Cal88 said:

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DiabloWags said:

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Cal88 said:

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^Have you read a book in the last couple of years, that wasn't a Porsche user manual?

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The manual cost me $280,000
But I can assure you that it is a very good read.

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You should have gotten the PDF version online!

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Naaaa...
I also wanted the GT car that went with the manual.
Just in the nick of time too. Yesterday, Porsche increased the price $13,000 for model year 2024.

Cal88 said:

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sycasey said:

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Cal88 said:

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sycasey said:

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Cal88 said:

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dajo9 said:

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sycasey said:

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Well done, Vlad.

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Putin is winning like Charlie Sheen

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Russia has lined up China, India, Brazil, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Mexico, UAE, practically all of Africa and the Global South.

NATO has ...Finland.

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So NATO is the big bad dominant global threat or . . . not?

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Yes.

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But how is this possible when Russia is lining up so much support from so many powerful nations? I don't understand.

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Perhaps Jeffrey Sachs can help you here, he does a great job of explaining the Wolfowitz Doctrine that has been driving US foreign policy the last few decades, using his personal experience as an official adviser to several governments:



Sachs: "if you believe that the key is you have to be number one, then you look at any other success story as a threat. If you believe in an open cooperative world, then you celebrate the success of others, I am in the latter camp, but that's not the foreign policy of the United States."

I am in his camp.

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I'm with you. What's wrong with a thriving Russia, Germany, India? China... different ball of wax.

RUSI out with a fascinating new report on the "unconventional" tactics of the Russian attempt to interfere in and take over Ukraine. This is an obviously well-researched report with a treasure trove of interesting details. No one will be surprised to hear that it completely contradicts Putin's narrative and that of his firehose of falsehoods.

Contrary to what the shills will have you believe, Putin was preparing for this invasion for quite some time, had his intelligence agents embedded throughout Ukraine - including through the Russian Orthodox Church - and had spent years preparing to take over Ukraine. A lot of the blame for why Russia is losing this war so spectacularly is that all of those plans fell apart because they relied on an assumption that Ukraine would not put up military resistance, similar to how Russia was able to take over Crimea in 2014.

You will note that there is absolutely zero factual basis for anyone to challenge the facts in this report. I don't take this to mean that the report is unimpeachable, just that the shills will of course be unable to do the sort of on the ground research required to disprove anything here - they certainly aren't equipped to operate on this level and have never shown any desire to faithfully acknowledge any actions taken by Russia in Ukraine prior to the war. All the shills have to say is that this isn't consistent with the propaganda they have been fed.

The report is a bit of a dense read, but here's a thread with some of the better details.

"in the autumn of 2021 Russian agents in Ukraine began to go on brief holidays at short notice to resorts in Turkey, Cyprus and Egypt where, coincidentally, they would meet with their handlers." https://t.co/gVu7s4ekAQ

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) March 29, 2023

"Russia’s belief that it understood Ukrainian politics may have been bolstered by the number of senior former Ukrainian officials resident in Moscow who had a clear motive in telling the Kremlin to proceed." https://t.co/gVu7s4ekAQ

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) March 29, 2023

"A large portion of the middle echelon of [Ukrainian] officials that were Russian agents simply stopped responding to [Russian] messages early in the invasion or else abandoned their posts, severing chains of command" https://t.co/gVu7s4ekAQ

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) March 29, 2023

"One of the foremost causes of inaccuracy in pre-war military assessments of the likely trajectory of the fighting – both in NATO countries & in the Ukrainian mil.– stems from the assumption that the Ru forces would conduct a deliberate military offensive" https://t.co/gVu7s4ekAQ pic.twitter.com/L4srPVzUNb

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) March 29, 2023

"The Russians were so confident that they would succeed in hours that their support apparatus had rented apartments around the key sites from which their special forces were supposed to operate in Kyiv" https://t.co/gVu7s4ekAQ

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) March 29, 2023

"fact that layout of these facilities is consistent throughout the country & the equipment used in torture chambers incl specialised electrocution machines were same across multiple oblasts demonstrates this was a systematic plan & not improvised sadism." https://t.co/gVu7s4ekAQ

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) March 29, 2023

"Based on its experiences in Chechnya, [Rus] planning assumption was that 8% of the population needed to collaborate, whether proactively or under coercion, to enable the counterintelligence regime to be effective". Ukr assessed "FSB was broadly correct" https://t.co/gVu7s4ekAQ

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) March 29, 2023

SF cannibalising regular infantry. "the expansion of Spetsnaz units had contributed to a shortage of competent contract infantry for the wider Russian military – as most competent infantry had been pushed toward Spetsnaz and airborne units." https://t.co/gVu7s4eSqo

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) March 29, 2023

I'll also copy the report's conclusions in its entirety (with my highlights). I would suggest that anyone who chooses to continue to read and engage with the trolls on BI bear in mind the extent to which this report highlights just how consistent their messaging is with the apparatus employed by Putin.

Quote:

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IN STUDYING THE forms and methods of Russia's unconventional war against Ukraine, it is worth considering the strengths of the Russian special services, their systemic weaknesses and the extent to which they will remain a major threat in the future.

To begin with Russian strengths, it is evident that the Russian special services managed to recruit a large agent network in Ukraine prior to the invasion and that much of the support apparatus has remained viable after the invasion, providing a steady stream of human intelligence to Russian forces. The internal threat significantly constrained the political room for manoeuvre for the Ukrainian state prior to the conflict and this produced unfavourable conditions for preparing the population for war. There has, for many years, been a bias in many states to favour collection against Russian activities on their territories. The evidence from Ukraine strongly suggests that Russian subversion should be actively resisted and disrupted before it can build up the mutually supporting structure that existed in Ukraine. The Russian tendency to corrupt targets for recruitment and to recruit under a false flag appears to be an effective means of building large networks quickly, though the reliability of individual agents is arguably much less than those recruited for ideological reasons. The tendency to rely on a small number of elite agents who run their own networks also means that moving against these individuals has a disproportionate impact on Russian capabilities.

Indeed, it is important to acknowledge that the threats outlined in this report of high-level recruitment and the build-up of a support apparatus is not a problem limited to Ukraine. During the course of the conflict both a senior signals intelligence analyst in the BND 114 and a senior counterintelligence officer115 in the BND have been uncovered as Russian agents. The same methods are used, to some effect, widely. And the consequences of failing to counter this activity are significant. In April 2022 the authors of this report highlighted the extensive discussions in the Russian special services regarding their capacity to destabilise Moldova, in order 'for destabilisation and the broadening of the front to protect [protract] and expand the economic and political costs on the West'. 116 The attempt to destabilise Moldova appears now to be being attempted.117 It is important that states are proactive in preventing Russia building up these capabilities in their countries and, where this has been achieved, actively closing down these networks.

Another strength of the Russian unconventional warfare capabilities is their systematic methodology for repression of occupied territories. Although crude and violent having a terrible effect on the economy and quality of life in targeted areas it does appear to be an effective method of constraining resistance activities to a manageable level and maintaining control. The evidence from Chechnya suggests that it may take a generation for resistance to be fully quashed, but that does not mean that resistance activities threaten the Russian position. It is also important to note that the digitised tools that have proven an effective enabler of this counterintelligence apparatus are exportable to other autocracies and may be a feature of Russia's offer to elites in states where it wishes to maintain influence. For NATO forces, the strength of the counterintelligence regime strongly suggests that partnered resistance operations need to be calibrated towards reconnaissance rather than direct action unless the territory on which the resistance network is active is likely to be imminently liberated. Those interfacing with these networks need to prioritise skills in handling human agents and in covert communications if their networks are to remain survivable. Another key lesson is that any resistance network established prior to a conflict must be invisible to the bureaucracy of the state, or else it risks exposure through the capture of a state's records.

However, there are also clearly considerable deficiencies in Russia's approach to unconventional warfare. At a fundamental level the Russian special services lack self-awareness, or at least the honesty to report accurately about their own efforts. In the case of Ukraine, a plan was attempted that was critically dependent on unconventional methods when the preconditions for success had not yet been achieved. This reveals wider cultural problems in the Russian services. That they are directed to bring about an outcome without independently assessing the viability of the plan creates a reporting culture where officers are encouraged to have a significant optimism bias. Furthermore, there appears to be a systemic problem of overreporting one's successes and concealing weaknesses to superiors. This is evidenced by the overly optimistic assessment of the proportion of Russia's agent network that would be proactive in supporting Russia in the context of a full-scale invasion. The fact that this lack of self-awareness in the Russian services contributes to blunders can certainly be exploited by counterespionage officers, but is far from comforting as it leads to a situation in which the Russians are difficult to deter because they have an unrealistic estimation of the likelihood of their success.

Another significant vulnerability in Russia's approach to unconventional warfare is that it is formulaic. When under pressure, the reaction has been to revert to tried and tested forms and methods from the Soviet period rather than to innovate. Furthermore, because of the scale at which these activities are attempted, once a particular form or method is exposed it tends to have been widely replicated allowing for the rapid detection of a wide range of unconnected activities. The Russian system does not appear to encourage treating each operation as bespoke. Although this does mean that Russian operations can scale quickly against an unsuspecting target, there is also a real vulnerability to an alert target because operations risk exposing one another.

Despite this tendency to revert under pressure to established forms and methods, there is considerable dynamism and entrepreneurialism among Russia's special services. As demonstrated by Wagner or the restructuring of the GRU's clandestine capabilities while in contact, the services are quick to seize on opportunities and have the policies and permissions to do so. This is exacerbated by the political dynamic behind their employment, which is perhaps best captured in Ian Kershaw's phrase describing the animation of the Hitlerite state as 'working towards the Fuhrer'.118 The special services are encouraged to develop operations consistent with their understanding of Putin's intent and, depending upon which is closest to his will and is more successful, there flows resource and attention. This kind of internal competition also allows Putin to reward or punish service chiefs and officials without their ever feeling truly secure. These dynamics make the special services highly active and willing to accept risk. It also distorts analysis, encouraging exaggeration of both their prospects in reporting and a catastrophism in ascribing failure to the scale of adversary efforts. It encourages blame shifting internally, limiting accurate after-action reviews. The upshot is that, while the Russian services may have failed in Ukraine, this is unlikely to prevent their being central to the coercive activities of the Russian state in the future, and countering them will remain no less important.

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dimitrig said:

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movielover said:

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Why did JFK send our military to Cuba? In search of cigars or young concubines?

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*** does Cuba have to do with Ukraine?

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Think about it.

movielover said:

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Why did JFK send our military to Cuba? In search of cigars or young concubines?

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Ummm… The US military wasn't involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion. JFK wasn't alive in 1898 so he wasn't sending anybody to Cuba then.

AunBear89 said:

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You will have to forgive movielover. He loves movies, but he has a hard time with reality like facts and real life events.

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The Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961 was a failed attack launched by the CIA during the Kennedy administration to push Cuban leader Fidel Castro from power. Since 1959, officials at the U.S. State Department and the CIA had attempted to remove Castro.

oski003 said:

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AunBear89 said:

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You will have to forgive movielover. He loves movies, but he has a hard time with reality like facts and real life events.

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The Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961 was a failed attack launched by the CIA during the Kennedy administration to push Cuban leader Fidel Castro from power. Since 1959, officials at the U.S. State Department and the CIA had attempted to remove Castro.

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The CIA was behind it but our military didn't go to Cuba

Read Joe Biden's speech at Moscow State University in 2011 and ask what changed in second Obama term.
https://t.co/eVnS0SaG2G.

— Stephen McIntyre (@ClimateAudit) April 1, 2023

Crimea (ethnically Russian) voted to separate from Ukraine and join Russia, after violent US-backed riots overturned democratically elected president and installed Ukrainian extremists who purported to ban Russian language.

— Stephen McIntyre (@ClimateAudit) April 1, 2023