above reproach

Ex-MI5 agent Annie Machon explains:

1) Intelligence agencies are fragmented and in competition.

2) Creating and sustaining a strategy of tension between the US and Russia JUSTIFIES the continued military-industrial complex buildup in Central Asia.



We conclude, therefore, that tension with Russia is GOOD for business.

Then again, you don't want *too much* tension, that would be BAD for politics. People expect their leaders to work for peace and solve problems. After All. So the tension should be just at the right level. Not too hot, not too cold.

Juuust right.

Keeping the tension just right is a key component of social engineering. See: the social engineers

"This is our life, this constant cycle of stress and relief. 
Stability never comes.  
That's the point."  

See: and one day the owner came home and was gravely disappointed

^^^^^^^


On Wednesday, August 24, 2010, TIME reports Not to Worry about tension with Russia! What tension? We are all One Big Happy Family. With US Approval, Moscow heads back to Afghanistan. (via There Are No Sunglasses)

Mounting Russian concerns that Islamist militancy and cheap drugs emanating from Afghanistan are a threat to its national security [TRUE!] have made Moscow refocus on the region even as the U.S. and its NATO allies maneuver to draw down.

But the very day before, the Washington Post tells us that we're not really drawing down.  August 23, 2010: Air base expansion plans reflect long-term investment in Afghanistan

Three $100 million air base expansions in southern and northern Afghanistan illustrate Pentagon plans to continue building multimillion-dollar facilities in that country to support increased U.S. military operations well into the future.

So not really exactly "drawing down" then. More like "ramping up".... AIR BASES! More airplanes. In and out they go.

As we all know because it's perfectly obvious, airplanes are really great for transporting things.

What is going *in* on the airplanes? Supplies for our troops, presumably. Everything must be brought in because there is no economy to speak of in Afghanistan, since it has been destroyed by decades of war.

And what is coming *out* on all these airplanes? Perhaps the only thing that the Afghan economy does produce?

"government failure in the opium trade"

 government FAIL = organized crime SUCCESS

Massive quantities of heroin ARE being moved around the planet, to the benefit of organized crime and to the detriment of human beings addicted to drugs. That is a fact.

See: who moves the drugs out of Afghanistan

^^^^^^^

TIME narrative:

With a July 2011 deadline looming for troops to begin their withdrawal, the Obama Administration has been angling for regional partners to step in and shoulder a greater share of the burden.

Well let's just take a look at the Obama Administration for a second. Here are Obama's Czars:

We now have more czars than imperial Russia. Let’s consider Obama’s czars: Economic Czars – Larry Summers & Paul Volker, Regulatory Czar – Cass Sunstein, Pay Czar – Kenneth Feinberg, Military Jails Czar – Daniel Fried, Car Czars – Steven Rattner and Ron Bloom, Border Czar – Alan Bersin, Health Rationing Czar – Dr. Donald Berwick, Food Czar – Sam Kass, Climate Czar – Todd Stern, Global Warming Czar – Carol Browner, Afghanistan Czar – Richard Holbrooke, Central Region Czar – Dennis Ross, Aids Czar – Jeffrey Crowley, Domestic Violence Czar – Lynn Rosenthal, Anti-semitism Czar – Hannah Rosenthal, Government Performance Czar – Jeffrey Zients, Drug Czar – Gil Kerlikowske, Science Czar – John Holdren, all are Jewish.

And the Obama Administration is angling for some partners. And they found some in Russia.

Over the past year, a series of contact groups from the U.S. and Russia have ramped up intelligence-sharing to combat the flow of narcotics from Afghanistan, [wink wink wink!] the source of about 90% of the world’s heroin. In a June 9 op-ed in the Moscow newspaper Izvestia, Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan, highlighted Russian contributions at length, hailing them as a major step forward in bilateral relations. But while Russia’s intelligence assets in ex-Soviet republics may have a modest impact on combating the trade, myriad other transit routes through Iran and Pakistan will complicate the efforts to curtail the supply line.

I would like to thank our good friends in Russia

for helping us "combat" the flow of narcotics from Afghanistan.

(image source)

Good Friends in Russia?

^^^^^^^

But what about our leaders? What about Obama? This is an interesting interview.

I believe with Obama there is nobody home. He is a ghost. He doesn’t do anything. He is a Manshurian Candidate, he is a robot, he is nothing. He has done nothing, he is doing nothing, he will never do anything. Obama is just waiting to get a job at Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan in three or four years time and that’s it. The White House is a way to improve his resume.[7] The BP oil spill revealed that America is running with no leadership at all. There is nobody at the helm of the ship. It’s running wild with no leadership whatsoever.

Well we might quibble with that a bit. It's not that Obama does *nothing* exactly, it's that Obama does what he's told. That's why he has czars and minders.

image from Telegraph UK

As for Putin, he seems to be a master at the strategy of tension. I don't think he has minders. But this is telling, and not good:

Thanks to their cash (dollars, no credit cards), commercial ties between Italians and Russians are flourishing more than ever, helped along by the “special friendship” between Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Putin's daughters are frequent guests of the Italian media tycoon-turned-politician.)

Putin with his daughters, from Pravda

Katya and Masha

more pictures here

...The Adriatic Riviera in the north, the elite Emerald Coast in Sardinia and the Amalfitan villages of Positano and Sorrento have transformed into settlements of Russian oligarchs who spend months in fashionable hotels, rent summer villas for 100,000 euros per month and are willing to disburse some 20 million euros to buy beach apartments.


...Among them is Rustam Tariko (also known as the Vodka King), Alisher Usmanov (a metal magnate and manager of Gazprom, the Russian oil giant), Vasili Anisimov (a gold producer who bought his mansion from Berlusconi’s wife, Veronica Lario) and Ildar Karimov (a television tycoon). Owning a property in one of Sardinia’s top locations is a status-symbol for Russia’s jet-set society.

Another upcoming Russian destination in Italy is Alberobello, in the Apulia region. Here, real estate investors from Moscow and St. Petersburg are spending millions of euros to buy old farms and prehistoric white, cone-shaped stone village houses called "Trulli," despite them being listed as UNESCO heritage sites.

"A woman walks in front of trulli-style houses in the village of Arberobello in the southern region of Apulia on May 21, 2009. Russian investors are paying millions for these UNESCO heritage sites in Italy. (Christophe Simon/Getty Images)" Italy: Land of the Rich Russian

Buying UNESCO sites for your vacation cottage....Priceless.

And why would Putin let his daughters anywhere Berlusconi?


In any case, it is important not to conflate all Russians with the Russian Mafia. 



March 2, 2010: Moscow Times: 'Russian Mafia' abroad now 300,000 strong, journal says

VIENNA — After avoiding any use of the term “Russian mafia” in the last few years, law enforcement personnel in Europe and elsewhere are now speaking about it again, noting that it includes “up to 300,000 people” and dominates the criminal world in many countries around the world, according to a Moscow investigative journalist.
In Monday's Versiya, Ruslan Gorevoy says law enforcement personnel in many countries — including Spain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, France, Mexico “and even the United States” — have been surprised by how “confidently” criminal groups consisting of people from the former Soviet Union now dominate their national criminal worlds.

Note that Interpol doesn't bother to keep appropriate statistics. How convenient is that?

...Interpol, the international police agency, does not maintain the kind of files that allow for an even approximate assessment of the number of Russian criminals operating abroad. But last year, the National Prosecutor of Italy concluded that there are “up to 300,000” criminals from Russia operating in other countries.

One of the largest or at least most profitable activities of Russian criminals abroad, the Italians said, is money laundering, with the Russian mafia “laundering” funds in the United States, Marianas and Guam. In addition, they added, Russian criminals are charging Mexican drug lords 30 percent for laundering drug profits from sales in the United States.


...The Munich paper’s Rudolph Himelli said that “Russian mafiosi are better organized and permit themselves to commit the boldest crimes, remaining in practice unpunished,” crimes that are “of a completely different order of magnitude than those committed by Turkish immigrants or criminals from countries in Eastern Europe,” including illegal arms sales to Libya and Iraq.

See: he is supplying plausible deniability

To discern not conflate:

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the flamboyant head of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and vice speaker of the Duma, says that none of this information justifies any suggestion that there is a Russian mafia operating abroad let alone implying that Moscow is somehow responsible for it.
“Yes,” Zhirinovsky acknowledges, “people from the republics of the former USSR really occupy an important position in the international criminal community, and in recent years this position can even be called a dominant one. But here is one ‘but’: Many of these people already have been living abroad for a long time” and have exchanged Russian passports for foreign ones.

Consequently, he continues, they are now “more the representatives of Western and not our culture.” Indeed, the LDPR leader insists, “the fact that these people left Russia may testify only that our law enforcement organs do not allow them to make their way” in their homeland, while the police in other countries are not as successful.

Also see: corruption

Well that was a little rambley. I guess that's what happens when everything starts to come together. IF YOU WANTED TO, you could get up in the morning and look around the web and find out the most disturbing things. Anyone can do it, but most people don't want to. And if you do it for them, they don't want to believe you. The sources will never be good enough. Better to watch teevee and wait for them to tell us when it's all over. Social engineers say: Good plan.

source