manipulated. Perhaps our own secret digital marvels can embark on the kind of information counter-offensive to win over the many millions of Russians who share our values. Perhaps they already are.
The hypocrisy is mind-blowing, when I read this paragraph I was dumb-founded. Speechless. For months we’ve been hearing about how terrible Russia is for allegedly interfering in the American election. Damaging democracy with reporting true news out of context and some well placed memes.
Our response? Our defense of our “values”? Use the armies of online propagandists our governments employ – their existence was reported in the Guardian – in order to undermine, or undo the democratic will of the Russian people. Rice-Oxley is positing this with a straight face.
Russia is such a destabilising threat to “our democratic values”, such a moral vacuum, that we must use subterfuge to undermine their elections and remove their popular head of state.
Rice-Oxley wants to push and prod and provoke and antagonise a nuclear armed power that, at worst, is guilty of nothing but playing our game by our rules and winning. He wants to build a case for war with Russia, and he’s doing it on bedrock of cynical lies.
It’s all incredibly dangerous. Hopefully they’ll realise that before it’s too late. For all our sakes.
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Really. IT’S very difficult to comment on Guardian articles. Comments are often blocked.
Don’t be too hard on Mark Rice-Oxley. His career as a bit-part actor in TV serials has tanked, so now he is trying to reinvent himself as a cheaper version of Peter Pommyranter. It’s the dream of every double-barrelled Tarquin or Marcus these days – doing battle with the Beastly Bolsheviks, eh? Tally-ho, what fun! And what juicy pay-cheques for the truly unprincipled.
This is one of the most ridiculous articles posted on “Off-Guardian” – absolutely sycophantic in it’s portrayal of Russia and high misleading.
Yes, the Guardian article was absurd as well – but this is just the other side of the coin.
How can anyone actually post this with a straight face?
“TRUE…sort of: Russian billionaires do come to London, Paris, and Switzerland to launder their (stolen) money. Rice-Oxley is too busy with his 2 minutes of hate to interrogate this issue. The reason oligarchs launder their money here…is that WE let them. Oligarchs have been fleeing Russia for over a decade. Why? Because, in Russia, Putin’s government has jailed billionaires for tax evasion and embezzling, stripped them of illegally acquired assets and demanded they pay their taxes. That’s why you have wanted criminals like Sergei Pugachev doing interviews with Luke Harding, complaining he’s down to his “last 270 million”.”
The idea that Russia is actually anti-oligarch ideologically is crazy. Putin is surrounded by ultra-rich oligarchs. Many of them corrupt as can be.
Yes, they’ve attacked/dealt with corrupt oligarchs too but it’s about which oligarchs supported Putin and which didn’t. Not because of an anti-oligarch policy.
The oligarchs criticised and prosecuted by Putin’s government were more liberal (often Reform or atheistic Jews – most the oligarchs are Jewish) – they were also more pro-west in their leanings.
The ones backing Putin have turned to be more conservative, both religiously and politically, often actually supporters of the racist cult of Chabad Lubavitch.
Putin would not have come into power without the support of many oligarchs. That’s just documented fact.
That’s only one part of the article – there is much wrong with this overly pro-Russian piece.
Real analysis needs to take the criminality and problems of all leaders into account. Too easy to fall into binary thinking like this which is a trap.
The article doesn’t say the Russians are anti-oligarch “ideologically”. The oligarchs were created by the West, and as you say supported western interests as part of their self-interest. Therefore in trying to reclaim Russian control of Russian raw materials and industry, the Putin govt of necessity needed to curb the oligarchs. Those least interested in co-operating with this are the ones who moved their money overseas. No one questions that do they? Combatting Russian capital flight would benefit the Russian economy and penalise the oligarchs least sympathetic to Putin. No one questions this do they?
You seem to be disagreeing with your own misreading rather than anything in the actual article.
“The oligarchs were created by the West, and as you say supported western interests as part of their self-interest.”
That’s not really what I’m saying. The oligarchs weren’t necessarily created by the West but more by the power vacuum left after the end of the Soviet System. There was a huge black market under the USSR which is why a lot of more criminal elements were able to snatch up all the important assets – they had the means.
It’s not even purely about self-interest either – many of the oligarchs were more “liberal” or pro-Western in their ideological outlook than the current pro-Putin lot.
The major oligarchs who bought up Russia’s natural resources were funded by western banks via agents like Berezovsky and the unutterable , lying, whining creep Bill Browderevitch.
So no oligarchs are around Putin?
Abramovich with his aluminium empire who has backed Putin all the way?
In fact Putin wouldn’t be in power without him?
Berezovsky initially supported Putin and helped him into power as well. Putin went after him after he criticised him in his media outlets as Putin is generally want to do with opposition.
Putin was/is not powerful enough to take on all the oligarchs. They wield great influence inside and outside Russia. Therefore, he has had to ‘play’ them and he appears to have done so with great cunning or, perhaps, wisdom.
You are right we should be worried about the Chabad Lubavitcher thing. Like Trump, Putin has rejected the ‘globalist’ model supported by Liberal Jews and runs with the ‘nationalist’ one. Whether such developments, if ongoing, will result in more sovereignty for the “sovereign nations” concerned is doubtful if such nations are bound at their core by governments’ common allegience to the Chabad ghouls.
It would be more than interesting to know what we cannot know….. is Russia trying to lead the world away from the system herein described (link below) or nor? (as described to FSB (KGB) students by Russian professor Alexandreyvich).
Questions:
1) Is Putin really on the same page as Chabad (an utterly supremacist Satanic outfit)? Or playing the international Jew as craftily as he can?
2) Is Putin, likewise, serving the “Conceptual Power” above world governments or is he (and Russia) working to change the system?
Hoping the latter … but one day we will know.
Often like to comment on Guardian articles but a lot of articles blocked to comment !
You missed out Luke Harding…. he’ll do anything for a quick quick at Russia… that is when he is not the self-styled “Putin’s greatest enemy”.
quick snipe that is….
The Guardian does seem however to nauseatingly toe the neo-liberal line most of the time – getting quite embarrassing.
The KGB are probably still breaking into his house to open his windows and turn off his central heating.
And rearrange the books on his bookshelves, as he famously claimed….
The KGB doesn’t exist any more – it vanished along with the USSR a quarter of a century ago.
A excellent summing up of the hypocrisy our supposedly elected leaders.
I have had a running E-mail with my local MP on a similar theme to the above article.
I asked the simple question, how would the UK react if someone acts against the UK’s sovereignty in a similar to the way NAT/US acted against Libya and Syria.
Now we have seen [if it is proven to be true and not a false flag operation] how they reacted. Totally double standards.
I have forwarded this article to my MP, in an attempt to show how corrupt our system of Democracy as become.
“Not even the 2003 media frenzy to get pubic opinion behind the illegal war on Iraq reached these heights”
Exactly.
But “depths” would be a better word.
Professional liars don’t get to inhabit the heights.
We too can give it to the Drear old Queer and all her Jamesty’s lemmings.
One should aim for the vulnerability and here it is—-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rice-Oxley –
the ass holes’ weakness, his digital tombstone, his pride and his wikipedia page. Go and edit it and use facts and easily proven falsehoods used by the ass hole. If challenged , don’t back down.
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Rice-Oxley is absolutely right.
He should go and sort out Johnny Russian and villainous Vlad at once.
I can lend him my old army tin hat if he needs it.
When I first heard Luke Harding talking about how the FSB kept breaking in to his Moscow flat and turning off his central heating and tampering with his alarm clock, I just assumed he was a paranoid crank in need of professional help, or a bit of a tosser.
But then I realised that poor Luke was the victim of a KGB trained poltergeist. When Putin was a colonel in the KGB, he set up a programme to recruit all the poltergeists in Russia and train them in intelligence work. All the poltergeists in Russia are now directly controlled by the KGB.
The headline out of yesterday’s Independent was straight out of James Bond, complete with music.
Today they’ve upped the stakes to “Putin’s got 24 hours”.
Nobody stops to think that the oligarchs’ rise after the fall of the Soviet Union came to an end when Putin was elected. That’s why they got out, bought Chelsea FC (Abramovich), the Independent (Lebedev), etc., etc. And this spy-caper was seized on and magnified with glee once they saw the amount of publicity it could be used to create.
The Indie doesn’t allow comment on these lead articles.
Oh, and on the Skripal case, there is still NO evidence . . .
I wrote 4 comments against this Russophobic article and 3 were removed by the mods. In one of them I highlighted that if the same tone would have been used in an article against another nation, just for example Israel, it would rightly be treated as anti-semitic and even considered as hate crime by the Police.
The stink of hypocrisy from the Guardian and almost all the English press has made me absolutely convinced that the public are being softened up for a direct conflict against Russia. My guess is that it will kick off within the next year. I think that Putin has mis-calculated because NATO know that the Russians don’t yet have the capability that they boasted of recently, it’s largely still in development, so NATO needs to move now before they are further constrained. The lunacy of such a move is lost in their desperation to go to war.
Several weeks ago I predicted that there would be some false-flag event that would lead to a boycott of the World Cup in Russia, there’s no way that the neocons can allow Russia to be portrayed positively.
Why wage a war against Russia? It’s mad surely? A few years ago there was an independent and conservative estimate valuation of their KNOWN natural resources being worth at least $76 TRILLION. The bankrupt US, UK and EU financial and economic systems sooner or later NEED to be under-pinned by real wealth, not false promises to pay, otherwise they WILL collapse. Additionally China, India and other nations are increasingly stopping using the dollar and it’s placing the US in urgent dire straits and they will take action with their neocon allies.
God help us, the Russians won’t fight a war on their own terriroty ever again. If they feel genuinely threatened they will go pre-emptive. If the Americans feer a pre-emptive strike then they of course have their own ability and desire to strike pre-emptively too. The real question is, which cowboy will draw first?
Forget the Guardian you once knew. It’s dead and gone,. The name alone was rescued, by cash influx from the American neocon sponsors – the Roosevelt Institute, the Atlantic Council, and numerous other shady far-right organisations. Only Poor Old Polly Parrot remains from the Old Days, still squawking from her perch as ever.
Have a look at the new names who have arrived. Daniel Boffey, a Mail-on-Sunday hitman hack, with the qualms and morals of a stoat. Nathalie Nougayrede – a French neoliberal extremist pro-NATO hardliner, who has (just) been given control of the ‘Europe’ section of the paper. Rafael Behr – a hardline pro-NATO extremist.
Don’t even think fondly about the Guardian any longer. It is now a bought-and-paid-for vehicle of NATO policy.
Viewing The Guardian as a subverted organ of disinformation & social control, I am reminded of The Catholic Church, another subverted organ of disinformation & social control.
now we have the lunatic pipsqeak Rice-Oxley shilling madly for war: back in the Middle Ages we had St. Bernard of Clairvaux shilling frantically for an invasion of The Holy Land, which the Pope duly mandated. Plus ca change, eh?
This brings me to the uncannily accurate predictions for three world wars, seen in a vision & written down in 1871: http://www.rense.com/general80/pike.htm
Could the origins of the entire madness be Satanic?
William Guy Carr, a WWII Canadian naval intelligence officer spent 42 years investigating the worlds’ woes & came up with a one-word answer: Banksters.
I recommend his 1955 book: Pawns in the Game.
John Doran.
maybe nuclear war is what these maniacs NATO really want, there are perhaps now enough underground bases built with the trillions missing from the US budget, maybe the psychos plan to move to New Zealand or Argentina until the fallout settles while imposing military rule on whats left of the rest of the world
Who knows?
The “enviro” movement, actually Fascism behind a green cloak, is prepared for a cull up to 95%. & Hiroshima & Nagasaki were habitable about a year after being bombed
The anti-nuclear scare is just a pro-oil corral. http://www.c3headlines.com & click on Quotes: the maniacs condemn themselves out of their own mouths.
A superb, sane & thorough work of forensic journalism. Thank you Kit.
Mark Rice-Oxley seems an obviously lunatic little pipsqueak shilling frantically for WWIII, on a dying Fascist rag posing as a liberal left wing publication.
He shills now only to the brain-dead or the half asleep.
The Russians are well aware of the “Colour Revolution Game”.
Putin admits the US “partners” deceived him grossly & brazenly in Ukraine.
Any such efforts will be firmly squished on Russian motherland soil.
John Pilger sees the MSM now as an arm of Empire: that arm is withered & dying.
People now take their news from fines sites like this.
I now prefer MSSM: Main Slime Stream Media MSSM to project the Nazi connotation.
The entire Western Rothschild Central Bankster AngloZioUS Empire is now a Fascist enterprise promoting “Austerity” for the serfs & wealth, power & plenty for the 1%.
The Hunger Games is where they’re herding us.
John Doran.
The Hunger Games is where they’re herding us.
Are you sure that was the appropriate literary reference?
Yep, that works also.
John Doran.
Mr Oxley doesn’t seem to realize the danger isn’t Russia. It’s this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/egypt-tv-atheist-kicked-off-live-believe-in-god-islam-muslim-religion-allah-blasphemy-illegal-a8247651.html
which is being propagated by born-again Christian America (and Blair/May Britain) and Wahhabist Saudi Arabia, both of which support Egypt’s tyrant.
The past (1945-1989) will certainly be a different country if this overtakes us.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, Putin’s 10 year plan for the future of Russia. Putin is a builder, like Peter the Great. He is a seeker after excellence, like Catherine the Great. If his 10 year plan can achieve the half of what he set out in his recent speech, the name Putin will go down in history with the same sobriquet.
The most important part of Putin’s March 1st speech:
https://thesaker.is/the-most-important-part-of-putins-march-1st-speech/
And on the village level, because that’s where most of the real work of the world is done, a snippet BTL from Auslander who lives in the Crimea: … “the first implications of anti corruption efforts are obvious in our little village. We’ll see how it pans out but everyone can, and should, assist in this task. The proof will be in the pudding when The West starts screaming about certain kind, gentle and innocent ‘businessmen’ who end up counting trees [in Siberia?] for a decade or three.”
An ABSOLUTELY MUST READ:
https://cluborlov.blogspot.ch/2018/03/better-nukes-for-safer-planet.html
Excerpt:
“If you like peace, then it seems like your best option is to also like nukes—the best ones possible, ones against which no deterrent exists, and wielded by peaceful, law-abiding nations that have no evil designs on the rest of the planet.”
Putin to the USA:
Putin to the USA:
http://www.skolski-sport-skz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/3d-chess-2860-1920×1200-px-high.jpg
Great link and funny. Thank you.
If you read the whole article, there’s nothing funny or humorous about it. This is a serious and excellent article.
“When the Americans dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they only did this because they could do so with complete impunity”
The fact remains that they did so and there was no threat to the existence of US. To me, that fact shows a cruel, cynical and an exceptionalism that knows no moral, ethical or humanitarian bounds.
” Their goal was simple: make it possible to launch a first strike on Russia, destroying much of its nuclear arsenal; then use the new American ABM systems to destroy whatever Russia does manage to launch in response. On February 2, 2018 the Americans decided that they were ready, and issued a Nuclear Posture Review in which they explicitly reserved the right to use nuclear weapons to prevent Russia from using its nuclear deterrent.”
I rest my case. My hope is the Russian Federation has done enough to deter US/allied aim of destruction or absolute subordination of Russia but the fact remains the US/allies show (in many threats and actions) a disregard for humanity and the Earth that Russia has not displayed.
I am far more afraid of our own governments and the powers pushing them than Russia or China…
Me too.
In the 1960s, Russia was much weaker than the US in terms of nuclear weapons. So they came up with a project (which in the event they did not pursue) to build a single monster nuclear weapon that was so powerful that it would destroy the whole world. They would load this monster bomb on board a large merchant ship and sail it up and down the coast. Then if Russia was destroyed in a sneak attack, the matelots on board would light the blue touch paper, and goodbye world, spoiling the celebrations in Washington. A final gigantic party pooping strike from the grave. Maybe Putin will resurrect the idea.
For similar reasons, in the 1980s, when they were convinced they were being set up for attack by Ronald “Evil Empire” Reagan, the Russians developed a Dr. Strangelove type Doomsday Machine, called “Perimeter” or “Dead Hand.” This is still operational.
They also have the Klub missile. This is a standard shipping container that can be loaded on to any articulated lorry, railway flatcar or merchant vessel. It contains the missile itself and al its control and support systems. So if you want to destroy these systems, you have to take out every shipping container in the 6.5 million sq. miles of Russia.
All this MAD nonsense begins to make some kind of sense when you watch the faux Left Guardian journos like Luke Harding frothing at the mouth and burbling away about how we have to teach Johnny Russian a lesson.
“I am far more afraid of our own governments and the powers pushing them than Russia or China…”
Me and my family too.
I think they have. Do a search on Klub missile. This is a nuclear cruise missile self contained inside a normal shipping container with all its systems. It can be loaded on any articulated lorry, rail flatcar, or ship, and is indistinguishable from any other shipping container.
Russia has the Perimeter/ Dead Hand doomsday machine, a completely automated system that ensures a nuclear response in the event of a US sneak attack. This has been in place since the 1980s.
These are separate from the systems revealed by Putin recently. In the 1960s, Russia was very weak in WMD terms compared to the US. Russia had a project to build a monster nuclear bomb so powerful that it would destroy the whole world when detonated. They would load this on a large merchant ship and sail it up and down the coast. Then if America carried out a successful sneak attack, the matelots on board would light the blue touch paper, and goodbye world. A sort of strike from the grave, a massive party pooping operation to spoil the celebrations in Washington. Russia has a lot that isn’t known about, underground cities in Siberia. One Satan missile can destroy an area the size of France or Texas.
There have been some studies predicting 285/ 650 / 1,000 million fatalities on the first day of war. A war would only last a few days. Differences in GDP don’t matter.
What an eye-opener, especially to a know-nothing-on-the-subject like me. The Freudian illogicality-of-dreams comparison is fascinating.
“So far, the Western reaction to Putin’s speech has closely followed the illogic of dreams which Sigmund Freud explained using the following joke:
I never borrowed a kettle from you
I returned it to you unbroken
It was already broken when I borrowed it from you.
A more common example is a child’s excuse for not having done her homework: I lost it; my dog ate it; I didn’t know it was assigned.
In this case, Western commentators have offered us the following:
There are no such weapons; Putin is bluffing
These weapons exist but they don’t really work
These weapons work and this is the beginning of a new nuclear arms race”
Take a look at this wretched piece in the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/10/sergei-skripal-case-proved-charge-putin-attempted-murder
I wonder how much longer the general readership over there will cotton on to the pro-war and propaganda agenda of the Guardian and leave it en masse? It’s as dishonest as The Sun.
This is nothing new. The Faux Left Guardian always was just a piece of Zionist toilet paper, going back to the old Manchester Guardian. It was shilling for Israel even before Israel existed.
It appears Mr Rice-Oxley is a little out of his depth. I’ve read more informative pieces in the Skegness Standard.
Excellent. Reblogged at Steel City Scribblings
“Poor little Britain”, with half the population, a much smaller territory ,and being part of the largest military alliance in the world, spends only 10 billions less than Russia in “defense”. One of those “defense” strategies included in the budget, one that all those commentators vilifying Russia conveniently ignore, is to blow up weddings, funerals and entire villages with missiles fired from drones. No trial, no public kill list, no record of people killed, no accountability. That is sanctioned, extra-judicial murder of suspects and everyone around them. And these progressive commentators, eager to spread prosperity by any mean, seem to be ok with it.
Update: as I was writing this I noticed that The Guardian has a piece by (of all people!), Simon Jenkins, which, yes, takes for granted that the assassination attempt was carried out by the Russians, but asks if there is a moral difference between that and killing suspects with drone strikes. For that, he has been labeled an useful idiot and “an apologist for attempted mass murder on British soil”. Highly amusing if you ask me, but also a terrifying example of how straying if only a little bit from the official line (“yes, the Russians tried to kill this guy, they are the worst, but maybe we should have a look at ourselves and our (kind of) inappropriate tendency to murder everyone we want”) has to be punished. There are no ifs or buts while at the two minutes of hate. Now even the pieces that are there to give a semblance of balance have to be torn apart by those liberal, prosperity loving persons that can´t seem to be able to condemn the murder of children at will. Now it is time to express hatred towards Goldstein, I mean, of course, Putin and everything Russia.
Except now it’s not the Two Minute Hate, it’s the 24/7 Hate.
This,,,”Russia appears lost, a global menace, a moral vacuum, a far greater threat than it ever was during the cold war.”
Should be changed to…“The Guardian appears lost, a global menace, a moral vacuum, a far greater threat than it ever was during the cold war.”
All suffering from PTDS AKA Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome.
The Russophobes over at the Guardian (and the rest of the corporate media) would be well advised to review the trial of Julius Streicher at the Nuremberg Tribunal.
Good example. Streicher was such a loathsome individual even Hitler couldn’t stand him and sacked him before the war. But they still put him on trial and hanged him after the war.
The Guardian has consistently propagandised for regime changes inspired by Washington NeoCons, those of Libya, Syria, Ukraine and is ramping up their propaganda machine toward North Korea, Venezuela and now Russia itself having promoted destabilisation on its borders in Ukraine. I find it the ultimate paradox that a publication purporting to be ‘liberal’ acts so enthusiastically for deadly regime changes from this once Trotskyist but now extreme Right Wing group. There is nothing ‘liberal’, ‘humanitarian’, or moral about promotion of deadly regime changes that have destroyed previously peaceful nations and murdered hundreds of thousands in the process. Guardian for the geopolitical goals of the self-declared ‘exceptional’ Empire, the new ‘master race’ that of the US.
One final observation on the Skripal case (for now): this stuff is so toxic. We don’t know what the stuff is: nevertheless, we know it is so toxic, can only be made by a state, and needs careful expert handling. We know this because every paper and TV channel has by now emphasised that this stuff is so toxic, etc. If we missed the “nerve agents and what they do to you” coverage: we can ascertain for ourselves from the men in the hazmat suits, the this stuff must be so toxic. The Army have now been deployed: on hand after completing the largest CW exercise ever held, ‘Toxic Dagger’; they are now employing their specialist skills to carry out “Sensitive Site Operations” …because this stuff is …you get it by now. In another piece of pure theater: police in hazmat suits were examining the grave of Alexander and Liudmila Skripal …because even after a year or more buried underground, you can’t be too careful, because this stuff is… A woman from the office next to Zizzi was taken ill (maybe she had the risotto con pesce) because even after a week, and next door, traces of this stuff can still be…
11 (or 16) people were hospitalised from the effects of ‘this stuff’: the first attending officer, Nick Bailey, is only just out of ICU and lucky to be alive. The Skripal’s are not so lucky: and on “palliative care” according to H de Bretton-Gordon. Yet the eye-witness calling himself ‘Jamie Paine’ was close enough to get coughed on; and the unnamed passing doctor and nurse that attended the Skripals at the scene, clearing their airways, are all fine (despite being hospitalised). Yet PC Bailey nearly died? Funny that?
When first you practice to deceive: someone in the propaganda department must have noticed this glaring inconsistency. Enter, stage right, former Met Chief Ian (now Lord) Blair (guess who was leading the Met when Litvinenko was poisoned?): to clarify that PC Bailey was contaminated when he was the first officer to enter the Skripal’s home – not attend them in Salisbury. This allowed the Torygraph and Fox to speculate that Yulia brought a contaminated present for her father (which she kept in a drawer for a week, because this stuff is so toxic?). The Torygraph’s previous spin: that Skripal was poisoned for his contributions to the Pissgate dossier were torpedoed by Orbis (Steele’s company). Speaking on Radio 4: after pushing the Buzzfeed “14 other deaths” dodgy dossier; Blair said “So there maybe some clues floating around in here.” Yes, clues that you are lying? This is pure theater: only it is more Morecambe and Wise than Shakespeare.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/09/russian-spy-may-have-poisoned-home-police-believe/
Theatre indeed.
Check out the report from C4News (mute the sound).
Two guys plodding around in fluorescent breather suits, another couple with gas masks, but behind them firemen in normal uniform and no gas masks and the reporter 20 feet in front, in civvies wih no protective gear at all.
Virulent nerve agent threat?
Theatre, and not very convincing at that.
Another day, another story: now the BBC, Torygraph (contradicting its own article above), Wiltshire Police, and Nick Bailey himself all confirmed that he became ill after attending the Skripals. So now we know they are lying: the house story concocted by Blair was a complete fabrication. The “nerve agent” appears to be only selectively toxic!
http://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/journalnewsindex/16078868.Police_officer_in_hospital_over_nerve_agent_attack_releases_first_statement/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/08/russian-spy-poisoning-police-officer-struck-rare-nerve-agent/
The “nerve agent” appears to be only selectively toxic!
It’s a well-known fact the the Evilest chemical weapons are the most selectively toxic. That just shows how dastardly they really are.
I presume you’re aware of the fact that the video you posted above is a fake – had these people and especially the children been made ill and killed with a nerve agent, those people handling their bodies bare-armed and with no protective gear whatsoever would have immediately become very ill and possibly died very quickly too. It is a White Helmets’ style piece of mendaciout propaganda.
Does this indicate hopeless “conspiracy theory” thinking? Whenever I see the words “counter terrorism”, the words “staged event” automatically pop into my mind.
Boy, those FSB types must have some serious gaps in their training. They strew around a “deadly nerve gas ten times as dangerous as VX” but still fail to kill anybody. Putin should do something about it.
Meanwhile people only need a whiff of Assad’s chlorine and they keel over dead.
The Skripals were obviously contaminated by a Mark II Killer Door Knob. This is standard issue to the Leningrad KGB, as set out in the KGB Assassination Manual.
The only problem with this device is that the assassin has to remain on watch to intercept any postmen, double glazing cold callers, and charity chuggers, who may activate the substance before the target exits the house. The police should check urgently for any reports of postmen, cold callers and chuggers who have gone missing in the area under suspicious circumstances.
It just seems like the so very patronizing nonsense you’d see in a right-wing publication.
Or the tune you’d hear played on the “mighty wurlitzer”.
Flaxgirl: a bit OT, but not too much as this event does not seem to have too much basis in reality: on the question of fabrication …the UK Home Office held an event this week – Security and Policing 2018 – where the “Live Demo Area” was sponsored by Crisis Cast. I though you might interested? Are they providing critical incident training: or the critical incidents themselves is a legitimate question after the events in Salisbury?
https://www.securityandpolicing.co.uk/security-policing-live/demo/
As featured on UK Column News (from 22:52.)
https://www.ukcolumn.org/ukcolumn-news/uk-column-news-6th-march-2018
You know what I think, of course, BigB. I do get a little frustrated with Syria being the only country focused on for this sort of nonsense when it goes on all over including in your own backyard in a very obvious way, for example, the only image (at different levels of crop and zoom) of the Manchester bomb scene across all media is this one and it is so very obviously not a scene where 22 people were killed and 250 people were injured. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/foyer-full-of-young-girls-wearing-kitten-ears-was-the-softest-target-3kc0l25cj. They really don’t seem to have Crisis Cast or Simbodies on the job here at all. It’s ironic, isn’t it? They seem to put more effort into the fakery in Syria.
They seem to put more effort into the fakery in Syria.
They have to save the fancy special effects for sophisticated international audiences; the dim-witted domestic population doesn’t demand more than low-budget, made-for-TV crap. Refusing to suspend your disbelief will reveal you to be a “conspiracy theorist”, and then all your highbrow, Guardian-reading friends will look down on you. And who wants that?
The Guardian is an intellectual cesspit. It’s become the most awful propagandist of the mainstream media. Thoroughly Bilderberg’d. Quoting Buzzfeed this week as if it is a reliable and credible source. The really sad and pathetic thing is that it still pretends to be left wing!
The really sad and pathetic thing is that it still pretends to be left wing!
If it didn’t pretend to be left wing, then the target audience, who are also pretending to be left wing, would have trouble swallowing it. All the best-quality disinformation has a yummy candy-coating to help avoid any unpleasant aftertaste. Sophisticated left-liberal poseurs demand nothing less.
I suppose the west should let the Russians and Syria the special munitions that the US/NATO have that only kill military personal and does not kill civilians?
This is quite simply the most outstanding piece of journalism I have ever read, and I sincerely thank you for publishing it.
Outstanding journalism… seconded.
Journalism is now almost as scarce as hens teeth in our corporate and so called public service providers.
Public service ‘media’ that should read. Apologies to all those working their butts off to provide public services under Tory/Lib Dem-Tory needless, vicious austerity.
Totally agree. This is a simply brilliant takedown, truely a masterpiece and a joy to read.
Well, if the Guardian’s “Russophobic” stance offends your moral sensibilities may I suggest reading another paper(such as the Morning Star)!
Let me get this straight. You’re suggesting the Guardian isn’t Russophobic? I mean even if you agree with every word it says, it blatantly is Russophobic isn’t it? That’s just a fact.
Why shouldn’t people read and criticise the highly influential Guardian?
Are you under the impression that Russia is communist?
I suppose by now we should be used to the nauseating, self-righteous bluster dished out on a daily basis by the Anglo-Zionist media. The two minutes hate by the flabby ‘left’ liberals who now have apparently joined forces with the demented US neo-cons in openly baying for a war against Russia. How, exactly did these people expect Russia to react to the abrogation of the ABM agreement, marching NATO right up to Russia’s doorstep, staging coups in the Ukraine and Georgia, having the US sixth fleet swanning around in the Black Sea? Of course, Russia reacted as any other self-respecting state would react to such blatant provocations. And this includes the US during the Cuba crisis and its self-proclaimed right to intervene in its sphere of influence – Latin America – and for that matter anywhere else on the planet. And it does so A L’outrance.
But I was foregetting, the Anglo-Zionist axis has a divine mission mandated by the deity to reconfigure the world and bring democracy and freedom to those ”Lesser breeds without the Law” (Kipling). Of course, this updated version of ‘taking up the white man’s burden’ by the ‘exceptional people’ may involve mass murder, mayhem, destruction and chaos, unfortunately necessary in the short(ish) run. But these benighted peoples should realise it is for their own good, and if this means starving to death 500,000 Iraqi children through sanctions, well, it was ‘worth it’ according to the lovely Madeline Albright. This is the language and methodology of a totalitarian imperialism. As someone has remarked the Anglo-zionist empire is not on the wrong side of history, it is the wrong side of history.
The arrogance, ignorance and crass venality of these people is manifest to the point of parody.
Bombing Brown People is good for them.
Just so long as the bombing is done by Uncle Sam and his satraps.
All the children in Yemen say how great it is to be bombed by nice British cluster bombs and American star spangled democracy bombs. So much nicer than those nasty Russian bombs.
Bombing Brown People is good for them. Samantha Powers and Bernard Levy can explain it.
I agree with Mark Rice-Oxley that Russian oligarchs should pull their money out of Britain and return it to Russia to invest in businesses there. That would be the ethical thing for them to do, to fulfill their proper tax obligations and stop using Britain as a tax haven.
I hear that Russia has had another bumper wheat harvest and is now poised to take over from Australia as the major wheat exporter to Egypt and Indonesia, the world’s biggest buyers of wheat. So if Russian oligarchs are wondering where to put their money in, wheat production, research into improving wheat yields and the conditions wheat is grown in are just a few areas they can invest in.
Be careful what you wish for, Mr Rice-Oxley – your wish might come true bigger than you realise!
On top of what I said yesterday, if Russian oligarchs do pull all their money out of Britain, the British economy would crash, it being highly dependent on the services sector (constituting 80% of Britain’s GDP in 2016 according to Wikipedia) and the financial services industry in particular. So if all those Russian billions swirling through Britain’s financial system are “dodgy”, that’s because the system itself encouraged those inflows.
Who’s really “dodgy”, Mr Rice-Oxley?
The City of London is the money laundering capital of the world.
London is to money laundering what Liberia is to merchant shipping.
The rest of the world offshores its fraud and swindling to the City of London.
“Poor little Britain”… which actually spends on par with Russia in terms of its military budget, despite the fact that a) it’s a much smaller country to defend and is surrounded by water, and b) it’s part of NATO with the US as its staunch defender so it really doesn’t need a standalone military anyway.
The Guardian are scum. Lying, deceiving, warmongering, hating scum.
I would love to parachute them all into East Ghouta.
I’m afraid East Ghouta already has its share of Guardian readers, and journalists so it wouldn’t need any more. Riyadh would suit them better, amongst the democratic reformers of HMG’s partner state..
(and beaut article Kit!)
“It’s them, over there, they are evil. We must stop them. They are coming for us, they will take our children and steal our i phones !!! Arrgh!!!”
“I’ll have another strong short black thanks”
Their world is falling apart- in Korea and the Middle East the Empire is on the verge of eviction. All the certitudes of yesteryear are dissolving. Even the Turks, who, famously, held the line in Korea when the PLA attacked and the US Eighth Army fled south, are now on the other side. The same Turks who hosted US nuclear armed strategic missiles so openly that the USSR sent missiles of its own to Cuba.
As to the UK, the economy is contracting and the economic infrastructure is cracking up- living standards are plummeting and the only recourse of those responsible for the mess-the officers on the bridge- is propaganda. Like the Empire the British Establishment has been living on the fruits of its own propaganda for so long that, when it is exposed as merely empty bullying, there is nothing left but to resort to more lies in the hope that they will obscure raw and looming reality.
In The Guardian newsroom the water is three feet deep and rising inexorably, the ship is sinking and all hands are required to bail or the screens will go black. There is no time to wait for developments, for investigations to be completed, for evidence- every ounce of strength must be thrown into the defiance of nature, the shocking nakedness of reality.
There is something very significant about the way that simultaneous attacks of impotent russophobic dementia are eating away the brains of the rulers on both sides of the Atlantic.
The game, which has been going the same way for about 500 years, is up. The maritime empire is becoming marginal and the force that it has used, throughout these centuries, no longer overwhelms. The cruisers and carriers no longer work except to intimidate those not worth frightening.
There is only one thing left for the Empire and its hundreds of thousands of apparatchiki-from cops to pundits, from Professors to jailers- either they adjust to a new dispensation because the Times are Changing or they blow themselves and the whole planet up.
From what’s emerging now, it seems there simply were no assassins wandering round Salisbury.
Instead, it appears Mr Skripal for some reason has a house full of nerve gas, or enough of it at least to take out himself, his daughter and a policeman who inspected the premises.
Or is it because Russia is a proudly Christian country, on the whole?
I wish there were an emoticon for punching a sly, flabby faced British journalist in the face.
Russia embraces five major faiths – Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Tenge.
All five are native to Russia, and enjoy equal protection under the Constitution.
Cleary the Guardian was swallowed up by England’s fascist regime controlled by the City of London when it surrendered its hard drives to the regime for examination and/or destruction in the wake of the Snowden revelations.
The Guardian ownerships also sold their souls — although the Guardian had already been in decline before they nabbed Glenn Greenwald. When he left, the Guardian lost ALL presumptive credibility.
Now The Guardian is just an organ of regime propaganda like the BBC (thank GOd for OffGuardian) and here is the island nation AGAIN asserting its dominance over the whole world, but this time on behalf of his brawnier brother, the EUSE, aka Exceptional US Empire.
One wonders how much longer the Russians will put up with this now that it is CLEAR that — for the first time ever — the Russians have complete military and nuclear superiority over “The West.”
I’ll bet Putin won’t invade Ukraine, Germany, France, Brussels and England from the North and from the sea in the wintertime.
The Big Problem Is YThat Americans are afraid — frightened — but they are NOT afraid or frightened of a particular tbhing — it is a generic fright. So they are no longer afraid of nuclear war. Trotsky said A’meria was the strongest nation but also the most terrified’ and nothing has changed except military and nuclear superiority along with economic clout has shifted to Russia and China. Were Americans afraid of nuclear war — or say, of an invasion from Saskatchewan or Tamaulipas — there might be hope.
But somehwre along the time beginning with Clinton, Americans didn’t worry their pretty little heads about nuclear war or American wars on everybody anywhere any longer so long as it didn’t disturb their creature comforts and shopping and lattes by coming to the homeland. The Nuclear Freeze movement was, after all, a direct response to Reagan’s “evil empire” military buildup in the 1980s and then voila he and Gorbachev negotiated away a whole class of nuclear weapoms and Old Bush promised NAto wouldn;t expand. Hope. Then that sneaky little bastard Clinton started expanding Nato on behalf of the Pentagon / CKIA / NSA / miklitary /congressional industyrial complex.
None of this suggests tht it will end pretty.
Thomas,
You wrote: “now that it is CLEAR that — for the first time ever — the Russians have complete military and nuclear superiority over ‘The West.'”
No. That is not clear. And, not true. You have missed the point. All the Russians claim to have, at this point, is the ability to land a few blows of their own on the aggressor’s homeland should Mother Russia be attacked. That’s all. It’s just a Samson option: try to destroy us and you, too, will be destroyed. Strategic parity. The restoration of M.A.D. That’s QUITE different from ‘military and nuclear superiority’, which Russia does not have (and which they do not wish to have.)
Actually, you are quite wrong. Russia indeed has reached considerable military and nuclear superiority over the USA inasmuch as they can successfully intercept any incoming missiles, and the USA are now unable to intercept any Russian missiles.
http://thesaker.is/putins-stunning-revelations-about-new-russian-weapons-systems/
http://thesaker.is/newly-revealed-russian-weapons-systems-political-implications/
vierotchka,
To say “Russia indeed has reached considerable military and nuclear superiority over the USA inasmuch as …” is different from saying “the Russians have complete military and nuclear superiority over ‘The West’.”
The new weapons may be a game changer (tho’, we don’t know what the US may be hiding behind behind their black curtain), but RF’s new designs are only starting to go into production. How many of them even exist at this point? A handful? That doesn’t give complete superiority. Meanwhile, US/NATO’s Aegis system can still intercept the other ordinance.
My point was that it’s dangerous to think these weapons give Russia “complete military and nuclear superiority” if superiority means being able to win a war against ‘the West’. They were designed to prevent such a war. A couple of the designs will certainly be assets in the type of battles that are being fought in Syria at the moment.
I’m familiar with the Saker’s analysis, BTW; and I don’t think the point I’m making here contradicts what he has written. I believe when he says check and mate he’s talking about the fact that NATO can no longer plan to pull off a nuclear first-strike and walk away unbloodied.
They are all in continuing production, many have been produced, and they all work.
What it means is that should Russia be attacked with a nuclear missile or a very destructive conventional one, be it by NATO or the USA alone, the retaliation will not be limited to them walking away bloodied – there will not be any walking away at all. Therefore, Russia’s military and weapons superiority (which was quietly and discreetly in the making for a great many years) is Russia re-establishing MAD – plus it still has its regularly upgraded Dead Hand (a.k.a. Perimeter) on standby. The powers that be in the USA are in shock.
”the ability to land a FEW blows of their own on the aggressor’s homeland.” Perhaps you are unaware of the fact that the Sarmat28 ICBM is MIRVD and can carry between 10 to 15 warheads. If one detonates over Manhattan, estimated casualties would immediately be 8 million dead, with a further 8 million dying of burns, radiation, starvation and general social breakdown. I will repeat that is ONE warhead carried by ONE ICBM. Don’t you think your estimate of ‘a few’ a little on the conservative side?
He really is taking Russians for idiots and fools!
Does he think Russians would actually believe all the bollocks spouted by people like him?
Does he not know Radio Free Europe and BBC Russian already exist?
There is one key element that proves that the Russians didn’t do it:
The Russians aren’t so clumsy as to poison over a dozen other people at the same time.
They would never have put the girl at risk. She may not be wild on Putin but she’s clearly a loyal Russian, having moved back there from the UK by choice.
The whole piece is an emotionally charged… rant, bordering on hysteria, based on a transparent tissue of lies, distortions and absolutely stunning hypocrisy; and this coming from the ‘liberal’ ‘left of centre’ Guardian!
It’s rather scary. The Guardian screaming for a crusade aimed at toppling the Russian system and replacing it with something else, something closer to ‘our values.’ The moralizing is shocking and grotesque. I really wish the ground would just open up and swallow the Guardian… whole. We’d be far better off with out it.
I can not subscribe to your short-term solution in an ever-changing world, sir. Nothing lasts, and it seems only yesterday that the Guardian was a pleasure for many, before Mr Rusbridger was frog-marched to the basement.
This too will pass, Armageddon has been check-mated.
Keep calm and carry on.
My only worry is that the end of the Guardian and BBC is exactly what Murdoch wants.
Unlikely. The Fraudian is ‘controlled opposition’ – its continuation only boosts Murdoch’s circulations.