People hate the media. Media dishonesty has accelerated considerably in the West since around 2015. The well-deserved loss of trust has made some jump onto the irrational assumption that whatever sounds the most remote from their media’s explanation is the reality. This “logic” has absurd side effects such as the mainstream media still remaining the compass and that their inconsistency must be mirrored whenever they knot their narrative into a pretzel.
In need of finding a standpoint that looks – at first glance – like the most remote one from that of Western media, a variety of political influencers have blindly trusted Russian media. The irony is big, literally, since Russian propaganda is infamous for its absurd level of inconsistency.
Vladimir Milov served under Vladimir Putin as his Deputy Energy Minister. Since then they had a little fall out. US General H. R. McMaster interviewed him for his show ‘Battlegrounds’ (organized by the Hoover Institute). In the interview Mister Milov shares with us some insights into Putin’s rise, the inner workings of the administration in Russia and the attitude of the public. The full recording is long and you find it here.
This video summarises and adds illustrations to the audio. Unfortunately, the microphone and/or sound setting of the original document are not great and I do not know how to improve on that. If somebody can clean it up and make it available to me, I will re-upload it with the polished sound. But in any event it is easily comprehensible still. On some segments (notably at the beginning) the voice modulation sounds strange. This is because my cuts “corrected” grammar flaws or pre-empted an interruption of the interviewer that make listening to it rather more difficult. They do not misrepresent Vladimir Milov’s views (and everybody can check the original to prove me right).
Carl Bildt is a Swedish diplomat and conservative politician. In a conversation with Russian dissident Vladimir Milov he addresses the fact that the motivations stated by Russia make no sense. Ukraine’s constitution even forbade a NATO membership. This was only changed after Russia annexed Crimea, occupied government buildings in the East of the country through proxy “separatist” forces and armed years of attempts at an insurrection.
Helen Dale’s first novel ‘The Hand That Signed The Paper’ won critical acclaim and a variety of prestigious prizes like the Miles Franklin Award. Yet, what followed her heightened visibility in the public eye was not a privileged pathway to more success, but a decades-long cancel-culture witchhunt. In her book she described the pressures on and the weaknesses of Ukrainians during WWII. Stalin committed a genocide against them only a few years earlier. The Nazis, at the time, looked like an opportunity to break free from Russian control. It is this historical dilemma Vladimir Putin weaponizes against Ukraine today. In those dark years a disproportionate number of Holocaust enablers emerged from this brutalised country. Cultures change. Ukrainians have made huge strides in the past. One very visible, and thus often repeated, example is that they voted for a president who is the descendent of survivors of both major genocides the country had seen, the Holocaust and the Holodomor.
I summed up, re-organised and illustrated some of the points Konstantin made in his conversation with Triggernometry partner Francis Foster. You find the full conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNnq8gMAE-8
Please, share my content! I try to upload fairly regularly. Sometimes, though, I invest time in improvements which is bad for the social media algorithms. This time I made a pause to set myself up to make these illustrations that I premiere today with this video.
Donald Trump is chasing the bills. Germany is notoriously remiss in spending the promised 2% of its GDP on Defence. The attitude is a mix of ingratitute, anti-Americanism and pseudo-pacifism. Why would anybody take precautions if, on your behalf, American soldiers will put their lives on the line? It is so easy to be a pacifist while the heat is low, particularly if you can rely on others to take it, should push come to shove.
Of course, Germany does have an army, the Bundeswehr, which used to be very respected, at least until the Russians got out of the country and the debilitating cuts began. They see their obligation in assisting NATO partners with mission participations they are poorly equipped and adequate for. The self-set task is to clear the seas with the British and to patrol the African deserts with the French, albeit the partners have a long-standing history and understanding of their territories while the Germans are exhausting themselves as multi-specialised and ultimately unspecialised aides.
The problem is therefore twofold: In addition to the low budget the troops lack focus.
Various weapon systems are in shambles. According to the “Report on the Material Employability of the Main Weapon Systems of the Bundeswehr in 2019”
less than 50% readiness can be expected of the Tornado (jet), the CH-53 (helicopter), the Lockheed P-3c Orien (maritime surveillance aircraft) and tanker ships class 704; less than 40% can be expected of the PUMA (tank), A400M (carrier aircraft), H 145M LUH (helicopter), GTF ZLK (hardshell truck) and NH-90 (helicopter).
And while Germans were so comfortable in their pseudo-moral shirker-parcifism, they whittled down their stable energy system to become ever more reliant on Russian gas.
Goldstein 
