Somewhere in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, the leaders of ISIS-K, an offshoot of the Islamic State, must be lamenting that it has gotten to the point that you can’t even carry off a good old fashioned terrorist attack without a bunch of confusion and madness about who did it and why. Since the attack last Friday on a concert venue on the outskirts of Moscow that killed 140 and injured dozens more – which ISIS-K quickly took credit for -- Vladimir Putin and the head of his security service, the FSB, have sought to put the blame for the attack variously on Ukraine, the United States, Great Britain, and a combination of those three.
Somewhat O/T but still important, and horrifying: The Taliban has resumed stoning and flogging women to death, but the only place I've seen the story in in The Guardian, and it's likely that nobody will care - it's only women, you know, and the world won't give a shit. Madness is upon us, indeed.
A truly terrifying column. Two of the most powerful nations on earth, one run by a declared Stalin wanna-be, the other in the throes of a takeover attempt by a demonstrated Putin/Corleone wanna-be. That question you asked, Lucian: "Could Trump be casting about for Russian money?" Will a mongrel street dog eat its own vomit?
I wouldn't put it past Putin to do something like this. In this case, disregarding the CIA warning is not hard to believe. He's another one who thinks only he knows what is and isn't. It is a sorry state of affairs.
I remember reading that dictators/authoritarians want to make and control the crisis - that they are flummoxed, incompetent, and unprepared when a crisis occurs they don't control. Think Trump and the Covid pandemic, Putin and this terrorist attack. They lie to cover their own inadequacies and to take back what could look like control to others.
All this added to Lucien's concluding paragraphs today - - Yikes! I fear we are in for even more troubling, scary times.
After reading this, Lucian, I confess I'm confused (not a state in which you normally leave me!)--and perhaps you mean for your readers to react this way since it is all contradictory, anyway, i.e. not simple. You seem to suggest (to me) that the "terrorists" were hired guns. Yet you quote Hersh's information about the intercepts, etc. which seems to say, there were real terrorists at work here. And then there is the false flag business. I'm waiting for you to write the next act of this drama........which may be that Putin really did something unthinkable in a rational world but possible for a psychopath and megalomaniac at the levers of power.
Re: "Several days after a private warning was delivered by the CIA station in Moscow, including the information that the group likely to attempt the attack would include radicalized Tajiks associated with ISIS-K, Putin accused the United States of lying about the threatened attack ..."
This is not far off Israel's intelligence service (and Bibi) poo-pooing the deadly attack by Hamas. What inference shall we draw?
And a footnote: I was happy to see Sy Hersh's name because, not having seen it in a while, I assumed he had ... well, never mind.
Madness is definitely upon us. It will only get worse, and could be unbearable should the unthinkable happen. I’m not going there. My insides can’t handle it.
(1) "Where is Donald Trump going to come down on all of this?"
Trump prolly: ISIS (no K) wouldn't have tacked Putin's Ru if I was still President because I woulda' defunded Uk thereby eliminating ISIS funding. Besides I destroyed ISIS in 4weeks after people couldn't do it for 14 centuries. So, it wasn't ISIS, it was Uk and their open border policy and Biden.
(2) Re: western media reporting of the Crocus timeline. Their reporting is even less reliable than Ru State media because they can only go where and when allowed. More importantly if they and their inside Ru source(s) are caught it's the Gulag for both. Their sources are most likely to be Ru expats who claim to have insider info.
(3) While Mr. Hersch's info of SGINT located in the mountains of Af sounds good am skeptical of any ground based COMINT system being there because they would have to be located above the treeline where they are easily spotted. Wouldn't take long for a goat herder to call attention to any no matter if it is on AQ or Is-K turf. Would need many to cover all the valleys in the border region due to other mountains being in the way.
To me it is far more likely the COMINT came from within Tajikistan, a nation that the US STATE Dept., US Mil, and US Intel incorporated into the regional working group (can't recall the cute name name) of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyz. Was a BFD to make happen. No doubt we have resources and assets there. Plus black flaggers are far more de-centralized than the US media portrays them to be and do not have a rigid hierarchy like fish food UBL/AQ maintained or the Phake Caliph of the daeshbags. Hoping the actual towns/villages the attackers came from will be made public.
(4) Have no confidence in the Ru version of the mofo capture. IS-K Telegram did confirm the 4 as being their mofos.
You know what? Fuck Putin ,that dwarf KGB retread ! That bastard is going to throw the whole friggen world 🌎 into a nuclear crypt! And for what ? His miniman stature? These power crazed idiots that WE allow to govern us are what we get for being sheeple! Where are the leaders who can inspire us to be better citizens? HEY ! Dwight ,Harry,John,Bobby,Martin,where are you guy’s?
I doubt he has to cast much further than getting a withdrawal approved by Putin from the account that's been in place since 2015 or earlier. The price the US pays for each withdrawal is the terrifying wild card, as 2016 proved in spades.
And this vile scum is currently leading in the polls? Makes me wish there actually was a god that might come to the rescue. Or maybe it's time to seed our water supply with a dose of Owsley's acid.
Yes, except "the lunatic fringe of the Twitter / X-verse" is exactly where the GRU and other Putin tools are busily at work spreading disinformation, so it isn't clear this is from mainly domestic "far right" lunatic fringe, still, it's all one big happy quasi-fascist family!
LONDON (AP) — A top European Union official said Tuesday that the social network X, formerly known as Twitter, is the biggest source of fake news and urged owner Elon Musk to comply with the bloc’s laws aimed at combating disinformation.
Ahead of upcoming elections, Google, TikTok, Microsoft and Meta also have more to do to tackle disinformation, much of it coming from Russia, which is using social media to wage a “war of ideas” against democracy, European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said.
Moscow’s disinformation operation “is a multimillion-euro weapon of mass manipulation aimed both internally at the Russians as well as at Europeans and the rest of the world,” she said at a press briefing in Brussels.
With elections scheduled in Slovakia and Poland in the coming weeks and a bloc-wide vote next year, big online platforms must address the risk of online meddling, she said.
The Kremlin and other malicious actors “will try to use the design features of the platforms to manipulate,” Jourova said.
She was providing an update on the 27-nation EU’s 2022 Code of Practice on Disinformation. Google, TikTok, Microsoft and Facebook and Instagram parent Meta signed up to the voluntary code last year, but Twitter dropped out after Musk bought the platform. ******* AP report continues...
Thanks again Lucian for the insight that is entirely unavailable anywhere else, like your info about the farcical arrest at the border.
This pack of supposed hard ass ISIS dudes that just slaughtered 100s in a planned attack shows up all together and still fully armed with their AKs at the border in their rental car and then just gives up? What, were they out of bullets? It sounds like a sick SNL skit.
"And what was the purpose of your visit to Russia?"
I can't even get a carton of cigarettes into Canada, but hours after a horrendous slaughter in Moscow these pawns supposedly think they've got a "shot" at getting through a Russian border entry with their AKs without a hassle? Sure, that's plausible.
And if those were their mug shots, well they don't look too worse for wear given the impression I've got of Russian border guards. A couple of black eyes and some forlorn faces? Really?
Poor fools. They probably got paid a couple of loaves of bread and a promise of Mai Tais and virgins on a tropical island. In their dreams as they get spirited away to the human mulching gulag.
I can see how magas get so enamored with their conspiracy fantasies though as my brain boggles with the possibilities of what really went down. It's so easy and fun to go down the rabbit hole.
There are certainly some holes in the story, but then that's what trump envies about Putin. No need to make sense. Just do your shit and tell them all to fuck off and get used to it.
The more updates from Ruth Ben Gait I get on the progress if fascism, the more down the tubes this whole human civilization thing looks. So much for evolution.
Somewhat O/T but still important, and horrifying: The Taliban has resumed stoning and flogging women to death, but the only place I've seen the story in in The Guardian, and it's likely that nobody will care - it's only women, you know, and the world won't give a shit. Madness is upon us, indeed.
Just a reminder. Trump has pledged to gut the CIA and FBI if elected. That should work well in this brave new world.
A truly terrifying column. Two of the most powerful nations on earth, one run by a declared Stalin wanna-be, the other in the throes of a takeover attempt by a demonstrated Putin/Corleone wanna-be. That question you asked, Lucian: "Could Trump be casting about for Russian money?" Will a mongrel street dog eat its own vomit?
I wouldn't put it past Putin to do something like this. In this case, disregarding the CIA warning is not hard to believe. He's another one who thinks only he knows what is and isn't. It is a sorry state of affairs.
I remember reading that dictators/authoritarians want to make and control the crisis - that they are flummoxed, incompetent, and unprepared when a crisis occurs they don't control. Think Trump and the Covid pandemic, Putin and this terrorist attack. They lie to cover their own inadequacies and to take back what could look like control to others.
All this added to Lucien's concluding paragraphs today - - Yikes! I fear we are in for even more troubling, scary times.
After reading this, Lucian, I confess I'm confused (not a state in which you normally leave me!)--and perhaps you mean for your readers to react this way since it is all contradictory, anyway, i.e. not simple. You seem to suggest (to me) that the "terrorists" were hired guns. Yet you quote Hersh's information about the intercepts, etc. which seems to say, there were real terrorists at work here. And then there is the false flag business. I'm waiting for you to write the next act of this drama........which may be that Putin really did something unthinkable in a rational world but possible for a psychopath and megalomaniac at the levers of power.
Re: "Several days after a private warning was delivered by the CIA station in Moscow, including the information that the group likely to attempt the attack would include radicalized Tajiks associated with ISIS-K, Putin accused the United States of lying about the threatened attack ..."
This is not far off Israel's intelligence service (and Bibi) poo-pooing the deadly attack by Hamas. What inference shall we draw?
And a footnote: I was happy to see Sy Hersh's name because, not having seen it in a while, I assumed he had ... well, never mind.
Madness is definitely upon us. It will only get worse, and could be unbearable should the unthinkable happen. I’m not going there. My insides can’t handle it.
(1) "Where is Donald Trump going to come down on all of this?"
Trump prolly: ISIS (no K) wouldn't have tacked Putin's Ru if I was still President because I woulda' defunded Uk thereby eliminating ISIS funding. Besides I destroyed ISIS in 4weeks after people couldn't do it for 14 centuries. So, it wasn't ISIS, it was Uk and their open border policy and Biden.
(2) Re: western media reporting of the Crocus timeline. Their reporting is even less reliable than Ru State media because they can only go where and when allowed. More importantly if they and their inside Ru source(s) are caught it's the Gulag for both. Their sources are most likely to be Ru expats who claim to have insider info.
(3) While Mr. Hersch's info of SGINT located in the mountains of Af sounds good am skeptical of any ground based COMINT system being there because they would have to be located above the treeline where they are easily spotted. Wouldn't take long for a goat herder to call attention to any no matter if it is on AQ or Is-K turf. Would need many to cover all the valleys in the border region due to other mountains being in the way.
To me it is far more likely the COMINT came from within Tajikistan, a nation that the US STATE Dept., US Mil, and US Intel incorporated into the regional working group (can't recall the cute name name) of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyz. Was a BFD to make happen. No doubt we have resources and assets there. Plus black flaggers are far more de-centralized than the US media portrays them to be and do not have a rigid hierarchy like fish food UBL/AQ maintained or the Phake Caliph of the daeshbags. Hoping the actual towns/villages the attackers came from will be made public.
(4) Have no confidence in the Ru version of the mofo capture. IS-K Telegram did confirm the 4 as being their mofos.
You know what? Fuck Putin ,that dwarf KGB retread ! That bastard is going to throw the whole friggen world 🌎 into a nuclear crypt! And for what ? His miniman stature? These power crazed idiots that WE allow to govern us are what we get for being sheeple! Where are the leaders who can inspire us to be better citizens? HEY ! Dwight ,Harry,John,Bobby,Martin,where are you guy’s?
"Could Trump be casting about for Russian money?"
You probably wanted to say "more money".
I doubt he has to cast much further than getting a withdrawal approved by Putin from the account that's been in place since 2015 or earlier. The price the US pays for each withdrawal is the terrifying wild card, as 2016 proved in spades.
And this vile scum is currently leading in the polls? Makes me wish there actually was a god that might come to the rescue. Or maybe it's time to seed our water supply with a dose of Owsley's acid.
Yes, except "the lunatic fringe of the Twitter / X-verse" is exactly where the GRU and other Putin tools are busily at work spreading disinformation, so it isn't clear this is from mainly domestic "far right" lunatic fringe, still, it's all one big happy quasi-fascist family!
apnews.com/article/disinformation-musk-x-twitter-european-union-9f7823
BY KELVIN CHAN
Updated 8:30 AM CDT, September 26, 2023
Share
LONDON (AP) — A top European Union official said Tuesday that the social network X, formerly known as Twitter, is the biggest source of fake news and urged owner Elon Musk to comply with the bloc’s laws aimed at combating disinformation.
Ahead of upcoming elections, Google, TikTok, Microsoft and Meta also have more to do to tackle disinformation, much of it coming from Russia, which is using social media to wage a “war of ideas” against democracy, European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said.
Moscow’s disinformation operation “is a multimillion-euro weapon of mass manipulation aimed both internally at the Russians as well as at Europeans and the rest of the world,” she said at a press briefing in Brussels.
With elections scheduled in Slovakia and Poland in the coming weeks and a bloc-wide vote next year, big online platforms must address the risk of online meddling, she said.
The Kremlin and other malicious actors “will try to use the design features of the platforms to manipulate,” Jourova said.
She was providing an update on the 27-nation EU’s 2022 Code of Practice on Disinformation. Google, TikTok, Microsoft and Facebook and Instagram parent Meta signed up to the voluntary code last year, but Twitter dropped out after Musk bought the platform. ******* AP report continues...
Madness has always been among us - it's a whack-A-Mole deal
Thanks again Lucian for the insight that is entirely unavailable anywhere else, like your info about the farcical arrest at the border.
This pack of supposed hard ass ISIS dudes that just slaughtered 100s in a planned attack shows up all together and still fully armed with their AKs at the border in their rental car and then just gives up? What, were they out of bullets? It sounds like a sick SNL skit.
"And what was the purpose of your visit to Russia?"
I can't even get a carton of cigarettes into Canada, but hours after a horrendous slaughter in Moscow these pawns supposedly think they've got a "shot" at getting through a Russian border entry with their AKs without a hassle? Sure, that's plausible.
And if those were their mug shots, well they don't look too worse for wear given the impression I've got of Russian border guards. A couple of black eyes and some forlorn faces? Really?
Poor fools. They probably got paid a couple of loaves of bread and a promise of Mai Tais and virgins on a tropical island. In their dreams as they get spirited away to the human mulching gulag.
I can see how magas get so enamored with their conspiracy fantasies though as my brain boggles with the possibilities of what really went down. It's so easy and fun to go down the rabbit hole.
There are certainly some holes in the story, but then that's what trump envies about Putin. No need to make sense. Just do your shit and tell them all to fuck off and get used to it.
The more updates from Ruth Ben Gait I get on the progress if fascism, the more down the tubes this whole human civilization thing looks. So much for evolution.
Terrorism scripted by Kafka and Orwell