GILVERT DOCTOROW—First, with regard to sanctions, there was near unanimity among the panelists that it is time for Russia to respond directly and strongly to the full economic and hybrid war that the United States and Europe are now waging against their country. They call for an immediate cut-off of gas supplies to Europe, to an embargo on export of titanium and other essential raw materials for advanced industrial production in the West. One alternative to these cruel and devastating moves against Europe would be to try it all out first on Japan, which has been a fervent enforcer of the trade war on Russia and even in the past few days publicly came out in support of the Azov ultranationalists, by removing them from the list of global terrorists. Russia should impose a total commercial embargo on Japan, beginning with hydrocarbons and extending into all spheres, such as fishing concessions.
"The Quiet Russian"
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The Russian website GEOFOR interviews The Saker
40 minutes readTHE SAKER—There is a certain specificity of American politics in this. Very often, American diplomats come to Moscow and say one thing, then when they come back, they are attacked by the media and Congress. Both the media and the Congress are totally in the hands of the “War Party” here. Accusations of weakness, softness, cowardice, etc. follow and here they need to show their “coolness”.
So, for example, Trump acted when he negotiated with the Russian side, and then declared: “There were no agreements.”
Therefore, it remains to be seen whether Biden will be able to withstand the onslaught of the “War Party” now. If he can do it, say, in the next 2-3 weeks, then I would say that for him this conversation was a clear and undoubted success.
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Assessing the Russian counter propaganda efforts (UPDATED 2x)
117 minutes readTHE SAKER—What I tried to show in these articles is that, in total contrast with the “bad old Soviet propaganda,” the modern Russian counter-propaganda does the exact opposite of what most people in the West believe it does: far from suppressing western propaganda, the Kremlin tries its very best to make sure that as many Russians as possible become aware of what the West is saying about them, their country and their values. The Kremlin even PAYS anti-Russian pundits to go on Russian national TV!!!
Why? Simply, because considering the nature of what the western media outlets, and even entire specialized entities, write and say about Russia, the best thing the Kremlin can do is to make darn sure that everybody in Russia becomes aware of it.
During the Cold War, the Soviets had a strict censorship system, entire segments of literature was banned, you could not take certain books across the border and radios like RFE/RL, the BBC or DW were jammed. Now the opposite is happening.
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N. BALDWIN—The Putin government does seem to be aware that there is dissatisfaction among Russians about the economic stagnation they have been enduring or several years. Ben Aris, a journalist who has been covering Russia fairly since the 1990’s, recently reported that there has been a major meeting to revamp the National Projects infrastructure and investment program, spearheaded by Mishustin and with some of the same people who helped Putin with his economic plan in the first years of his presidency, including Alexei Kudrin and German Gref, among others:
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Why Are These Anti-Russian And Anti-Chinese Narratives So Similar? (And how Hillary might become vice-president)
30 minutes readMoA—The FBI, and others involved, knew very early on that the Steele dossier was a bunch of lies. But the issue was kept in the public eyes by continued leaks of additional nonsense. All this was to press Trump to take more and more anti-Russian measures which he did with unprecedented generosity. The accusations about a Trump-Russia connection were the ‘Russia bad’ narrative that pressed and allowed Trump to continue the anti-Russian policies of the Obama/Biden administration. A similar string of continuous policies from the Obama/Biden administration’s ‘Pivot to Asia’ and throughout the four years of Trump is the anti-China campaign.