Dancing With Delusion – Military Strategy 101 with Yulia Latynina

Uncle Volodya says, "Yulia Latynina recently interviewed Mahmoud Ahmadenijad. When asked what it was like to talk with a crazy person, Ahmadenijad replied. "It wasn't so bad."

Everybody knows someone who is terrible at a particular hobby or chosen field of interest, but who stubbornly continues their pursuit of it in the face of considerable evidence that they have no aptitude for it. Motorhead and music, for example. Steven Seagal and acting. Sarah Palin and public speaking. Anybody from the Indianapolis Colts and football.

To the list, add Yulia Latynina and military strategy. Yulia Latynina and psychology. Actually, Yulia Latynina and everything to do with writing except for fiction, at which she is allegedly not bad.

It’s been some time since Yulia Latynina and this blog crossed paths; ‘way back in August of 2010, to be precise. On that occasion, as on this one, Yulia showcased her largely imaginary familiarity with military affairs. The effort resulted in an exemplary departure from reality which saw Yulia excoriating Viktor Bout for being a shitheel unscrupulous arms dealer while rapturously praising the CIA for giving Stinger missiles to the Mujahedin in Afghanistan. It proved extremely hard to draw any conclusion from her angry barking other than that Viktor Bout is a filthy criminal because he is a Russian, while the CIA is a good example of responsible social engineering because it is American.

Have the intervening months marked a sobering of judgment in Ms. Latynina; a more even-handed approach to international affairs and domestic politics? Not so you’d notice. By way – with thanks – of Moscow Exile, here is Yulia’s recent Moscow Times piece, in which she attempts to persuade the reader that Vladimir Putin intends to go to war with Georgia immediately after the March 4th presidential elections in order to silence his opposition with a patriotic distraction. I wish I were making that up, but I’m not.

The Regime Change Special; Derailed By Travesty

Uncle Volodya says, "The most reliable indicator of a sociopathic serial bully is not a clinical diagnosis, but the trail of devastation and destruction left behind throughout their life."

Although this blog deals mostly with Russian politics, political figures and issues, occasionally the connection is purely peripheral. So it is today, when we’re going to talk about Russia and China’s veto of a UN Security Council Resolution centered on the situation in Syria. The fact that Russia is one of the countries which vetoed the resolution is largely secondary to the hysteria going on in the western press as a result of it, the fascinating glimpse of diplomatic maneuvering it offers, and the brass boldness of the western plan for Syria after the cataclysmic wreckage of Libya – brought about by the same regime-change blueprint.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flipped her wig over the veto – to be more specific, she said, “What happened yesterday at the United Nations was a travesty”. America’s U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice went further, pronouncing herself “disgusted” with the vote and, if gossip is to be believed, swearing at Russian Ambassador Vasily Churkin. In a totally unsurprising glimpse of why the vote had been held even with the likelihood of a Russian/Chinese veto (because the framework of the resolution is known long in advance so negotiation can iron out any no-go issues and so the arm-twisting can take place behind the scenes: the actual vote is about as exciting as Little House on the Prairie reruns), Ms. Rice intoned for posterity, “Any further bloodshed that flows will be on their hands”.

That kind of struck a familiar chord with me; I thought, where have I heard that before? And I remembered – in a discussion with the always-interesting Patrick Armstrong, a fellow Canadian, at Russia; Other Points of View. On that occasion, coincidentally enough, we were discussing the U.N. Security Council Resolution on Libya, which might have served as a copy-and-paste template for the Syrian one which aimed to push Bashar al-Assad off a cliff like Gaddafi.

Waking Up on the Wrong Side of the Corruption Index

Uncle Volodya says, "It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible."

Russia has an acknowledged problem with corruption. The dispute goes back and forth on whether the government is doing anything serious to combat the problem, or simply paying it lip service while remaining relatively unconcerned. But statistics released in June 2011 by Transparency International, and based on its research, are discouraging.

I mean, the conclusion is inescapable – from surveys which examined 23 sectors and institutions, researchers learned:

• Some 53.4% of respondents to a national survey believed corruption had increased “a little” or “a lot” in the past 3 years. Only 2.5% of respondents believed corruption had decreased a little or a lot. A whopping 48.1% did not think the government was effective in tackling the corruption problem. Damningly, 92.7% of respondents would like to report corruption, but only 30.1% would know where to report it.
• A leaked police investigation report from 2006 suggested there were approximately 1000 corrupt prison officials currently working, while a further 600 were having an “inappropriate relationship” with a prisoner.
• An estimated 38, 000 people are involved in organized crime, and a 2006 survey of the construction sector reported that 41% of respondents had been offered a bribe at least once in their career.

Who is running this benighted country? Let its Prime Minister step forward, and bow his head in shame. Step forward, Vladimir Put….no, wait, wait, my mistake. I got my pages mixed up, sorry for any unintended attribution of blame. Just a minute, let me get my notes together….

There, sorry once again for being so disorganized; I can’t think what came over me. Step forward, David Cameron, because those statistics reflect the state of corruption in the United Kingdom. Shame you have to take the rap for it, considering some of those values were realized before you took office – but that’s why you get the big bucks.

Vladimir Ryzhkov, Doomsday’s Outrider: I Wanted a NATO Intervention for Christmas

Uncle Volodya says, "Those who beat their swords into plowshares will end up plowing for those who didn't."

Bye-bye, 2011; Happy New Year, everyone! С Новым годом!!

It’s funny, how you can go on reading the same newspaper day after day and, if it’s a foreign paper you mostly read only for the opinion columns, you never notice who the other writers are or what the paper’s political philosophy is. I used to read the Moscow Times every day, but that was during the tenure of the Bush administration. I had taken an interest in foreign politics that year that surpassed by far my interest in what was happening politically in my own country because, as the old saying goes, it’s like sausage; plenty of people are okay with the finished product, but you never want to watch it being made. Anyway, I became a politics junkie on American and Russian issues – the former because the nation had elected a president who offered every appearance of being stone-cold crazy, and the latter because of my Russian wife. The Moscow Times (online edition) became a daily staple, because I enjoyed Chris Floyd’s column, Global Eye, in which he regularly excoriated the Bush administration, and I also browsed it for items of political or military interest on Russia. Suffice it to say that so naive was I, I thought Pavel Felgenhauer actually was an authority on defense matters rather than the western think-tank toady he is. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, all right?

It’s a measure of how long it’s been since I paid any attention to the Moscow Times that I did not notice until today that Chris Floyd was fired in 2006. Apparently his column “no longer fit in with the paper’s plans”. In 2005, the Moscow Times was sold to the Finnish publishing group Sanoma, owned by one of Finland’s richest men, Aatos Erkko (a regular at Bilderberg Group meetings), and members of his family; Sanoma also owns the St. Petersburg Times. At the Moscow Times, former Deputy Editor Andrew McChesney moved up to Editor. I honestly couldn’t say if this marked a change in ideology (although your friend and mine, “Kim Zigfeld” claimed Mr. McChesney as an associate), since I didn’t read most of what was in it.

Well, where was I? Oh, yes; Vladimir Ryzhkov. All that time reading the Moscow Times, and I never heard of Vladimir Ryzhkov. Never took notice of him at all, in fact, until Yalensis pointed out in a comment to the last post that Mr. Ryzhkov would be organizing the next Russian protest march and rally, just as he had organized the last one on December 24th. But he was there all the time, beavering away at the Moscow Times since at least 2002 (as far back as his articles go).

Western journalism long ago abandoned any pretense to objectivity, and it is usually fairly easy to figure out which way a particular source wishes any given issue to go. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, for example. Every western source I read at the time of his second conviction damned the Russian judicial system to the blackest depths of hell, to be escorted there personally by Vladimir Putin, for jailing that mild-mannered, incredibly rich prisoner of conscience – why, he wouldn’t hurt a fly, anyone can see that; just look at his little rimless glasses!! He looks like John Denver with a buzz cut!! Plainly, western sources thought Mikhail Khodorkovsky was cute as a button, more or less completely innocent, and only jailed because he represented a political threat to Vladimir the Black-Hearted. Incidentally, a theory to which Mr. Ryzhkov subscribes.

The Pumpkin Sherbet Revolution: Stop Worrying About The Economy – You’re FREE!!!!

Uncle Volodya says, "Hate is able to provoke disorders, to ruin a social organization, to cast a country into a period of bloody revolutions; but it produces nothing."

In order to best understand the underpinnings of the gestating “Snow Revolution” (sometimes called the “White Revolution”), we’re going to have to retrace our steps a little.

Like most societies that regularly draw on their past for inspiration, western societies are fond of parables. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” used to be a favourite, although its meaning has been largely lost in the brave new generation of empire and being “history’s actors” rather than simply studying what happened after the fact. It inspires simple nostalgia for the dual personalities in Charles Kingsley’s “The Water Babies”, a book I loved as a child; Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby was kind and gentle, coaxing the stubborn to mend their ways while time to do so remained, but Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid was the grim avenger whose appearance heralded yet another fool stepping across the line that can never be recrossed. Atonement would not be far behind.

The English, too, are fond of such distilled life lessons – “a stitch in time saves nine”, and “procrastination is the thief of time” suggest that a timely effort now will save much more difficult work later.

Within this list, an emerging favourite should take its rightful place: “There’s always money for regime change”.

Yawn. Duma Elections and the Predictability of Western Outrage

Uncle Volodya says, "Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises - for, never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing."

The recently-concluded Duma elections in Russia have western media outlets in such a tizzy of self-fulfilling prophecy that you would think the opposition had actually won. In fact, although United Russia’s share of the vote slipped a little, it still (as usual) polled more than double the result of its next closest competitor, the Communists. It’s also worth remembering that United Russia still garnered better than 10% higher support than the 37.6% it gained in its first appearance, in 2003. Still, as I mentioned, western sources – almost dribbling in their excitement – now see fit to differentiate between the “Soviet Communist Party” and the New Communists, signalling their willingness to see Genady Zyuganov and the KPRF running the country if only he will defeat Putin. How very far, and by what strange pathways has America come since the xenophobic Joe McCarthy thundered, “Any man who has been given the honor of being promoted to General, and who says, ‘I will protect another general who protects Communists,’ is not fit to wear that uniform, General.” Back then, Communists were unambiguously the enemy; now, they’re the Russophobe’s best hope. Indeed, politics makes strange bedfellows.

Exemplary of what has become her signature spit-in-Russia’s-face style, Julia Ioffe spoke disparagingly - before the vote - about “a lot of people talking about going out to vote just to vote for somebody, even if the vote is falsified in the end just as a way to exercise their right and to at least participate”, as if it were a sad and wasted effort by a few despondent people who went out to just blindly push a ballot in a box so they could pretend they were voting in a real democracy. In reality, the Duma election voter turnout was better than 60%. To put that in perspective, in the last 3 U.S. midterm elections only two states (Minnesota and South Dakota) have ever broken 60% turnout, and the national average has not broken 40% since 1970. Voter turnout in Russia blows the doors off that in the USA and the United Kingdom, where it is sometimes embarrassingly in the 20′s.

Hit the Road, Jack; the L.A. Times Knows You Ain’t Comin’ Back No More

Uncle Volodya says, "Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, you're a mile away, and you have their shoes."

When I was a kid, hardly a day went by when you didn’t get called a “retard” by someone, usually another kid. The slightest mistake was enough to get you branded a retard for a day or two; growing up was tough then, and it’s tough now. But the term “retard” was common then, and its use is anathema now (although the terms “conservatard” and “libtard” are still frequently bandied back and forth in political arguments on American media sites, presumably to convey the degree of stupidity vested in those who oppose the other’s ideology). I suppose we didn’t mean any harm; we didn’t know any better, and believed retards were regular people who, through some accident of birth or generations of inbreeding, were slower than everyone else. I know now those people were born that way and couldn’t help it; I also know a lot of the people who came under the retard umbrella were simply stupid, and most certainly could help it.

Exempting, then, those poor souls who are victims of God’s disfavour from birth, let’s imagine an intense concentration of retards who are retards simply because they choose to be stupid. There have been lots of sci-fi/horror  films about small towns affected by something in the water supply or some other localized mutating factor; let’s imagine something like that has resulted in stubborn, intellect-sucking obtuseness. Let’s further imagine that, rather than all living in the same town, they all work at the same newspaper.