Been a minute, nerds.
Since I've been gone:
1Jack Murphy, publishing on his own page because no major paper would carry the story (see block quote) shows that America is training and directing sabotage operations inside Russia. Russia knows this, but doesn't respond. Impossible to square with the repeated claims that Putin is a madman, since this means that America is, in actuality, relying on
Russian restraint as it escalates this conflict. Also, going to share a long quote from the end of his story, ties into the next bit
https://jackmurphywrites.com/169/the-cias-sabotage-campaign-inside-russia/Quote
A note on the publication of this article:
Many will ask why an article of this importance is appearing on my personal website rather than in a prestigious publication. I will not detail the entire journey this article took at this time, but will say that while working with editors at mainstream publications I was asked to do things that were illegal and unethical in one instance, and in another instance I felt that a senior CIA official was able to edit my article by making off the record statements, before he leaked a story to the New York Times to undermine this piece.
I don’t begrudge the intelligence community for attempting to keep covert operations out of the newspapers. That’s their job, and in this case they were quite effective at it. However, I do blame the press for not fulfilling the most basic premise of their job.
This article went through a vigorous fact checking process, and was deemed newsworthy as the strategic bombings of Laos and Cambodia or the CIA’s secret drone campaign in Pakistan. Yet, it nearly never saw the light of day. Journalists can lack the circumspection to examine how their organizations come to mimic the institutions of power that they claim to speak truth to. At some point the equities they build with the intelligence community and military commands become more important than informing the public.
Indeed, the Russian government knows perfectly well who is sponsoring these sabotage strikes. Moreover, the intelligence community wants them to know. The only party left in the dark is the public at large, left unaware of the shadow war taking place behind the scenes.
Ultimately, I felt that I was being asked to compromise my work and put careers ahead of my own integrity.
That’s why this piece appears here.
2Sy Hersh comes out with some inside sources (multiple, he's said in interviews) that confirm, as was immediately obvious to anyone with an ounce of skepticism, that America attacked infrastructure jointly held by the largest economy in Europe. And, of course, it has had basically no political effect. Not because the story isn't credible (Hersh has never had to retract a single story), but because Germany, like all NATO satrapies, isn't a sovereign country. Ditto Ukraine for that matter.
And, just like Jack Murphy's above story, this one appears as a substack piece, because despite Hersh's long history of quality of journalism, he reports that his regular publishers refused it. Somewhat amusingly, some pieces (the very few that deign to mention this story at all), refer to Hersh's piece as a "blog post", lol. Rather, it's an indictment of the state of news journalism as an institution. Nothing new, though. In the 70s, Hersh's big piece on the My Lai massacre also didn't find it into the NYT or WaPo. He had to publish it on a friend's startup wire service. It was as maligned as this Nordstream story, at the time. My Lai was also covered up, of course, minimzed and said to be an exception. By Colin Powell, no less. Good thing that guy didn't lurch from this failure into another one! And good thing the people behind Nordstream (Nuland, Blinken, Sullivan, etc) will never again be in a position to do even bigger acts of sabotage against ostensible allies, right?
3BBC has updated their earlier work on Russian fatalities in this war, which I some months ago noted matched up perfectly with Russian MOD claims when the BBC first presented this in June or July.
https://bbcrussian.substack.com/p/russian-losses-in-ukraine-january-2023They put it at 28,000, and includes the same (unexplained) 'could be 40-60% higher', but I have to say that I don't see why. They look at physical cemeteries, they look at social media posts, that ought to capture all of it, I'd think. They are also including Wagner and formerly LPR/DPR forces.
Still, the BBC is too committed to covering for Ukraine to give that country the same treatment. Ought to be just as easy, given the number of endless fields of graves adorned with the Blue And Yellow I've seen posted on Telegram. There are some dubious leaks at various times of 180,000 dead Ukrainians, even some as high as 268,000. Probably somewhere between those two numbers.
The disparity shouldn't be controversial, we know that Russia has an overwhelming artillery advantage, which is the main killer in this war. And, of course, they withdraw rather than take losses. Ukraine only withdraws when a front is in a state of near collapse, as just happened yesterday in Paraskoviivka, north of Bakhmut.
4Speaking of, things are actually moving much quicker these days, now that the season of Russian withdrawals seems to be over. Doesn't look a lot different day to day, but this really excellent map by the really unfortunately named "Weeb Union" account is good for seeing it. Expand the 'recap' section and scroll down for the most recent days. He's a pretty conservative mapper, doesn't change things without a broad consensus or unless there's video evidence:
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1_JYk9u6A-TBxADdy2oqLfjFQr5koKT8&ll=25.82029988897944%2C76.24794779999999&z=4&entry=ytHis youtube channel is also good for very short, daily updates on things. Short and to the point, replaced a lot of skimming for me!
https://www.youtube.com/@WeebUnionWU/videos5Not Russia related, but this balloon stuff is nuts. The Anglo world is such an embarrassing, fragile, barely-sapient culture. Spazzing out for a solid two weeks over a weather balloon, shooting it down with a million dollars worth of missiles, then getting mocked by the entire non-Western world and getting your calls on the direct line to Chinese defense minister Wei Fenghe just completely ignored. And then, not happy with all that, doubling down, shooting down a NWS balloon, then a balloon from, I shit you not, the fucking "Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade", then some other fucking thing over Lake Huron (as well as sinking a spare AIM-9X into it, why fucking not?)
These are the morons who decided to bomb Germany's pipelines. Incredible.
This post was edited by kusotarre1 on Feb 17 2023 11:50pm