Posted by: Tom UK | Sep 25 2022 13:02 utc | 5
Did anybody see something at #5, I thought saw something, but it was so silly I dismissed it as gibberish.

Posted by: Guernica | Sep 25 2022 18:12 utc | 103

https://www.rt.com/news/563489-cia-75-anniversary-history/
From respect to resentment: My history with the CIA
The US Central Intelligence Agency recently turned 75. I have my reasons to wish it doesn’t see another birthday
Article by Scott Ritter in the English version of Russia Today

Posted by: Oblomovka daydream | Sep 25 2022 18:22 utc | 105

The way the MSM reports the ‘Russians recruiting convicts’ story is designed to be another example of Russian barbarism. There are no details about the actual convicts. Do they volunteer? Are they forced? Obviously the RF will weed out drug addicts and psychopaths.
Posted by: dh | Sep 25 2022 17:46 utc | 94
If you seek you will find all the answers to your convict questions, and much more; I know I did. But you can search all day long, and for weeks and months, and never get anything but lies from the western MSM.

Posted by: Guernica | Sep 25 2022 18:25 utc | 107

Dumb fucks.
Nothing else can explain.
theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/25/us-russia-ukraine-war-nuclear-weapons-jake-sullivan

Posted by: jpc | Sep 25 2022 18:27 utc | 109

@Chaka Khagan #43
Even if the LNG supply is available – be clear on just what 12.5 bcm means in the grand scheme of things: Russia supplies in the order of 400 bcm to Europe per year.
12.5 bcm won’t change a damn thing.
Ten times that won’t change a damn thing.

Posted by: c1ue | Sep 25 2022 18:30 utc | 111

how soon before Germany mobilizes?
Posted by: Wokechoke | Sep 25 2022 18:27 utc | 109
The legions of the 🌈 flag?

Posted by: jpc | Sep 25 2022 18:31 utc | 113

I don’t see any way to step back from mobilization. I guess this is what Vucic was aware of. I wonder how many hothead Serbs will fly to Russia/Ukraine now? They are keen to bash NATO in revenge. They might make excellent saboteurs.

Posted by: Wokechoke | Sep 25 2022 18:34 utc | 115

@La Bastille #90
75 million cubic meters of LNG equals roughly 45 bcm of natural gas.

Posted by: c1ue | Sep 25 2022 18:37 utc | 117

In recent years, ever since Nelson Rottenfeller died of a heart attack while getting head from a woman other than his wife, Happy; the Rottenfeller Crime Clan has maintained a low profile and covered up their tracks. It’s still the same old, same old…or as Leonard Cohen put it “Everybody knows”.
Frankly, Opport, I’m beginning to wonder about just where you happen to be coming from. Perhaps you simply are ignorant as to what goes on behind the scenes.
Posted by: aristodemos | Sep 25 2022 17:22 utc | 82

David Rockefeller, not Nelson was the last public face of the dynasty. He died in 2016, the same year Trump was selected. A former Democrat, Trump could never been selected if the Rockefellers still controlled the Republican Party, as they had for many decades.
If the Rockefeller Family is still so influential and powerful, why did they allow 2 relative lightweights, Sheldon Adelson and Robert Mercer, to buy the nomination and Presidency for Trump.
The current generation of Rockefellers are nothing more than very wealthy Trust Fund babies, and unless you can prove otherwise, you are engaging in speculation.
As for Vanguard:

Vanguard has a fairly unique structure for an investment management company. The company is owned by its funds; the funds are owned by the shareholders. Thus, the shareholders are the actual owners. In contrast to most publicly-owned investment firms, Vanguard has no outside investors other than its shareholders.
Vanguard’s structure allows the company to charge very low expenses for its funds. Due to its scope, the company has been able to reduce its expenses over the years. The average expense ratio for Vanguard funds was 0.89% in 1975. That number stands at 0.09% in 2022

As for Blackrock, see:
https://www.businessinsider.com/what-to-know-about-blackrock-larry-fink-biden-cabinet-facts-2020-12
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/kind-shareholders-own-blackrock-inc-120134015.html
Note that the single biggest shareholder in Blackrock is Vanguard.
The genius of these 2 firms is that they recognized in the 1980s that the future was in huge pools of institutional (pension funds, insurance, trusts) capital that needed professional management.
I am certain that if a representative of the Rockefeller Family Trusts called Larry Fink, he would pick up the phone. He would not for you or I. But my response to your false statement: “they have full domination of Wall $treet…as they did in October of ’29.” stands.
I have no agenda, other than to point out that today’s stock market is not anything like that of a century ago. Stocks are overvalued now for completely different reasons and they will go down as interest rates rise, shaking out highly leveraged speculative positions. However the larger pools of institutional money will prevent a massive 1929 type crash.

Posted by: Opport Knocks | Sep 25 2022 18:39 utc | 119

Posted by: plangner | Sep 25 2022 13:34 utc | 13
Posted by: petrospapas | Sep 25 2022 13:45 utc | 16
Posted by: Andy | Sep 25 2022 14:07 utc | 18
I don’t understand your questions and answers as things seems clear for this :
– Russian army can deploy anywhere in Russia.
– Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizka will be in Russia by next week.
– The 300,000 mobilized PoW must be involved in the SMO, outside Russia, in 3 months.
– Mykolaiev, Odessa, Dnipro, Kharkiv and a part of Zaporija are not in Russia, and will still not be in Russia in 3 months.
It seems clear that those new mobilized forces are not needed for the 4 new oblast of Russia but for the 4 next ones ?

Posted by: UncleTom | Sep 25 2022 18:41 utc | 121

I think Russia should make a clear threat:
“The next time any civilian buildings and people are hit in the Donbass, Russia will liquidate the Ukrainian leadership. So don’t say we didn’t warn you.”

Posted by: Nico | Sep 25 2022 18:48 utc | 123

@ c1ue | Sep 25 2022 18:37 utc | 116
Yes, World Champion of lng import in 2021 was Japan with 100 million cubic meter. Then regasified to 60 billions cubic meter of gas. As many as one Nordstream pipe.

Posted by: La Bastille | Sep 25 2022 18:51 utc | 125

This should be covered by the decades old Russian policy on nuclear weapons use: Conventional weapons attack on the Russian heartland by NATO (and it’s allies) will result in a nuclear response against the US mainland.
M.A.D – the gift that keeps on giving.
Posted by: Arch Bungle | Sep 25 2022 18:16 utc | 103
But thats the point – do the Russians really want to go down that road in order to gain the opportunity to bomb Kiev?

Posted by: Night Tripper | Sep 25 2022 19:05 utc | 127

With the US putting nuclear warnings into the news cycle, I think there is a real possibility of a nuclear false flag. The Western public has been prepared with the “Russia losing and desperate” narrative. The US would respond to the false flag immediately, before anyone can show where it truly originated, as they did in Syria. For instance, otherwise reputable people still say that Russia simply invaded Georgia without placing it within any context. Perhaps 9/11 gave them the idea (proved?) that the historical record will be whatever they say it is. How else can they “win” this ?

Posted by: FarminChimp | Sep 25 2022 19:09 utc | 129

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Sep 25 2022 17:32 utc | 86
Arch Bungle, In my view (I just went to a bog standard secondary modern school), the layout and structure of your essay, was exemplary.
I just had a slight problem with the content, especially about the UK, where I live.
I am nearly 70 years old. I suspect you are considerably older than me.
Well done for keeping your marbles. What’s your secret?
If it was 1980. I would give you top marks, but it’s 2022
Well done,
Tony

Posted by: tonyopmoc | Sep 25 2022 19:13 utc | 131

Pompeo is soon off to Taiwan again:
Kaohsiung, Sept. 22 (CNA) Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is scheduled to visit Taiwan next week for the second time,…
When I think about Sullivan, Nuland, Kagans and Blinken and then I think about Trump’s team, it is depressing.

Posted by: Chaka Khagan | Sep 25 2022 19:16 utc | 133

Hermit @66
Thanks. Critical information on the price-gougers in the Big-Oil consortium. The Rottenfellers keep adding to their trillions and so do their unindicted co-conspiritors.
Posted by: aristodemos | Sep 25 2022 17:26 utc | 84

LOL… I see you are having more flashbacks to the 1970s. The Rockefeller Brothers Family Trusts exited all their oil investments in 2014-16, in a very public manner.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29310475
Or perhaps you believe it was just a head fake and they bought all the shares back later at lower prices. Or perhaps just try to keep up.

Posted by: Opport Knocks | Sep 25 2022 19:20 utc | 135

Washington giving Kiev more sophisticated weapons.
“Ukraine has already received the US-promised systems of anti-aircraft missile systems (SAM) NASAMS, Said President Volodymyr Zelensky in an interview with CBS.
Last week’s spokesperson Pentagon General Pat Ryder reported that the United States expects the supply of two NASAMS air defense systems to Ukraine within two months.”
https://ria.ru/20220925/nasams-1819381054.html

Posted by: Republicofscotland | Sep 25 2022 19:22 utc | 137

To move millions of cubic meter of LNG.
And….
you need a few hundred of very expensive ships. Investment probably exceed 5 times NS2
https://www.rnd.de/politik/lng-engpaesse-bei-fluessiggas-tankern-und-kaum-besserung-in-sicht-LQGDZ343HRFDZM75J6M75NZCZA.html

Prices for new ships also rising
As gas prices and charter rates rise, so do the prices of newbuildings. While an LNG carrier in the most common size class of 174,000 cubic meters capacity cost about $195 million a year ago, the price is now approaching the $250 million threshold.

Posted by: La Bastille | Sep 25 2022 19:27 utc | 139

@1 why would the Russians have a shortage of willing fighters when Russian polls show most Russians agree with Putin and the ongoing fighting in Ukraine? Putin is popular in Russia and in most parts of the world. President Putin is popular Everywhere but in the west. To most of the world he is seen as a hero fighting the evil Europe and the devil called America
https://www.levada.ru/2022/03/30/odobrenie-institutov-rejtingi-partij-i-politikov/
https://www.rferl.org/amp/putin-poll-ratings-climb/31781913.html

Posted by: Mr chums | Sep 25 2022 19:29 utc | 141

#136
Those news are irrelevant because they are always outdated. The West has already shipped way more than officially announced.
I still think Russia should keep the stuff, mercenaries etc. from getting in in the first place, and if it means flattening the whole border region, so be it.
Russia should really isolate Ukraine in every way, destroy telecommunication, TV, radio etc.

Posted by: Nico | Sep 25 2022 19:33 utc | 143

CarlD@65:
The other day somebody posted a 20 second video of a drone just blasting the Hell out
of a target. It really had a peculiar sound, perhaps it was a Geran2.

Posted by: morongobill | Sep 25 2022 19:34 utc | 145

The chatter in the West about Putin’s “threat” of nuclear weapons is growing every day.
It could be usual populace-numbing propaganda.
But I worry that something else is afoot. I imagine there are elements in State Department that want to push Russia into using a tactical nuclear device in Europe as a way of instigating a full-on war between Russia and NATO in Europe.

Posted by: WJ | Sep 25 2022 19:52 utc | 147

Opport knocks@118:
I think you can add another venerable name to that list of trust fund babies-
Rothschilds. They are way past their expiration date also.
Sure I will be castigated for doubting their status, at least by the Jewish cabal conspiracy types, ” it’s all the fault of the Jews!”

Posted by: morongobill | Sep 25 2022 19:53 utc | 149

Posted by: Syler | Sep 25 2022 18:11 utc | 100
My wife would scratch your eyeballs out and I would just watch with amazement.

Posted by: Guernica | Sep 25 2022 20:02 utc | 151

America’s going for the biggie. Nuclear war between NATO and Russia. That’s basically the meaning of Jake Sullivan’s words today.
Bluntly put, America is ordering Russia to forgo use of nukes in self-defense or else face an “immediate and decisive” response from the US. That’s the only realistic interpretation of Sullivan’s statement.
The war is happening because the US ordered Russia to accept subversion of its national defense, by allowing the West to turn Ukraine into a NATO stronghold.
Now America’s ordering Russia to forgo winning the war – and securing its legitimate existential needs – or else it’s nukesville.
The US State Department, DoD, White House and Brussels have gone mad. Absolutely, totally insane. God save the world.

Posted by: Rudi | Sep 25 2022 20:09 utc | 153

@ Chaka Khagan 132
To lift your spirits, imagine all your aforementioned, Nudelman & Filth, hanging by the neck on makeshift gallows.

Posted by: WTFUD | Sep 25 2022 20:16 utc | 155

Because of my long interest and involvement in the legalise cannabis issue I took an interest in Russell Bongo Bentley a few years ago and occaisionally watch his videos (He was correct in predicting the SMO a week or two before it happened). I have full respect for his actions and commitment, but have small reservations about him seeming to be a “in gun we trust” ‘merican. He clearly is very passionate about what he does and patience is probably not his strong suit.
As Russia (like China Iran Syria Venezuala Cuba and other nations of the resistance) has fucked in the head, shit for brains cannabis prohibitionist laws and policies, I would be interested on Rusell’s views on the matter (and the quality of weed he gets to consume these days!). Also I wouldn’t mind hearing Putin’s answers if someone put the (cannabis) questions to him at one of his 4 hour sessions. However, both men clearly have more pressing matters of concern at the moment, so I can wait!
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/russell-texas-bentley-putin-propaganda-ukraine-interview-1315433/
POLITICS Story of How a Hardcore Texas Leftist Became a Frontline Putin Propagandist
In a contentious interview with Rolling Stone, Russell “Texas” Bentley explains why he’s in Ukraine cheering on Russian troops
BY TIM DICKINSON
MARCH 3, 2022
HOW DOES A 61-year-old former pot dealer named “Texas” end up filming videos in front of Z-marked tanks on the Russian side of the frontline in Donbas?
Russell “Texas” Bentley has gone viral this week with a YouTube video in which he wears a black leather jacket and a revolutionary’s army-green cap. “This is Tejas on the frontline with the De-Nazifiers and the Liberators of Ukraine,” he twangs with all the camp of a Tarantino character. “These guys are tough. These guys are ready. And there’s plenty of ‘em,” Bentley boasts of the Russian soldiers behind him, adding: “We’re gettin’ ready to bring the hammer down. These guys are going to save and liberate all the good people of Ukraine. And the bad people? BOOM! Kick their ass.”
YouTube pulled the video for violating its community guidelines but it’s still available on Twitter.
? pic.twitter.com/2D6PderGxD
— Bad Weapon Takes (@BadWeaponTakes) February 28, 2022
Bentley writes that his aim — which also happens to be Vladimir Putin’s aim — is to bring “Ukraine back into the Slavic family where it belongs and has been for 1,000 years.” As for the “bad people” he hopes to see the hammer dropped on? They seem to include not only the rulers of Ukraine but the leaders of his former American homeland. On VK — the Russian alternative to Facebook — Bentley posted that he was “heading west with the Liberators of Ukraine. We may stop in Kiev, we may stop on the English Channel. We may liberate the USA.”
On Tuesday, Rolling Stone reached Bentley at a hotel in Donetsk for an hour-long phone interview. Bentley describes himself as an “information warrior” for the Russian side. He has lived in the separatist areas of Eastern Ukraine since 2014 and is now a citizen of the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic as well as of Russia. “I don’t give a fuck what they think about me in the United States,” he insists. “The government — or most of the people.”
Bentley’s backstory is as wild as his present circumstance. He’s a former marijuana legalization activist who once mounted a third-party bid for the Senate in Minnesota — in the 1990 election that brought Paul Welstone to Washington — before landing in prison for felony marijuana trafficking.
He was born Russell Bonner Bentley III to a wealthy family in Texas in 1960. “I grew up in a very exclusive area of Dallas called Highland Park,” he says. “It’s basically the Beverly Hills of Dallas.” Bentley was the “black sheep” of the family as a teenager, he says, drawn to hard left causes. “I was reading Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara” he says. “I understood the Vietnamese were right to defend their land against foreign invaders, and that the United States was wrong. I understood that Fidel and Che were right to overthrow the foreign masters that had turned Cuba into a casino and bordello.” Bentley insists: “I’m anti-racist. I’m anti-imperialist. I grew up supporting people’s rights to defend themselves.” (His commitment to democracy and self-determination was less developed.)
Bentley bills himself as an “auto-didact.” He dropped out of middle school, but later got his GED and spent some time in the U.S. Army. He then waited tables and partied for years on South Padre island, on the Texas coast, playing guitar in a group called the Asbestos Band. He says his preferred genre was “cow punk” — a mix of Johnny Cash and Johnny Rotten. But when that music failed to pack in the crowds, Bentley recalls, they started covering hits from hot MTV bands like ZZ Top, the Cure, and even Bryan Adams.
Known then as “Bongo” rather than “Texas,” Bentley followed a girlfriend to Minnesota, according to profile in Texas Monthly. There, Bentley got deep into the world of marijuana legalization, running for Senate in 1990 as a member of the pro-pot Grassroots Party, whose motto was “lower taxes, higher taxpayers.” He garnered nearly two percent of the statewide vote.
In the mid-1990s, Bentley made a radicalizing trip to Cuba where his socialist leanings hardened into communism. “I went with Pastors for Peace, with Medea Benjamin from Code Pink, and a bunch of those guys,” Bentley recalls. On the island, he met a captain in the Cuban army who told him that “a communist is someone that’s willing to fight for socialism.” He vowed then: “I’m going to quit being a pussy and calling myself a socialist; I am a communist.”
In his professional life, Bentley wasn’t just promoting pot, he was dealing it — importing substantial quantities of weed from Texas to Minnesota. And by 1996, Bentley got tripped up by the DEA. He was arrested for felony trafficking and sentenced to federal prison. But only months before he was scheduled to be released in 1999, according to court documents, Bentley broke out of the minimum security facility where he was being held. “I didn’t have to dig a tunnel or take anybody hostage,” he recalls. “But I did escape from prison.”
Bentley then lived on the lam, mostly in Washington state. He took part in the anti-globalization uprising against the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle in 1999, which he says “was the last time that I was really proud to be an American.” Bentley remained a fugitive for the better part of a decade before being recaptured in 2007. “They put me in a maximum security joint till the end of my sentence.” Bentley remained under supervised release — which included a ban on intoxicants and a mandated 12-step program — until 2012.
Over the years, Bentley’s distrust of American power had been metastasizing. Today, he rattles off a list of American foreign policy sins dating from Ronald Reagan’s invasion of the island nation of Grenada and what he denounces as Bill Clinton’s “horrendous war crimes against Yugoslavia.” Growing conspiratorial, he insists that 9/11 was — at least in part — an inside job, citing his expertise in the U.S. Army as a demolition expert: “You can say what you want about building one and two, but building seven? Anyone that doesn’t understand that that was a pre-planned, pre-placed controlled demolition is either an idiot or a liar,” he claims. (Government investigators found the tower collapsed from the heat of uncontrolled fires.)
Bentley’s disgust grew through the “bogus” wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he insists the final straw was the 2011 Western military action that toppled Muammar Gadhafi in Libya. “He was one of the greatest,” Bentley says fondly of the larger-than-life dictator whom the International Criminal Court accused of war crimes. Bentley says that when “Gadhafi was brutally murdered on video, it really pissed me off.” Bentley worked out his anger by donning rock climbing gear to scale a Marines recruiting billboard in Austin, defacing it with the words “FUCK NATO” in six-foot letters.
By the time the Maidan Revolution broke out in 2014 in Ukraine — toppling the Putin-backed government in Kyiv — Bentley was primed to see the events through the looking glass. “I knew it was exactly the work of the State Department and the CIA and Soros, of course,” Bentley recalls, invoking another conspiracy theory that Hungarian billionaire George Soros pulls the strings of American foreign policy. When he saw the unrest spill over into violent clashes in Odessa, Bentley sympathized with wounded pro-Russian separatists.
Then Bentley came across video from the aftermath of an explosion in Luhansk, in eastern Ukraine, that local separatists blamed on a Ukrainian air strike. He recalls a video of a dying young woman with her legs blown off. “Her eyes looked into my soul,” he says, earnestly. “She was asking me, ‘What are you going to do about this? Are you going to go hold hands across America for peace, or sing Kumbaya?’ And I said, ‘No, I’m going to go kill some of the dudes that did this.’ And I have,” he insists.
Determined to head to the frontlines in Donbas, Bentley broke up with his yoga-instructor girlfriend, quit his job as an estimator for a tree-trimming company, and booked a flight for Rostov-on-Don, a Russian city on the Black Sea. Before he left Texas, he recorded a song about his belief that this was “armageddon” and he was choosing his side with “Novorussia.” He sang: “The U.S. is wrong, and I’ll do more to right it than just write this song.”
Bentley, then 54, was an unlikely foreign fighter. He didn’t speak Russian at the time, but made his way to the war-torn city of Donetsk where he hooked up with a fellow Russian-sympathist expat, a writer from Italy, who showed him around and helped Bentley hook up with the Vostok Battalion — a militia group linked to the Russian intelligence service.
“When I came here, I didn’t think I would live through the winter, bro,” says Bentley, who peppers his speech with surfer pronouns like dude and bro. “I didn’t hardly speak Russian. It was a major war with a full-on National Army against the people’s militia. And I was on the little guys’ side,” he says, adding he believed he was, “defending good people against abjectly evil people.”
Bentley has lived in the contested separatist regions of Donbas ever since, surrounded by a war that’s killed an estimated 14,000, with allegations of abuses and needless civilian casualties on both sides. Bentley says he’s since served as a military policeman and an “information warrior” — an English language propagandist for the Russian side, hosting a podcast called “Radio Free Donbas” and filming YouTube videos of the struggle in the region. He emphasizes he’s a volunteer for the cause: “I don’t get paid by the Donetsk People’s Republic. I don’t get paid by the Russians. I don’t get paid by anybody.”
Bentley became a citizen of the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic in 2017, and became a citizen of Russia in 2020. Today, he grows belligerent when pressed on the contradictions of his decision to side with an authoritarian like Putin. ”What about Putin poisoning his political rivals?” I ask him, referring to Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader who blames the Kremlin for poisoning him with a powerful nerve agent.
Bentley shoots back: “Are you really that stupid or are you pretending to be that stupid?” He insists that it’s “a fucking question that only an idiot would fucking ask.” Bentley underscores that the alleged poisoning victims are still living. “Do you think that if Vladimir Putin, the head of the most powerful military in the world today, wanted to kill somebody that [he] would fail?” he asks. “That’s a really stupid question.”
Like Putin, Bentley decries the Ukranian military as the sum of all evil, blasting them as “genuine, mass-murdering Nazis.” Bentley embellishes that the Ukrainian ranks are also swelled by “thousands of ISIS cannibals.”
Invocations of Nazis are still politically potent in Russia, which suffered unfathomable losses at the hands of Hitler’s armies in World War II. But while Ukraine, like many nations, has extremist right-wing factions, there is no evidence its military is teeming with Nazis. To the contrary, Ukraine’s popularly elected president is Jewish, and several of his relatives were killed in the Holocaust. The United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum has denounced Putin for having “misrepresented and misappropriated Holocaust history” by “claiming falsely that democratic Ukraine needs to be ‘denazified.’” Shortly after I spoke to Bentley, news broke that Russian forces had shelled a Holocaust memorial in Kyiv.
I ask Bentley why he thinks anyone who calls themselves an “information warrior” should be trusted as an honest broker.
“In every information war, there’s two sides,” he says.
“And you see yourself as on the side of truth?” I ask.
“The evidence speaks for itself,” he insists.
In the current conflict, Bentley boasts that “Russia is liberating Ukraine from foreign occupation.” I ask why the world is not seeing Russian troops greeted as liberators, and Ukranians are instead hunkering down and with AK-47s and Molotov cocktails preparing to defend their cities. “How in the hell can you even think you’re qualified to have an opinion on that?” Bentley snaps. “I was, today, 50 kilometers inside what was, two days ago, under Ukrainian Nazi occupation and the dudes there, the women there, had tears in their eyes thanking us for coming to liberate them after eight years of terrorism and oppression. How do you dare to say that?”
With the conversation growing heated, I ask a more muted question: If Bentley knows why Russian tanks have been marked with a “Z.” He says he’s heard differing explanations, from the swashbuckling — “the mark of Zorro” — to the mundane, deriving from the Russian word for west, zapad, which indicates the direction they’re traveling. “But I have my own personal theory,” he adds, “and it is that the ‘Z’ stands for Zelensky’s zhopa. Zelensky, of course, is the puppet president of Ukraine,” he says. “And zhopa is the Russian word for ‘ass.’ So all those machines are going to Zelensky’s ass. That’s my theory.”
Carrying on a conversation with Bentley is challenging. Though we share a common language, he’s committed himself to an alternate reality. “With U.S. politicians and mainstream media, including Rolling Stone,” he tells me, “everything they say is a lie. It is 180 degrees — the opposite direction from what is true.”
What is Bentley’s version of the truth? “Believe me, bro, this is very clear cut,” he says. “This is the battle, not just of Ukraine. This is the battle between good-and-evil for the future of the world. And right now, it’s looking like the world might just have a chance because us and our friends are kicking some Nazi ass right now.”
In reality, the balky Russian blitz of Ukraine has brought terror and bloodshed to a prosperous European nation, whose only real offense has been to chart a course independent of the aims of an unstable strongman in Moscow, who yearns to recapture the glory of a Russian empire.
Before he hangs up, Bentley signs off with a chilling little prayer for the battles ahead:
“May God protect the innocent,” he says. “And may the rest of us get everything that we deserve.”

Posted by: tucenz | Sep 25 2022 20:17 utc | 157

The US State Department, DoD, White House and Brussels have gone mad. Absolutely, totally insane. God save the world.
Posted by: Rudi | Sep 25 2022 20:09 utc | 152
Assholes who don’t understand consequences.
Says all about us education doesn’t it.

Posted by: jpc | Sep 25 2022 20:23 utc | 159

Posted by: Chaka Khagan | Sep 25 2022 15:47 utc | 43
How does Germany get LNG?
– Germany has leased four floating storage
and regasification units (FSRUs) to quickly
start importing liquefied natural gas (LNG)
directly and replace Russian volumes.
– Two of the FSRUs will be stationed in
Wilhelmshaven and Brunsbuettel, able to
jointly handle up to 12.5 billion cubic
metres a year .Aug 24, 2022
But… Those are supposed to be working for january… AND the “normal” imports of gaz by Germany is about 89 bcm a year, “small” part from russia.
https://www.atlasbig.com/en-us/countries-natural-gas-imports.
Problem yet to be solved…

Posted by: UncleTom | Sep 25 2022 20:27 utc | 161

‼️🇺🇦🇷🇺The Ukrainian armed forces threw armored groups into demilitarisation in the DPR in vain, trying to surround Lyman
▪️Today AFU with two armored groups attempted to breachAllied’s defenses from Karpovka towards Shandrigolovo.
▪️AFU were pinned down by the fire of MLRS. Two tanks, two BMPs, trucks, and infantry in the counterattack,were demilitarsied,the surviving fighters retreated.
▪️The second armored group succeeded in breaking through to the outskirts of Shandrigolovo, where Allied motorized riflemen engaged them. Using artillery and anti-tank-guided missiles, two more tanks and three BMPs were demilitarised. Caught in the firing pit, the second armored group was demilitarised
https://t.me/azmilitary11/22092

Posted by: unimperator | Sep 25 2022 20:34 utc | 163

@156 tucenz
Like Putin, Bentley decries the Ukranian military as the sum of all evil, blasting them as “genuine, mass-murdering Nazis.” Bentley embellishes that the Ukrainian ranks are also swelled by “thousands of ISIS cannibals.”
He sounds rational and sane.

Posted by: Tom UK | Sep 25 2022 20:42 utc | 165

In my experience, when someone warns someone in public that they better not do something nefarious, it’s because that first someone is about to do it, or has done it and kept news thereof on the qt. This is my thought when Biden people warn Russia against using nukes. Besides, in this case it’s a weak move, Russia already warned Biden people not to use nukes.
I am getting the sense that Nuland/CIA have lost interest in Zelensky and his lack of success for them. And are not a little afraid of what Russia has shown she can do. They won’t renounce their enmity for all things Russian, but they also know the country they nominally represent is not behind them and do not have industrial capacity to fight Russia even if they wanted to. US military recruiting and retention are disaster-land since AUG21.
In other words, CIA/Nuland are like Richard III at Bosworth Field, without the support of their army. They are testing other proxies, as Richard did, to carry on for them against Russia, their nemesis, but finding it difficult to conjure a country large and capable enough to get the job done. Besides, they had their shot at Russia in the 90s, and blew it. One doesn’t behave like a jerk and expect those on the receiving end to like you, not unless you’re certifiable to begin with.

Posted by: The Rev. David R. Gr | Sep 25 2022 20:49 utc | 167

Why is the US issuing threats seemingly unafraid of retaliation ?
Posted by: Deplorable Commissar | Sep 25 2022 19:04 utc | 125
We don’t really know they are issuing threats, certainly not on the basis of words alone uttered by some bloviating hack in the administration. The Russians have made it abundantly clear that any clear involvement of US/NATO forces in the conflict would trigger Russian retaliation against Western command and control centers. The collective West knows this and knows that it cannot defend its territory against any such retaliatory attack.
So, if the threats are communicated to the Russians at all, they are dealt by the Russians in the same way the Chinese blew off Blinken’s veiled threats by telling him that the US is not in a position to issue any threats. It is much more likely, however, it’s all for show. That in reality the US swaggers around pretending to issue threats in order to reassure its vassals that the big boss is still in control and powerful enough to order people around.

Posted by: Pagan | Sep 25 2022 20:52 utc | 169

Strelkov is going on about Russia declaring war. That won’t happen unless NATO actually attacks Russia directly. He’s not factoring in what a declaration of war means under the UN system and international law. Declaring war would make it almost impossible for any other country to continue supporting Russia. It’s the same reason why Ukraine hasn’t declared war on Russia. It’s why nobody declares war. And it sure as shit is why Putin of all people won’t be declaring war.
But after the referendums, the actual Russian military will move into the new oblasts (it might already be there but not doing much of anything) and something similar to a CTO will loosen Putin’s SMO rules. The mobilized troops won’t go to the front as combat troops for the most part but might be near enough. Russia still needs to maintain a ready reserve of regular troops to stop NATO from doing something stupid elsewhere. It seems like a fair amount of troops could also be moved from the Far East if needed since it’s unlikely the Chinese will invade.
The US is hoping for a nuke to turn this whole thing around.

Posted by: Lex | Sep 25 2022 20:59 utc | 171

The Club of Rome’s 1972 publication The Limits To Growth was a Malthusian blueprint on how the human population needed to be reduced in order to prevent an ecological collapse, which in itself was merely a disguised version of the abhorrent eugenicist ideas that were circulating in the early part of the 20th century and eventually died out with Hitler. ”
Tony
Posted by: tonyopmoc | Sep 25 2022 20:37 utc | 163

I remember the “Club of Rome” days, that was during my University Years and it was closely followed in the Faculty of Environmental Studies. Maurice Strong was the high profile Canadian member of the group. Unlike many, I do not find the discussion of eugenicist ideas “abhorrent”, but its practice along ethno-cultural lines most certainly is.
The issue is now self correcting, birth rates in almost all countries are now below the replacement rate. Populations are only increasing due to people living longer and immigration. The bigger issue is that the big population increases are happening in the lower IQ countries.

Posted by: Opport Knocks | Sep 25 2022 21:21 utc | 173

I just want to say that all this talk about recruiting convicts to the Army is merely a smokescreen. The UK Army has convicted criminals in its army as does the USA.
However, let’s not forget that, within 2 weeks of the start of the SMO Ze signed a Decree that Prisoners should be released and given arms to fight with. Many of those released from prison in Ukraine following this are actuly very dangerous including murders rapists and extremely violent offences in their record.
I read I think it was in Grayzone a few weeks ago that one of the commanders of a unit is wanted in Poland for an extremely violent murder. The soldiers in this unit have made substantial formal complaints about him including severe abuse, bullying and more

Posted by: Jo Dominich | Sep 25 2022 21:29 utc | 175

I see Africa was belatedly noticed in the thread discussion. Barflies must have missed this, “‘Attack on Russia is Attack on Africa’, Ugandan Commander of Land Forces Says”:

During Sergei Lavrov’s tour of Africa in July, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni assured the Russian foreign minister that “if Russia makes mistakes then we tell them. But when they have not made a mistake we cannot be against them.”
Uganda’s military would treat aggression against Russia as aggression against the African continent, Land Forces commander Muhoozi Kainerugaba has indicated.
“President Putin does not have to threaten nuclear war. We hear him. An attack on Russia is an attack on Africa!” Kainerugaba wrote in a tweet Saturday.

Too bad more info isn’t available, although IMO Uganda’s sentiments are shared by many African nations.
Earlier this month after the Eastern Economic Forum, RT reported the following:
“Nigeria looks to Russia to help end dependence on the West: Nigeria wants to improve ties and deepen cooperation with its major trade partner Russia, entrepreneur and co-founder of the DevCA Initiative David Okpatuma told RT at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.
“Okpatuma explained that he would like to see a broadening of frontiers, as well as ‘the shifting of focus from a bipolar world to a multipolar world, where every country is able to harness its own resources … and develop itself before seeking external collaborations and support’….
“The businessman noted that Nigeria has similar natural resources to Russia, saying: ‘We can learn from Moscow in developmental aspects. We’ve seen how Russia is able to develop its [resources] and create more sustainable wealth for its people.’
“He added: ‘We want to make sure that we can improve our GDP, that we are sustainable, that we are not co-dependent on the West or other countries in regards to creating improved livelihoods for our people and ensure that we build better friendship [with Russia] as we grow along.'”
It should be recalled that Russia and Nigeria signed an agreement on military cooperation last August, and they just had consultations over hydrocarbon production.
There’re a great many events happening in Africa, but media still treats it like a Black Hole and so it doesn’t get much discussion.

Posted by: karlof1 | Sep 25 2022 22:00 utc | 177

Referendums mandate mobilization
The war has turned from a Ukrainian civil war into a war between NATO and Russia. The West is fighting Russia with a Ukrainian proxy army. But Russia is also using the Donbass proxy army for its defense.
If the war is about defending Russia’s western borders, then the LPR and DPR soldiers have the right to ask: “why are we fighting in the trenches, when Russia is doing practically nothing?”
The referendums clear up the situation, but they also mean that Russia now has to take over the defense of Donbass. The Donbass conscripts who have been in the trenches for half a year have the right to demand that they be sent home and others take their place at the front lines.
For this Russia has to mobilize 300,000 men.

Posted by: Petri Krohn | Sep 25 2022 22:13 utc | 179

When the leaves change then fall the Ukrops lose their cover and they will be bombed to smithereens.

Posted by: Lou Cypher | Sep 25 2022 22:21 utc | 181

Tom cUcK’s reply at 121 made me laugh. What a buffoon.

Posted by: RDF2 | Sep 25 2022 22:23 utc | 183

“Some observers suggest NATO directs the sacrifice of Ukraine people to weaken Russia, while NATO leaders stay safe. People with “no skin in the game” make the decisions for others.”
Dfg @131
NATO will fight until the last dead Ukrainian.

Posted by: RDF2 | Sep 25 2022 22:33 utc | 185

@Paul Damascene #184, genuinely curious what escalations you think Russia has available on the conventional side? Attacking NATO countries would bring NATO into the war, so that won’t happen. No air superiority means no strategic bombers or fighter-bomber raids behind the front line. Whatever Ukraine & partners are doing to hand off weapons seems to include excellent opsec so those can’t be interdicted with cruise missiles unless they get lucky – and it’s not reluctance, because Russia was willing to hit that foreign legion base near Lviv early in the war. Attacking “decision making centers” is floated frequently but Kyiv has excellent air defense and cruise missiles won’t take out the bunkered HQs anyway.
I think Russia is doing everything it can to succeed in the war using conventional means except commit huge masses of cannon fodder, which admittedly does seem to be changing now.

Posted by: Yenwoda | Sep 25 2022 22:38 utc | 187

@ 58 Nicodemus
Is that you JB? (Johnny Bolton). Dream Son. Dreams are free too

Posted by: Maximus | Sep 25 2022 22:43 utc | 189

When my dad was 17 he liked to fight. During one brawl he seriously injured somebody. The judge gave him the choice of Juvee and jail or Vietnam. He chose Vietnam.
Too young for combat, he was assigned to a destroyer off the coast of Vietnam that flew medical helicopter and provided logistics.
The practice of recruiting convicts still holds today. Upper class and educated criminals will sometimes have the option of working for Intelligence instead of military. One of the professional trolls who used to work this site got into the business that way.
Some sort of service for amnesty process is common to all militaries.

Posted by: Haassaan | Sep 25 2022 22:58 utc | 191

It’s more than likely that RU seriously beefing up their grouping in Ukraine will actually further reduce their losses. As these will be armed with hundreds, if not thousands additional artillery, tanks and integrated air defense systems. It will reduce the strain on the mobile defense groups currently acting as certain kind of fire brigades, and make easier to set up and fortify more static defense lines.

Posted by: unimperator | Sep 25 2022 23:03 utc | 193

Why do European men let women lead them in everything these days?
Posted by: Syler | Sep 25 2022 18:11 utc | 100
—
Equality is not a weakness. But chauvinism is. And pretty stupid at that.
Look, Europe may have a lot of faults, and what is more, there is still a plethora of colossal idiots here. But we stopped shitting in the streets and throwing feces at each other a long time ago.

Posted by: Nobody | Sep 25 2022 23:28 utc | 195

This is about taking measures, to try and avoid my family freezing to death in the coming (I suspect) artic, very cold winter
Due to the realities of the price of gas and electricity us two OAP’s face, we have subtley and gently given our son fair warning (who is currently working furiously trying to save his business – I reckon he will do it – dunno how)
We have a big old house, but we can’t afford to heat your bedroom in the attic.
Sure you and your children, are welcome to stay here, including your new baby due soon..but not in the attic. It will be too cold for a newborn baby.
Just move downstairs, into the spare bedroom, close to the hot water tank.
We can afford to keep most of our home warm, with the help of the coal I have bought, but not the attic.
he said fine
My wife and I can’t wait to see our new Grandchild
We also need some new thick curtains, and basic insulation
Just jobs to be done.
I think we have fixed the central heating, but not sure if we can afford to run it with these psychos in control, trying to kill us all.
There is something I haven’t thought of maybe a new chainsaw. We have lots of trees round here, and a fresh water stream nearby.
So its survivable.
Tony

Posted by: tonyopmoc | Sep 25 2022 23:40 utc | 197

The 300,000 have been mobilised – within 48 hours of the announcement.
But of course the msm in the west think a few pictures of traffic jams changes that reality

Posted by: Night Tripper | Sep 25 2022 23:50 utc | 199