Understanding Russia & Putin

[vizual]

You get the sense from that interview that Putin is like the main character in the book "I am Legend"(spoiler); where he is fighting evil monsters all alone for such a long time that he hasn't realized that somewhere along the line he has become the real monster. And the monsters he was fighting aren't even there anymore.

[Sucuk Ekmek]

6 hours ago, Fleetinglife said:

The Soviet Union collapsed overnight without a war, without an invasion. Putin and the KGB didn’t understand what happened. They failed. I think he has a strong feeling of guilt.

 

'' What the public record suggests is that with the beginning of the first Bush Presidency in 1989, George H.W. Bush initiated a program of covert economic warfare to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union. The name of this program appears to be Project Hammer, a previously reported, multi-billion dollar covert operation, ‘third world investment program’ whose investments remain shielded.

  This program consisted of four major covert operations including:

1) Theft of the Soviet treasury,

2) Currency destabilization of the Ruble,

3) Funding of the KGB Generals’ August 1991 coup against Gorbachev, and

4) Takeover of the key energy and defense industries in the Soviet Union.

At its inception, the program was conducted well within policy framework of the U.S. government as defined by several Executive Orders authored by Vice President Bush and signed by President Ronald Reagan. There is good reason to believe that the plan was initially formulated by Reagan’s CIA Director, William Casey. During World War II, before Casey headed OSS operations in Europe, he worked for the Board of Economic Warfare and his role was “pinpointing Hitler’s economic jugular and investigating how it could be squeezed.” Many of the program operatives were probably engaged through official CIA and National Security channels. However, as a result of the experience gained by the Bush cabinet and its private sector counterparts during the secretive Iran-Contra and Ferdinand Marcos gold operations (which will be explained in short order), the execution of that program would be accompanied by two new assumptions:

1) Using covert and illegal funding for a policy not approved by Congress would remain acceptable. Under George H.W. Bush, Congressional oversight of covert operations could be ignored with impunity;

2) The American public and their representatives in Congress were too pre-occupied with their own lives to be worried about what happened in foreign lands, even if those actions violated the law and the constitution. Emboldened by the lack of consequences for subverting the U.S. constitution and breaking international law during the Iran-Contra scandal, the Bush administration group known as “the Vulcans” planned a bigger drive to crush the soul of Communism once and for all. This group had graced themselves with this moniker, naming themselves after the Roman god of War – Vulcan. They waged war against the Soviet Union and Iraq under George H.W. Bush, and against Iraq and Afghanistan under George W. Bush. Belonging to this group  were

• Dick Cheney

• Don Rumsfeld

• Colin Powell

• Paul Wolfowitz

• Richard Armitage

• Condoleezza Rice The

Vulcan’s drive to bring and end to the Cold War was fueled by a covert war chest invisible to congressional oversight. This war chest would be known by several names: Black Eagle Trust, the Marcos gold, Yamashita’s Gold, the Golden Lily Treasure, the Durham Trust or Project Hammer. These same Vulcans would be brought back to power in 2000 under the administration of President George W. Bush, son of President George H. W. Bush.

The covert operations conducted by the Vulcans involved – at a minimum – potential securities fraud, money laundering and violation of Foreign Corrupt Practices act.34 In a number of situations, murder and false imprisonment seemed to be the mainstay of efforts to prevent any remorseful participants in this operation from going public with their stories. While accomplishing its objective – bringing about the demise of the Soviet Union – the program also seems to have lined the pockets of the individuals that executed this policy, at US taxpayer expense. This was done to the tune of a mere $240 billion dollars in covert and allegedly illegal bonds, which appear to have been replaced with Treasury notes backed by U.S. taxpayers in the aftermath of September 11!

 Seventeen years later in 2008, the personal financial empires of those who benefited directly from these covert securities should now stand at several trillion dollars, and are rightfully the property of various citizenries. Putin’s purge of selected oligarchs is consistent with this story. The covert securities used to accomplish the original national security objective of ending the Cold War ended up in the vaults of the brokers in the World Trade Center, and were destroyed on September 11, 2001. They came due for settlement and clearing on September 12. The federal Agency investigating these bonds – The Office of Naval Intelligence- was in the section of the Pentagon that was destroyed on September 11. To a key group of senior National Security officials who had participated in the victory of the economic cold war in 1991, the WTC, the Pentagon, the four airliners and their occupants would became ‘collateral’ damage in the ending of the Cold War. Their deaths were required to hide the existence of the Black Eagle Trust, and the covert activities it had funded for over 50 years. The alternative view of these events suggests that the destruction of these lives and buildings constituted a cover-up of continued lawlessness by a fraternity or brotherhood of businessmen and criminals often referred to as ‘the Enterprise’ in the 1980s, but has remained in the shadows since.''

Cited:

https://www.wanttoknow.info/911/Collateral-Damage-911-black_eagle_fund_trust.pdf

 

Edited March 22, 2022 by Sucuk Ekmek

[ValiantSalvatore]

There is a lot of technical historical talk. I just leave this here as I am no expert on this subject, but I find this good as a big picture view. 
 

 

[K Ghoul]

Volodya announced Russia accepts rubles only now for gas deliveries to the US and EU countries.

[Sucuk Ekmek]

1 hour ago, K Ghoul said:

Volodya announced Russia accepts rubles only now for gas deliveries to the US and EU countries.

That's a big ouch for the west. Textbook of how to  play cards, his strategies are hard to counter with populism.

[hello1234]

[vladorion]

It's not about missile strikes. It's about civilian casualties.

Syria: According to the Statista Research Department, almost 207,000 civilians had been killed by November 2020, including about 25,000 children.

Ukraine: Number of civilian casualties in Ukraine during Russia's invasion verified by OHCHR as of March 21, 2022: 2510 (The actual number is probably 2-3 times higher).

Edited March 24, 2022 by vladorion

[mojsterr]

On 22/03/2022 at 1:17 PM, PurpleTree said:

can you post some great russian electronic music?

don't know any i know german, french, italian, dutch etc. though

 

Just kidding

I don't listen anywhere close to this genre, but I do love these guy's energies. And they have grown on me and I like them now.

 

In Slovenia we also have a great electronic music scene. And DJs from all over the world love our party people.

I can't imagine going to a party in the US, where they start in the middle of the day and end at 2am.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 24, 2022 by mojsterr

[Lyubov]

What’s happening now is really bad. Russia is fucked and I’m glad. I never thought it would go this far. Ukrainian civilians killed. This has gotten far worse than anyone could of imagined. I support a full blockade against Russia at this point. All of EU needs to stop Russian energy imports. USA should share in the burden and subsidize it so the weight of it is shared evenly between every country that’s part of the fold. 

[kray]

On 3/6/2022 at 4:22 PM, Lyubov said:

If we were to take a really broad sort of overarching geographic meta perspective on this I think people will notice that a lot of this comes down to the fact that Russia is both a)geographically very vulnerable to western forces, where they can easily roll into the steppe. And b) Russia’s level of development is in contradiction / vindication of what lies west to them. Countries around them democratizing directly threatens the overall societal structure of Russia. So of course Russia wants some control over these neighboring states. This conflict very much boils down to a clash of stages. Orange center to the west, blue center to the east. 

I personally thought about the meta perspective too, but I always thought that Russia was much closer to stage orange than say China. Simply put, Russia's government, society and ideals are completely European, and Russia has had that historical relation with other European powers (France, UK, Germany, etc.) going back centuries. If anything, up until the Soviet revolution, the Russian Empire's level of spiral and economic development was at the same level of other European powers at the time. If the red revolution of 1919 never happened, Russia would be more entangled with NATO, the EU, and Europe as a whole. Not trying to show some anti-communist views here, but I personally think when the revolution did happen, it took Russia back into stage red, and ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was simply trying to rebuild, and naturally from stage red, they went into stage blue. 

[Lyubov]

1 hour ago, kray said:

I personally thought about the meta perspective too, but I always thought that Russia was much closer to stage orange than say China. Simply put, Russia's government, society and ideals are completely European, and Russia has had that historical relation with other European powers (France, UK, Germany, etc.) going back centuries. If anything, up until the Soviet revolution, the Russian Empire's level of spiral and economic development was at the same level of other European powers at the time. If the red revolution of 1919 never happened, Russia would be more entangled with NATO, the EU, and Europe as a whole. Not trying to show some anti-communist views here, but I personally think when the revolution did happen, it took Russia back into stage red, and ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was simply trying to rebuild, and naturally from stage red, they went into stage blue. 

Russia is kinda hard to fit into one spiral label. I would say it’s a fairly blue country with some sectors of the economy (educated in Moscow) trying to pull the population into orange but the values and the root of survival are largely held together by blue and some power structures are still in red like the police, military, mafia structure, etc. 

[vladorion]

8 hours ago, Lyubov said:

What’s happening now is really bad. Russia is fucked and I’m glad. I never thought it would go this far. Ukrainian civilians killed. This has gotten far worse than anyone could of imagined. I support a full blockade against Russia at this point. All of EU needs to stop Russian energy imports. USA should share in the burden and subsidize it so the weight of it is shared evenly between every country that’s part of the fold. 

https://telegra.ph/Situaciya-v-Buche-CHto-bylo-na-samo-dele-04-03

[pedro23]

5 minutes ago, vladorion said:

https://telegra.ph/Situaciya-v-Buche-CHto-bylo-na-samo-dele-04-03

Uuu boi. Genocide denying brigade is here. 

 

[pedro23]

First things first. 
Russia says it left on 31st of March. Meanwhile, it posted this: on its propaganda channels, saying that as of April the 1st they (russian troops hold the line, and are "mopping up the settlements". Any new pieces of russian propaganda to spew?

Edited April 3, 2022 by pedro23

[hello1234]

Bucha news, recently freed from the dogs army

Mass murders, dead civilian bodies laying all over the streets, many with their hands tied - russians tied their hands and then shot them while they were defenceless, naked women laying on the streets, raped and murdered, bodies of naked girls, some under 10, with torn genitals, mass graves with hundreds of dead bodies on the streets, dead bodies in sewage. 

Edited April 4, 2022 by hello1234

[erik8lrl]

 

[hello1234]

Bucha, 50 km away from Ukraine’s capital Kyiv. Photos ~1-2 day old.

 

Burnt russian truck loaded with stolen washing machines, one of the “souvenirs” the dogs tried to bring back home from their “peacekeeping mission” in Ukraine. Some of the other “souvenirs” include stolen clothes, women’s underwear, alcohol, jewelry, plastic toy cars, tv’s, laptops, blenders, other kitchen appliances, food products, money - all of this stolen from stores as well as people’s homes. 

Edited April 4, 2022 by hello1234

[vizual]

Damn, Russian soldiers are animals

[Lyubov]

Bunch of savages. We need even more sanctions agains Russia. An entire embargo and curtain up. They need to be entirely cut off from the western world including their energy exports. Even if it hurts the west some so be it, they need to be totally cut off. They can go to China for their technology needs. Don’t listen to Russian propaganda. These sanctions are most definitely having an impact by isolating the country and lowering their standard of living and destroying their air travel industry. I’m perfectly fine with the west making Russia another North Korea

[Breakingthewall]

it is strange that they have tied the hands of a 7 year old boy before killing him. it is possible that it is a farce, although it can also be true. but I bet on the fake, if I were Ukrainian I would do that montage, a good strategy