Parsing Putin's Popularity

Here is a handy graphic that explains why Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin's approval ratings are north of 80% these days.

"How has Russia changed in 15 years of Vladimir Putin's governance?" (e.g. between 1999 and 2013)

GDP went from $195 billion (1999) to $2,113 billion in 2013.

Per-capita GDP went from $1,320 to $14,800.

Inflation went from 36,5% to 6.5%.

Gold reserves went from $12,6 billion to $511 billion.

Government debt went from 78% of the GDP to 8% of the GDP.

Average monthly pension went from 499 rubles to 10,000 rubles.

Average monthly wage went from 1522 rubles to 29,940 rubles.

Ah, but Putin put an end to the raping and looting of Russia by Western "reformers" and their pet oligarchs, and stood up to the Atlantic Empire's reign of chaos. Can't have that. So the Western media calls him an "autocrat" (though he obeys the letter of the law punctiliously), but lavishes praise on the ruler that shrugs laws off in favor of "a pen and a phone."

No wonder no one has put together a chart like this for the United States. Those numbers must be terrifying... 

FIFA Upholds Sieg-heiling Conviction

In November last year, when Croatia's soccer team managed to win passage to the 2014 World Cup by the skin of their teeth, one of the players sieg-heiled with the crowd in triumph. While Nazi displays in Croatia - from soccer stadiums to symbols of state - have been ignored for over two decades, FIFA couldn't let this one go. "Crazy Joe" Šimunić was fined and suspended for 10 games - starting with the World Cup.

At the end of April, a Croatian web magazine (billing itself as "one of the world’s leading portals") quoted Šimunić's lawyer Davor Prtenjača, who was optimistic that the decision would be overturned on appeal. Citing the speed of the hearing - just a month after the appeal was filed - as cause for hope, Prtenjača added that "FIFA had given up on the assertion that “Za dom – spremni” was purely a fascist salute, but still claim Šimunić had provoked racial hated at Maksimir stadium."

Both the salute and the shield have been symbols of the Croatian Nazis (Ustasha), who committed genocidal atrocities against Serbs and Jews and Roma so vicious, even some Nazis were appalled. Yet the defense is now that the salute - the Croatian equivalent of the German sieg-heil - was "not purely fascist"? Same with the checkerboard shield, which the Croats claim is an ancient symbol of their people. So? The swastika is an ancient Hindu symbol, yet it's been banned throughout much of the world because of its association with Hitler.

But even allowing for all that, for the sake of argument, what explains this?

Široki Brijeg, Herzegovina, November 2010 (source)

This photo is from a November 2010 game in the overwhelmingly Croat Široki Brijeg, in Herzegovina, where fans of the local team waved around both the actual Nazi flag and that of the Vatican - because the Church of Rome was a major backer of the Croatian Nazis, in WW2 and thereafter.

In any case, the "not solely fascist" defense didn't work. Šimunić lost his appeal on May 13, and the only way he will be involved with the World Cup - which begins this afternoon - is as a spectator. 

Western Economy, Explained

And this is why I enjoy reading Karl Denninger's The Market Ticker:

Oh boy, the imagery this conjures up....

"Just when the European recovery story looked played out, the European Central Bank sent out a new mating call to equity investors with a major policy package that included rate cuts."

You're going to get mated with all right.

The problem is that it's going to be in one of the holes that does not offer the prospect of reproduction.

Today's Western economy, in a nutshell.

This is why I think all the recent protestations of power are just a bunch of hot air. 

The Empire of Stupid: Old Map Hoax Taken Seriously

When the tabloid media in Serbia - controlled by foreign conglomerates or oligarchs loyal to whatever quisling government happens to be in charge (since every parliamentary party has been suborned, it doesn't make much difference) - print unverified rumors and fanciful flights of wishful thinking, that's par for the course. A group of satirists even mocked this a few years back, by planting patently false stories written in such a way that they sounded plausible (think The Onion here), but wouldn't hold up to elementary fact-checking. But whether due to laziness or wishful thinking, the press never bothered to check, running the stories because they fit their confirmation bias.

So it says volumes about Foreign Policy - very much a voice of the DC establishment - that it chose to run a serious analysis of a complete and utter hoax, and a stale one at that. On June 4, FP contributor Frank Jacobs wrote about "what Russia could look like in 2035 if Putin gets his wish," referring to a map of Europe allegedly created by "Russian experts."

There is just one tiny little problem: the whole thing is a fabrication. Moreover, it's an old one: the story of it broke in Serbia in January 2013 (here is the state television, taking it at face value), and the map itself appeared in the summer of 2012 in the Russian tabloid "Express Gazeta." But that is not where it originated.

Far from being an actual analysis of the GRU or the KGB or some top-level Moscow institute or even Putin himself (because "everybody knows" Vladimir Vladimirovich is a superhuman mastermind who personally does everything in a country of some 150 million, right?), the map was produced by a Ukrainian web magazine "Obozrevatel", with the author identified as "Pavlo Nikonenko."

Empire's White-Knighting Explained

In an article published in Counterpunch on Friday, Diana Johnstone pulls back the curtain on the Ukraine crisis:

"In September 2013, one of Ukraine’s richest oligarchs, Viktor Pinchuk, paid for an elite strategic conference on Ukraine’s future that was held in the same Palace in Yalta, Crimea, where Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill met to decide the future of Europe in 1945. The Economist, one of the elite media reporting on what it called a “display of fierce diplomacy”, stated that: “The future of Ukraine, a country of 48m people, and of Europe was being decided in real time.” The participants included Bill and Hillary Clinton, former CIA head General David Petraeus, former U.S. Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers, former World Bank head Robert Zoellick, Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt, Shimon Peres, Tony Blair, Gerhard Schröder, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Mario Monti, Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite, and Poland’s influential foreign minister Radek Sikorski. Both President Viktor Yanukovych, deposed five months later, and his recently elected successor Petro Poroshenko were present. Former U.S. energy secretary Bill Richardson was there to talk about the shale-gas revolution which the United States hopes to use to weaken Russia by substituting fracking for Russia’s natural gas reserves." 

Ah yes, the shale gas canard that's physically and mathematically impossible: the U.S. simply does not have the shipping and processing capabilities to meet Europe's gas needs - nor is there nearly as much shale gas in the fracking wells as originally estimated. Doesn't stop the world's biggest conmen from trying, though.

"U.S. policy, already evident at the September 2013 Yalta meeting, was carried out on the ground by Victoria Nuland, former advisor to Dick Cheney, deputy ambassador to NATO, spokeswoman for Hillary Clinton, wife of neocon theorist Robert Kagan. Her leading role in the Ukraine events proves that the neo-con influence in the State Department, established under Bush II, was retained by Obama, whose only visible contribution to foreign policy change has been the presence of a man of African descent in the presidency, calculated to impress the world with U.S. multicultural virtue. Like most other recent presidents, Obama is there as a temporary salesman for policies made and executed by others."

The truth hurts. But it's blindingly obvious.

Seven Decades Hence

"The world is Hades for me now
and all men in it hellish spirits."
- The Mountain Wreath

Seventy years ago, on June 6 1944, the Western Allies launched the largest amphibious operation in history, landing hundreds of thousands of men and tanks onto the beaches of Normandy. Were they fighting and dying for an American Empire, or the world democratic revolution? The Emperor now says so.

Did those men fight so their country could pick up Hitler's torch 50 years later, back his allies, pursue his policies? With the Luftwaffe bombing Belgrade again, German boots on Serbian soil, SS marches in Latvia, and Banderist torchlight parades in Ukraine, Anglo-American boasting of how they won in 1945 are at best hypocritical and hollow. At worst, a cruel jest.

Bandera supporters march in Lwow, January 2013 (via "Kyiv Post")

The "Greatest Generation" is spinning in their graves. Hitler's ghost cackles with glee.

But the East remembers.

Of Quislings and Censorship

An old Serbian folk tale tells of a peasant who served a Turkish judge (qadi) as a cowherd. He had one cow of his own, which he shepherded along with the qadi's herd. One time, the cows got into an altercation, and the peasant's cow gored the qadi's.
So the peasant hastens into town, and tells the qadi: "Effendi, your cow gored mine!"
"Whose fault was it, did someone make them?" asks the qadi.
"No, effendi, they fought among themselves," answers the peasant.
"Well, then. Can't put cattle on trial," says the qadi.
"But effendi, did you hear what I said? My cow gored yours!" the peasant says.
"What? Wait, then, I must look at the law," exclaims the qadi and reaches for the book.
The peasant grabs his arm and says: "By God and God's faith you won't! If you didn't look at the law for mine, you won't look at the law for yours either."

Contrast that to the Roman expression "Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi" - what Jove may, the ox may not. While the Serbian cowherd insists on equality of justice, the Romans enshrine a double standard. One of the greatest accomplishments - perhaps the only one - of the Enlightenment was the notion that "all men are equal" before the law. That is, that a law is the same for rich and poor alike, for both Jove and the ox.

What if the ox is Jove? (source)

A sea of ink would run dry before one could describe all the instances of double standards and gross violations of this principle just in the case of the country that was once Yugoslavia. And this week there was another.

Fear and Loathing at the New York Times

An autocrat

A toxic mixture of arrogance and stupidity haunts the establishment class of the Atlantic Empire. They really believe they can create reality through willpower alone (as Karl Rove told Ron Suskind back in 2004), that America is the "indispensable country" (M. Albright), and that God - or whatever they believe in these days - has given them the world to do with as they please.

I'm not talking about the Emperor's West Point speech, however deluded it may have been, but about the hysterical reaction of the chattering classes to it, best exemplified by the New York Times' "conservative" columnist David Brooks.

Alarmed that His Most Elevated Imperial Majesty may have had a stray thought or two about - gasp! - restraint, Brooks upbraids Barack Obama for insufficient imperialism. Sure, Obama "argued persuasively" for the need to "mobilize democracies", and his UN envoy Samantha Power gave a "great" (i.e. fiery) speech to the new generation of Harvard drones, but let's remember that World War Two was the fault of America failing at its duty to rule the world.

Er, what? No, really. Brooks actually wrote that:

"In the 1920s and ’30s, for example, Americans were in a retrenching mood, like today. The result was a leaderless world, the gradual decay of the world order and eventually World War II."

The Audacity of Delusion

It is one thing when Mad Madeleine Albright declares the U.S. "the indispensable nation", and quite another when Barack "Hope and Change" Obama does so, 15 years after Albright's conceit has been conclusively proven wrong.

As I told Voice of Russia the other day, there is a dangerous combination of arrogance and stupidity in Washington, making the Empire's leadership blind to reality because they've begun to drink their own kool-aid.

In his West Point speech, the Emperor demonstrates the fact of this. It's all hyperbole, outright denial of reality and assertion of virtual facts. Moreover, he admits to it, crediting "our ability to shape world opinion" (!) for the alleged "isolation" and "condemnation" of Russia, even as he describes his camp followers - G-7, EU, OSCE, NATO and the IMF - as "the world."

Jan Oberg of the Transnational Foundation offers an interesting analysis of the West Point speech. I'd like to quote the conclusion here, but I suggest you read all of it:

In its reality-defying arrogance and self-praise it leaves little hope for those of us who have always been fascinated by the American cultural and other creativity and – earlier – leadership while loathed its empire’s arrogance, exceptionalist militarism and insensitivity to the victims of its policies.
The audacity of hope is crushed. Regrettably, with this speech one has to think more in terms of the audacity of fear to begin to perceive the potentially catastrophic combination of militarism, hubris, a decreasing sense of reality and silly self-praise.

Duh-mock-risy

This morning, I was on the newest episode of "CrossTalk" to discuss the farce that is the "presidential election" in Banderastan (formerly the Ukraine). It should air tonight sometime, and I'll try and post it as soon as it is online. (UPDATE: You can watch the show here)

Look at who all was involved: "several US senators," Mad Madeleine Albright and her NDI, the State Department, OSCE... Three cats and a unicycle-riding poodle could have voted, and they'd still call it legitimate. Meanwhile, the exit polls are in. Congratulations, it's an oligarch!

A sharp-eyed Facebook user spotted this attempt at perception management, that best illustrates today's circus:

On the left is a Ukie Twitter feed purporting to show happy voters being democratically democratic (source); on the right, the same photo - taken two weeks ago, in Gorlovka, during the Donetsk referendum on independence (source).

"Oops" doesn't even begin to cover it.

Parsing the Doublespeak on Ukraine

Tomorrow, the people in parts of Ukraine controlled by the Banderist coup regime in Kiev will be given a chance to "vote" in a farce of an election, and pick one of the candidates endorsed by the ruling junta to become "president" of Ukraine - or rather, then Banderastan rump thereof.

No matter how farcical and absurd the "election" turns out to be, it will be declared legitimate, free and fair by the Empire and its stooges. Because - as Phillip Cunliffe observed in 2007, and I keep reminding you here - to them, democracy is whatever they decide it is.

Oleh Yaroslavovych Tyahnybok, Empire's "democratic democrat" (via Novi Standard)

Fellow blogger The Saker has put together a post that cuts through the Imperial doublespeak. I believe it represents the best summation of the events in Ukraine so far, so I am re-posting it here with his permission, just in case someone tries to stop the signal:

Calling things by their proper names in the Ukraine
(Vineyard of the Saker, May 23, 2014)

Life often seems like one long never ending Asch conformity experiment: even when there is overwhelming evidence that something is "A", the media, and those zombified by it, confidently state "non-A". That this kind of doublethink is also applied to the conflict in the Ukraine should surprise nobody, but it is still important to "call a stone and stone" and to give a clear and unambiguous characterization of what has happened so far and what is about to happen this Sunday.

So today I want to re-state the obvious using the most direct and unambiguous language possible. My hope is to contribute to wake up at least one comatose person out there by calling things by their proper names.

Flood testimonial: Doboj

Here is a video-testimonial of the flooding that hit Doboj (Serb Republic, Bosnia-Herzegovina) last Friday, recorded by Ozren Stakić. In just six minutes, the angry river Bosna spills over into the town, drowning a busy intersection.

Here is how high the waters rose - a "before and after" photo of Doboj, found on Facebook:

The waters have receded, but the devastation remains. If you can, please help.

Vignettes from the Deluge

The rains have stopped, but the floodwaters have not receded yet. Reports are coming in like the tide - 1,5 million affected, dozens of dead. Enormous property damage includes crops and livestock, which will have an impact on food supply down the line.

Cataclysms bring out the best and the worst in people. Here are just some tidbits that have reached me over the past couple of days.

First, the good. Tens of thousands have volunteered to shore up the levees and save towns like Šabac from suffering the fate of Obrenovac (now completely underwater). Among them were Serbs from Kosovo, the very same people the current Serbian government renounced and tried to force to become "Kosovians". Reports from Bosnia suggest that Serbs and Muslims have banded together to survive the flooding, while Croats - whose strongholds in the south were unaffected - sent rescue teams to help both. Rescue teams from Croatia proper have lent aid to both Bosnia and Serbia.

Flood Aid for Serbia and Bosnia

Heavy rains over the past several days have resulted in flooding of "Biblical proportions" in much of Serbia and Bosnia.

Obrenovac, Serbia, May 2014

UPDATE: More charities added below

Thanks to a diligent reader, I have been informed that the humanitarian organization "Serbs for Serbs" (Срби за Србе) - which has worked since 2005 to provide assistance to endangered families, especially in Kosovo and among the Krajina refugees - has launched a drive to help those affected by the flooding.

I am passing on this information as a courtesy; for all questions, please contact SZS directly, via email or Facebook.

Here is how to donate:

Bildt's Tweets, Real and Fake

Nils Daniel Carl Bildt is currently the Foreign Minister of Sweden, and a longtime operative for the Transnational Progressivist establishment (e.g. the first Viceroy of Bosnia). He is also on Twitter.

Last week, some online outlets in Serbia reported that Bildt had tweeted: "the biggest mistake of the modern Russian government and Vladimir Putin was the return to Orthodoxy, which is worse than the Islamic terrorism that appears in the east."

Now, anyone even remotely acquainted with Twitter would have realized this could not have been accurate - not because Bildt doesn't dislike Russia or Orthodoxy (more on that in a second), but because the alleged statement is too long for a 140-character tweet. Moreover, a proper Tranzi like Bildt would have never used the phrase "Islamic terrorism" or referred to Islam in anything but properly submissive terms. Especially in Sweden, which has just about criminalized criticism of Islam. But the legacy media - controlled by foreign interests or the puppet government - did not bother to mention any of this, while the blogosphere took 'Bildt's" words and ran with them, because the made-up quote fit in with his other views on Russia and the EU/US policy in the Ukrainian meltdown.

Statism at its "finest"

You can read through volumes of political theory, philosophy and analysis to understand the basic libertarian argument against government - as a tyrannical force routinely initiating aggression against people's lives and property. Or you could take one look at this video, put together by the Danish government, as an inducement to vote in the upcoming European Parliament elections.


Why in the blazes would any government, much less a transnational bunch of busybodies, legislate the amount of cinnamon on a bun? But you're not supposed to ponder that question. Yours is to vote (for whatever's on offer) or else. And by "else" this Danish government-funded video means getting decapitated, roughed up or defenestrated (after a home invasion), by "Voteman."

Forget "civic duty" or "representative government" or "subsidiarity" or any of the fine vestments devises to cover up the force and fraud. This is what they mean by democracy, folks. This is distilled statism. 

Murdering History, Again

Two days ago, as I posted about the meaning of St. George's day and the victory ribbon, news came of this:

So, in addition to murdering or burning alive any Ukrainians who disagree with them, the Banderite regime in Kiev is now butchering history. Where oh where have we seen this before?

What exactly are "European symbols"? The poppy flower is an English thing, traditionally associated with November 11 and the armistice that ended the Great War (1914-18), inspired by the poppies of Flanders. What exactly do Flanders, Britain or WW1 have to do with 1945? Also, why would Ukraine commemorate 1939, when Hitler invaded in 1941?

Unless... in addition to sucking up to the English (and maybe payback for rescuing the Banderites in 1945), the red-and-black poppies could be a wink and a nudge to the Banderite flag (see the "Right Sector" symbols). And the focus on 1939 might be the preparation for claiming that "Ukraine" was "invaded" by the Soviets. Anything to properly "integrate" Banderastan with the West, where Victory Day has already been politically corrected into "Europe Day."

Either way, considering it was the Soviet Union that deserves the overwhelming credit for actually destroying Nazism, the decision to use "European" symbols is a travesty. Worse, it is a deliberate insult to all those murdered by Hitler's hordes. And let's by all means remember - since they seem so proud of it - that among Hitler's allies were the Ukrainian SS and militias, whose heirs now "rule" in Kiev on behalf of the Atlantic Empire.

As I noted on Tuesday, I'll keep flying the Ribbon of Saint George to let them and their sponsors know that they were defeated then, and will be defeated again. Here is that message in Russian - courtesy of KP - so they may understand precisely what I mean:

Когда я надеваю георгиевскую ленточку, я делаю это во имя моих предков, которые веками сражались с турками, завоевывая свою свободу. Я делаю это во имя моего деда, который выжил в лагере для военнопленных. В память о бабушке, которую я не знал; ради многочисленных родственников, погубленных усташами. Я делаю это, чтобы выразить свое презрение нацистами, усташам, сегодняшним бандеровцам. И чтобы напомнить им (и их спонсорам), что мы победили их тогда, и победим снова.
Потому что они и есть дракон, которого убил Георгий Победоносец.
И Восток помнит.

The Sound of Russian Silence

The following essay was written on May 5, 2014, by Roman Nosikov. Its Russian original is here. As my Russian is not equal to the task, I have taken the liberty of translating it from a Serbian version, posted here. Any errors, omissions or infelicities are mine. 

The world is full of calls to Russia. The world calls to Russia and her president to influence the "pro-Russian separatists" in southeast Ukraine. The international community, the Russian intelligentsia, the Ukrainian media clique, all choke on the cries reminding us of our peacefulness, our non-resistance to evil, of Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi.

"Peace! Peace! Peace! Mercy!" is what we hear, 24 hours a day.

But at the same time, those same throats spit out threats: "Sanctions! You shall starve! We shall drive you into huts, into caves! We shall take away everything, select everyone, buy everything! We order you! We condemn you!"

And what answer do we hear? What do our colleagues hear from the Russian president? What do they hear from our people?

Silence.

Heavy, unbearable Russian silence that rests over the world like a calm before the storm.

Saint George's Day

In the Orthodox (Julian) calendar, today is April 23 and the feast of St. George, the fabled dragonslayer and patron saint of many Serbs.

According to the legend, Saint George came upon a kingdom beset by a foul, plague-breathing dragon. To appease the dragon, they began to give it a daily sacrifice of livestock, and later even their children. When the saint came along and killed the dragon, the grateful citizens embraced Christianity.

In Serbian folklore, the feast of Saint George is the beginning of hayduk season - guerrilla resistance to Ottoman overlords that had conquered Serb lands in the 15th century. The season traditionally ended on the feast of Saint Demetrius (Mitrovdan), October 26.

The distinctive orange/black ribbon shown above belongs to the Order of Saint George, the highest military decoration of Imperial Russia. During the Great Fatherland War (1941-45), the Soviets resurrected the ribbon to reward elite and Guards units, as well as individuals decorated for valor. The 1945 victory medal given to all veterans of the war also had the ribbon of Saint George. Starting with the 60th anniversary of the victory, in 2005, the ribbon has become a symbol of Russian patriotism and victory over the Nazis.

While Hitler was defeated in 1945, the Western allies immediately began using the Nazis and their sympathizers as allies in the struggle with "Communism" (i.e. the Soviet Union): from the actual Nazi scientists brought over in Operation Paperclip, to the Croatian Ustasha, Baltic Waffen-SS veterans and the Ukrainian Banderovtsi. Following the Soviet Union's demise in 1991, many of them, and their ideas, made a comeback - to the point where those who once fanatically served Hitler are now the most fanatical allies of NATO.

When I fly the ribbon of Saint George, I do it for my ancestors who fought the Turks for centuries, until they won their freedom. I do it for my grandfather, who survived a German POW camp; the grandmother I never knew; the scores of relatives murdered by the Ustasha. I do it to defy the Nazis, the Ustasha and the Banderovtsi today, to let them (and their sponsors!) know that they were defeated then, and will be defeated again.

Because they are the dragon. And the East remembers.

Remembering the "Blitz"

At 0530 hours on May 1, 1995, some 16,000 Croatian troops attacked the Serb-inhabited portion of Western Slavonia known as Sector West (a UN Protected Area, UNPA).

Following the failure of Croatian militias to conquer this and other Serb-inhabited areas (later united in the Republic of Serbian Krajina - RSK) that rejected Croatia's anti-Serb, neo-Nazi regime in Zagreb. In January 1992, an armistice was signed ("Vance Plan") and a UN force deployed to safeguard the Serb-inhabited areas following the withdrawal of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA).

Operation "Blitz", May 1-2, 1995 (source: CIA, via Wikipedia)

Backed by the United States government, Zagreb launched the May 1 operation as a trial balloon. Within 36 hours, the Croats had expelled the area's 15,000 Serbs, and killed 283 (including 57 women and 9 children). The UN troops charged with protecting the zone did nothing. The so-called "international community" (the Atlantic Empire and its vassals, in practice) did nothing.

Three months later, Croatia launched an all-out assault against the Serb-inhabited areas, with full diplomatic and political support of the United States government, killing 930 (with another 922 missing and presumed dead), while expelling almost all the remaining Serbs from the territories claimed by the Croatian state. By 2001, there were 380,032 fewer Serbs living in Croatia than in 1991, when Zagreb declared independence.

Both "police actions" were named in the true tradition of WW2 Croatia: "Flash" (Blitz, in German) and "Storm" (Sturm).

Croatian map of the "liberation" of Western Slavonia;
Serb-inhabited territories in blue were "liberated" in 1991,
in operation "Hurricane" (Orkan)  

Because Croatia was a proxy of the Atlantic Empire, it got away with this murder. Now the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, which seized power in the illegal coup of February 22, is expecting to do the same, launching a military attack against the Ukrainians refusing to submit to them. But while they expect May 2014 will be like May 1995, they should remember what happened when someone else tried to replicate August 1995 in August 2008.

God is just, and His justice does not sleep forever.

The East remembers.