Sunday 27 December 2020

The Parable Of The Tapeworm

 This was written for the newspaper The Meghalaya Times and published here.




Once, long ago, there was a little tapeworm that happened to hatch inside a human’s stomach.


The tapeworm was very happy in there. It was warm and moist inside the stomach and intestines, no matter what the weather was like outside, and no enemy with sharp claws and ripping teeth could reach the little tapeworm there. And, best of all, several times a day the tapeworm would be bathed in warm food, already digested and broken down, which the parasite simply had to absorb into its own body. It was a very nice place for the tapeworm and soon it grew larger and larger, and ate more and more.


There were a few other creatures living in the intestines, bacteria and protozoa, which helped the human digest his food. They broke down the complex food material, the cellulose in the cell walls of fruit and cooked vegetables, the polysaccharides in the bread and grain and made it into a form that the stomach’s digestive juices could absorb. The tapeworm ignored them, except for busily absorbing the food that they broke down as soon as it had been digested. And the tapeworm grew bigger still, and absorbed yet more food, so that the person began to feel hungry all the time, and had to eat more. But eating more only meant that there was more food for the bacteria and protozoa to break down and the stomach juices to digest, which in turn meant that there was more of the fruit of their labours for the tapeworm to swallow.


And the tapeworm grew bigger still.


Then one day a thought occurred to the tapeworm. “Since this place I live in is so perfect for me,” it thought, “only I should have a right to enjoy it. I will permit nothing else to live here. I will keep it for myself. None of these bacteria and protozoa have any right to share it with me, because I am so much larger and more powerful than they.” And it began wriggling and writhing and lashing out at all the bacteria and protozoa that lived in the intestine, and killed a great many, and drove many more away into the lower colon, though it could not kill or chase away all. And the human began to suffer because with the reduction of hard-working bacteria and protozoa breaking down food, there was less digestion going on, and of what little happened, the tapeworm ate almost the lot.


The more the tapeworm ate, the larger it got, and the larger it got, the hungrier it got, and since there was less and less food being digested, there was less for it. “It is all the fault of this human I live inside,” it declared. “He is selfishly eating so little that I am hungry. Well, then, I shall force him to do what I want. I will permit no food into the intestine at all.” And, pushing its elongated mass, bloated with all the nutrition it had swallowed, into the opening of the stomach into the intestine, it blocked off the passage completely.


“Now he shall suffer,” the tapeworm thought to itself with satisfaction. “He will be forced to let me have as much food as I want, and I will share none of it with all the bacteria and protozoa. This place shall be mine alone.”


But the human, with his digestive tract blocked by the worm, for the first time, felt sick enough to visit the doctor, and the doctor gave him some medicine, which he swallowed. And the medicine did its work, the bacteria and protozoa came flooding back, the food was broken down and digested and the human regained his health at last.


But the tapeworm was dead.

Witches By Night

 During WWII, the Germans were terrified of Russian witches.


This is not a joke.


In 1941, Hitler’s Wehrmacht smashed across the borders of the USSR and speared into the Soviet heartland. The Nazi project, which Hitler had gone into in detail in Mein Kampf, visualised the conversion of the USSR into a Nazi colony, where the “strong” (“Aryans”) would rule “naturally” over the “weak” (the Slavs), who would form a helot underclass. The great Soviet cities, Leningrad and Moscow, would be demolished with their populations even if surrendered. Soviet prisoners of war were frozen, starved, shot, medical experimented, and worked to death, refugee columns bombed and strafed from the air, the entire western reaches of the USSR turned into a hellscape of destruction so characteristic of Nazi Kultur.

 

In the Soviet system at that time, women were given exactly the same status as men, with Stalin repeatedly stating that there were no differences between the sexes and that they were the same. Many Soviet women – Russians, Latvians, Kazakhs, Ukrainians, whatever – had learnt to fly. Note that under the evil tyrant Stalin, any Soviet girl aged 15 who was interested could get pilot training for free. Many did, and some of them had become really famous. One such was Marina Raskova, who with two other female colleagues had attempted a world record long distance flight in the late 1930s. Due to bad weather and engine failure in the depths of eastern Siberia, it had become obvious that the plane would crash. Raskova, the navigator, was ordered to parachute out by the two pilots so that at least one of the three of them had a chance of survival. She did, but only after leaving her survival kit behind for the other two women. Once on the ground she walked in the direction the plane had taken, and finally found the crash site ten days later, surviving on two bars of chocolate during this time. The two pilots, incidentally, had also survived, and all were eventually rescued by ship. Not surprisingly this had made them all heroines in the USSR, with access to Stalin.

 

Now, in 1941, Raskova began badgering Stalin about permitting women with aircrew training to take part in combat. If they were equal in all things, Raskova said, why shouldn’t they fight as well? Why shouldn’t they have the same right to sacrifice their lives for the Motherland as the men did? Indeed, some woman pilots, like the fighter ace Lydia Litvyak, were already flying as part of mostly masculine air units, but Raskova wanted fully female units; not just the pilots and other aircrew, but even the ground personnel, the mechanics and ordnance operators, would be women. By 1942, Stalin had had enough and gave in. There was only one problem, which was that with the dire situation of the USSR, every capable fighter and bomber was desperately engaged in action, so there was nothing for the new Soviet women crew to fly in.

 

Oh, no? the Soviet women said. No, really?

 

Enter the Polikarpov 2, known as the Po 2 or the U 2 (U as a designation as a trainer, which had been its initial role; it shouldn’t be confused with the Amerikastani imperialist reconnaissance aircraft). First designed as long ago as 1928, it was a wood and fabric biplane which by 1942 was long obsolete even as a trainer and had been relegated to crop dusting and light transport roles in the boondocks. Its only good point seemed to be that it was available in very large numbers. It was weak-engined, low flying, with a top speed of just over a hundred kilometres an hour, and one would think that going into battle with it would be a nice way of committing suicide.

 


One would be wrong, but it took the system some time to realise just how wrong.

 

When the newly formed 588th Night Bomber Regiment of the Red Army Air Force, comprising at that time forty aircrew, of two women each, as well as mechanics and other ground personnel, came into possession of a lot of ancient crop duster biplanes and set about turning them into lethal war fighting machines, they – despite Stalin’s explicit injunctions – found themselves at the receiving end of a mix of male chauvinism and apathy from the military establishment. The women were given cast off uniforms and flying gear, billeted in whatever was available – cow sheds, for instance, or barns – and armed with whatever could be spared after the men had been properly equipped and weaponed. And they were all volunteers, all of them, young women from seventeen to twenty four years of age, from all parts of the USSR and all sorts of backgrounds. 

 

So what exactly did these women do with their ancient biplanes?

 


Right from the start, it was obvious that they couldn’t possibly fight the Nazis on an even footing. Their slow crop dusters would have been dead ducks even over the trenches of World War One, let alone the blistering technological superiority of the Germans in World War Two.

 

And there was the answer: the Germans were so technologically superior that this very superiority could be turned against them, and was.

 

The very features that made the Po 2 such a hopeless day combat aircraft, in fact, made it an ideal light bomber flying harassment missions at night. For one thing, a weak engine was a relatively quiet engine (it got the plane nicknamed the “sewing machine”), with less of a noise signature warning the enemy of its approach. For another, being a plane optimised for training and crop dusting, it could fly at extremely low altitudes, at extremely slow speeds, and its antique biplane configuration meant that it manoeuvrable enough to fly rings around far more modern and faster monoplane fighters. It was too wood and canvas to be visible to radar, and its maximum speed was below the stalling speed of a German night fighter. That’s right, a Luftwaffe fighter attempting to fly slow enough to get a Po 2 in its gunsights risked falling out of the sky. And if a shell struck the metal fuselage of a modern fighter, it might blow the plane apart or at least would do substantial damage. A shell that struck a Po 2, if it missed the engine or cockpit, would more likely than not just rip right through the plane, leaving a small hole, and keep on going (one pilot successfully flew back to base with her cockpit floor shot away, her feet hanging in empty air, but her plane’s controls perfectly intact).

 

And this is what the 588th Night Bomber Regiment did: night after night after night, they flew out of their airbases – often just meadows converted into temporary airfields – into the German rear. The two member crew (pilot and navigator, both armed with pistols and the latter sometimes given a machine gun if one was available) had no radio, no radar, no cockpit heating (they flew with frozen hands and feet, their flight helmets and jackets their only defence against the wind in their open cockpits). They flew through total darkness as close to the ground as they could, peering through their goggles to make out any trees or buildings or hills in the way in time to change course. Then, when ten to twelve kilometres from their target, they would climb to a relatively sane altitude and...turn off their engines, gliding silently through the night over their target area, so as not to tip off the Germans that they were coming. Once overhead, they would drop their bombs (without, of course, benefit of bombsights, these were crop duster agricultural aircraft, not warplanes), start their engines, and head for home as not-very-fast as they could before the enemy began shooting back.

 

Sometimes, especially in winter, ice would freeze the bombs to their racks, and they wouldn’t fall when the buttons were pressed. So did the women abort their missions and turn home? Well, not exactly. Standard practice was for the navigator to step out of her cockpit and, standing on the lower wing, kick the bombs until they finally dropped out of their racks on the heads of the enemy.

 

These women were, for want of a better word, hardcore.

 

And that was not all. Because their weak engines had only a limited load bearing capacity, they could only carry two bombs each. And because only the first bomber or two in their gliding attacks could count on surprise (after explosives start dropping out of the sky on your heads, it’s only reasonable to assume that there are people doing the dropping and to begin shooting back) they couldn’t fly in large formations. So what they did was, as soon as the plane returned to base, it would pause only long enough for another couple of bombs to be loaded, fuel pumped in if necessary, and back they would fly for another go.

 

That’s right – these girls and young women, freezing in their open cockpits, flying through dead darkness at a height that might send them straight into a wall or tree, went back again and again and again to bomb the Germans, in the course of a single night. The record holder is Nadezhda Popova, who joined up to avenge her brother, murdered by the Nazis in 1941, and, believe it or not, flew eighteen missions in one night. 


Here's a somewhat personal article on her, if you're interested.


Nadezhda Popova, sometime during WWII


Incidentally, this was in 1944, when an Amerikastani bomber crew’s entire combat tour was 25 missions. Popova, who you’ll be glad to know survived the war with the rank of Colonel, won numerous medals, and lived to a ripe old age – here she is with Dmitri Medvedev in 2008 – did 72% of that in the course of one single night





Sometimes she would deliberately draw attention, flying her plane within reach of German searchlights as a decoy so others of her unit could sneak in to bomb the distracted enemy. Shot down numerous times, she got away unscathed on every occasion.

 

Oh, and did I mention that until 1944 the 588th Night Bomber Regiment people didn’t have parachutes? Weight was at a premium, and so I assume were parachutes. The women, actually, said that their planes were parachutes, because they were so light and slow and stable that they could often be crash landed safely without injury to the crew, and many times shot down pilots and navigators managed to find their way back on foot to their lines after abandoning their wrecked aircraft. Popova, by the way, met her future husband while hitch hiking back to base with a Red Army motorised column after being shot down yet again.

 

And in between missions the women stayed determined to remember that “they were women”. The first of their "twelve commandments" - I have no idea what the other 11 were - was "Be proud you are a woman." They embroidered each other’s uniforms with flowers and designs, organised dances for themselves, used map marker pencils as eyeliner... and if they got leave got cheerfully drunk. Why not?

 

The 588th Night Bomber Regiment was soon renamed the 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Regiment, and fought from the Caucasus all the way to Berlin. By the end of the war it had dropped 3000 tons of bombs (doesn’t sound like a lot until you remember that each sortie only carried two light bombs) and 26000 incendiary shells, flying 23,672 missions. On average, each member flew over 800 missions (if you’re interested, the aforementioned Popova’s total was 852, while the all time record was Irina Sebrova, 1008) and during the entire course of the war they only lost 32 dead. From all causes. Including accidents and disease.

 

By the way, Hollywood refused to make a film on them. It would detract from Amerikastani we-won-the-war-single-handed-propgandising, and now of course projecting Russians in a good light would be unthinkable.

 

So what did they achieve for all this effort? Materially, it’s difficult to judge, since light bombs dropped at the dead of night without benefit of bombsights generally can’t be measured for effect. Wikipedia claims that they

 

collectively accumulated 28,676 flight hours, dropped over 3,000 tons of bombs and over 26,000 incendiary shells, damaging or completely destroying 17 river crossings, nine railways, two railway stations, 26 warehouses, 12 fuel depots, 176 armored (sic) cars, 86 firing points, and 11 searchlights. In addition to bombings, the unit performed 155 supply drops of food and ammunition to Soviet forces.

 

Be that as it may, there is absolutely no denying the effect that they had on the Germans at the receiving end. Already exhausted, stressed, harassed by partisans from the flanks and rear, faced with the vengeful Red Army from the front, they couldn’t even rest a moment at night without the constant threat of bombs falling on their heads at any moment from the silent night air. In all weathers – be it rain or snow or ice, conditions where their own aircraft wouldn’t even think of budging out of the hangar – the antique biplanes were there, the wind whistling through the bracing wires on their wings the only warning of their coming. The Germans, who hated and feared them so much that anyone who shot down one of them was automatically awarded the Iron Cross, finally paid them the ultimate compliment, giving them the name die Nachthexen. The women themselves cheerfully adopted it, calling themselves the Russian equivalent, Ночные ведьмы, Nochnie Ved’mi,   

 

In both languages it means Night Witches.

 

Who else could possibly deserve it?

Thursday 12 November 2020

How Genghis Won The War Single Handed (And Two Booted)

 

As you probably know, the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the region of Nagorno Karabakh, which seemed set to go on forever, or at least all winter, suddenly came to an explosive end after Azerbaijan abruptly and apparently inexplicably captured the fortified and impregnable clifftop city of Shusha. The capture of this city led to the utter and total collapse of Armenian forces, and Russia (and Iran) stepped in quickly to impose a peace that left a scrap of Nagorno Karabakh still in Armenian control while ceding the rest to Azeri control.

    But how? How could Azerbaijan (and its Ottoman allies and its jihadi headchopper mercenary imports) capture this city so quickly and unexpectedly, leading to the utter rout of Armenia, and its prime minister Nikol Pashinyan going into hiding?

    In this remarkable account from the frontline, an exclusive account that has been specifically written for you, that story will be told.

********************************************






His name is Genghis Gobi. He is an Uighuristani from East Turkistan, and has been living in Syria for a number of years. Over time, he felt a burning desire to tell his story to the world. And now, as a mercenary who has gone to fight in Nagorno Karabakh, he feels it absolutely essential that his tale be told.

    Let him tell you who he is:

 Freinds and infidels!

    It grate pleasuring to announcement that I am able to giving you informationing from the spot on fighting in Armenazerbaijanistan.

    Allowing me to introduct myself. Who this Genghis Gobi?

    I am certificated instructor level Uighur headchopper from East Turkistan which as you might be known occupated by evil lefteous Chinese regime. So I look four freedom along with four wifes Hala, Bana, Lina and Fatma, because evil lefteous Chinese regime say I can having only one wife. How one can live with only one wife, I asking you? Also evil lefteous Chinese regime oppressioning my berthright to chop head in piece and quiet. This wrongeous and unacceptably!

    So I looking four freedom, and just then getting vision (by mobile phone video, that true) from blessed Shaykh Muhaysini telling me to coming to Jisr al Shughour in Idlibistan, which you might be gnawing is freedom territory where poor innocent jihadis can chopper head and murdering happily. So four wifes and I comed to Idlibistan, thinking troubles over. Happy ever after, righteous?

    Wrongeous! First thing happen in Idlibistan is three billion children there being sarinbarrelgasbombed by evil lefteous Nusayri regime of pointy nose dictator Assad and evil half naked Russia dictator Putin regime. To saveing three billion children and also become famous movie star I join White Hellmate organisation, but pointy nose dictator Assad regime stooge stealed my white helmet befour I can making false flag video and becomed famous. After that four wifes want me to buying car from Honest Jamal VBIED dealership, but problem is that it cost too much goat, and I only getting one and half goat a day. Supposed to get FOUR goat from dear friend Abu Salman al Bonesawi in Saudi Barbaria but two and half goat stealed by Abu Erdogan al Turki. How one live on one and half goat a day, you telling me? Even with position as top trainer and also bottom trainer at Idlibistan headchopper training institute I haveing to get second job as head twitterer at Uighuristan Cultural Centre and still not making front end and rear end of goat meet. When I try goat butt me into middle of next week.

    And then my four mother in law also comed to Idlibistan so I have to hide in hole below house. That is how bad situation is in Idlibistan. Bigly!

    Then I gottinged call from blessed Shaykh Muhaysini tellinging me that grate opportunity to escaping Idlibistan - not to mentionable four mother in laws - by going to fighting in Armenazerbaijanistan. And so I here and you getting my report straight from goat's mouth!

    Takebeer! Muhaysinihu Akbar. Thank.

 

    Please do not marvel at Genghis’ terrific command of English. As he informs us,

 

I taughted English by Abu Alhamdo al LastTweetFromAleppoi in Idlibistan English Academic! He speaker best English in World as you gnawing if you read his last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last last tweets from Aleppo.

 

    Some of you may remember Abdulkafi Alhamdo, who was about to be massacred by the Assad regime in Aleppo, and kept tweeting last farewells, until he wasn’t massacred and stopped tweeting last farewells. If you don’t remember him, no matter.

    Soon enough, Genghis and his platoon, under one Great Khan, found themselves at the bottom of the cliffs below Shusha, ordered to scale the cliff and capture the city. But they had other problems of their own as well. Here is a cry of protest from him to his platoon leader, given out to the world:


Grate Khan my freind and truely comrade! This righteous!

    Grate Khan, why you not giving me fair share of ten goat you get pay from Abu Erdogan four entire platoon? Only five men left in platoon, also five right, top and bottom, so each get half goat, righteous? Why you wrongeously keep two goat four yourself? This unacceptably!

 

    Despite all this, Genghis did not neglect to prepare for his assault on the mountaintop Armenian stronghold. And his strategic planning was totally out of the box!

    As you may have heard, the recent Armenia-Azerbaijan war was also the first drone war, with Azerbaijan making intensive (and effective) use of drones as its weapon of first resort. Well, Genghis and his friends thought of another role for these aircraft:

Freinds and infidels!

    I am going to telling you now of top and also bottom secret plan by which we planning to capture city Shushabad!

    Why I telling you this? Is because by time you read this planning will already be operation! Yes we doing surgerycal strike on Shushabad!

    Now I gnaw what you thinking. You thinking, but, Genghis, you at bottom of cliff and town on top, how you planning to get up to make surgerycal strike, fly?

    Yes! You understanding righteous! We fly!

    Plan told by Sultan Erdogan al Turki, who call us personification over app Zoom. Of coarse he wear mask but we gnawing who he is because of Ottoman turban and robe he wearing, and because he keep stick pins in effigy of Abu Gülen al Amriki while ranting!

    Anyweigh, here plan: you gnaw how drone aeroplane Bayraktar TB 2 being given by Sultan Erdogan to Abu Aliyev al Azeri, righteous? And how drone aeroplane Bayraktar TB 2 very successfully to bombing Armenistani? Now it have new roll four it!




    Yes. Now each drone carry under each wing one jihadi who holding gun in hand and headchopper knife between teeth, and fly up to Shushabad. Once above town small rocket fix to jihadi belt fired, projectioning jihadis on to Armenistani position! As soon as landed, jihadis can starting shooting and headchoppering anybody they find!

    It brilliantly idea, righteous? With blessing of Shaykh Muhaysini, secure by app WhatsApp, it not possible to failure.

    Soon I be back from mission and then I telling you how success it wented.

Takebeer! Muhaysinihu Akbar! Thank.

 

    Indeed, it was a brilliant plan, and would have written a new chapter in military history, except for a tragic incident that nobody could have foreseen. Let Genghis tell you in his own words:

 

Freinds and infidels!

    This report of attempt to capture city Shushabad by surgerycal striking by drone aeroplane Bayraktar TB 2, which I telled you befour!

    We all very excitation at drone plan, and drawing lots to go on first drone. My dear freinds Abu Recep al Idlibistani and Abu Tayyip al Qaedi get honour of climbing first drone, and they're eyes full of tears that must have bean of joy! Our Idlibistani jihadi so bravely that even if they lose draw of lots, like these two, they as happy as though they winned!

    So Abu Recep and Abu Tayyip fixation rockets on belts, rockets fitted to wings of aeroplane drone, and then with guns in hands and headchopping knifes between teeth they take off! All of us watching as drone lift highly and higherly into sky.

    But then disastrous! Somehow undoubted sabotage agent in pay of evil bearded Abu Pashinyan al Armeni sneakering on to drone base and sabotage drone wings, make wings weak. Suddenly both drone wings brake off under weight of Abu Recep and Abu Tayyip! They fall all way down to martyrdom, but so bravely we hear them cheering all way. At least we think it cheering.

    Also even grater disastrous is that drone crash, and Armenistan get chance to claiming it shot it down, as big propaganda claim as big as capture of Azerbaijanistani capitalist Baku. So all air surgery strike plan stoppage until new drone with stronger wing brought.

    Or I have nice ideal! We ask Sultan Erdogan al Turki to giveing us ballisticated missiles, but with warhead removed. Jihadi with drone and headchopping knife sitting in warhead spacious and fired with it. When missile fall on Shushabad he come out and begin shooting and headchoppering. It excellently idea, righteous or wrongeous?

    I tell you what replying from Sultan Erdogan.

    Until then we taking rock climbing lesson on broken village wall.

    Takebeer! Muhaysinihu Akbar.

 

    Utterly tragic, was it not? When I received this message from Genghis I despaired of his safety. Imagine my astonishment, though, when I then read the news update that the Armenians had been routed from Shusha and the Azeris were in occupation of the town! How did this miracle come to pass?

    Let Genghis tell you how:

 

Freinds and infidels!

    I telling you now how we Uighuristani headchoppers from Idlibistan capture Shushabad!

    It happen this weigh: after failure of drone aeroplane Bayraktar TB 2 surgery strike, which I telled you about elsewhere, I decide to climbing cliff and attack Shushabad single and even double handed! Why, you asking?

    This why: while practice wall climbing I suddenly look over shoulder and see four wifes Hala, Bana, Lina and Fatma coming! You can see them in picture.

 


    They not happy, four mother in laws demanding they bringing me back to taking care off them! I so frightful I beginned climbing cliff by one hand and two foots to get away from them! And when I reach top, I behind Armenistani position and they see me, think I am vanguard and lorryguard of full forceful of climbing jihadis, and run away.

    That truthful and righteously! Now I have to finding place to hide from wifes. You help me please.

    Takebeer! Muhaysinihu Akbar!

 

    And so the impregnable fortress was defeated! Truly, behind every successful man is a woman (or four of them with guns).

    Unfortunately this was far from the end of Genghis’ travails:

 Freinds and infidels!

    Terribleacious news! My dear freind and comrade Grate Khan missing! We liberation a horse in Shushabad, and last we seeing him he get on it and gallop down road toward Stepanakertabad waving headchopper knife around and shouting "Mamtu Armenistani Ha ha ha!"

    We all disturbed not only because Grate Khan freind and comrade but because he owe us many goat which salary from Sultan Erdogan al Turki, but which he keeped four himself. At least forty goat! Now who pay us goat? If anything happen to Grate Khan we sue Abu Pashinyan al Armeni!

    Assuming he not runned away that is.

    Please to keeping both eye open four Grate Khan, freinds and infidels. Also nose, mouth and ears.

    Takebeer! Muhaysinihu Akbar! Thank.

 

    Unfortunately Great Khan is yet to be found, along with all the goats he filched from Genghis and his friends. Genghis, in fact, is in such desperate financial straits that he is offering a course in headchopping (remember that he’s a certified instructor in the art):

 

    I run training coarse in headchoppering! You can joining if you want! Payment only one quarter goat a day.

 

    Obviously this is a golden opportunity and anyone not taking it is less than interested in his or her own future.

    Meanwhile, even as the Armenian resistance evaporated, Azerbaijan allegedly shot down a Russian helicopter with a surface to air missile,a MANPAD. But Genghis knows the truth of what really happened.

 

Freinds and infidels!

    My grate freind Abu Frank al CIAi who postedated in Azerbaijanistan telled me what really happen! Abu Frank want to get promote and transfer to nice warm station with pretty girl, like Colombiastan or Portugalistan! To get promote he need to show a victory over evil half naked Russia dictator Abu Putin. So he ordered manpad from Sultan Erdogan al Turki. Why from Sultan Erdogan? Because first he order manpad from Umm Merkel al Germaniya, but she send him sanitary towel four transsexual.

    Anyweigh, when he get the manpad he crawl to border at night and shoot down helicopter. Now he being promotioned and sented to warm country he want, I think it Saudi Barbaria.

    Takebeer! Muhaysinihu Akbar!

 

    It is this shooting down that caused the belated Russian intervention that ended the fighting and brought in Russian peacekeepers. But even with peace, there were more pressing problems on Genghis’ mind:

 

Freinds and infidels!

    While looking four place to hiding from wifes Hala, Bana, Lina, and Fatma (who as you gnawing want to forceful me to return to Idlibistan and four mother in laws like stampeding elephant) I meeted evil half naked Russia dictator Abu Putin regime peacekeepers:



    It wrongeous and unacceptably that they keep uniform on, like their half naked leader they should half naked. Then maybe and junebe and even novemberbe four wifes see them, fall in love with them, and forget about me.

    Freinds and infidels, please to telling Russia soldiers to half naked immediately, or I might have to coming to your house for to be hiding. You not want that, righteous? Think of all the goat.

    Takebeer! Muhaysinihu Akbar! Thank.

 

    Unfortunately nobody seems to have, and Genghis was constrained to keep running. But not so quickly that he failed to pick up some more information, the inside story of the alleged collapse of law and order in Armenia.


Freinds and infidels!

    Spy in Armenistani capitalist Yerevanabad giving me top and also bottom and left and right secret informationing.

    This riot and disturbanceing in Yerevanabad not really collapsation of law and ordering. No! It actually plan by Armenistan to find best mixed martial artist, who can beating up maximum number of people! Then Armenistan unleash these mixture martial artist horde on Azerbaijanistani position! Since unarmed it violation of ceasefire four Azerbaijanistan for to shooting at them.

    On hear of plan Azerbaijanistan also planning to find best mixture martial artist to fight Armenistani invasioning! Trial already being holded four best kicker, slapper, puncher and head butter. We trying to hire Abu Miketyson al Heavyweighti four to take course in biting as in the well.

 






    This sounds like a disturbingly plausible plan, does it not?

    But things suddenly seem to be looking up from Genghis. Here is his latest missive. He’s taken a Very Important Prisoner:

 

Freinds and infidels!

    While trying to find place to hiding from four wifes and mother in laws behind them (as I tolded you in last posting) I comes across deep hole in ground,like giant burrow of animal gerbil. So I crawl into it and then wented round bend. There I sawed small room with man with beard sitting with laptop writing. As soon as I see him I recognition him, it Abu Pashinyan al Sorosi. When he seed me he taked out pistol and threatening to shooting me, but it nothing to threat of second wife Lina who threaten to shooting me on daily and nightly and even dawnly basis. So I take pistol away with one finger. Now question I want to ask, what I do with Abu Pashinyan. Should give him to Armenistan? Should give him to Azerbaijanistan? Or should just give him to wifes in hope they take him and forget about me?

    Takebeer! Muhaysinihu Akbar! Thank four answerationing.

 

 

    Well? Do you have an answer for him or do you not?

    You need to help him, or he might turn up at your doorstep, and then hiding him from his pursuers is on YOU. 

    And remember - or let Genghis tell you:


Now Abu Donaldtrump al Twitteri declaration that Uighuristani headchopper not any longer or shorter terrorist, you gnawing I can doing anything I want without fearing of being calling terrorist! Except for four wifes and four mother in laws I fear nothing!


Takebeer.

Tuesday 13 October 2020

Dr A and P-man

 


Let me tell you a story.


    Like all good stories, we have a hero. And since superhero stories are popular right now, our hero is a superhero.

    His name? P-man!

    All together now: who can fly faster than a speeding hypersonic missile? P-man! Who can jump higher than a B 52 bomber flying through Ukranazi airspace up to the Russian border? P-man! Who can travel through time and space so that he can see 10135 years into the future and can make plans that no mere three dimensional mortal can comprehend? P-man! Look up at the sky. Is it a plane? Is it a bird? Is it a Covfefevirus to thin out the herd? No! It's P-man!

    Ahem.

    Anyway, so P-man has a friend, Dr A. A very very good friend is Dr A, who has a fine large house, albeit nowhere near as large as P-man's mansion. And so good a friend is Dr A that he has reserved a room in his house for the use of P-man whenever he wants.

    You wish you had a friend as good as that.

    Now one day a Mafia Godfather looked at Dr A's nice big house. And, as Hannibal Lecter said in "The Silence Of The Lambs", what did he do? He coveted. That's right, this Mafia Godfather looked at Dr A's fine house, and though he had many houses of his own, he decided he wanted it too.

    So the Godfather, we might call him the Don, gathered together his caporegime and underbosses, their hitmen and associates, and sent out a call for more thugs and gangsters to gather. And when enough were gathered, they climbed over Dr A's fine boundary wall, and broke down his gate, smashed his doors, and broke into his house.

    Dr A and his family, as well as two friends and neighbours, began valiantly fighting as hard as they could, but they were few in number, and little by little they were driven back, being forced to abandon the garden, the bedrooms, the dining room, the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom, until they were cornered in the gym room with the mafiosi trying to smash down the door. Dr A, after resisting for so long, decided he had no other option but to call on his great friend and superhero, P-man, for help. 

    And with a flash like an exploding hell cannon and a  roar like a low flying SU 25, P-man arrived! Dr A and his friends and family, reinvigorated with hope, stormed out of the gym and drove - with the help of some superpowered slaps, kicks, and punches from P-man - the Don's mafiosi out of the kitchen, out of the dining room, out of the bathroom, and out of the living room. Now only the bedrooms and the garden were still occupied by the mafiosi, and Dr A prepared to storm them too and end the home invasion once and for all.

    But hark! What dread words word fall from P-man's lips? Are they - can they possibly be - "negotiated peaceful settlement"? Does P-man hold back Dr A from breaking down his family's bedroom doors, behind which a few surviving mafiosi even now continue to strip the wallpaper from the walls, the carpets from the floors, the light fixtures and furniture, and remove them elsewhere while painting PROPERTY OF THE DON on all available surfaces?  

    They are! He does!

    Does P-man then call to the Don's consigliere - perhaps we can call him Sultan E - and sign an agreement with him? Does this agreement leave the garden and the bedrooms in the Mafia's hands? Does Sultan E agree to let P-man poke his head through the bedroom doors at intervals for brief periods in return? Why, yes, he does!

    And when P-man tries to actually poke his head through the bedroom door, does Sultan E slam said door in his face? That too!

    And does the Don himself squat in the other bedroom, rifling through Dr A's wardrobe for his best suits and shirts and ties to steal? My, yes!

    And is the very worst Mafia hitman of all - a most bloodthirsty psychopath, known as The ZE - tramping through the garden, shooting through the windows at Dr A and his friends and family? And does P-man totally ignore this, popping out every now and then to share tea and biscuits with The ZE? Why, yes, yes, he does!

    P-man! What a friend to Dr A, P-man! Everyone can trust him forever and ever, P-man!


    ___________________________________________



Remember, it's only a story. It's totally not an analogy for anything! Why would you even think that?



Sunday 11 October 2020

The Sultan And The Grandmaster: Nagorno Karabakh, Armenia, and Azerbaijan

There is a war going on between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

 

No there isn't. There is no war going on between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

 

The territory that is being fought over is territory that is recognised by literally everyone (including Armenia) as Azerbaijani territory. This includes two parts:

 

1. The enclave of Нагорный Карабах (usually written in English as Nagorno Karabakh, roughly meaning "Hilly Black Garden") which is mountainous and heavily settled by ethnic Armenians since ancient times, and until 1993 by many thousands of Azeris. This is surrounded entirely by Azeri territory, and was a part of Azerbaijan as it existed in the USSR.

 

2. Said surrounding Azeri territory occupied by Armenia, which is also recognised by everyone as Azerbaijani territory.

 

(a) These two territories are both completely occupied by Armenia since a 1988-93 war and comprise a quarter of Azerbaijan.

 

(b) The occupation of these territories was accompanied by the ethnic cleansing of over a million people, most of whom were Azeris, so that both parts of the occupied territory are now entirely Azeri-free.

 

(c) The two territories jointly declared themselves "independent" as a so-called Republic of Artsakh, which is not recognised by anyone, including Armenia. This Artsakh, by the way, is only one of several unrecognised republics that rose from the murder of the USSR; the others are Transnistria (from Moldavia), Abkhazia and South Ossetia (from Georgia) and, latest and far from least, the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics (from post Maidan Ukranazistan).

 

(d) UN resolutions have demanded the settlement of the dispute by negotiations. However, Armenia, until fairly recently far more militarily powerful than Azerbaijan, saw no need to negotiate on facts it had created on the ground by military force. Also Armenia is a CSTO treaty ally of Russia, which has a small military presence in the country.

 

(e) However, in the past few years, these things happened:

 

(i) In 2018 a colour revolution brought yet another "pro-western" regime - under prime minister Nikol Pashinyan - into power in Armenia. The Pashinyan regime has been spending the last two years slowly and systematically distancing itself from Russia, which, let me repeat, is still its CSTO ally and – with its military base in the country – its protector.

 

(ii) Azeri oil revenues boomed and it massively increased expenditure in defence, buying weapons from everyone from Russia to America to a certain settler ethnostate on the eastern Mediterranean coast that treats the native population abominably. I don’t need to remind you what this so called country is called.

 

(iii) Sultan Erdogan of the neo Ottoman Empire needed money for his Ottomanisation project, as well as an empire to rule.

 

(iv) The defeat of the jihadi headchopper invasion of Syria left a lot of armed jihadis trapped in Idlib and desperate to find a way to make a living.

 

(v) Erdogan suddenly discovered, or more correctly found it suddenly convenient to remember, that the Azeris, though Shia, were fellow Turkic speakers, and, therefore, people it was his “duty” to “protect”.

 

As a result of all this, Erdogan made an alliance with the (corrupt and easily purchased) Azeri president, the dynast Ilham Aliyev. The Ottomans would supply the means (air cover, weapons, and jihadi headchoppers to use as shock troops) to reclaim the Azerbaijani territory occupied by Armenia. Aliyev, as the Liberator of Azeri Land, could immediately scotch all opposition to his rule. In return, Erdogan would get a share of the oil revenues and the right to station Ottoman forces in the reconquered land.

 

Simple, right? In fact it played out in full public view, with Ottoman forces conducting “exercises” with Azeri troops in (Azeri controlled) Azerbaijan, after which less than all returned to their own country. Aliyev, too, sharply increased his anti-Armenian rhetoric, clearly signalling that the matter was now to be settled by military force. So obvious was it that even I, with no resources available to me but the news, immediately stated as soon as I heard of the fighting that it was the Ottomans who were behind it. But, as we shall see, someone who could have stopped this war before it started, didn’t.

 

Meanwhile, Pashinyan of Armenia was facing his own challenges. Armenia has hardly any natural resources. Its best farmland isn't even Armenian, it lies in the occupied zone around Nagorno Karabakh. And like a good little colour revolutionary he needed to obey the orders of those who put him into power. As such, he couldn't even ask Russia for help (this would anger his owners in Washington), or recognise Artsakh, or annex it, even though he "threatened" to when the fighting began.

 

It is, in fact, possible that Pashinyan has deliberately chosen to sacrifice the territory in order to get rid of a dispute that would normally stop Armenian accession to NATO. We will return to this point later.

 

Now let’s go over this again:

 

1.The so-called Republic of Artsakh is Azeri Nagorno Karabakh, historically settled by Armenians, surrounded by Azeri territory occupied by Armenia from which the Azeri population was ethnically cleansed thirty years ago.

 

2.Azerbaijan is in all but name an Ottoman proxy, which happens to have a sudden glut of oil money and is part of the neo Ottomanisation project of Sultan Erdogan Pasha.

 

3.Pashinyan is a colour revolution tool owned by Washington as much as Aliyev is the wholly owned property of Erdogan Pasha.

 

4.Normally, Armenia would have been able to smack down any Azerbaijan attack, but these are not normal times, because Azerbaijan is reinforced by Ottoman command and control, air support, and cannibal headchopper jihadi imports from Syria.

 

In fact, the Ottoman-Azerbaijan-Headchopper Alliance (hereafter referred to as OAHA for convenience) plan of action is as simple as it is predictable by anyone looking at a map. 



OAHA’s basic operational plan depends on two things:

 

First, the fact that Armenian manpower is seriously restricted by two factors:

 

(i)It has a much smaller population than Azerbaijan and therefore a much smaller recruitment base.

 

(ii)It has an Azeri enclave (Nakhichevan) and the Ottoman Empire on its western borders as well as, you know, Azerbaijan on its eastern borders, the part where it does not occupy Azeri territory.

 

As such, Armenia can’t, no matter how much it tries, mobilise as many troops as Azerbaijan. And of those troops it does mobilise, it can’t, no matter how much it tries, put all or even most into defending Nagorno Karabakh. It has to hold back many or most of them to defend Armenia itself from any possible attack from the Ottomans and/or the Azeris. It’s the classic dilemma of a two front war.

 

On the other hand, OAHA has no such constraints. It knows perfectly well that, unless suicidal, Armenia can’t and won’t attack them. They can perfectly well concentrate almost all their forces around Nagorno Karabakh.

 

Secondly, once said forces are concentrated around Nagorno Karabakh, what happens? Aliyev may be a corrupt sell-out, but he’s no idiot. Casualties in large numbers won’t be popular at home, no matter how popular the conquest might be. To this end, a blitzkrieg offensive into the waiting guns of fortified Armenian defensive positions on the Nagorno Karabakh hills is not exactly the best solution. So what is?

 

The really brutal, really simple plans are usually also the most successful. And a look at the map shows the extremely predictable strategy OAHA is following:

 

1.Impose unacceptable levels of attrition on the limited forces that Armenia can commit. At a certain point, the attrition will cause the Armenian lines to collapse. That point, in fact, has been reached north and south of Nagorno Karabakh itself in the plains.

 

2.Use jihadi headchopper imports from Idlib as shock troops, taking the casualties while the Ottomans achieve air supremacy and the Azeris hold back their own troops for the final push. This is the same way the Ottomans used jihadi headchoppers as shock troops against the Kurds in Syria and against Haftar in Libya, about which I’ll talk in a moment.

 

3.Attack Nagorno Karabakh cities (just like Stepanakert is being bombed and shelled) to trigger a refugee exodus into Armenia. This has already happened to a large extent with some half of the Nagorno Karabakh population already having been “displaced”, meaning, they’re fleeing.

 

4.Bypass the mountainous fortified area to cut off Nagorno Karabakh from Armenia in a pincer movement from north and south. As the territory becomes increasingly encircled, the remaining civilian population and at least a substantial part if not all of the surviving defenders will flee. Which sane Armenian, after all, will ever trust himself to the tender mercies of the Ottomans and their anti-Christian jihadi cohorts, not to mention Azeris filled with vengeance for their own ethnic cleansing thirty years ago?

 

5.Manufacture “Armenian attacks” on Azeri cities as propaganda. It is shoddy propaganda, like the Narendrabhai Damodardasbhai Modi regime’s anti-China propaganda (or like the EU “Novichok” propaganda), but like them, it’s meant as a justification, not to be believed.

 

And then what happens afterwards? If Erdogan’s actions in Syria, where he settled Uighur jihadi imports in a mini caliphate in Jisr al Shughour are any guide, the headchoppers from Idlib will be put into “liberated” Nagorno Karabakh and protected there by Ottoman forces. Just like the headchoppers in Idlib, come to think of it.

 

The Ottoman Question:

 

By this point the reader will have been aware that the driving force behind the entire war is the Ottoman Empire. This same Ottoman Empire is a member of NATO, allegedly not one in good standing, but still a member of NATO. I say “allegedly” because despite all the rhetoric against the Ottomans from the likes of the gerontophiliac Macronist regime in France, the Ottomans are

 

1.Still the second largest military in NATO, and by far the best – indeed the only competent – military in NATO.

 

2.The single most strategically located country in NATO, sitting as it does across the chokepoint of the Black Sea and overlooking all of West Asia.

 

Because of these factors, even if there was any option to expel a member from NATO (there isn’t) the Amerikastani Empire would never do such a thing. And that in turn means that

 

1.An Ottomanised Azerbaijan is a NATO Azerbaijan in all but name.

 

2.The endless appeasement of Erdogan by Russia, which I will refer to in the next section, will get nothing for Russia.All it is doing is emboldening Erdogan.

 

Among Erdogan-watchers there is a remarkable tendency to imagine that the Sultan is flailing around starting wars at random, as though he’s just another tinpot megalomaniac like Muhammad bin Salman al Bonesawi of Saudi Barbaria. This is absolutely not true. Erdogan, whatever else he might be, is a remarkably shrewd political operator. His wars are always extremely carefully chosen. Look at these:

 

1.From 2011, he assiduously supported headchoppers against Syria, laying out the red carpet for international jihadis, so that the airline from Istanbul to Gaziantep became known as the “jihad express”. In return he got the proceeds of the factories and warehouses the headchoppers systematically looted and shipped off to Ottoman businessmen, and, later, bought oil from ISIS; the Amerikastani Empire left the convoys of oil tankers from occupied Syrian oilfields to Turkey alone until the Russians began bombing them. Erdogan’s son is known to have personally benefited from these transactions.

 

2.In Libya, Erdogan intervened to save the so-called ‘government’ (the GNA, an outfit of slave-trading, human trafficking gangsters) when it was on the ropes against the forces of the LNA (led by “Field Marshal” Khalifa Haftar, a known CIA asset whose only saving grace is that he’s a secularist). In return he got the “rights” to oil exploration in the Mediterranean and a share of Libyan oil exports. He’d have got away with it, too, but for the fact that Haftar managed to hang on to the city of Sirte, the hometown of the martyr Brother Muammar Gaddafi. Libya’s oil reserves are pretty much all to the east of Sirte, in Haftar territory. In Libya, too, Erdogan used large numbers of jihadi headchoppers imported from Syria. Some of those headchoppers – the very same ones – have been sent on to Azerbaijan.

 

3.In Iraq, Erdogan’s repeated invasions are mostly a security measure meant to keep the Kurds down. It’s far from a war of choice; the Ottomans actually have, by their standards, a legitimate reason to not empower the Kurds. At the same time it’s not stopped Erdogan from buying oil from other Kurds in Iraq, at prices well below what he would have to pay the legitimate Iraqi government, well, as legitimate as any Iraqi government after the invasion of 2003 can be.

 

4.In Azerbaijan, as stated, Erdogan’s calculations are simple; victory for Aliyev in return for oil revenue.

 

In fact, Erdogan, who closely styles himself on the 16th Century ninth Ottoman Sultan, Selim the Grim, like the Ottomans, wages war as a way of securing income. Then it was the loot of conquered cities, and the taxing of vassal states – the Ottomans didn’t really care what their vassals did as long as they paid their taxes – and now it’s the loot of natural resources and protection money from the looters. This is why the crash of the lira is a temporary blip; the Ottoman plan of war will succeed as long as nobody stops them.

 

And who will stop them? Well, then, let’s talk about...

 

Russia and the worship of the Greatest Grandmaster Genius The Galaxy Has Ever Known:

 

A few years ago I wrote an article in which I had compared Putin’s “restraint” against Amerikastani provocations not just failures in and of themselves, but direct encouragement to more provocations. Back in 2014, I had said, Putin was so single issue focussed on the Sochi Olympics that what even the Amerikastani imperialists STRATFOR called the “most blatant coup in history” played out in full public view in Kiev, without Russia lifting a finger. I had written that Putin could have sent in two battalions of Spetsnaz, overthrown Obama’s Ukranazi coup regime, reinstated Viktor Yanukovych, and withdrawn, with the clear statement that if there were any more coups Russia would return and this time to stay. I remember that when the militias of the Donbass were desperately raiding museums to secure WWII weapons to take on Ukranazi armoured columns, when Russian military blogs were demanding “Putin, dai prikaz!” (Putin, give the order!), Putin kept silent. When the defenders of Donbass had to withdraw from Slovyansk and were nearly cut into two, when the Ukranazis were at Donetsk airport, when defeat was only a matter of hours, it was then that Putin allegedly did something. What that something was I’m not clear about. It was certainly not the dispatch of Russian forces, or else Russian tanks would have been rolling down the Kiev streets in two days. It may have been finally sending weapons, allowing volunteers to go to the front to fight (including more than a few brave and laudable Americans; not all of them are brain-dead imperialists), and possibly limited artillery support. At any rate, when the defenders of the republics crushed the Ukranazis at Debaltsevo and were well on the way to liberating Mariupol on the Black Sea, Putin again withdrew support to them, leaving them without a port and stuck in a frozen war interrupted by sniping and shelling.

 

And what was the excuse presented by Putin’s worshippers online, a species I have recently dubbed “Putinoids”? It’s been changing over the years. At first it was that the Ukranazis would “inevitably” collapse. Well, it’s going on for seven years now, and, absolutely predictably, the Ukranazis are far too convenient a tool to the Amerikastani Empire to be permitted to collapse. Then the excuse shifted to the notion that if Putin had intervened, Russia couldn’t have got back Crimea. Apparently it passeth the limited understanding of these people that had Putin intervened, with a friendly government in Kiev, Russia would not have had to annex Crimea. Then it was something about Yanukovych not having had the courage to fight, so why should Russia fight for him. It seems that we are still in the 17th century, when kings could conduct foreign policies according to their personal likes and dislikes, whims and fancies. It’s not, by the way, surprising that a lot of these Putinoids are people who hanker back to a Tsarist mythical golden age. Arch Putinoid the Saker (Andrei Raevski) is the most infamous, but the internet is full of them.

 

But let’s ignore the people of the two Donbass republics for the moment and look at the result of this “restraint”. Today, Amerikastani B52 bombers and RC135 reconnaissance planes fly freely through Ukranazi airspace right up to the Russian border, compelling Russian air defence systems to turn on their electronic defences, exposing their signatures for analysis and jamming by said Amerikastanis. Ukranazistan, not being a NATO member officially, is even more valuable to Amerikastan than it would have been as a NATO member, since it can be used for staging actions that could not involve NATO without risk of a world war. How’s that for “restraint”, Putinoids?

 

In fact, with the one shining exception of the war against Georgia in defence of South Ossetia in 2008, when Medvedev – not Putin – was president, Russian foreign policy has always been criminally defensive and reactive, never proactive. In 2011 Russia permitted Libya to be destroyed, turning an ally into a jihadi hellhole where a slave trading human trafficking regime and a CIA asset fight for control. In 2015 Syria was on the verge of collapse when Putin belatedly and reluctantly sent just enough planes and troops to save Damascus and help the legitimate government of Dr Assad liberate Aleppo, but failed to do a thing to stop the north and east turn into, respectively, an Ottoman colony and a Kurd Quisling puppet state under Amerikastani protection. In 2020 in Belarus it was only the personal courage and genuine popularity of President Aleksandr Lukashenko that prevented a colour revolution that would have turned the country into another NATO stooge. The same 2020 saw the Putin regime allow the racist right wing “liberal” Alexei Navalny to be sent to Germany, and predictably a fake “Novichok poisoning” was immediately manufactured to wreck EU-Russian relations, which were just about beginning to mend, beyond repair.

 

In none of these cases – none! – did what the Putinoids celebrate as the Greatest Grandmaster and Geopolitical Genius in the Galaxy do a thing to prevent it happening, even when everyone could see it coming. For instance, the moment I heard that the Azerbaijan regime had attacked Nagorno Karabakh, even I, with no information but what I could read in the news, instantly said the Ottomans were responsible. I refuse to believe that Putin, with the Russian intelligence services at his disposal, did not know any of these things were coming. But he never did anything proactive, and when he did react, it was just enough to impose a shaky and unstable status quo. Not a status quo ante, just a status quo.

 

This same instinct, apparently, is in effect where Putin’s relations with the zionist entity and the Ottomans are concerned. Under the Putinist “help” to Syria, the zionazi pseudostate bombs the country at liberty, and Putin, despite having S 400 air defence systems in place, does nothing. And after the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, when Russia, for some inexplicable reason, saved Erdogan’s bacon, it’s bending over backwards to appease him. It sold him S400s, offered the latest SU57 fighters, endorsed the Turkstream pipeline, and when Syria attempted to reclaim the Idlib jihadistate earlier this year, it withheld air cover, allowing the Ottoman drones to wreck the Syrian army spearheads. After which it signed yet another agreement that it knew perfectly well the Ottomans had no intention of honouring, as they have not.

 

Much is made by Putinoids of Russia calling the Amerikastani Empire “not agreement capable”. If it isn’t, and it is not, the Ottomans are a thousand times more “not agreement capable”. Anyone trusting Sultan Erdogan about anything needs a brain transplant. And yet the Putin regime keeps making agreements with them!

 

When I asked online how Russia has benefited from appeasing Sultan Erdogan, I was responded to by a counter-question. Did I think, a Putinoid asked, that a “western poppet” in Turkey would be better for Russia? I replied back by asking the Putinoid to inform me which conceivable Ottoman regime would be worse than one that occupies North Syria, routinely attacks Iraq, conducts a proxy war with jihadi headchoppers in Libya, and now helps Azerbaijan create a headchopper ministate in Russia’s underbelly. I would, I said, enjoy watching him make the attempt.

 

Not astonishingly, he never replied to me.

 

The “arguments” of the Putinoids, assuming one can dignify them with such a term, fall into these basic categories:

 

1.Putin is such a genius that he is beyond our comprehension; his slightest act (or, much more frequently, total inaction) is loaded with more symbolism and hidden plans than we mere mortals can ever fathom. I do not see this as a particularly persuasive contention.

 

2.Putin does not need to do anything because of the famous new Russian hypersonic missiles, which make it impossible for the Amerikastanis to attack Russia directly. The so-called analyst Andrei Martyanov, who among other things can’t stop boasting that he’s written three whole books, is a particularly loud exponent of this thesis. It again seems to have escaped the attention of these people that

 

(a)Said hypersonic missiles will only be of the slightest use in case of an all out war, which is now absolutely the least likely kind of war. Wars these days are first and foremost economic and fought by economic strangulation.

 

(b)Said economic strangulation is preceded by political strangulation, that is, stripping way friends and allies by jihadi invasions and bought and paid for colour revolutions. That’s what these colour revolutions and NATOisations, even of specks like Montenegro, are about.

 

(c)Is Putin going to go to war if Amerikastani colour revolutions and NATOisations end up blockading Russia on all or most of its borders? Really?

 

3.If I don’t like Putin, who do I want to lead Russia in place of him? (Followed by an abusive rant when I name anyone.) Well, I’m not Russian so it’s not my business who leads, but

 

(a)Is Putin immortal? Is he beyond cognitive degeneration that comes with age? If the answer to either of these is no, why has Putin not only not appointed any successor, but systematically loaded his government with personality-less bureaucrats who can never succeed him? What happens when Putin dies or becomes incapacitated? Apres moi l’deluge?

 

(b)Literally anyone who’s not of the Russian liberal Quisling set from Moscow, such as Navalny, would be a better replacement than Putin, in my opinion. From the far left or the nationalist right, anybody.

 

4.Why do I want Russians to die in Armenia?

 

(a)Let’s remember the Nazi coup in Ukraine. At that time Putin could have overthrown the Nazis at next to no cost in blood or treasure. But Putin was too obsessed with the Sochi Olympics, towards which his attention had been diverted by a few “Putler” memes and some canards about homosexual oppression in Russia. What happened in the end? Far more ethnic Russians (and Russian volunteers) dying than would have happened if Putin had acted in 2014.

 

(b)The exact same thing happened in Syria when Putin waited till the government was on the ropes before finally, belatedly, and minimally acting. To this day Russian servicemen are dying in Syria because of Putin’s “agreements” with Sultan Erdogan. Inaction costs lives.

 

(c)Absolutely no Russians needed to die in Armenia, or more precisely in Nagorno Karabakh, if Putin had stopped the war from happening.

 

Which brings up a couple of questions.

 

Let us assume (it’s an easy assumption to make, and a safe one) that the Russian intelligence agencies had intimated Putin in advance that the Ottomans were planning an attack in conjunction with the Azerbaijanis and jihadi headchoppers on Nagorno Karabakh. Then we must ask:

 

First, could Putin have stopped the war from happening at all?

 

The answer to this is, yes, yes, he could have. All it would have had needed was two phone calls and one public statement.

 

(i) A phone call to Erdogan saying that Putin knew what he was up to and that it would have dire economic consequences for Russian-Turkish relations, such as another ban on tourism. (The last time that happened, in 2015, it brought Erdogan to his knees within weeks, so important is Russian tourism to the Ottoman economy, so this is no idle threat.)

 

(ii) A phone call to Pashinyan saying that Russia isn't overwhelmed with joy at his actions since 2018 and that if this continues Russia will stand aside and let any future OAHA offensive overrun not just Artsakh but Armenia itself.

 

(iii) A public statement that Russia will not tolerate the changing of the facts on the ground by military action - by anybody.

 

I do not see that the Ottomans would dare to begin their aggression under those conditions. And under the current conditions I do not see them ending their aggression short of the fall of Artsakh entirely or most substantially. Erdogan has too much prestige invested, not to speak of money, to have it any other way.

 

Secondly, should Putin have stopped the war from happening at all?

 

To this question the Putinoids have a standard, scripted response. The Greatest Geopolitical Grandmaster Genius The Galaxy Has Ever Seen was teaching Nikol Pashinyan a lesson for sneaking around canoodling with NATO; a defeat in Nagorno Karabakh, apparently, would bring Armenia crawling back to heel.

 

It seems to have escaped the notice of these sublime geniuses that

 

(a)It might only play into Pashinyan's hands, assuming the idea (increasingly being voiced on multiple fora) that he wants to lose the war in order to sacrifice Artsakh and - free of the territorial dispute that might block the accession - join NATO is true. Russia would be faced with a NATO Armenia and a NATOised Azerbaijan together. A good idea? I think not.

 

(b) Officially, Artsakh isn't part of Armenia. Therefore it is not responsible for the crimes of the Pashinyan regime. Therefore allowing it to be overrun is ipso facto an imbecilic response to teach Pashinyan a lesson.

 

(c) If Artsakh is overrun, what happens to the other republics that seceded from post Soviet states? What about Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria? What about the two Donbass republics, which let me remind you, Russia doesn't recognise either? Does anyone really think the Ukranazis won't take the hint that Russia won't intervene unless they attack Russia itself?

 

(d) If part or all of Nagorno Karabakh is captured by OAHA, what exactly is stopping Sultan Erdogan from repopulating the place with jihadi headchoppers just as he did in Jisr al Shughour with his Uighur imports? A jihadi headchopper ministate in Russia's underbelly isn't exactly a great idea.

 

Or maybe I’m wrong, the Putinoids are right, and Putin is playing some kind of incredibly complex chess game in which he can see hundreds of years into the future, and Russia will save the world yet. We’ll only have to wait 10135 years to find out!

 


The religion factor:

 

There’s a school of thought that Russia should intervene, but only because Armenians are fellow Christians. This is rubbish.

 

Once again: it's entirely an ethnic/economic/political clash. Religion has absolutely nothing to do with it. (Sunni) Muslim Brotherhood Sultan Erdogan is supporting Shia Azerbaijan with, among other things, (Sunni) Wahhabi jihadi headchoppers. Shia Iran is supposedly neutral but is being accused by Azerbaijan of sending weapons to Christian Armenia, with whom it has an open border, and has shot down Azeri drones. So-called Christian Russia – most Russians are atheists or agnostics – has stayed out of the fight completely. And (Sunni) Wahhabi Saudi Barbaria has opened another propaganda offensive in the meantime...against the Ottoman Empire.

There is nothing religious about it.


The Ceasefire:

At the time of this writing, I read that under Russian auspices a temporary ceasefire between the two sides to exchange prisoners and bury corpses has been signed. This is being presented by Putinoids as a “triumph for Russian diplomacy”. Apparently said Putinoids can’t read, because the “ceasefire” is specifically referred to as “temporary”. Both Sultan Erdogan and his ventriloquist’s dummy Ilham Aliyev have far too much invested to back down now.

 

And finally...what do I believe?

 

 

By now it should be obvious that I am not particularly enamoured of Putinoids or, for that matter, Putin. My position is that Russia, in fact, has a duty to the world; it is the only military bulwark (China being the economic entity on that scale) against the Amerikastani Empire. It is what stops the Amerikastani Empire from enslaving us all. When Russia stands up it stands up for all of us. When Putin betrays Russian interests he betrays us all.

Also, Russia is hardly secure. It’s beset on almost all its borders with Amerikastani aggression, colour revolutions, and subversion. It cannot afford “restraint” and complacency. A bit of proactive and aggressive action would only help it, especially if it nipped Amerikastani plans in the bud.

Therefore the Putinoid position that Russia only needs to “look after itself” is asinine, as imbecilic as the idea that Armenia will come crawling back if only Putin allows Nagorno Karabakh to be overrun. In fact, all it will do is convince everybody – including China – that there is no more unreliable ally and protector than Vladimir Putin. Is this what the Putinoids want? Really?

So here is today’s cartoon.





I’m also adding a version without dialogue, in case anyone wants to add their own.