In case you are wondering, there is a difference. Fools, for example, are a group of senators who could not tell the difference between an ass and stonewalling a confirmation process for a SCOTUS associate justice. A fear of flying, on the other hand, is something some people have and some people fake so they can help in stonewalling a confirmation process for a SCOTUS associate justice. The difference should be obvious, but for some strange reason - other than the 24/7 drivel of the mainstream media - it isn't.
There are other things that should have been obvious from the moment that the substance of life-long trauma of Dr. Blasey Ford was leaked to the WaPo. One, it was timed for maximum effect with the same objective as the false claim of a fear of flying. Two, there was no freaking way a claim like the one levelled against Brett Kavanaugh could be substantiated. The only material witness to the alleged assault on the high-schooler, was a friend of the accused and by the artful scenario, an accomplice in the act, and therefore someone hugely unlikely to corroborate the thirty-six year old trauma of the distraught doctor. The other two (three ?) people present in the house had nothing substantial to add since by Dr. Ford's own testimony she did not share with them the horror story. But this, of course, assume, that neither of the two would-be rapists bragged in their presence and colored the outrage perpetrated in the upstairs bedroom. Therefore, a thorough FBI investigation would be needed to confirm that no-one other than Dr. Ford remembers anything about a party sometime in the summer of 1982, somewhere around Washington D.C. Surely, this could not be done in a week, since now there is already another credible victim claiming that the prospective SCOTUS associate justice at another party had his dick in her face, literally and figuratively. You see, Anita Hill, had the disadvantage of fighting Clarence Thomas alone, and therefore never quite managed to make people comfortable with the notion that she followed him from job to job, despite all the petty harassments because she had no other career options open to her. The internet and #MeToo wasn't around and therefore the twisted sisters' were limited in generating mass assaults on the politically undesirable favoured by the basket of deplorables. But you can't stop progress, even though this surely is the smelly sort that George Orwell said "causes bluebottles to flock to a dead cat".
Like the real fear of flying, the foolishness of GOP senators relates to a loss of nerve. Instead of quickly assessing the situation, concentrating on the leak from senator's Feinstein's office and discrediting the preposterous and contradictory claim that the Kavanaugh's accuser wanted to remain anonymous, they allowed themselves to be shanghaied into a Monty Pythonesque Flying Circus. Now, in the third week of the melodrama, the senators will have to rely on the clean bill of health of the nominee by the FBI investigation, which is by no means assured. All it would take at this point is some ambitious, closet Clintonite in the ranks (preferably a woman of color), to uncover some untold tale of debauchery relating to excessive beer consumption in the judge's sophomore year for this sorry saga to come to a sad end.
There are very few middle-of-the-road, and intelligent conservative voices that have this story right. The always-entertaining Jim Kunstler, who has most things right, went a step too far when he dismissed the alleged incident as "awkward teenage necking". No, I would not go there. The woman might really believe in the reality of the incident, and we do not know her background to cast aspersions. I would say, though, that if this incident was really the most serious traumatic sex event of her life, then she has lived a charmed life. Tucker Carlson's line I like; he is direct and as usual cuts through the nonsense. He and Mark Steyn understand the problem well. Unfortunately, most of the commentators in the middle and on the respectable right are just ....having a fear of flying.
The respected Canadian commentator Lorne Gunter is one who would have it both ways. He deplores the lack of process in delivering the Ford charges before the Senate committee, but he cannot bring himself to dismiss them precisely because they cannot be handled by a process that can claim impartiality and integrity. He says, "[It] does not diminish these allegations that they are for an attack more than three decades old." He is dead wrong. Not only is this allegation (a single one, of a minor sexual assault) diminished by the nearly two generations that transpired between it allegedly occurring and now, it is unequivocally "lapsed". It simply cannot be belabored in a manner that would do justice to a fair and impartial process. Period. End of story. The only reason that one would want to raise this incident in any public forum with such a delay is to impugn the character of the person against whom such charges are brought - outside of a judicial process. Mr Gunter evidently wants to play the gentleman here, but unfortunately, the committee hearing accusation against Mr.Kavanaugh does not proceed by standards of civility, and the writer cast himself into the role of a gentleman who gives away too much. His plea, to preserve the presumption of innocence, is miscast and frankly, foolish, because he is giving it away by agreeing to a crazy process. It appears to be a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Mr Gunter protests procedural changes to Canadian criminal law (Bill C-51) which further erode the rights of the accused in cases of sexual assault. But he does not understand that this is just a step in dismantling the legal framework which began long ago. In Canada, for example, we no longer have the doctrine of "recent complain" in sex crimes, which allows inquiry into why a complaint about an old incident was not raised earlier. Mr Gunter appears to subscribe to it, even though it severely disadvantages the defense in real cases, let alone the kind brought forth against Brett Kavanaugh.
Sunday, September 30, 2018
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Who Is Afraid of Virgin Wolves ?
Just in case you have been wondering who informs the Washington elites of the unfolding events north of the border, I have found out that one of the wise women is Melissa J. Gismondi. Her clippings.me website tells us that Melissa uses her training as a historian to inform her analysis of contemporary issues. She has over seven years of experience writing and editing digital and print content for diverse audiences.
There might be a problem with the first sentence of her intro, but what the heck, who cares about syntax these days. No, it is not important; it only adds colour to the mental efforts of Melissa who holds a PhD in American history. But, if you are curious, just a handful of clippings of her contributions to major media outlets will give you a good idea just where her head is at: Are Canadians really less racist than Americans?, Can students who engage in sexual or romantic relationships with their professors avoid being exploited?, When it comes to white supremacy, historians can't stand on the sidelines, Why media obsession with male charisma has to stop. I don't know how you but I feel assured after perusing a few of her journalistic creations that they are not really meant for "diverse audiences" unless of course she means that her politics are what is required for all genders, races, and altars worshipped.
Melissa's take on the last month's Toronto sidewalk terror incident has been sold to The Washington Post. She believes she knows what drove Alek Minassian's anger and a rented van to plow a busy metropolitan boulevard that Monday. She writes...until very recently white men in patriarchal societies such as Canada and the United States didn't have "incel" complaints, because they enjoyed relatively free access to women's bodies. Indeed, the seething rage that allegedly fueled Minassian's terror comes from women gaining more control of their bodies, thanks to decades of activism. In the process, they're denying white men an old privilege to which many still feel entitled: sex whenever they want it. From there, Melissa goes on to say that if in the past rape was prosecuted it was to protect women as men's property, and that white slave owners and "Euro-American colonizers" saw the slave and indigenous women as their prize to take.
In other words, Melissa asserts that there are large, historical wrongs behind the horrific but, as police indicated, isolated, attack, motivated by a very personal sort rage against the world. However, was no indication in the only artifact fact by Minassian available that he was raging against women - exclusively. His Facebook note prior to the attack names both sexually active sides, the Chads and Stacys, as the object of his wrath. Nor is there any indication that he, or most "incels" for that matter, have a beef with feminism as such. They appear to be climbing walls simply because they don't get laid and are scorned by their peers as social retards. This poses no problem for the social justice warrior, though. If social justice complaint does not exist, it can be manufactured. Since this is a terrorist attack story that is not Islamic it can be easily be converted into an illustration of alt-right white male supremacy/privilege, slavery and oppression of native women in North America. And of course it is not just Melissa Gismondi. There were several commentators in the mainstream media with a matching narrative. The Southern Poverty Law Center immediately latched onto the "Incel Ideology" idea.
It is really a sad commentary on the state of the Western academia to see someone with a PhD in history to be grossly ignorant on the basics of the subject matter she expounds on. Melissa Gismondi apparently does not understand anything about the English Common Law and its development. She says that the crime of rape was occasionally prosecuted [in most of American history] so long as the woman was white and behaved as women were expected to behave. That is not true as is not true that the woman's body was not hers to violate (since it was a chattel of her husband or property of her male guardian). This is an unbelievable libel not just on the sense of law, order and fairness (or good morals, if you want) but on the whole "white" Western civilization. It would take Ms. Gismondi not more than a quick look into the Blackstone's Laws of England (1765-69) to educate herself that rape, raptus mulierum was a "public wrong" , not a private one. She would learn in a few seconds that the outrage was not perpetrated against the woman's guardians but against the female part of his majesty's subjects. Unlike the old Roman or the Mosaic laws, the law of England has recognized the inviolability of a person (habeas corpus) for eight hundred years. To have carnal knowledge of a woman forcibly and against her will, violated her body and no one else's! This principle has been universal in Anglo-Saxon legal history. Ms Gismondi and the left-wing academic lunatics she speaks for are clueless. Blackstone cited Henry of Bratton, a thirteen-century jurist who ruled on the King's Bench that violating even a prostitute (!!!) was a crime. His brilliant and clever argument refuted the notion that since a prostitute sold her body for money she had no regard for it. Bratton ruled that the state of mind of the woman could not be known to the assailant - beyond her protest that is - and therefore she could be in fact on her way to rehabilitation. Besides, said the just man, the law of England does not judge so hardly of offenders, as to deny them retreat even from common strumpets. I marvel at the idea that the best among the white supremacists knew that no meant no, even if she was a hooker, as early as the thirteenth century.
No, the "incel" social media phenomenon does not relate to anything in the cultural mainstream of the West. The involuntary celibate men (and some women), are simply a new label and form of communication for social and sexual marginals. They are not as a rule violent; it has been argued by competent psychologists that the rare outbursts of violence within that group points to issues other that their sexual frustration. Most likely, it is serious mental health issues (beyond, say, spectrum autism) that account for murderous assaults like those of Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian. The latter's Facebook post recalls the first known intentional vehicular mass murder by a young Czech woman, Olga Hepnarová in 1973, who like the two men transparently suffered from persecutory delusions. If there is a larger social issue behind the Toronto tragedy then it is the all-too-real decline of the traditional masculine virtues in our society, such as honour, self-control, courage, thoughtfulness and compassion. These would naturally act as a potent inhibitor of gross antisocial oubursts. But even if we managed to recapture a positive male self-image, even we had male leaders who would show character and integrity, even then we would see extreme cases of marginal behaviours. They will be with us always. The only difference is that we would be confident in the goodness of men, and see the nastiness and poverty of spirit of those who would take a terrible but isolated tragedy as an excuse to malign the whole gender of one race.
Melissa's take on the last month's Toronto sidewalk terror incident has been sold to The Washington Post. She believes she knows what drove Alek Minassian's anger and a rented van to plow a busy metropolitan boulevard that Monday. She writes...until very recently white men in patriarchal societies such as Canada and the United States didn't have "incel" complaints, because they enjoyed relatively free access to women's bodies. Indeed, the seething rage that allegedly fueled Minassian's terror comes from women gaining more control of their bodies, thanks to decades of activism. In the process, they're denying white men an old privilege to which many still feel entitled: sex whenever they want it. From there, Melissa goes on to say that if in the past rape was prosecuted it was to protect women as men's property, and that white slave owners and "Euro-American colonizers" saw the slave and indigenous women as their prize to take.
In other words, Melissa asserts that there are large, historical wrongs behind the horrific but, as police indicated, isolated, attack, motivated by a very personal sort rage against the world. However, was no indication in the only artifact fact by Minassian available that he was raging against women - exclusively. His Facebook note prior to the attack names both sexually active sides, the Chads and Stacys, as the object of his wrath. Nor is there any indication that he, or most "incels" for that matter, have a beef with feminism as such. They appear to be climbing walls simply because they don't get laid and are scorned by their peers as social retards. This poses no problem for the social justice warrior, though. If social justice complaint does not exist, it can be manufactured. Since this is a terrorist attack story that is not Islamic it can be easily be converted into an illustration of alt-right white male supremacy/privilege, slavery and oppression of native women in North America. And of course it is not just Melissa Gismondi. There were several commentators in the mainstream media with a matching narrative. The Southern Poverty Law Center immediately latched onto the "Incel Ideology" idea.
It is really a sad commentary on the state of the Western academia to see someone with a PhD in history to be grossly ignorant on the basics of the subject matter she expounds on. Melissa Gismondi apparently does not understand anything about the English Common Law and its development. She says that the crime of rape was occasionally prosecuted [in most of American history] so long as the woman was white and behaved as women were expected to behave. That is not true as is not true that the woman's body was not hers to violate (since it was a chattel of her husband or property of her male guardian). This is an unbelievable libel not just on the sense of law, order and fairness (or good morals, if you want) but on the whole "white" Western civilization. It would take Ms. Gismondi not more than a quick look into the Blackstone's Laws of England (1765-69) to educate herself that rape, raptus mulierum was a "public wrong" , not a private one. She would learn in a few seconds that the outrage was not perpetrated against the woman's guardians but against the female part of his majesty's subjects. Unlike the old Roman or the Mosaic laws, the law of England has recognized the inviolability of a person (habeas corpus) for eight hundred years. To have carnal knowledge of a woman forcibly and against her will, violated her body and no one else's! This principle has been universal in Anglo-Saxon legal history. Ms Gismondi and the left-wing academic lunatics she speaks for are clueless. Blackstone cited Henry of Bratton, a thirteen-century jurist who ruled on the King's Bench that violating even a prostitute (!!!) was a crime. His brilliant and clever argument refuted the notion that since a prostitute sold her body for money she had no regard for it. Bratton ruled that the state of mind of the woman could not be known to the assailant - beyond her protest that is - and therefore she could be in fact on her way to rehabilitation. Besides, said the just man, the law of England does not judge so hardly of offenders, as to deny them retreat even from common strumpets. I marvel at the idea that the best among the white supremacists knew that no meant no, even if she was a hooker, as early as the thirteenth century.
No, the "incel" social media phenomenon does not relate to anything in the cultural mainstream of the West. The involuntary celibate men (and some women), are simply a new label and form of communication for social and sexual marginals. They are not as a rule violent; it has been argued by competent psychologists that the rare outbursts of violence within that group points to issues other that their sexual frustration. Most likely, it is serious mental health issues (beyond, say, spectrum autism) that account for murderous assaults like those of Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian. The latter's Facebook post recalls the first known intentional vehicular mass murder by a young Czech woman, Olga Hepnarová in 1973, who like the two men transparently suffered from persecutory delusions. If there is a larger social issue behind the Toronto tragedy then it is the all-too-real decline of the traditional masculine virtues in our society, such as honour, self-control, courage, thoughtfulness and compassion. These would naturally act as a potent inhibitor of gross antisocial oubursts. But even if we managed to recapture a positive male self-image, even we had male leaders who would show character and integrity, even then we would see extreme cases of marginal behaviours. They will be with us always. The only difference is that we would be confident in the goodness of men, and see the nastiness and poverty of spirit of those who would take a terrible but isolated tragedy as an excuse to malign the whole gender of one race.
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
Putin's Propaganda Blunder
I am a known Putin admirer, and on the discussion boards I have been accused of being his bot and/or his bootlicker. Well, let them say what they will. I like Vladimir Vladimirovch when he is smart and down-to-brass-tacks which is most of the time. I don't like the stupid, manipulative banter in politics which is what is currently being served in the West twenty-four seven. Putin is a welcome relief from that. He talks common sense and that is why he comes across loud and clear - across languages (though I still have some Russian). On the other hand, while I admire the Russian president, I don't idolize him. He is human and makes mistakes like all of us. I hope he will not make another mistake of the sort he made last month.
Masha Gessen is one of the Moscow journalists who was not killed or maimed for being critical of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, even though she was a lesbian activist in and spread the most ridiculous tale about his corruption, an alleged selfie called Putin Black Sea Palace. But a miracle happened. When she was sacked by a popular magazine for ignoring one of Putin's public relations stunts, she received a personal call from him with an invitation to visit him in the Kremlin. What transpired during her interview with the Russian president is certainly worth the read. That Masha has a hostile animus toward Vladimir Vladimovich I think comes out loud and clear. Other than the late Zbig Brzezinski, I can't think of anyone who would describe Putin as shallow, self-involved, not terribly perceptive, and apparently very poorly informed. Strangely, or perhaps not, from what I have seen, this would be how I would describe Masha Gessen, who has since moved to the U.S. and milks her Putin envy and Kremlin twenty-minute expertise for all it is worth. Do not get me wrong; I am not saying that Masha is not bright - she is - but like some women on the public scene she suffers from the Hillary Complex, that is, a hopelessly exaggerated view of her own importance and abilities. If she really knew Putin's habits she would have known he always comes prepared for interviews and so he certainly knew everything that mattered about her (especially her book on himself published in the West) and the effect the encounter would have on the perception of him when the word gets out about her Kremlin visit. So, dear Masha, you were played.
I never thought I would agree with anything that Masha Gessen had to say about Vladimir Putin. But, we live in a strange world where strange things happen. So I do agree with her that the president wants to wage a rhetorical war with the U.S. without too many coffins. Naturally, I don't mean it as an exercise laced in Schadenfreude, and I certainly would not use the word coffin in the punchline. It's a way too morbid way to make the point even if you are Alexei Balabanov and you have a scary tale to tell about a Russian soul warped by murderous Soviet authoritarianism. (His 2007 horror movie used a Soviet-era euphemism for a military coffin - "Cargo 200"). Nor do I see Putin as someone who wants to engage in war propaganda to collect brownie points on the nasty Russian right, to wit, among the village butchers and pub brawlers, where, Gessen apparently believes, lie Putin's natural political affinities. All that aside, her bottom point is valid. Putin has unadvisedly engaged in goading the West as a way to compensate perhaps for what Russia can deliver on the battlefield at the present time. I am speaking above all about the annual address to the Federal Assembly, he delivered on March 1st of this year. This must be the strangest speech Vladimir Putin has ever delivered, or the strangest one I ever heard, at any rate.
I was aghast: I could not for the world of me understand why a leader of a nuclear superpower but a second-tier economy harassed for years by barrages of sanctions from the West would want to parade in public an array of new super-sophisticated offensive weapons. Who really needs to know this - if it is real ? And, pardon me for being Captain Obvious here, would not this be feeding into a known Putin stereotype ? Or say, give credence to the view that Russia is an "existential threat to the U.S."? Hello? And Putin would not just talk about the weapons systems but actually show clips of how these monstrous killers "against which there the West has no defense" work in animated simulation on a giant screen behind his rostrum. The show had a distinct air of unreality. The introduction of each of the new weapons (and the ICBM known in the West as "Satan") was greeted by a loud applause in the audience. There was a cluster of nuclear vehicles descending on Florida (hmmm....) and cruise missiles deftly zigzagging around the U.S. defense system. Even Putin's closing punch line: "they did not want to listen to us before, but they will have to listen to us now" was a truly foolhardy optimism. All it did is recall the naïve Soviet propaganda faithfully tracking the progress of time to the inevitable final victory of communism in the world. These weapons are not a bluff, assured Putin his mesmerized audience, as though his saying he was not bluffing, assured also everyone he was not misleading his audience about the state of readiness of these systems in the aggregate.
The most disconcerting aspect of Putin's speech was that, he, the former high-ranking intelligence officer and experienced statesman evidently did not take into account the most likely response in the West to his message. He should have known that the speech would be dismissed as, one, a way to bolster his domestic support among the pessimistic sort of patriots and the wilder, too-soft-on-the-West yahoos on the eve of election to get them to show up to vote, two, an unrealistic appraisal of the new weapons' system readiness, and three, and most importantly, as "threats" to the security of the West. I simply refuse to believe that the Russian president believed his low-budget large-screen demo would bring the West to the negotiating table. And indeed, NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu immediately denounced the speech as "bellicose" and "unprovoked", and repeated the ridiculous lie that the Polish and Rumanian ABM batteries are designed to protect against "ballistic missiles from outside of the Euro-Atlantic area", meaning Iran. The Russians have long known that these so-called defensive systems are in fact easily convertible to an offensive platform and their target is Russia and no-one else.
Worse still, within few days of the speech Britain cooked up the Skripal sorry saga in Salisbury and another chemical attack false flag in Douma. Russia's intelligence got wind of the latter, and threatened a vigorous response through the Chief of General Staff general Gerasimov in case a fake chemical assault should prompt a military response from the West. It is hard to run away from the impression that the missile attack on Syria, and pretty much everything else that has followed in Russia's relations with the West in the weeks since the address of the Russian president to the Duma, directly relates to the speech, and its implied threat that frankly resembled more a drunken sailor's bragging than the smart and indomitable Putin we have come to know and rely on.
In several of my discussions on the Web I have been challenged for my perception that Putin meant to "threaten" the West. Naturally, it is in the eye of the beholder, and there though I consider myself Russia's friend, I am a Westerner. I grew up in Prague and have my own perception of the Russians lack of insight in grasping their own aggressive impulses. It was registered by professor T.G.Masaryk (later the first president of Czechoslovakia) who went to Yasnaya Polyana and reported later that Leo Tolstoy, the great apostle of peace and non-violence, regularly slapped around his servants silly. On the same subject, we even had a joke about a Soviet advisor in Africa who "solved" a problem in deciding whether a prisoner of his client army was a dangerous spy. He asked the prisoner to slap his face. The prisoner did and the advisor shot him dead. When the clients asked him why he shot the prisoner he said: 'bezopasnostj prezhde vsevo' (security above all!). They were perplexed: 'no, what we meant to ask is why you asked him to slap your face before shooting him?' He replied: 'tovarishchi, my nikogda agressory'. (Comrades, we are never the aggressors!) I recalled the old chestnut when I read about Nikki Haley's recent posturing: Russia will never be our friend. We'll slap them when we need to. Of course that speaks of a different problem, but by all means, let us stay away these slap fests. They do not add any value.
Staging propaganda events is perhaps necessary but they should be done intelligently. The March 1 speech was far from smart propaganda, unlike, say, inviting Masha Gessen to Kremlin for a tea and a friendly tête-à-tête. Putin was threatening and the sooner he realizes he made a mistake and paid for it by being taken down a peg or two in his international stature, and having Russia's economy further damaged, the better for all of us.
Masha Gessen is one of the Moscow journalists who was not killed or maimed for being critical of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, even though she was a lesbian activist in and spread the most ridiculous tale about his corruption, an alleged selfie called Putin Black Sea Palace. But a miracle happened. When she was sacked by a popular magazine for ignoring one of Putin's public relations stunts, she received a personal call from him with an invitation to visit him in the Kremlin. What transpired during her interview with the Russian president is certainly worth the read. That Masha has a hostile animus toward Vladimir Vladimovich I think comes out loud and clear. Other than the late Zbig Brzezinski, I can't think of anyone who would describe Putin as shallow, self-involved, not terribly perceptive, and apparently very poorly informed. Strangely, or perhaps not, from what I have seen, this would be how I would describe Masha Gessen, who has since moved to the U.S. and milks her Putin envy and Kremlin twenty-minute expertise for all it is worth. Do not get me wrong; I am not saying that Masha is not bright - she is - but like some women on the public scene she suffers from the Hillary Complex, that is, a hopelessly exaggerated view of her own importance and abilities. If she really knew Putin's habits she would have known he always comes prepared for interviews and so he certainly knew everything that mattered about her (especially her book on himself published in the West) and the effect the encounter would have on the perception of him when the word gets out about her Kremlin visit. So, dear Masha, you were played.
I never thought I would agree with anything that Masha Gessen had to say about Vladimir Putin. But, we live in a strange world where strange things happen. So I do agree with her that the president wants to wage a rhetorical war with the U.S. without too many coffins. Naturally, I don't mean it as an exercise laced in Schadenfreude, and I certainly would not use the word coffin in the punchline. It's a way too morbid way to make the point even if you are Alexei Balabanov and you have a scary tale to tell about a Russian soul warped by murderous Soviet authoritarianism. (His 2007 horror movie used a Soviet-era euphemism for a military coffin - "Cargo 200"). Nor do I see Putin as someone who wants to engage in war propaganda to collect brownie points on the nasty Russian right, to wit, among the village butchers and pub brawlers, where, Gessen apparently believes, lie Putin's natural political affinities. All that aside, her bottom point is valid. Putin has unadvisedly engaged in goading the West as a way to compensate perhaps for what Russia can deliver on the battlefield at the present time. I am speaking above all about the annual address to the Federal Assembly, he delivered on March 1st of this year. This must be the strangest speech Vladimir Putin has ever delivered, or the strangest one I ever heard, at any rate.
I was aghast: I could not for the world of me understand why a leader of a nuclear superpower but a second-tier economy harassed for years by barrages of sanctions from the West would want to parade in public an array of new super-sophisticated offensive weapons. Who really needs to know this - if it is real ? And, pardon me for being Captain Obvious here, would not this be feeding into a known Putin stereotype ? Or say, give credence to the view that Russia is an "existential threat to the U.S."? Hello? And Putin would not just talk about the weapons systems but actually show clips of how these monstrous killers "against which there the West has no defense" work in animated simulation on a giant screen behind his rostrum. The show had a distinct air of unreality. The introduction of each of the new weapons (and the ICBM known in the West as "Satan") was greeted by a loud applause in the audience. There was a cluster of nuclear vehicles descending on Florida (hmmm....) and cruise missiles deftly zigzagging around the U.S. defense system. Even Putin's closing punch line: "they did not want to listen to us before, but they will have to listen to us now" was a truly foolhardy optimism. All it did is recall the naïve Soviet propaganda faithfully tracking the progress of time to the inevitable final victory of communism in the world. These weapons are not a bluff, assured Putin his mesmerized audience, as though his saying he was not bluffing, assured also everyone he was not misleading his audience about the state of readiness of these systems in the aggregate.
The most disconcerting aspect of Putin's speech was that, he, the former high-ranking intelligence officer and experienced statesman evidently did not take into account the most likely response in the West to his message. He should have known that the speech would be dismissed as, one, a way to bolster his domestic support among the pessimistic sort of patriots and the wilder, too-soft-on-the-West yahoos on the eve of election to get them to show up to vote, two, an unrealistic appraisal of the new weapons' system readiness, and three, and most importantly, as "threats" to the security of the West. I simply refuse to believe that the Russian president believed his low-budget large-screen demo would bring the West to the negotiating table. And indeed, NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu immediately denounced the speech as "bellicose" and "unprovoked", and repeated the ridiculous lie that the Polish and Rumanian ABM batteries are designed to protect against "ballistic missiles from outside of the Euro-Atlantic area", meaning Iran. The Russians have long known that these so-called defensive systems are in fact easily convertible to an offensive platform and their target is Russia and no-one else.
Worse still, within few days of the speech Britain cooked up the Skripal sorry saga in Salisbury and another chemical attack false flag in Douma. Russia's intelligence got wind of the latter, and threatened a vigorous response through the Chief of General Staff general Gerasimov in case a fake chemical assault should prompt a military response from the West. It is hard to run away from the impression that the missile attack on Syria, and pretty much everything else that has followed in Russia's relations with the West in the weeks since the address of the Russian president to the Duma, directly relates to the speech, and its implied threat that frankly resembled more a drunken sailor's bragging than the smart and indomitable Putin we have come to know and rely on.
In several of my discussions on the Web I have been challenged for my perception that Putin meant to "threaten" the West. Naturally, it is in the eye of the beholder, and there though I consider myself Russia's friend, I am a Westerner. I grew up in Prague and have my own perception of the Russians lack of insight in grasping their own aggressive impulses. It was registered by professor T.G.Masaryk (later the first president of Czechoslovakia) who went to Yasnaya Polyana and reported later that Leo Tolstoy, the great apostle of peace and non-violence, regularly slapped around his servants silly. On the same subject, we even had a joke about a Soviet advisor in Africa who "solved" a problem in deciding whether a prisoner of his client army was a dangerous spy. He asked the prisoner to slap his face. The prisoner did and the advisor shot him dead. When the clients asked him why he shot the prisoner he said: 'bezopasnostj prezhde vsevo' (security above all!). They were perplexed: 'no, what we meant to ask is why you asked him to slap your face before shooting him?' He replied: 'tovarishchi, my nikogda agressory'. (Comrades, we are never the aggressors!) I recalled the old chestnut when I read about Nikki Haley's recent posturing: Russia will never be our friend. We'll slap them when we need to. Of course that speaks of a different problem, but by all means, let us stay away these slap fests. They do not add any value.
Staging propaganda events is perhaps necessary but they should be done intelligently. The March 1 speech was far from smart propaganda, unlike, say, inviting Masha Gessen to Kremlin for a tea and a friendly tête-à-tête. Putin was threatening and the sooner he realizes he made a mistake and paid for it by being taken down a peg or two in his international stature, and having Russia's economy further damaged, the better for all of us.
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