Mark Steyn on that coup in Russia

 ~This weekend there appears to be a mutiny underway in Russia. That's the term Vladimir Putin used, and it fits. A year ago western governments exaggerated, laughably, the fragility of Putin's regime in the face of economic sanctions. But this is different. Whether or not it expands into a coup or full-blown revolution, it is the first serious challenge to the current iteration of the Russian state since it came into being in the wake of another attempted coup three decades ago. Putin is colloquially known as "the Tsar" - ie, he wields absolute power. But Russian leaders are vulnerable to bungled warmongering: You could ask the real Tsar, if he hadn't been shot in a basement, stabbed, soaked in acid, burned, and tossed down a disused mineshaft for three-quarters of a century.

The Wagner Group are mercenaries and only 25,000 strong. But they're effective, which is more than you can say for the Russian Army. They have spirit and swagger - again in contrast to the demoralised and defeatist regulars - and are battle-hardened not only from Ukraine but from Syria and Central Africa and various other undercovered spots on the map. After taking Rostov-on-Don, down south near the Ukraine border, Yevgeny Prighozin's men then apparently covered half the ground between there and Moscow in nothing flat, and as of now are reported to be north of Lipetsk - or within 250 miles of the Kremlin.

Twenty-five thousand men cannot take the largest country on earth without backing from the 800,000-strong regular army and/or the people. On their quickstep march to the capital, the Wagner troops are not encountering any serious resistance - which is not quite the same as getting active support. The poor bloody infantry are sick of the Ukraine war and want to go home. Prighozin, on the other hand, thinks it has been fought ineffectually and insufficiently seriously by hack commanders in the Kremlin; he is in favour, for example, of putting Zelenskyy & Co on the receiving end of tactical nukes. So the Wagner Group and the regulars are not really on the same page, but they have the same enemies, which may be enough.

Russia in 2023 is not Romania in 1989, when it took just four days from Ceaușescu's final speech to propping him up against a wall and putting 120 bullets in him. But perception of power is what matters: the Romanian "strongman"'s balcony moment, when the boos of the crowd forced the abandonment of his speech, signaled to the army's commanders that it was safe and, indeed, prudent to switch sides. Putin is a great student of history, and knows in detail the final hours of doomed leaders.

In Washington, meanwhile, unlike the QAnon shaman, the man on the march is an insurrectionist western liberals can really get behind - notwithstanding his increasingly Gollum-like appearance:

And that is more or less where we are as of this hour. All the rest is speculation, which is already galloping far ahead: The Wagner Group are mercenaries after all, and are paid in cash. Would it be possible, therefore, for someone to pay them more cash and redirect them from Bakhmut back to Rostov? You would need a lot of the folding stuff - but then, thanks to the US Government, Ukraine is more liquid than any other place on earth. From here, the conspiracies run their merry ways:

a) The Ukraine war is over. With Russia's least worst soldiery marching on Moscow, what's left on the western front can't do diddly;

or

b) The Ukraine war is about to mestatasize. There are generals in the Kremlin awaiting Prighozin with open arms, because, like him, they're itching to nuke Kiev.

And these are merely the most obvious possibilities. The ease with which Wagner have taken the military facilities of a state with more nuclear weapons than anywhere on earth raises all kinds of darker scenarios.

UPDATE! But then again - from The Daily Mail:

'We are turning back': Wagner chief sensationally agrees to END his mercenary group's march on Moscow.

Interesting Twitter video - Putin on the West

My voice, my editing, from a documentary I madehttps://t.co/wipUOZjVqt

— Robert Sepehr (@robertsepehr) May 26, 2023

Putin the Apostate

 

Matt Taibbi on Putin.  It helps to have some background.  Read how the Ruling Class in America and the West fawned of Putin.

The president of the Council of Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, made an extraordinary statement over the weekend. “Just days ago much of the world was focused on the unwanted prospect of regime change in Ukraine,” he tweeted. “Now the conversation has shifted to include the possibility of desired regime change in Russia.” ...

I would like to point out that we already tried regime change in Russia. I remember, because I was there. And, thanks to a lot of lurid history that’s being scrubbed now with furious intensity, it ended with Vladimir Putin in power. Not as an accident, or as the face of a populist revolt against Western influence — that came later — but precisely because we made a long series of intentional decisions to help put him there.

Once, Putin’s KGB past, far from being seen as a negative, was viewed with relief by the American diplomatic community, which had been exhausted by

Hillary Clinton Asked To Leave Costco After Repeatedly Accusing Sample Lady Of Being A Russian Asset

...  Whatever the case, the sample lady had apparently offered the failed presidential candidate a small paper cup of orange juice and told her the packs were on sale for $9.49 when the incident occurred.

"Orange... orange like Trump!" Clinton screamed suddenly, frightening the poor food demonstration worker. "You're in league with him, aren't you!?" The failed presidential candidate lunged across the cart and attempted to pull off her face mask, certain the lady was actually Vladimir Putin in a skin suit.

When that failed and the woman shooed her off with a plastic glove, Clinton turned for help and began screaming, "Security! Margaret in the frozen foods aisle is a Russian asset! Help, help, our elections are being meddled with!"

Read the whole thing. In view of recent news, can anyone confirm that this is actually satire?

Is CNN Putin's Puppet?

If Vladimir Putin wanted to delegitimize the American election system and set American against American - and CNN didn't exit - he would have to create it.

As it is, CNN is doing Putin's work to destabilize the United States.

Here's an interesting excerpt from a Medium column written in 2017 about a Fareed Zakaria "special" tying Putin to Trump:

Major props to CNN — all of this is very clever and slickly produced, just like a propaganda film should be. It’s easy to see how the average American, watching on TV, would conclude that Russia is a sad, cold place where only power-hungry madmen like Putin can survive and prosper. CNN desperately wants you to think there’s a link between Putin and Trump, and this is their news-entertainment-scripted TV show to bring that idea into your living room (if you actually still get cable TV, that is).

Unfortunately, this approach to winning hearts and minds using TV is exactly what Peter Pomerantsev wrote about in his book about Russian propaganda television— “Nothing Is True and Everything is Possible.” Ironic, eh? CNN has taken the tactics of what Pomerantsev and the whole anti-Russia crew (Ioffe, Gessen, Remnick) call “Russian propaganda” and used it to create its own Russophobia-influenced TV special. This is what slick propaganda for the masses looks like in the digital era, and it’s all coming from the mainstream media elites in New York who are willing to say outrageous things on TV.

What made my stomach turn was how this CNN special really tried to de-legitimize the views of two people — Stephen Cohen and Henry Kissinger — who have been basically the only two high-profile people who have tried to provide an intellectual (not ideological) justification for Russia’s actions over the past three years. And former President George Bush (“43”) is basically characterized as a guileless dupe for believing he could read into Putin’s soul.

But here’s what the CNN show didn’t include:

1 — The fact that Fareed Zakaria is COMPLICIT in his own way. He’s been a host at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, where Russia cozies up to the West for investment capital. And that was when Russia was under sanctions! (Just Google “Putin crushes CNN smart ass Fareed Zakaria”)

2 — The fact that Hillary Clinton was a supporter of the “reset” with Russia back in 2008. That was after eight years of Putin in power, so you can’t say that she didn’t know better. If Bush and Trump were duped, then so was Hillary.

3 — Any evidence of collusion between Putin and Trump. Not a scrap. Plenty of hearsay. Plenty of rumors. But no evidence. C’mon, CNN, at least go out and interview someone from Cozy Bear if you’re going to implicate them in a hacker attack.

4 — Any evidence that Russia is anything more than a “regional power,” as Barack Obama famously described Russia. Yes, Russia can have its way with a neighbor like Ukraine, but the U.S.? Really? At one point, Dmitry Peskov basically tells Zakaria, “Look, you’re embarrassing yourself. How could we have interfered in the election of the world’s only superpower?” ....

CNN is now in the business of being a mixed entertainment/news provider. When it comes to Russia, it’s job is to take opinions, rumors and innuendos and repackage it in a middlebrow way for the mass market. So we get these “the U.S. president is a sleeper agent of the Kremlin” stories.

The more that CNN clings to the Putin-Trump story — a story that it touts every day of the week, in both the morning and evening talks shows, the closer CNN is to becoming a true propaganda network, along the lines of Russia’s RT. That’s literally what propaganda organs do — repeat the same message over and over again, pounding it into people’s heads.

The one thing you should know about a propaganda TV network is that it looks largely like a regular TV network. You can’t really tell it’s a propaganda network until you watch enough of it. If you want to know what RT looks like, there’s an app for that — download RT to your smartphone. Or check out one of their 33,000 YouTube videos. It’s pretty slick, and the set and anchors look a lot like what you’ll find on CNN these days.

Diplomacy 101 Versus Politics Writ Small

Angelo Codevilla

The high professional quality of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin’s performance at their Monday press conference in Helsinki contrasts sharply with the obloquy by which the bipartisan U.S. ruling class showcases its willful incompetence.

Though I voted for Trump, I’ve never been a fan of his and I am not one now. But, having taught diplomacy for many years, I would choose the Trump-Putin press conference as an exemplar of how these things should be done. Both spoke with the frankness and specificity of serious business. This performance rates an A+.
Both presidents started with the basic truth.

Putin: The Cold War is ancient history. Nobody in Russia (putting himself in this category) wants that kind of enmity again. It is best for Russia, for America, and for everybody else if the two find areas of agreement or forbearance.

Trump: Relations between the globe’s major nuclear powers have never been this bad—especially since some Americans are exacerbating existing international differences for domestic partisan gain. For the sake of peace and adjustment of differences where those exist and adjustment is possible, Trump is willing to pay a political cost to improve those relations (if, indeed further enraging his enemies is a cost rather than a benefit).


In short, this was a classic statement of diplomatic positions and a drawing of spheres of influence.

And this:

This led to the final flourish. The Associated Press reporter demanded that Trump state whether he believes the opinions of U.S. intelligence leaders or those of Putin. It would be healthy for America were it to digest Trump’s answer: The truth about the charge that Russia stole the contents of the Democratic National Committee’s computer server is not to be found in the opinions of any persons whatever. The truth can be discovered only by examining the server in question—assuming it has not been tampered with since the alleged event. But, said Trump emphatically, those making the accusations against Russia have refused to let the server be examined by U.S. intelligence or by any independent experts. What is the point of accusations coupled with refusal of access to the facts of the matter?

The classic texts of diplomatic practice teach that diplomacy advances the cause of peace and order only to the extent that its practitioners avoid contentious opinions and stick to demonstrable facts.

The AP reporter, who should be ashamed, is beyond shame. Then again, so are the ruling class representatives who have redoubled their animus against Trump. Cheap partisanship is not all that harmful. It is the transfer of domestic partisan animus to international affairs, however, that has the potential to start wars.

Not so long ago, American school kids had to read George Washington’s farewell address, which warned in the most emphatic terms at his command to avoid that sort of thing for the sake of peace with other nations as well as among ourselves.

What that ignorant “journalist” was demanding of Trump—precisely what the credentialed experts should know better than to have demanded—was that the president of the United States scream at the president of Russia for all his evils. Competitive “virtue signaling” has become the way of political life in America. To the extent that it bleeds into America’s foreign policy, we are all in big trouble.

Once Again, President Trump Is Magnificently Right—This Time About Russia

Something you will not see anywhere in the MSM for a while.

President Trump offended the entire political spectrum with a tweet this morning blaming the U.S. for poor relations with Russia. “Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity,” the president said, and he is entirely correct. By this I do not mean to say that Russia is a beneficent actor in world affairs or that President Putin is an admirable world leader. Nonetheless, the president displayed both perspicacity and political courage when he pointed the finger at the United States for mismanaging the relationship with Russia....

The United States supported the 2014 Maidan uprising in Ukraine and the overthrow of the Yanukovych government in the hope of repeating the exercise in Moscow sometime later. Then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland pulled whatever strings America had to replace the feckless and corrupt Victor Yanukovych with a government hostile to the Kremlin. She didn’t say it in so many words, but she hoped the Ukraine coup would lead to the overthrow of Vladimir Putin. Evidently Nuland and her boss, Hillary Clinton, thought that the Ukraine coup would deprive Russia of its Black Sea naval base in Crimea, and did not anticipate that Russia simply would annex an old Russian province that belonged to Ukraine by historical accident.

At the time, liberal opinion evanesced with the notion that Moscow would follow Maidan. The Christian Science Monitor reported in February 2014:

Some in Russia's liberal community see in the Maidan a hope that the Kremlin, no matter how solid it looks, could one day crack under similar popular pressure. "What we are seeing in Ukraine is the realization of the Ukrainian people's aspiration for democracy, of the right to revolt," says Sergei Davidis, a board member of Solidarnost, a liberal opposition coalition. "It doesn't mean we're ready to follow that example. Russian conditions are different. But in the long run, as the contradictions pile up, we may well come to the same pass and find ourselves with no alternatives but the Ukrainian one."

Of course, no such thing occurred.

The Maidan coup was the second American attempt to install a Ukrainian government hostile to Moscow; the first occurred in 2004, when Condoleezza Rice was secretary of State rather than Hillary Clinton. As I wrote in Asia Times a decade ago, “On the night of November 22, 2004, then-Russian president - now premier - Vladimir Putin watched the television news in his dacha near Moscow. People who were with Putin that night report his anger and disbelief at the unfolding 'Orange' revolution in Ukraine. ‘They lied to me,’ Putin said bitterly of the United States. ‘I'll never trust them again.’ The Russians still can't fathom why the West threw over a potential strategic alliance for Ukraine. They underestimate the stupidity of the West."

The Podesta Group (Owned by Jon Podesta's Brother) Retroactively Updates Filings to Disclose Lobbying Work Done on Behalf of Vladimir Putin

Interestingly, Paul Manafort was the subject of white-hot searing by the media, and yet -- get this -- he advised the very group that Hillary Bundler Tony Podesta, brother of Hillary campaign manager Jon Podesta, now confesses he himself represented.

Exit Question: Think this will get the same amount of play?

Exit Answer: No, you don't think that.

Democrats Know the Election Was Legitimate but Persist in a Dangerous Fraud

Putin is smiling.

‘Horrifying!” inveighed an indignant Hillary Clinton at the last presidential debate, less than three weeks before Election Day. What so horrified her? Donald Trump’s refusal to pledge that he would accept the legitimacy of the election.

Trump speculated that the electoral process could be rigged. Until he saw how it played out, the Republican nominee said, he could not concede that the result would be on the up-and-up.

Trump offered a three-part “rigging” claim.

There was the allegation for which he’d already been roundly derided: A foreign element could swing the election — specifically, “millions” of ineligible voters, a reference to illegal immigrants, the bane of his campaign. Further, there was the gross one-sidedness of the media’s campaign coverage — scathing when it came to him; between inattentive and fawning when it came to his opponent, whose considerable sins were airbrushed away. Finally, there was deep corruption: Clinton, he maintained, should not have been permitted to run given the significant evidence of felony misconduct in her mishandling of classified information.

Meanwhile, law-enforcement agencies of the Democratic administration bent over backwards to give her a pass, and congressional Democrats closed ranks around her — conducting themselves in committee hearings more like her defense lawyers than investigators searching for the truth.

A flabbergasted Clinton responded that she was shocked — horrified! — to hear Trump “talking down our democracy.” This was a top theme in her campaign’s closing days: The election was absolutely legitimate; Trump was traitorously condemnable for refusing to say so.

Of course, Clinton and the Democrats who parroted her would prefer that you forget that now. And given her strained relationship with the truth, they’re right to calculate that you’d never retain anything she said for very long. Nobody does. Corporate big wheels who paid to hear her vaporous speechifying couldn’t tell you a memorable thing she’d said after paying $250,000 for her “insights.”

The media-Democrat indictment of Trump’s election-rigging spiel was not rooted in patriotic commitment to the American democratic tradition of accepting election outcomes. They said what they said because they fully expected to win — all the polls said so! Hillary and her chums, Barack Obama included, would not abide a taint of illegitimacy affixing itself to her inevitable presidency.

Except she wasn’t so inevitable.

So now, there is just one very inconvenient problem for the “Russia hacked the election” narrative, the tireless media-Democrat harangue since November 8: Everything of substance that is known to the U.S. government about Russian meddling was already known in those pre-election weeks when Clinton and the Democrats were hailing the legitimacy of the process.

They’ve changed their tune not because the facts changed, but because they lost.

This is dangerous. Read the whole thing.

Leading Putin Critic Warns of Xenophobic Conspiracy Theories Drowning U.S. Discourse and Helping Trump

The MSM can't help themselves.

Democrats wage anti-Trump offensive for their own gain

This is a first: Donald Trump is guilty of an understatement, of making a molehill out of a mountain. He called the Washington furor over Russian hacking a “witch hunt” when it is actually far more sinister and dangerous.

Witch hunts end. The Washington mob aims to make sure the election never ends and that Trump can never govern.

There are no modern precedents to the scandalous attempts to smear and undermine the president-elect. Nearly nine weeks after his victory and less than two weeks before he takes the oath, the voter-nullification plot is growing more vile.

It began when the Clinton campaign and her donors tried to overturn results in key states, then tried to steal the election outright by intimidating electors of the Electoral College.

When all that failed, the establishment forces that opposed Trump all along — the Obama White House, members of both parties, the Democratic media and Big Government activists — switched their goal to thwarting his presidency. One example: They aim to deny confirmation to as many as eight Cabinet picks.

This is not mere politics. This is half the country going rogue in a fit of madness.

The Russians

“If they bomb EVEN one city in Russia, I swear, in half an hour every muslim will die” Vladimir Putin

What's not to like?

Why Trump is right about Putin

At the risk of being attacked from every side, can I suggest that it may not be in America’s best interest to make Russia an enemy? I believe that Mitt Romney was right when said that Russia is “without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe.” He was ridiculed by Obama and the press for it. But now it appears that most in the political class has become Romney on steroids, seeking to outdo each other in condemning Russia and Putin. Part of that is reaction to the fact that Putin has been handing Obama defeat after defeat in the geopolitical arena, from Crimea to the Middle East. But while it may make politicians look bold, I don’t think it’s in any one’s interest to start a war with Russia.

The fact is that the U.S. and Russia have foes in common; the Russians have their own Islamic problem. In addition, Russia, despite the fact that it has beaten Obama like a rented mule whenever it saw an opportunity, it’s still a poor nation with a shrinking population and an authoritarian, dictatorial, political system that makes Chicago look clean.

The Russian rulers are no longer ideological communists so we have an opportunity to find common ground, like Nixon in China. If Trump wins there is actually a great opportunity for an opening to Russia that makes even more sense than the opening to China.

OBAMA FROZEN OUT: Netanyahu considering offer of talks with Palestinian president in Moscow...

Given Obama's track record, it's probably a good thing to keep him out of any Mid-East peace talks.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering an offer by Russian President Vladimir Putin to host talks in Moscow between the Israeli leader and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Netanyahu's office said on Monday.

Why would Russians prefer Trump?

“Democrats liked secret-stealing Russians so much better when they called themselves Communists.”

The media has turned the hack of the DNC into an full frontal attack on Trump.  Forgotten is the fact that the hacked e-mail show that the DNC stacked the deck for Hillary when it should, by modern rules, be neutral in the selection of candidates until the votes are counted.  Now the story is that the Russians back Trump.  But while this has yet to be proven; if it's true, why?

One comment, by CJW in The American Spectator article: WikiLeaks Crashes the Party has  a plausible answer:

The next question is why would the Russians prefer Trump? The Russkies are no longer the agent of world communism with that role taken over by the Democrats so they are not our Cold War adversary. The Russians have problems with Muslim terrorists on their southern border and have had terrorist attacks on their soil just as we have.

The Russians should be our ally in fighting the Muslim terrorists, just as they were an ally in fighting the Nazis. We do not have to be friends, just allies fighting a common enemy. Maybe the Russians prefer Trump, as any normal person who cares about defeating Muslim terrorism, because they believe Trump will fight Muslim terrorism.

There are two points that are so obvious that most people overlook them because they are stuck in a time-warp where Russia = Communism.  But are they?  Or are the simply a dictatorship?  

• Russians are no longer true-believing Communists.  They are Crony Capitalists.  Russia may be led by a former KGB agent who runs the place like a dictator.  The oligarchs are definitely corrupt.  But they are no longer keepers of the Communist flame.  There are more True-Blue Communists in American academia and the Democrat Party than there are in the Russian government. Putin honeymooned in Russia because it's where he lived, not because he preferred communism to capitalism like America's Democrat/Socialist Bernie Sanders.

• The Russians have even greater problems with Muslim terrorism than we do.  It's obvious that Democrats are prevented by their ideology from working effectively to end the menace of Muslim terrorism.  Their ideology encompasses multiculturalism which which means all cultures are equal but which, in effect, allows it's true believers to elevate other cultures above American culture.  Not so Donald Trump.  

The Coming Defeat of NATO

How Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama will break the Atlantic alliance




Read the whole thing.

Now we have reached the point where a Russian general can barge into a US military office in the Middle East and order us to stop flying our aircraft over Syria. Oh, we’re still flying, for now — but you can bet that our flights are restricted and careful to the point of paralysis.

You bet President Obama’s afraid of Putin. Physically, tangibly, change-the-diaper afraid.

And as I wrote in these pages on Monday, the odds are good that Putin will order the shootdown of a US drone or even a manned aircraft, anyway. Why? Because he can.

And he enjoys it.

But Putin sees a necessity in humiliating the United States. That’s business. And yet, despite Putin’s obviousness, the White House team and its acolytes publicly scratch their heads and other body parts, saying, “We’re not certain what the Russians intend.”

So let’s help them. Here are Putin’s clear strategic goals…

* * * * *

Never before has a US presidential administration combined such naked cowardice, intellectual arrogance and willful blindness. We don’t have a president — we have a scared child covering his eyes at a horror movie.
And Putin knows it.

Russia Destroys ISIS Training Camp and Command Center That For Some Curious Reason Was Still Standing After a Year of Obama's "Degrade and Destroy" Air Campaign

Ace of Spaced comments:

I guess Obama just didn't notice the ISIS Command Center there.

Remember the ferocious air campaign that Obama said we were conducting against ISIS?

I also note that Obama and his lickspittle acolytes in the media are predicting that Putin is going to get sucked into a morass.  He's where I also agree with Ace:

I'm going to guess this is 100% wrong, because the Idiot Princeling is saying it....

Obama, feeling humiliated (as he ought to), went on to offer other impotent insults, specifically saying Putin is acting out of "weakness" and not strength of the sort shown by the feckless, incompetent coward Obama....

Obama went on to, as usual, suggest that Putin doesn't properly understand his own interests and goals and if he did he would agree to whatever faggity shit Obama is babbling about.

Obama is confusing Putin with the Republican congressional leaders who have all the courage of kicked curs.

A Week of Political Failures

Peggy Noonan:

House Republicans made it bad for themselves. Putin made it even worse for Obama.

Let me help you with that subhead Peg: 

Republican Establishment fails again.  Obama fails worse than usual.  

Noonan is the Republican Establishment writ large.  She calls Boehner's uselessness "dignity."