What's Going On In The Tenderloin?

realclearinvestigations |   The epicenter of the political earthquakes rattling San Francisco’s progressive establishment is a 30-square-block neighborhood in the center of downtown known as the Tenderloin. Adjacent to some of the city’s most famous attractions, including the high-end shopping district Union Square, the old money redoubt of Nob Hill, historic Chinatown, and the city’s gold-capped City Hall, it is home to a giant, open-air drug bazaar. Tents fill the sidewalks. Addicts sit on curbs and lean against walls, nodding off to their fentanyl and heroin fixes, or wander around in meth-induced psychotic states. Drug dealers stake out their turf and sell in broad daylight, while the immigrant families in the five-story, pre-war apartment buildings shepherd their kids to school, trying to maintain as normal an existence as they can.

“If you happen to be walking through the Tenderloin and you feel unsafe, imagine what it feels like to live there,” said Joel Engardio, head of Stop Crime SF, a civilian public safety group. “The Tenderloin has one of the largest percentages of children in the city. It’s untenable, inexcusable to ask them to confront this hellscape.” 

“The Tenderloin is out of control,” said Tom Ostly, a former San Francisco prosecutor who used to work there and lives nearby. “It has never been worse than it is now.”

Nancy Tung, a prosecutor who once handled drug enforcement in San Francisco, called it “ground zero for human misery.” Kathy Looper, who has run a low-income, single resident occupancy hotel in the Tenderloin for more than 45 years, said, “It feels like we’re in Gotham,” adding that she once considered putting a spotlight on her hotel roof and projecting a Batman signal into the sky.

The crime and disorder of the Tenderloin may appear to be symptoms of deep and mysterious sociological forces. Chesa Boudin, who was ousted last week as San Francisco’s district attorney because of his lenient policies, argued, “We can’t arrest and prosecute our way out of the problems that are afflicting the Tenderloin.”

But there is a fairly straightforward kind of order beneath the chaos: an illicit market economy operating in plain sight. The Tenderloin is home to two sprawling, overlapping transnational organized crime networks – one centered on drugs and the other on theft – which thrive in that neighborhood because of the near-total absence of the enforcement of laws.

 

 

 

Nice, Plain English Synopsis Of The Present World Situation

thesaker  |  There have been many explanations for what is going on and the most common is the fight between two possible futures; a multipolar world where there are several power centers in the world, and a unipolar world where the West governs the world. This is correct as far as it goes, but there is another reason which explains why this is happening now and all the urgency and panic in the West.

Recently the New Zealand tech guru Kim Dotcom tweeted a thread about the debt situation in the US. According to him all debt and unfunded liabilities of the US exceed the total value of the entire country, including the land. This situation is not unique to the US. Most countries in the West have debt that can only be paid back by selling the entire country and everything it contains. On top of that, most non-western countries are buried in dollar-denominated debt and are practically owned by the same financiers who own the West.

During the last few decades, the economy of the US and Europe has been falsified on a level that is difficult to believe. We in the West have been living far beyond our means and our currencies have been massively overvalued. We have been able to do this through two mechanisms:

1. The first one is the reserve status of the dollar and the semi-reserve status of the euro which have enabled the West to export digital money and receive goods in return. This has created enormous financial power for the West and enabled it to function as a parasite on the world economy. We have been getting a lot of goods for free, to put it mildly.
2. The second falsification mechanism is the increase in debt to a level where we have essentially pawned everything we own, including our houses and lands, to keep up our living standards. We own nothing now when the debt has been subtracted. The debt has long since become unserviceable – far beyond our ability to pay interests on – which explains why the interest rates in the West are in the neighborhood of zero. Any increase would make the debt unserviceable and we would all go formally bankrupt in a day.

On top of all this, the falsification has created artificially strong currencies in the West which has boosted their purchasing power for goods priced in non-western currencies. These mechanisms have also enabled the West to run bloated and dysfunctional service economies where inefficiencies are beyond belief. We have giant groups of people in our economies that not only create no value but destroy value systematically. What maintains the West’s standard of living now is a small minority of productive people, constant debt increase, and parasitism of the rest of the world.

The people who own all this debt actually own everything we think we own. We in the West own nothing at this point – we only think we do. But who are our real owners? We know more or less who they are because they meet every year at the World Economic Forum in Davos along with the western political elites who they also happen to own.

It is clear that our owners have been getting increasingly worried, and their worries have been increasing in sync with the increased pressure applied by the West on the rest of the world, particularly the Independents. During the last Davos meeting, the mood was bleak and panicked at the same time, much like the panic among the western political elites when the isolation of Russia failed.

What is about to happen

The panic of our owners and their politicians is understandable because we have come to the end of the line. We can no longer keep up our living standards by debt increase and parasitism. The debt is reaching beyond what we own as collateral and our currencies are about to become worthless. We will no longer be able to get free stuff from the rest of the world, or pay back our debt – let alone pay interest on it. The entire West is about to go bankrupt and our standard of living is about to go down by a massive percentage. This is what has our owners panicked and they see only two scenarios:

1. In the first scenario most countries in the West, and everything and everyone within them, declare bankruptcy and erase the debt by diktat – which sovereign states are able to do. This will also erase the wealth and political power of our owners.
2. In the second scenario, our owners take over the collateral during the bankruptcy. The collateral is us and everything we own.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which scenario was chosen. The plan for the second scenario is ready and being implemented as we speak. It is called ‘The Great Reset’ and was constructed by the people behind the World Economic Forum. This plan is not a secret and can be examined to a certain degree on the WEF website.

The Great Reset is a mechanism for the seizing of all debt collateral which includes your assets, the assets of your city or municipality, the assets of your state, and most corporate assets not already held by our owners.  Fist tap Dale.

Do You Suppose Any Of The Western Leadership Sincerely Believes This Nonsense?

sonar21  |  Dear President Putin:

I write with the greatest of respect and sorrow to inform you that your gamble in Ukraine has failed and you have lost a strategic battle. How do I know? Well, UK Admiral Tony Radakin, the head of the UK’s Armed Services says so. Here is what he said:

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin said Russia was suffering heavy losses, running out of troops and advanced missiles and would never be able to take over all of Ukraine.

“This is a dreadful mistake by Russia. Russia will never take control of Ukraine,” Tony Radakin told PA Media in an interview published on Friday.

The country’s highest-ranking military officer said the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, had lost 25% of Russia’s land power for only “tiny” gains and it would emerge a “more diminished power” while strengthening Nato. . . .

“The Russian machine is grinding away, and it’s gaining a couple of – two, three, five – kilometres every day,” the admiral said.

“And Russia has vulnerabilities because it’s running out of people, it’s running out of hi-tech missiles.

“President Putin has used about 25% of his army’s power to gain a tiny amount of territory and 50,000 people either dead or injured. Russia is failing.”

If Admiral Tony says it is true you can take it to the bank. I mean, who can deny the British victory at Dunkirk and their smashing successes in quelling the natives in India, Iraq and Afghanistan. Not to be presumptive Mr. Putin, but when Russia comes to grip with the mighty military prowess of the United Kingdom, I can understand why you will quiver in your snow boots.

Oh sure, just because you now control the areas of Ukraine that produce the bulk of its grain exports, does not mean that you can remain a big player in grain exports (notwithstanding the fact that your country is the 7th largest grain producer in the world). And ditto for your vast reserves of oil and gas. I hear that the Europeans are quite prepared to burn cow and sheep dung to stay warm rather than submit to the indignity of buying your gas and paying rubles.

And speaking of rubles, do you not realize that no one wants your ruble? Joe Biden told me that your ruble is rubble, so it must be true. Biden is known for his veracity. You are acting as if the ruble is stronger now than at the start of your special military operation. That is delusional sir.

And how do you hope to continue to produce new missiles and rockets and other munitions to replace the hundreds of thousands you have fired so far? You act as if Russia is a major manufacturing/industrial center that does not depend on foreign exports to sustain itself. Just because your country is the major exporter of critical minerals and metals that the United States and Europe need to make everything from catalytic converters to computer chips, does not give you the upper hand.

Do you not remember how the United States could no longer make the rocket engines required to carry astronauts to the International Space Station and found an outside provider? See, the west always has some dandy alternatives. You act as if Russia was building those rocket engines and we in the west know that cannot be true because, speaking frankly now sir, you Russians are a bunch of vodka soaked, illiterate peasants.

The fact that you require your students to take three times the number of courses in mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology is further proof of Russia lagging behind the west. See, we understand what is really important. First, small children need to understand there is no such thing as male and female. Once they understand that they do not have to waste their time learning about chromosomes. Men get pregnant and need tampons (though a shortage of those has cropped up). Second, we believe deeply in promoting racial division based on the pigment of someone’s skin. You crazy Russians operate under the delusion that national unity is something important. Not here. We have come to understand that we need to destroy our heritage and recreate something new, which includes recognizing there are at least 72 genders.

The Russia-Iran-India Corridor - CHECKMATE

A Russian Kinzhal missile at 12,000 kilometers per hour, 10 times faster than sound, was, reportedly, used today to destroy a Ukrainian weapons depot 136 meters underground. (Listen to the astonishment of the American reporter when he suddenly saw this). via @Dmitry65smols pic.twitter.com/hbP4BsmFlb

— 알렉산더 대왕 (@51st__State) June 18, 2022

thecradle  |  A key node of the International North South Transportation Corridor (INTSC) is now in play, linking northwest Russia to the Persian Gulf via the Caspian Sea and Iran. The transportation time between St. Petersburg and Indian ports is 25 days.

This logistical corridor with multimodal transportation carries an enormous geopolitical significance for two BRICs members and a prospective member of the “new G8” because it opens a key alternative route to the usual cargo trail from Asia to Europe via the Suez canal.

The International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC)

The INSTC corridor is a classic South-South integration project: a 7,200-km-long multimodal network of ship, rail, and road routes interlinking India, Afghanistan, Central Asia, Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia all the way to Finland in the Baltic Sea.

Technically, picture a set of containers going overland from St. Petersburg to Astrakhan. Then the cargo sails via the Caspian to the Iranian port of Bandar Anzeli. Then it’s transported overland to the port of Bandar Abbas. And then overseas to Nava Sheva, the largest seaport in India. The key operator is Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (the IRISL group), which has branches in both Russia and India.

And that brings us to what wars from now will be fought about: transportation corridors – and not territorial conquest.

Beijing’s fast-paced BRI is seen as an existential threat to the ‘rules-based international order.’ It develops along six overland corridors across Eurasia, plus the Maritime Silk Road from the South China Sea, and the Indian Ocean, all the way to Europe.

One of the key targets of NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine is to interrupt BRI corridors across Russia. The Empire will go all out to interrupt not only BRI but also INSTC nodes. Afghanistan under US occupation was prevented from become a node for either BRI or INSTC.

With full access to the Sea of Azov – now a “Russian lake” – and arguably the whole Black Sea coastline further on down the road, Moscow will hugely increase its sea trading prospects (Putin: “The Black Sea was historically Russian territory”).

For the past two decades, energy corridors have been heavily politicized and are at the center of unforgiving global pipeline competitions – from BTC and South Stream to Nord Stream 1 and 2, and the never-ending soap operas, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) and Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipelines.

Then there’s the Northern Sea Route alongside the Russian coastline all the way to the Barents Sea. China and India are very much focused on the Northern Sea Route, not by accident also  discussed in detail in St. Petersburg.

The contrast between the St. Petersburg debates on a possible re-wiring of our world – and the Three Stooges Taking a Train to Nowhere to tell a mediocre Ukrainian comedian to calm down and negotiate his surrender (as confirmed by German intelligence) – could not be starker.

Almost imperceptibly – just as it re-incorporated Crimea and entered the Syrian theater – Russia as a military-energy superpower now shows it is potentially capable of driving a great deal of the industrialized west back into the Stone Age. The western elites are just helpless. If only they could ride a corridor on the Eurasian high-speed train, they might learn something.

Decide For Yourself If Russia Is Issuing Checks It Can't Cash!!!

indianpunchline |  Fundamentally, the Western economies are facing a systemic crisis. The complacency that the reserve-currency-based US economy is impervious to ballooning debt; that the petrodollar system compels the entire world to purchase dollars to finance their needs; that the flood of cheap Chinese consumer goods and cheap energy from Russia and Gulf States would keep inflation at bay; that interest rate hikes will cure structural inflation; and, above all, that the consequences of taking a trade-war hammer to a complex network system in the world economy can be managed — these notions stand exposed. 

When the money printing presses whirred in Europe and America, no one felt uneasy about the structural flaws in the system. In a haze of ideological bluster, the Biden Administration and its junior partner in Brussels didn’t pay any due diligence before sanctioning Russia and its energy and resources. Europe is much worse off than America. Inflation in Europe is well into double digits. A European sovereign debt crisis may already have begun.

The accelerating inflationary crisis threatens the standing of western politicians, as they will encounter real popular anger once inflation eats away at the middle class and high energy prices gut business profits.

How to arrest the unfolding slow burn political debacle for both Europe and the US? The logical way is to force Zelensky to go to the negotiating table and discuss a settlement. The narrative of continuing the attrition against Russian forces for the coming months, to inflict hurt on Russia, does not help European politicians. Mariupol, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia have fallen. Donbass might also, soon. What’s the next red line? Odessa? 

Paradoxically, the long war in Ukraine could only work to Russia’s advantage. President Putin’s speech at the SPIEF at St. Petersburg on Friday shows how thoroughly Moscow studied the western financial and economic system and identified its structural contradictions. Putin is adept at using the weight and strength of his opponents to his own advantage rather than opposing blow directly to blow. The West’s overextension can ultimately be its undoing. 

That’s where the actual inflection point lies today — whether the structural contradictions in the western economies have matured into disorder. Putin sees the West’s future as bleak, hit simultaneously by the blowback from its own imposition of sanctions, and the resultant spike in commodity prices, but lacking agility to deflect the blows due to institutional rigidities. 

The big question today is at what point Russia retaliates against the countries who are involved in the gun-running business in Ukraine if they accelerate on that path. The air strikes by Russian jets last Thursday on the militant terror groups harboured in the US garrison at Al-Tanf on the Syrian-Iraqi border may well have carried a message.

Joseph Robinette Biden (Complete Transcript And Appropriate Video)

thestar |  A transcript of an Oval Office interview Thursday with President Joe Biden by AP White House reporter Josh Boak. Where the audio recording of the interview is unclear, ellipses or a notation that the recording was unintelligible are used.

AP: I wanted to thank you for taking the time to do this.

BIDEN: Sure, happy to.

AP: And I’m really interested in how you’re thinking and how you’re making choices during what seems like a really unique time in American history.

BIDEN: Well, I’m making choices. It’s an interesting question. I’m making choices like I always have, in the sense that circumstances change but my objective doesn’t change. Does that make sense to you? For example, I have, uh, from the time I’ve entered public life, it’s been about how to give ordinary working-class and middle-class folks a shot (inaudible) .. instead of everything being viewed as from the top down. I’m not a big, is it working (a reference to the tape recorder).

AP: Yeah, we’re good.

BIDEN: I’m not a big believer in trickle-down economy, and, um, and so everything I look at from the time I took this office, but even before that when I was a senator all those years, is what’s the best shot to grow the economy from the bottom up and the middle out because when that happens everybody does well. The wealthy do very, very well. And the biggest thing I think that, when I came into this job, that I have the greatest frustration with the last four years, is that, um, uh, everything was constructed and built and arranged in order for the top 1 to 3% of the population to do very well. The rest was sort of, I mean that literally, everything else seemed to be an afterthought.

AP: So, let me ask about that, right, because you’ve seen the polls. There’s a lot of voters who are very pessimistic. When I look at the consumer sentiment survey the University of Michigan puts out, even Democrats began to get really worried about a year ago regarding the economy and we’ve had people that have basically been through a pandemic, shortages of basic goods, inflation, some of the political divisions you’re seeing right now on the Hill with the Jan. 6 hearings, and also a war in Europe. And how do you as a president provide a sense of stability and strength ... (crosstalk)

BIDEN: Well, if you notice, until gas prices started going up, which was about the same time, the University of Michigan survey, they had a very different view. Things were much more, they were much more optimistic. We came in and we started to grow the economy in significant ways. We were able to, ah, you know, go from 2 million shots in arms to 225 million. People were having access to dealing with the pandemic. We started opening up businesses, and opening up access to go back to work, etc. But then, in my experience, the way I was raised, if you want a direct barometer of what people are going to talk about at the kitchen table and the dining room table and whether things are going well, it’s the cost of food and what’s the cost of, of gasoline at the pump. I mean literally at the pump.

And if you notice, you know, uh, gasoline went up a, you know, $1.25 right off the bat, almost, when, the, Putin’s war started. Um, and as I said at the time, by the way, I made it clear with helping Ukraine, and organizing NATO to help Ukraine, that this was going to cost. There was going to be a price to pay for it. It was, this is not going to be cost-free, but we had, the option of doing nothing was worse. If he in fact moved into Ukraine, took hold of Ukraine, and Belarus, where it is, and he’s been a threat to NATO, all those things would have even been more dire.

AP: Why is that? Because it seems like you knew the risks on Ukraine with regard to higher gasoline prices ...

BIDEN: Sure.

AP: ... that carried political risks for you at home ...

BIDEN: Sure.

AP: ... so when, when your aides said, “Look at the situation,” how did you make that choice? What would you tell someone in Latrobe, Pennsylvania?

BIDEN: I’m the president of the United States. It’s not about my political survival. It’s about what’s best for the country. No kidding. No kidding. So what happens? What happens if the strongest power, NATO, an organizational structure we put together, walked away from Russian aggression of over 100,000 troops marching across a border to try to, to occupy and wipe out a culture of an entire people. What, then, then what happens? What happens next? What do we do next?

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Complete Transcript And Video)

Pernicious frauds have tricked miseducated subjects into the absurd delusion that the whole Russian awakening and change of course has been the result Putin's takeover. But ask yourself, who chose him and made Yeltsin put him up as PM? 

Russia may not have the deep state in the same way that the U.S. does, but influential and respected Russian elders had and continue to have a way to make themselves heard. Very obviously, a group of elder Russian statesmen got together - worried about Russia going to the dogs - and engineered a quiet changeover. However it happened, Putin did not make it to the top by himself, and most certainly he has not been alone in running things, as the West would like its most simple-minded subjects to believe.

So do not worry about Valodya's health and Russian leadership's succession.  Everyone in Russia has learned the lesson from the 1990s. The support that Russians extend to Putin is not so much personal, it is instead support for his policies for making Russia strong, independent and proud. 

The idea that the Russian people would fall for Western "beads" again is ludicrous.

RG-RU.Translate.Goog  |  Vladimir Putin: Thank you very much! Dear Kassym-Jomart Kemelevich! Dear friends, colleagues!

I greet the participants and guests of the anniversary XXV St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

It is taking place at a difficult time for the entire world community, when the economy, markets, and the very principles of the global economic system are under attack. Many trade, production, and logistics ties that were previously disrupted by the pandemic are now going through new tests. Moreover, such key concepts for business as business reputation, inviolability of property and trust in world currencies have been thoroughly undermined - undermined, unfortunately, by our partners in the West, and this was done intentionally, for the sake of ambition, in the name of preserving outdated geopolitical illusions.

Today ours - when I say "ours" I mean the Russian leadership - has its own view of the situation in which the global economy finds itself. I will dwell in detail on how Russia is acting in these conditions and how it is planning its development in a dynamically changing environment.

A year and a half ago, speaking at the Davos Forum, I once again emphasized that the era of the unipolar world order is over - I want to start with this, there is no getting away from it - it has ended despite all attempts to preserve it, to conserve it by any means. Changes are a natural course of history, since the civilizational diversity of the planet, the richness of cultures is difficult to combine with political, economic and other patterns, patterns do not work here, patterns that are rudely, without alternative, imposed from one center.

The flaw lies in the very idea, according to which there is one, albeit a strong power with a limited circle of approximate or, as they say, states admitted to it, and all the rules of business and international relations - when it becomes necessary - are interpreted exclusively in the interests of this power , as they say, work in one direction, the game goes in one direction. A world based on such "dogmas" is definitely unsustainable.

The United States, having declared victory in the Cold War, declared itself to be the messengers of the Lord on Earth, who have no obligations, but only interests, and these interests are declared sacred. They do not seem to notice that over the past decades, new powerful centers have been formed on the planet and are louder and louder. Each of them develops its own political systems and public institutions, implements its own models of economic growth and, of course, has the right to protect them, to ensure national sovereignty.

We are talking about objective processes, about truly revolutionary, tectonic changes in geopolitics, the global economy, in the technological sphere, in the entire system of international relations, where the role of dynamic, promising states and regions is significantly increasing, whose interests can no longer be ignored.

I repeat: these changes are fundamental, pivotal and inexorable. And it is a mistake to believe that the time of turbulent changes can, as they say, sit out, wait out, that, supposedly, everything will return to normal, everything will be as before. Will not.

However, it seems that the ruling elites of some Western states are just in this kind of illusion. They do not want to notice obvious things, but stubbornly cling to the shadows of the past. For example, they believe that the dominance of the West in global politics and economics is an unchanging, eternal value. Nothing is eternal.

Moreover, our colleagues do not simply deny reality. They are trying to counteract the course of history. They think in terms of the last century. They are captivated by their own delusions about countries outside the so-called "golden billion": they consider everything else to be the periphery, their backyard, they still treat them like a colony, and the peoples living there consider them second-class people, because consider themselves exceptional. If they are exceptional, then everyone else is second-class.

Hence - an irrepressible desire to punish, economically crush the one who stands out from the general ranks, does not want to blindly obey. Moreover, they rudely and shamelessly impose their own ethics, views on culture and ideas about history, and sometimes question the sovereignty and integrity of states, create a threat to their existence. Suffice it to recall the fate of Yugoslavia and Syria, Libya and Iraq.

If some "rebel" cannot be hounded, pacified, then they try to isolate him or, as they say now, "cancel". Everything is used, even sports, the Olympic movement, a ban on culture, masterpieces of art - for the sole reason that their authors are of the "wrong" origin.

This is the nature of the current attack of Russophobia in the West and insane sanctions against Russia. Crazy and, I would say, thoughtless. Their number, as well as the speed of stamping, knows no precedents.

Sergei Lavrov - In A Russian State Of Mind

Lavrov, in a snippet from his interview with the BBC at about the 21:50 mark:

I then turned to Russian relations with the UK. It is on Russia's official list of unfriendly countries, and I suggested that to say relations were bad was an understatement.

"I don't think there's even room for maneuvre any more," Mr Lavrov told me, "because both [Prime Minister Boris] Johnson and [Liz] Truss say openly that we should defeat Russia, we should force Russia to its knees. 

Go on, then, do it!"

The American Dilemma

consortiumnews |  The West has been inhabiting a fanciful world that could exist only in our imaginations. Many remain stranded in that self-deluded mirage. The more that we have invested in that fantasy world, the harder we find it to exit and to make the adjustment — intellectual, emotional, behavioral. 

An assessment of where we are, where we might go and the implications over time of the reactions of other parties is a singularly complex undertaking. For it requires not just specification of time frames, but also the varying definitions of national interest and strategic objective that government leaders might use as reference marks.  

The number of permutations created by the array of players involved, and the low confidence margins associated with forecasts of how each will act at key decision points down the road, exacerbate the already daunting challenge. Before one even contemplates embarking on such a task, there are a few crucial considerations to bear in mind. 

Those in Charge

First, the people who count at the head of governments are not pure thinking machines. Far from it. They are too often persons of narrow intelligence, of limited experience in high stakes games of power politics, who navigate by simplistic, outdated and parochial cognitive maps of the world. Their perspectives approximate montages composed of bits of ideology, bits of visceral emotion, bits of remembered but inappropriate precedents, bits of massaged public opinion data, and odds-and-ends plucked from New York Times op-ed pieces.

In addition, let’s remind ourselves that policy-formation and decision-making are group processes — especially in Washington and Brussels — encumbered by their own collective dynamics.  Finally, in Western capitals, governments operate in dual currencies: policy effectiveness and electoral politics.  

Consequently, there are two powerful, in-built tendencies that inflect the choices made: 1) inertial extension of existing attitudes and approaches; and 2) avoidance wherever possible of endangering a hard-won, often tenuous, consensus on a lowest common denominator basis.  

One thing we know with certainty: no fundamental change in thinking or action can occur without determination and decisiveness at the top. 

Necessity is the mother of invention — or so it is said. However, grasping what is “necessary” can be a very slippery business. An actual recasting of how one views a problematic situation normally is a last resort. Experience and history tell us that, as do behavioral experiments.

The psychology of perceived necessity is complex. Adversity or threat in and of itself does not trigger improvisation. Even the survival instinct does not always spark innovation. Denial, then avoidance, are normally the first, sequential reactions when facing adversity in trying to reach an objective or to satisfy a recognized interest. A strong bias favors the reiteration of a standard repertoire of responses.

True innovation tends to occur only in extremis; and even then, behavioral change is more likely to begin with minor adjustments of established thinking and behavior at the margins rather than modification of core beliefs and patterns of action.

 

Sanctions Having No Effect On Russia But Crushing Everyone Else...,

WSJ  |  Sanctions on Russia, offset by a windfall from high-price energy exports, haven’t inflicted enough economic pain so far to hurt Moscow’s war effort or push President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.

That resilience isn’t expected to last, with many economists predicting a deep recession later this year, a rise in poverty and a long-term degradation of the country’s economic potential. For now, the slow pace of sanctions, Russia’s successful efforts to stabilize its economy and its ability to keep oil and gas flowing overseas have cushioned the blow for Moscow. 

That is allowing Russia to continue its war effort in Ukraine for now, said Janis Kluge, an expert in the Russian economy at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

“Right now, the economic sanctions are not an incentive for Russia to negotiate,” Mr. Kluge said. “The Kremlin is convinced it can withstand a few years with a bad economy and wait for better days. Russia is emboldened by its own success in fending off the West’s sanctions.”

On Thursday, some of Russia’s top economic officials spoke at the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, which was empty of its normal crowd of global political, economic and business leaders. While staying positive, they acknowledged the long-term problems the economy faces.

“We’ve managed to persevere, we’re a strong people and we just need to believe in ourselves,” Maxim Oreshkin, economic adviser to Mr. Putin, said at the forum.

The economic resilience means that Moscow is able to exert pressure on European countries, which are dependent on its oil and gas supplies. Russia’s energy leverage was on display this week as state-owned Gazprom PJSC curtailed gas shipments to Germany and Italy in what the German economy minister, Robert Habeck, called “a strategy to unsettle and drive up prices.” Russia had previously cut off gas supplies to Poland, Bulgaria and Finland.

Despite Europe’s frantic efforts to wean itself off Russian energy, including through a phased oil embargo by the end of this year, Russia is still earning hundreds of millions of dollars every day from its oil and gas sales because of elevated global prices. Even as Europeans limit purchases, Moscow has been able to reroute some of its oil flows to India and other customers across Asia.

 

The West Lost Its Race For The Future With Russia When It Lost Its Education System

smoothiex12  |  In fact, I need to elaborate on the immensity of this news. Yesterday:

МОСКВА, 24 мая — РИА Новости. Министерство науки и высшего образования России подтвердило намерение выйти из Болонского процесса и отдать приоритет созданию собственной системы образования, сообщили в пресс-службе ведомства.

Translation:  MOSCOW, May 24 - RIA Novosti. The Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Russia confirmed its intention to withdraw from the Bologna process and give priority to the creation of its own education system, the ministry's press service said.

Here is the key point: 

Болонская система предполагает двухуровневую систему образования: бакалавриат и магистратура. Российская система образования кроме этих уровней включает подготовку кадров по уровню специалитета с нормативным сроком освоения образовательных программ в течение пяти-шести лет.  

Translation: The Bologna system involves a two-level education system: undergraduate and graduate. The Russian education system, in addition to these levels, includes training at the specialist level with a standard term for mastering educational programs for five to six years.

Read the whole piece (use Google to translate) and this "specialist" degree is what makes real professionals. It was always the basis of a superb Russian/Soviet education which was also program of study-rigid in providing both an extremely advanced foundation in general science (Math, Physics, Chemistry, Language etc.) while giving a professional training of the highest level. Return to classic Russian/Soviet system is yet another step in breaking the hold of many poor, if not damaging, Western ideas on Russia's life and this one is huge. You want some "elective" courses in dancing or acting while studying for engineer? Good, only on your own expense and time, otherwise, go and take entrance exams to profile colleges. It is also remarkable that it was Nikolai Patrushev who took an active role in removing this system. 

The consequence of all that will be the return to what Admiral Hyman Rickover was afraid of in 1959:  

Vice Admiral Hyman G. Rickover said today that his recent visit to the Soviet Union and Poland had convinced him that "our really great race with the Soviet Union is in education."

We all can observe today a collapse of the Western system of education through a sheer incompetence, stupidity and malice of contemporary Western "elites". We also see a precipitous decline in what was always thought as a strong point of Western education--STEM. Enough to take a look at Boeing-737 Max and at the killing of the energy sector in EU and the US. As Buzz Aldrin (I believe) said: in 1969 we thought that we would be flying to Mars in 2020, instead we have got Facebook. I may add B-737 Max, LCS and F-35.

So, I decided to give you all heads-up on this extremely important issue. And the sigh of relief in Russia, that finally the killing of Russian educational school is over. Consequences of that will be massive.

Valodya's Meeting With The Head Of Rosnano State Corporation Sergei Kulikov

kremlin.ru  |  Vladimir Putin:  Sergey Alexandrovich, the company started operating in its original form in 2007. During this time, 150, in my opinion, enterprises have been created, several tens of thousands of jobs - somewhere under 40 thousand.

Let's talk about the results of the work in general.

Sergei Kulikov: Mr  President, this is indeed true.

You, as the founder and ideologist of this program, know better than anyone else that this is not just a state corporation, not just a joint-stock company, and not even just a development institution – it is a symbol of investing in science, technology, and the future.

I will try to focus my report on three aspects: technology, science and education, and money.

Indeed, 150 enterprises have been created, and nanotechnologies have taken root in six technological clusters. This is electronics, these are the actual materials, this is optronics, this is the disposal of even municipal solid waste. In terms of science, 53 billion rubles were spent on R&D. One and a half thousand students graduate annually from nanotechnology departments in 28 universities in the countries.

As we said in December, we have not yet launched a program, but an initiative for mathematical modeling of materials, and it has already begun to show results in prototypes. We didn’t just start, for example, in the MISiS laboratory, we increased the properties of thermoelectrics by 30–40 percent due to mathematical modeling, and today we have already launched the next cycle this year – with major players who are now beginning to understand that everything starts with materials .

Finance: we pay off debts, last year we paid off the first 20 billion. For those with whom we agree on a discount, we, of course, meet halfway, but the interest accumulates. I have prepared several proposals, I will report to you.

The good news is that, given that 233 billion rubles were invested in Rusnano over the years you mentioned, by 2020, 155 billion rubles were received from exits from the portfolio, from assets. We added another 50 billion rubles to this piggy bank last year, thus, we have overcome the psychological barrier of 200 billion rubles, equaling the investment costs, which, we think, confirms the overall profitability of our activities.

Returning to the fact that after all this is a symbol, and not just a joint-stock company, I would like to emphasize that over these ten years it has been proven that nanotechnology is necessary, that it is achievable and that a competitive product cannot be obtained today without immersion in the morphology of the material. And this is probably really worth investing in - it's time to invest in it right now.

How rich are we today? First, there are three professions.

Nanotechnologist. To be honest, I myself tried to master it externally, but I realized that it was better to do my own thing, create conditions for replenishing the army of process engineers and nanotechnologists.

The second important profession is the technology entrepreneur. And we have already launched one startup studio at ITMO [National Research University] as part of the University Technological Entrepreneurship program under the auspices of the Ministry of Education – it has already begun to give interesting results, and we have 14 [startup studios] in our plan this year. Just the task is to get from idea to product much faster.

And the third profession is an investor in science and technology, I would say so. This is a translator between business and science, who knows what money is being collected for today, and sets such a task for scientists and, on the contrary, looks for what scientists invent, and collects money for this.

As for the portfolio: we have 51 assets left today, of which 18 are in varying degrees of problem. As an example, the Novosibirsk Liotech is a manufacturer of accumulators and batteries. An old, “bearded” story: the enterprise went bankrupt several times, we tried to restart it, but in the end we save, first of all, the team, intellectual property. We have found a use for them: together with Rosseti - Rosseti Center - in eleven regions we operate system storage devices, we have successfully overcome the autumn-winter period in small towns with virtually no accidents. Today we are already developing the next generation of these solutions.

We have postponed sales plans for 13 companies until 2023-2024 because the need for them today to maintain critical infrastructure has become apparent. I will give examples.

For example, the Perm Novomet is an excellent company that produces submersible sediments for the oil industry. In general, we expect that if we present them as an assembly point, we will be able to collect such competencies in order to become an alternative supplier in principle or replace those who today decide to change the market.

“Russian membranes” in Vladimir are, one might say, the heart and basis of water treatment in general, not only desalination, which is used in the countries of the [Persian] Gulf, we are actively working with them, but also water purification, which is especially important today. You know perfectly well that we have agreed with the two governors, and now we are piloting these decisions.

Optovolokno is a Saransk enterprise in Mordovia, the governor, the Ministry of Industry and Trade and I agreed to develop it to ...

Vladimir Putin:  We need source materials.

Sergei Kulikov:  Of course. We will now finish building another redistribution in order to ensure sustainability.

And of course, today three American and Japanese suppliers have left the market, and we are now competing only with the Chinese, which is difficult, for a place in the energy cable and telecom cable. But it is also a very interesting task, you can grow it well.

We have, as it were, pushed these assets aside, but we will still go into the strategy so that a private investor joins this task.

Vladimir Putin:  Is this realistic? Do you think you will do it?

Sergei Kulikov:  We have no choice. How not to? Especially in today's environment: people need to communicate, networks need to be managed. There is no choice, it must be done by any means. And, even if we can’t deliver something, then it will be necessary to look for ways to produce it.

We prepared 20 assets for sale, including foreign ones. For example, assets known to you in the field of alternative energy. We are leaving them and reconfiguring the teams for new tasks. That is, for example, our power engineers will be engaged in small-scale generation, the same system drives, that is, some kind of hybrid solutions that can be applied today.

We left two waste incinerators, and we began to apply this competence, we began to look for new technologies. We discovered a wonderful solution for ash-free disposal: we built two reactors, now Rosprirodnadzor does not get out of there and is surprised, but still looking for there to be no mistake. That is, we do not have emissions, because there is no combustion, and I will also show you this solution after the report.

Manufacturer of nanotubes - you know about it. In general, he went all the way from a startup - the first four stages of technology maturation - to an IPO. This, in fact, illustrates the general function of Rosnano, when we pick up from the first to the fourth stage, from the fourth to the eighth, and then bring it to the market or become a strategic partner.

We joined forces with the founders and this year brought the nanotube to use in the automotive components of electric vehicles and are now piloting it on the road surface. For example, on the [highway] Moscow-Don, a nanotube was added to the asphalt material and we are surprised that at plus 50 degrees a rut is not formed. It seems to me that this generally deserves a separate development, perhaps on some more than a ten-year program, in order to see how our roads can be effectively used.

All this led to a total - like word of mouth, investors began to come to us, and we grew in the portfolio by 30 percent over the past year. For the entire period of work of Rosnano - until 2020 - 65 billion rubles of extra-budgetary funds were attracted. We raised 68 [billion] in projects last year, of which only four are our own funds, the rest is external financing.

It seems to me, if we talk about further reincarnation, that Rosnano, if you remember, went from a state corporation to a joint-stock company, that is, it is probably time to think about a public-private partnership. That is, in newly created funds, we can, in principle, already increase the share of a private investor. We have such an ambition in the strategy that we will attract in the first half of its implementation in the proportion of one to four, that is, for one ruble state or quasi-state four foreign, and by the end of the implementation period - one to eight.

The team was rebooted, with respect to the founders, in fact, we are even forming the club of the university "Rosnano". We attracted a lot of young colleagues, added competencies that we lacked, and based on the previously created groundwork and the groundwork that we have already formed today, we are looking at projects in the field of ecology, healthcare, mobility, energy and security, of course.

Vladimir Putin:  But you and I understand that in this regard, one of the key tasks is to take further steps to improve the financial situation.

Sergei Kulikov:  Of course.

All By Itself - Ukraine Can Feed And Provide For 600 Million People

sonar21  |  Until Joe Biden took office I thought that George W Bush had dibs on the “stupidest foreign policy blunder in history” award. His decision to invade Iraq rather than eliminate Al Qaeda hurt the United States and fueled international terrorism. But leave it to Joe Biden to one-up W by imposing sanctions on Russia that are inflicting an economic holocaust on the United States and Europe. Heck of a job, Joe.

The ostensible reason for “punishing” Russia with sanctions that actually pummel the west was Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Now we all know that Ukraine was/is the poorest nation in Europe. Right?

Ukraine is one of the worst off countries after the collapse of the USSR. It is the poorest country in Europe despite having a huge aerospace industry, natural resources and some of the most fertile land for agriculture. During the communist era, Ukraine was the breadbasket of the Soviet Union. Despite all this, Ukrainians have experienced terrible famines such as the Stalinist Holodomor.
 

Today, the situation is not much better. Apart from enduring a war with Russia, its political system is particularly corrupt. Almost the entire economy is in the hands of big oligarchs: millionaires who amass fortunes thanks to their connections with political power.

Let me share with you some critical facts about Ukraine and its economic potential. When you consider these facts you will likely wonder why Ukraine is not one of the richest nations in Europe.

UKRAINE IS:

1st in Europe in proven recoverable uranium ore reserves;
2nd place in Europe and 10th place in the world in titanium ore reserves;
2nd place in the world in terms of explored reserves of manganese ores (2.3 billion tons, or 12% of world reserves);
The 2nd largest iron ore reserves in the world (30 billion tons);
2nd place in Europe in mercury ore reserves;
3rd place in Europe (13th place in the world) in terms of shale gas reserves (22 trillion cubic meters)
4th place in the world in terms of the total value of natural resources;
7th place in the world in coal reserves (33.9 billion tons)

Ukraine is an important agricultural country:
1st in Europe in terms of arable land area;
3rd place in the world by the area of chernozem (25% of the world volume);
1st place in the world in the export of sunflower and sunflower oil;
2nd place in the world in barley production and 4th place in barley export;
3rd largest producer and 4th largest exporter of corn in the world;
The 4th largest potato producer in the world;
The 5th largest rye producer in the world;
5th place in the world for honey production (75,000 tons);
8th place in the world in wheat exports;
9th place in the world in the production of chicken eggs;
16th place in the world in cheese exports.

Ukraine can meet the food needs of 600 million people.

Putin Defers Cuban Debt Payments (IMF: No Changes To Latin American Debt Plans)

telesurenglish |   Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law ratifying four protocols to the Russian-Cuban intergovernmental loan agreements granting Havana a deferral of payments, the legal information portal published today.

The document was ratified on June 8 by the Russian Federation Council (Senate) and on May 24 by the State Duma (Lower House of Parliament).

During the exchange of views on the issue in the upper house, the senators stressed that the extension of these agreements will make it possible to provide assistance to Cuba in financing oil supplies and will contribute to strengthening Russia's positions in Latin America.

The International Affairs Committee of the Federation Council noted that cooperation between Cuba and Russia is of special importance for the country.

"Providing assistance to the friendly Republic of Cuba in the area of financing the procurement of oil and its derivatives will contribute to strengthening the political positions of the Russian Federation in Latin America," that committee stressed.

One of the protocols amends the bilateral agreement on the granting of a state loan, dated January 30, 2009, and another on the approval of a credit to finance the supply of oil and its derivatives to Cuba, initialed on March 20, 2017.

Two others extend the respective agreements between Moscow and Havana on the provision of loans to finance supplies of oil and its derivatives to the Caribbean island, signed on December 13, 2017 and July 19, 2019.

Between 2006 and 2019, Russia provided Cuba with state export loans in an amount equivalent to two billion three hundred million dollars, the explanatory note on the new law indicated.

The funds were granted to the Antillean nation to finance projects in the fields of energy, metallurgy, transport infrastructure and the supply of products to develop and support its economy.

Due to the country's difficult situation, caused by the tightening of the U.S. blockade and the impact of the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, Cuba stopped repaying the state loans provided by Russia since the beginning of 2020 and in September requested restructuring.

 

 

The Ukrainian Corruption That Infects Washington D.C.

sonar21  |  Yaacov Apelbaum wrote an amazing investigative piece in September 2019 that is more relevant and timely now. He provides photographic and video proof of how a certain segment in Ukraine has penetrated the U.S. political system. Did you know the following:

• Adam Schiff relied on Igor Pasternak, who was born in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic and graduated from Ukraine’s Lviv Polytechnic National University, to raise funds for Schiff’s congressional campaign. Pasternak is a naturalized American citizen.
• Igor Pasternak is tied directly to Nancy Pelosi and Ukraine’s network in the United States.
• Pasternak’s company, Aeros, partnered with the Government of Ukraine in 2015–The Government of Ukraine and Aeroscraft Corporation (Aeros) held a press conference today in Los Angeles, revealing further details about the cooperative partnership to strengthen the border protection agency of Ukraine with additional wide area situational awareness capabilities. The partnership with Ukraine, Aeros, and UkoBoronProm first announced in Kiev earlier this month will see the Ukraine-Russian border protected by a series of Aeros made Elevated Early Warning Systems (EEWS). Senior Ukrainian officials were joined for the conference today by Aeros’ CEO Igor Pasternak and CA State Assemblyman, Matt Dababneh (45th District).
• Notes from the desk of Yaroslav Brisiuck’s the Ukrainain Chargé d’affaires in Washington DC suggest that Democrat operative Alexandra Chalupa could be a long term Ukrainian intelligence asset
• Alexandra Chalupe was involved actively with a Michael Avantti, Linda Sarsour, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and the August 2020 effort to impeach president Trump.
• Alexandra Chalupa’s Ukrainian handler was Okana Shulyar. Chalupa held multiple intelligence briefing and debriefing sessions regarding president Trump with her handler Okana Shulyar .
• The Atlantic Council is tied closely to Ukraine and Adam Schiff is engaging in intelligence collection and political patronage in Ukraine with his collaborator Geysha Gonzalez (who paid for Schiff’s aid trip), an expert on disinformation, misinformation, and false information, and the Deputy Director of the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council.

These are not manufactured linkages. Yaacov’s research and evidence pull the curtain back on the Ukrainian corruption that infects Washington, DC.

An International Full-Court Press Is Underway To Discredit Antiwar Journalists

dissidentvoice |  A military funded academic, working at a school launched by Condoleezza Rice, claims leftist and anti-war journalists engage in Russian disinformation. His report doesn’t provide any evidence or refute anyone’s argument, but the legacy media laps it up.

On Thursday the University of Calgary School of Public Policy released “Disinformation and Russia-Ukrainian war on Canadian social media”. With the exception of a blog by Dimitri Lascaris that dismantled its absurd ideological premises, coverage of the report was almost entirely uncritical. Headlines included: “Canada target of Russian disinformation, with tweets linked to foreign powers” (Globe and Mail), “Why is Canada the target of a Russian disinformation campaign?” (CJAD Montréal) and “Canada is target of Russian disinformation, with millions of tweets linked to Kremlin” (City News Toronto). The report’s lead author Jean-Christophe Boucher was a guest on multiple TV and radio outlets, labeling those who question the role of NATO expansion, the far Right and 2014 coup against an elected president in understanding the war in Ukraine “useful idiots” of Vladimir Putin.

Boucher and his co-researchers claim to have mapped over six million tweets in Canada about the conflict in Ukraine. They claim over a quarter of the tweets fall into five categories they label “pro-Russian narratives”. But they don’t even attempt to justify the five categories. Instead, they simply list the most prominent commentators and political figures promoting these ideas under the rubric of “Top Russian-influenced Accounts”. The list includes leftist journalists Aaron Maté, Benjamin Norton, Max Blumenthal, Richard Medhurst and John Pilger. But no evidence is offered to connect these individuals to Russia.

While “Disinformation and Russia-Ukrainian war on Canadian social media” reveals little, it has served its political purpose. It will further insulate Canadian officials from criticism of their policies by suggesting anyone questioning Ottawa’s Ukraine/NATO policies are part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

Boucher is a product of the Canadian military’s vast publicly financed ideological apparatus, which I detail in A Propaganda System: How Canada’s Government, Corporations, Media and Academia Sell War and Exploitation. He has been a fellow at the military and arms industry funded Canadian Global Affairs Institute and Dalhousie Centre for the Study of Security and Development. He advocates theories amenable to the military’s interests, including “strategic retrenchment: falling back on the people you can really trust”, which is a sophisticated way of saying Canada should deepen its alliance with the US empire. His academic profile says Boucher “is a co-lead of the Canadian Network on Information and Security, funded by the Department of National Defence” while his Canadian Global Affairs Institute bio notes that “he is currently responsible for more than $2.4M of funding from the Department of National Defence (DND) to study information operations.”

In 2021 More Than 360,000 Californians Moved Down South Into Mexico

cnbc  |  More than 360,000 people left California in 2021, in what some are calling “The California Exodus” — many leaving for states like Texas, Arizona and Washington.

And a rising number of former Californians are migrating out of the country altogether and are instead heading south of the border. Many are seeking a more relaxed and affordable lifestyle in Mexico.

California continuously ranks high as one of the country’s most expensive states to live in. The median asking price for a home in California is about $797,470 — only 25% of the state’s households could afford that in the fourth quarter of 2021. 

California’s population growth has been declining for more than 30 years now. But thanks to the rise in remote work due to the Covid-19 pandemic, those trends have accelerated. The ability to work anywhere has 62% of Americans considering moving to a new country.  

However, there are some setbacks. Many critics argue that Americans are driving up the cost of housing for locals and pricing them out of the market.

Nicaragua Invites Russian Forces To Provide Humanitarian Assistance (Greasy House Negroes Are Nervous)

ticotimes | Daniel Ortega’s regime invited the Kremlin forces to enter the Central American country for “law enforcement, humanitarian aid, rescue and search missions in emergencies or natural disasters.”

“he most unpleasant icing on the cake for the United States was the sensational announcement by Daniel Ortega, president of Nicaragua. He allowed Russian troops, ships and planes into Nicaragua. Of course, only for humanitarian purposes, Russian troops can enter Nicaragua in the second half of 2022,” said state television presenter Olga Skabeeva.

“If U.S. missile systems can almost reach Moscow from Ukrainian territory, it is time for Russia to deploy something powerful closer to U.S. cities,” the journalist added.

The Nicaraguan government also authorized the presence of Russian troops for “exchange of experiences and training.”

Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, spoke to Russian media and mentioned: “We are talking about a routine procedure for the adoption of a Nicaraguan law on the temporary admission of foreign military personnel to its territory in order to develop cooperation in various areas, including humanitarian and emergency responses, combatting organized crime and drug trafficking.”

The Ortega regime stated that the exchange between the military forces will be of “mutual benefit in case of emergency situations” among both nations.

According to the Nicaraguan press, the entry of the Russian forces was previously planned and coordinated with the Nicaraguan Army.

On March 31, Kerri Hannan, an official of the US State Department, warned that Russia threatens to export the conflict in Ukraine to Latin America through military cooperation with Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.

“Russia maintains an unsettling attitude in Nicaragua and they could affect the stability of the region,” said Admiral Kurt Tidd, when he was head of the U.S. Southern Command.

Daniel Ortega has always been an ally and supporter of Russia, as evidenced by the relations between the two countries.

The closeness to Russia has been political and personal. Members of the Ortega Murillo family frequently travel to Russia on government delegations, and Nicaragua is one of the seven countries in the world to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two regions of Georgia that declared themselves independent under the patronage of Vladimir Putin’s regime.

Ortega’s regime has sent thousands of Nicaraguans into exile, shut down media outlets, forced the withdrawal of NGOs, imprisoned political opponents and threatened anyone who opposes or criticizes his administration.

As The Mighty Wurlitzer Admits Defeat In Ukraine Brandon Throws Zelensky Under The Bus

apnews  |  President Joe Biden, speaking to donors at a Democratic fundraiser here, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “didn’t want to hear it” when U.S. intelligence gathered information that Russia was preparing to invade.

The remarks came as Biden was talking about his work to rally and solidify support for Ukraine as the war continues into its fourth month.

“Nothing like this has happened since World War II. I know a lot of people thought I was maybe exaggerating. But I knew we had data to sustain he” — meaning Russian President Vladimir Putin — “was going to go in, off the border.”

“There was no doubt,” Biden said. “And Zelenskyy didn’t want to hear it.”

Although Zelenskyy has inspired people with his leadership during the war, his preparation for the invasion — or lack thereof — has remained a controversial issue.

In the weeks before the war began on Feb. 24, Zelenskyy publicly bristled as Biden administration officials repeatedly warned that a Russian invasion was highly likely.

moa  |   The New York Times, here via Yahoo, has some rather weird piece over alleged lack of intelligence on Ukrainian warplanes:

U.S. Lacks a Clear Picture of Ukraine's War Strategy, Officials Say

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine has provided near-daily updates of Russia’s invasion on social media; viral video posts have shown the effectiveness of Western weapons in the hands of Ukrainian forces; and the Pentagon has regularly held briefings on developments in the war.

But despite the flow of all this news to the public, U.S. intelligence agencies have less information than they would like about Ukraine’s operations and possess a far better picture of Russia’s military, its planned operations and its successes and failures, according to current and former officials.

Governments often withhold information from the public for operational security. But these information gaps within the U.S. government could make it more difficult for the Biden administration to decide how to target military aid as it sends billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine.
...
Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, testified at a Senate hearing last month that “it was very hard to tell” how much additional aid Ukraine could absorb.

She added: “We have, in fact, more insight, probably, on the Russian side than we do on the Ukrainian side.”

One key question is what measures Zelenskyy intends to call for in Donbas. Ukraine faces a strategic choice there: withdraw its forces or risk having them encircled by Russia.

Andrei Martyanov rants about the piece:

Well, NYT decided to start steering clear of this whole Russia "lost in Ukraine" BS it promoted together with neocon crazies, and begins this ever familiar tune of the "intel failure". Right.

U.S. Lacks a Clear Picture of Ukraine's War Strategy, Officials Say

Hm, how about I put it bluntly--the U.S. never had clear picture on anything, especially on Russia, or, as a private case, [the Special Military Operation] and completely bought into Ukie propaganda, which shows a complete incompetence of the "intel" in the US.
...
The narrative on [the Special Military Operation], in reality, is dead and the failure is not being set, it already happened. It is a fait accompli no matter how one wants to put a lipstick on the pig.

Larry Johnson thinks there is another another motive behind the story:

Frankly, I find it hard to believe that there are not solid analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency who know the answers to all these questions. The real problem may not be a lack of intelligence. Nope. It is the fear of telling the politicians hard truths they do not want to hear.

Given the billions of dollars the United States is spending on “intelligence” collection systems, it is time for the Congress and the American public to demand that the intelligence services do their damn job.

I do not believe for one moment that U.S. intelligence services do not know what is going on in Ukraine and in Kiev. They know that the Ukraine has lost the war and will have to sue for peace as soon as possible.

They also have told the White House that this is a case and that the whole idea of setting up the Ukraine to tickle the Russian bear was idiotic from the get go. The question now is who will take the blame for the outcome. Who can the buck be passed to?