Dmitry Orlov interview on issues including Ukraine. Straight talk as always.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6P3-Bt4THg

Posted by: unimperator | Mar 5 2024 13:05 utc | 403

@vargas | Mar 5 2024 12:28 utc | 399

We see that the ruling elites in EU have no problem in pursuing their war agenda. That proves that almost everybody agrees with this war against Russia. The only real anti-ukrainian group is the Polish peasantry because they suffer from under priced Ukro products.

Particularly in the Netherlands, the propaganda fog is almost impenetrable. All media play the same tune almost in unisono. The media and the government speak with one mouth.
There is a simple divide in the Netherlands: people who own (and watch) a tv and people who don’t. My guess is that 99% of the former category is fully programmmed to keep in line with official doctrine. Once the awareness and doubts about the programming sets in, watching dutch tv is almost unbearable. There is no middle road.
Not all people who do not watch tv are aware of the brainwashing, not even half of them. It is not a trivial undertaking to step outside of the sheep’s flock. In every day life, one has to deal with the tv drones and their groupthink does not take lightly to cognitive dissonance. Defensive reactions have been carefully preprogrammed and are updated freshly every night on the flickering altar. The propaganda works on all registers here.
The people who do not watch tv are a small minority, but their number is rising, especialy among those younger than 40 years of age. But this group is very unstructured or even atomized and has no common platforms or organizations. Fake opposition and other deadends are a lure for the unwary and naive.
The generation over 60 is almost entirely zombified. They are the only ones who may still read a newspaper. Newspapers (all owned by 2 maybe 3 holdings) and journalists have been heavily subsidized by the dutch government since at least a decade, they would have been out of business otherwise.
What I personally find the most depressing is how everything and everyone formerly (in the last century) pretending to be critical thinkers have fallen by the wayside. GLADIO has worked very effectively.
A personal anectdote is the alternative bar that I occasionally visit. While I am happy that such a noncommercial place has managed to survive in the thoroughly neoliberalized Netherlands, I find the original spirit wanting. They proudly participated in demonstative protests against “suppression of Iranian women” (but nobody mentioned the plight of their Saudi neighbors). Even worse, I spotted a poster there advocating the Ukraine’s cause, with an explicit adhortation “not to criticize NATO”. Another poster expressed solidarity with “anarchists in Russia”. There are no posters mentioning Assange.
It takes only one busy idiot to put up these posters, I suspect. But none of the bystanders seem to have a notion of how ridiculous the presence of these posters is. I did point it out to some oldtimers who should know better (they certainly used to pretend), but all respose I got was inebriated disinterest or at best silently dismissive awkwardness.

Posted by: Lurk | Mar 5 2024 13:45 utc | 405

@Tichy | Mar 5 2024 12:59 utc | 402
All fascist and nazi groups in Europe a tightly managed by secret services, even more tightly than the fake communists. As state secret services have a natural affinity for fascism, these are their favorite toys. Their “pro-Russia” stance is only a bait. Best to steer clear of such groups, for a lot of other reasins as well.

Posted by: Lurk | Mar 5 2024 13:51 utc | 407

Posted by: HERMIUS | Mar 4 2024 23:22 utc | 311

I have an inkling that the explosives on the crimea bridge may well have been planted some time ago. Thats what happened with the Nord Stream attack. It enabled Biden to say “We will stop the flow of gas, believe me”.
Also remember Nuland’s remark a week or so ago about a “surprise”.

What are you talking about?
what explosives on the “crimea bridge” ???

Posted by: ghiwen | Mar 5 2024 14:00 utc | 409

Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Mar 5 2024 9:12 utc | 376
like a right CIPSO agent he SELECT ( or got a list from his superiors ) only these sources / Tg channels that support HIS narrative
but on the other hand, his CIPSO buddy micron (btw, where is he?) describes TG channels that don’t fit his scheme as follows
Posted by: Micron | Jan 12 2024 20:54 utc | 46
It’s really amazing how pointless and useless such TG reports can be.

Posted by: ghiwen | Mar 5 2024 14:07 utc | 411

Antony Blinken: US Deputy Secretary to step down in coming weeks
US Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland will leave her post in the coming weeks, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, Report informs, citing TASS.

https://t.me/geromanat/22034

Posted by: Down South | Mar 5 2024 14:12 utc | 413

Not all people who do not watch tv are aware of the brainwashing, not even half of them. It is not a trivial undertaking to step outside of the sheep’s flock.
Posted by: Lurk | Mar 5 2024 13:45 utc | 405

Exactly. But just as a side note: It is a worthwile endeavour to take the time – e.g. on a quite evening – to think how (and IF!) and at what time in life it came about that oneself has stepped outside of the flock. When did it happen and why? And what is the difference to the many – often very intelligent – people who are still part of that flock? What can be learned from ones own experience about the conditions that such a break in perception may happen?
I don’t want to discuss that here – but to only point out that this can be an interesting reflection.

Posted by: Helmuth von Moltke | Mar 5 2024 14:28 utc | 415

@Helmuth von Moltke | Mar 5 2024 14:28 utc | 415
Personally I was quite roughly shocked out of it, a long time ago. A personal and individual catastrophe of sorts. This makes me not very optimistic about the chances of others to break free from the oppressive concensus.
Human group instincts are strong and run deep. Stronger and deeper than our little minds. The “powers that be” behind the scenes have used it to knead and lead the flock for ages. Managing the comfort zone is an important technique.

Posted by: Lurk | Mar 5 2024 14:42 utc | 417

Concern troll does more concern trolling. Yawn.

Posted by: Lurk | Mar 5 2024 14:44 utc | 419

Dmitry Orlov has been right about Victoria Nuland all along. Victoria Nuland announced plan to resign in coming weeks.
She is a huge war criminal, and the war crimes know no borders. So people in USA are now figuring out who gets left holding the bag. Not Vicky, though.
Posted by: unimperator | Mar 5 2024 14:08 utc | 412

Nothing will change in terms of policy, she will keep pulling strings from behind the scenes.
What changes somewhat is that this unties the Kremlin’s hands to off her in a discrete way, without violating the self-imposed constraints on not targeting official leadership. If someone deserves it, that is her — how much death and suffering has that witch caused? Preferably something slow and painful too — e.g. polonium poisoning would be a nice touch.
But for that to happen someone needs to grow a pair — if they were ever going to do something like that, there were plenty other people not in official leadership positions who could and should have been offed to send a message.

Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Mar 5 2024 14:51 utc | 421

A tiny bit of information in this thread though mostly buried under an avalanche of garbage.
The Resident quote by down south on Zelensky. The brits are well and truly upping the anti now. They will be struggling to keep their man Ze in power once the election date passes. Desperate to get the Americans back in the fight, the Brits are trying to provoke Russia into striking within a nato country. The flights over the black sea that are used for the naval drone attacks most likely American?
Just a matter of waiting to see which way Russia plays this. Perhaps something will occur after the Russian election, perhaps not. If we could see what Russia’s plans re then so could the Brits and the Yanks. If Russia does make some move in response to he recent escalation, then it is likely to be something no one has suspected.
And it won’t be like the kneejerker armchair general’s moves here which would play directly into the hands of the Brits.
One thing worth remembering is that in less than three weeks, Zelensky will become the self appointed president of Ukraine, not an elected president. That combined with lack of equipment and huge casualties on the frontlines… a perfect recipe for uprising, revolution or whatever it will be called.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Mar 5 2024 15:12 utc | 423

Pretty foolish conduct by the US were sb’s thesis correct – trashing the only truly productive economy in the entire West (Germany). China has the Chinese economy and potentially Taiwan’s – US has nowhere outside the Far East except Germany.
Russia really really needs to find an answer to those marine drones / torpedoes though, no doubt about it. I think I said that last time and the time before. Will it make a difference at the front? Maybe not, but the moral effect … not that morale will stop Ukraine losing.
Are they actually surface craft or are they just under the water? Surely there are ways of detecting both possibilities?

Posted by: YetAnotherAnon | Mar 5 2024 15:22 utc | 425

how is it possible to sink navy ships so easily?
Posted by: magicmirror | Mar 5 2024 11:56 utc | 393
The naval drones really are a game-changer. Small and nearly invisible to radar, quick moving, to spot them visually in a massive sea would be like finding a needle in a haystack, they can self-navigate to the target area in “dark” mode not communicating or emitting detectable EMF. Once at the target area, Starlink goes on and they are human controlled. They come in vast numbers to ensure a swarm attack – impossible to get them all. Active satellite surveillance means NATO knows the exact location of all the Russian ships at all times.
The obvious countermeasure seems to me to sail ships in fleets, with small, low value ships on the outer rings, or even a fleet of defensive drones, meaning that the offensive drones would waste themselves on these targets first.
Russia on the other hand seems to be slow to learn and continues cruising their capital ships about solo. Overconfidence perhaps.

Posted by: Moonraker | Mar 5 2024 16:13 utc | 427

Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Mar 5 2024 14:42 utc | 418
What do you actually want to tell us? Russia loses a few small ships, which is unfortunate, but it in no way prevents it from successfully winning this war. That’s what matters. The Anglo-Saxons rely much more on ships for their power than the Russians. When it comes down to it, Russia can still destroy these big targets – and so can China. It also depends on the moment when maximum damage is to be done.

Posted by: Oliver Krug | Mar 5 2024 17:59 utc | 429

Hm. So, this is quite off-topic, and if b. wants to he can trashcan it… but “group-think” is almost always used in a negative meaning, and that’s an individualistic, liberal attitude. Surely pooling resources is quantitatively and qualitatively superior than going at it your own? No thinking takes place in a vacuum.
Posted by: Tichy | Mar 5 2024 18:02 utc | 430

Yes, absolutely! By now means I meant it like a libertarian or extremely individualistic viewpoint.
Your example of the Swedish Communist Youth is exactly what I mean. The majority of people buy the whole opinion package of their society and shy away from anything which could jeopardize those opinions, because they are afraid to fall out of the group.
In my experience this effect is actually stronger with intelligent people who have some kind of higher position in society (say, a professor, a mayor, a judge) than it is with dumb people who are low in social hierarchy.
This is because it’s more a matter of feeling than of thinking. If society has treated you good you get into cognitive dissonance if you believe that there’s something fundamentally wrong with society.
On the other hand if it has outcast you in some way, you are more open to see the dark sides of society and to form your own opinions.
I didn’t mean that humans should live as isolated individuals or anything like that. But also not as drones in a bee hive or a Borg cube.

Posted by: Helmuth von Moltke | Mar 5 2024 19:15 utc | 431

Lurk | Mar 5 2024 14:42 utc | 417
*** Human group instincts are strong and run deep. Stronger and deeper than our little minds. The “powers that be” behind the scenes have used it to knead and lead the flock for ages. Managing the comfort zone is an important technique.***
That’s why “Nudge” units were set up. To manipulate the public.
Co-deviser of these units is Cass Sunstein, whose wife is Samantha Power.
The UK unit was set up by the Cameron government, and then allegedly “privatised” to make it completely unaccountable.
These Nudge Units are used by those who rule against what they see as their ultimate (and disposable) enemy — those they rule.

Posted by: Cynic | Mar 5 2024 19:20 utc | 433

Moonraker | Mar 5 2024 16:13 utc | 427
*** The obvious countermeasure seems to me to sail ships in fleets, with small, low value ships on the outer rings, or even a fleet of defensive drones, meaning that the offensive drones would waste themselves on these targets first.***
The most effective countermeasure could be several Poseidon nuclear torpedos blowing the west coast off California. But since those who rule the USA are certain Putin would never dare to do such a thing, they couldn’t care less about such theoretical possibilities.
Flattening London, Brussels, Berlin and Paris could be alternatives — but of course, Putin being basically one of theirs anyway, they know he would not do that either.
Hence, only one side has “deterrence”.

Posted by: Cynic | Mar 5 2024 19:37 utc | 435

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4T5gmAndFk
Economist JK Galbraith on why sanctions backfired.
If you go back to the period before the introduction of sanctions in 2014, and even up until 2022, the Russian economy was very heavily colonized by western firms. That was true, again, automobiles, is true in aircraft. It was true in everything from fast food restaurants, big box stores. Western firms were present all throughout the Russian economy. A great, many of them, not all, but a great many of them either chose to exit Russia or were pressured to exit Russia after early 2022. So on what terms did they leave? Well, they were required if they were leaving permanently to sell their capital equipment, their factories and so forth, to, let’s say a Russian business, which would get a loan from the Russian banks or maybe have other sources of financing at a very favorable price for the Russians. So effectively a lot of capital wealth, which was partly owned by the west, has been transferred to Russian ownership. And you now have an economy which is moving forward and has the advantage compared to Europe of relatively low resource costs because Russia’s a great producer of resources, oil and gas and fertilizer and food stuffs and so forth. And so, while the Europeans are paying maybe twice in Germany what they were paying for energy, the Russians are not, they’re paying perhaps no more and perhaps less than they were paying before the war. So again, I characterize the effect of the sanctions, in fact as being in certain respects, a gift to the Russian economy.

Posted by: YetAnotherAnon | Mar 5 2024 19:52 utc | 437

Amazingly there seems to be a prospect of renewing the Russian/Ukrainian gas pipeline deal.
https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/91649
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has suggested that instead of OGTSU (Ukrainian gas pipeline operator) signing a transportation contract with Russia, European companies could sign them, meaning the latter would effectively purchase gas on the Russia-Ukraine border and then task Ukraine with transporting that gas.
If Ukraine sticks to its guns and does stop transporting Russian gas through its territory, the transit system operator could declare sections of pipeline or other infrastructure decommissioned. But if they are considered operational, then European companies could book transport capacity on a daily, monthly, or yearly basis—just as they do when arranging the delivery of gas from the LNG terminal in Belgium to their domestic markets.
There are certain benefits for Ukraine in continuing to transport Russian gas. Mechanisms best described as “virtual reverse” and “virtual transportation” enabled Ukraine to maintain physical supplies of gas even when it stopped buying gas from Gazprom and switched to purchases from European traders. Even now, when Ukraine consumes significantly less gas due to being at war, and its own deposits are almost enough for its needs, this system is useful.
The issue is that gas extraction and consumption centers are not always located where they need to be, and this is where the virtual transportation comes in. Now, even the process of transporting gas from Ukrainian fields to Ukrainian consumers is effectively a virtual one: it is Russian gas that is sent to some areas (especially in the southern part of the country), while Ukrainian gas goes into the Slovak gas transportation system. Without an external supply of gas from Russia, Ukraine would have to modify its pipeline system and run it differently.
The situation will become even more complicated if the Ukrainian economy recovers and demand for gas grows. With no Russian gas flowing through the country, Ukraine would have to buy gas from Austria, pay for its transit through Slovakia, and then organize its delivery from the western border to the center of the country where consumption is concentrated. At the same European gas exchange price that Ukraine currently pays, physically reversing the flow would cost $30–40 more per 1,000 cubic meters than it does under a virtual reverse.
In 2022, Ukraine began providing large-scale gas storage facilities in the west of the country to EU countries, and plans to keep doing so. But that business also depends to a large extent on virtual reverse and swap operations: on the ability to buy gas at Austria’s Baumgarten hub and transport it virtually to Ukrainian storage facilities free of charge. Without any Russian gas transit, such operations will be more difficult and costly.

Posted by: YetAnotherAnon | Mar 5 2024 20:07 utc | 439

I don’t think it’s a matter of intelligent vs dumb people,
Posted by: Tichy | Mar 5 2024 19:35 utc | 434

Yes, that’s what I said. It’s an emotional matter, in my opinion. Namely the avoidance of cognitive dissonance.

Posted by: Helmuth von Moltke | Mar 5 2024 20:32 utc | 441

Posted by: Waldorf | Mar 5 2024 11:32 utc | 390
>>>Russia is a land power historically … <<< Well yes, but tradition does not equal the present. Russia presently has 3 of the best navies on the oceans. And with a coastline as long as it has it can protect its own beaches pretty damn well and attack any other land mass it wants to. - and at the end of the day the SMO's outcome is going to be determined on land.<<< Well, yes. But surface ships and subs are vital and effective missile launch pads for land targets, as we have seen from the Black Sea Fleet. So your two statements form a strawman. >>>In the “war of attrition”, Egypt used a Soviet missile to sink the Israeli destroyer Eilat in 1967. One of the first sinkings of its kind. Useful for Egyptian morale but changed nothing much.<<< Well, again, different times and places. One ship, pfft. But you don't see the complexity of that front ... and it IS a front. The UK/UKRs has many aims to gradually neuter the whole Black Sea Fleet. In the big picture, it wants to prevent RF ship missiles upon Ukraine; disable much of Crimean and Kersch-Sochi AD which is on those ships; make Sevastopol *and Rostov* further inland closed shipyards; keep the Bosphorous CLOSED for as long as it can (or else RF could boost its presence in the bathtub); prevent possibility of an Odessa amphibious storming; strain Russian economy (a few $6 billion ships is a lot of sunken money for replacement); re-open Ukrainian shipping for inwards weapons smuggling; and of course PR for Ukrainian morale. Also, the Black Sea has numerous RF and UKR oil and gas rigs. These too are assets which come in to naval play but have provably not been targets for fear of an eco catastrophy. So, in short, it's waaaay more complex than your coping of "a few dead ships mean nothing" ... to the Donbass advancement. It's way bigger than a land war.

Posted by: Jake Blanchard | Mar 5 2024 21:20 utc | 443

The Russians are being really smart. They’re gradually moving west, but they’re doing it slowly in a way that they are gradually obliterating Ukraine. Every town that they take is being left in shambles, look like moonscapes. What this means is there is no population left to subjugate, no saboteurs behind the lines to deal with. Just future farmland.By the time they get done, the entire population of Ukrainials in the areas Russia controls will be gone. It really simplifies things, because one of the worries when you take over a country like this is that you have to deal with a hostile population in the areas you’ve subjugated. By destroying these towns/cities and driving out the people, Russia won’t have to deal with this problem. Smart.

Posted by: Kellen Cramer | Mar 6 2024 4:07 utc | 445