Dear Readers:
Continuing (and concluding) my translation of Maria Zakharova’s op-ed which she wrote for Komsomolskaya Pravda.
Zakharova: Let us move on now, from Iraq to Syria.
The Terrorist Internationale
In 2015, at the request of the legitimate Syrian government, Russia dispatched a group from the Russian Aerospace Forces (ВКС), to assist the Syrian army in its struggle against terrorists. This one thing disrupted the plans of the ISIL group to take under their control vast swaths of Iraq and Syria, including Aleppo and Damascus. An entire Terrorist Internationale had been organized to carry out these aims: Tens of thousands of fighters from more than 80 nations. It was only our intervention that allowed the Syrian army to halt this threat and to liberate most of their country from the terrorists. The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, in 2015, at a session of the General Assembly of the UN, proposed to create a united front against ISIL, along the lines of the anti-Hitler coalition. The response he got back from the West was not so much a rapturous agreement, as a bare-toothed snarl. The United States not only did not help us, but quite the contrary – they did everything in their power to prevent us from fighting against ISIL. Rather interesting, no?
Meanwhile, to the Southeast of Syria, there continues to exist an extremist enclave, the so-called refugee camp called “Al-Tanf”. Which, being under the control of the Americans, became a haven and central training ground for terrorists.
Syria is the most obvious case for still another tactic beloved of the White House: Empty-worded protestations about separating the so-called “Moderate Opposition” from ISIL terrorists. Take, for example, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (the former al-Nusra which was, in essence, a filial of Al Qaeda in Syria) and various other similar criminal band formations which all merged eventually into Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. In other words, a rebranding was accomplished, and there was absolutely no gleaning out of Moderates, as was promised. This rebranding was thought up and accomplished by Washington, no doubt to just drag out the conflict and augment the number of victims, while preventing once and for all the destruction of those who sow international terrorism.
According to a strange confluence of events, in recent years ISIL has started to change its plans, and now carries out attacks mainly against America’s opponents and enemies, like the Taliban in Afghanistan, for example; also against the Iranians, the legitimate government of Syria; and against us [Russians]. But this is just what we see on the surface of events, and that which we can deduce from international news sources.
Who Created Hamas?
Further. In 1992 the Americans imposed upon the Palestinians a “democratic voting process”. Various contradictions led to the result that in the Gaza sector, the process of democratic elections led to the creation of the political party Hamas.
From recently de-classified correspondence of U.S. State Department employees, we have learned that Biden, already back in 2021, un-froze payments to Hamas in the sum of $360 million American dollars. These funds were channeled through USAID, that infamous American agency for international development. Donald Trump, during his presidency, had stopped these payments, but Joe Biden personally authorized their re-instatement. The result is viewed by the entire world. There is just one nuance, though: Israel, which is supposedly the closest ally of the USA, is screaming to high heaven about Hamas activities.
Where is the logic, you might ask? [For all of the above.] The reason for everything lies in money and in power. Because under the conditions of international law, which forbids direct interventions, then the ruse is to sow “controllable chaos” and rebuild the entire world order using the hands of terrorists as the builders.
Attention, please, one question for the White House: Are you ever going to re-think this whole ISIL thing?
Awful Avalanche 
One is left to be as bewildered as Zakharova is at the way the US behaves. Different parts of the US bureaucracy apparently do their own thing, independently of each other. Well, it’s all in a good cause, right? Even if uncoordinated, freedom rules!
So, if I have this correct, Biden reinstalled payments to Hamas that the Mango Mussolini had stopped. So that Hamas could build more tunnels and then attack Israel, giving it the excuse to genocide Gaza. I think I got it. I read somewhere before that the US had started funding Hamas back in 2007, though I cannot remember why. No wonder Trump stopped it and moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem. It’s all clear as mud, which is the way the US likes things.
As for ISIL-K, they hate the Taliban. Meanwhile, Turkish journos have figured out the movements of two of the four Crocus hitmen in Istanbul in January/February. And the blubberer Fariduni seems to have been the boss, according to the FSB. Budanov has been designated as an approved object for snuffing by all RF armed forces, so they must have missed him the other day. Zelensky, meanwhile, earlier today, after a large hit of the finest coke, emerged from his bunker to fire Danilov and shuffle portfolios of his underlings. After downing a crust of the finest Ukie fresh-baked bread and draining a delicious cup of coffee, Ze proclaimed: “We will retake Crimea by Thursday next week!”
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Word on the street is that Danilov was fired, not because he gloated at the dead Russians in the theater (that was okay), but because he had cracked a dirty joke about an important Chinese official. The official’s name is something like “Xue”, which sounds like Russian xuy (“hooey”), which is a joke word for penis (like English “Dick”). So, Danilov’s joke went something like, “This guy is a real dick…” Totally classy, as are all the Ukrainian officials.
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This is the same Hui Li who was the PRC ambassador to Russia from 2009–2019. I’m sure the Russians must have had a field day with that one “Vladimir Vladimirovich, Hui Li zvonil”!
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Yup. If he was going to be Ambassador to Russia, Hui probably should have changed his name to something more appropriate. Like “Long Wang”.
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Regarding the support Hamas received and its present day actions, I still am not convinced that the actions on Oct. 7 were not fully in line with the Israeli objective to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Upon Neanyahus demand, Qatar some time peviously had released a several hundred million$ payment to Hamas.
And who only benefits from Hamas actions? Israel and the USA, to wipe off the table the dreaded two state solution and get land and access to subsea gas in the Mediterrenean. Who the real beneficiaries are should tell anybody with a sound mind against whose interests the actions were actually aimed. Clearly not against Israel and the USA.
Even if Hamas had other intentions, the play between Hamas and the foreseeable reaction by a rightwing government in Israel only hurt the real victims in this, the Palestinian population, and was thus unconscionable and irresponsible.
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Yes, I generally agree. That is the conclusion I came to above. However, I remain at sea as to what Hamas’ ulterior motives are, if they are not pro-Palestinian, however cynical they appear at present in that regard. Perhaps they are playing a double-double cross to also takeover from the PA in the West Bank — those people acquiesce to anything the Israelis say, and let the settlers run wild. And if Hamas is bought off, why are they administering such a beating to IDF forces in Gaza?
And of course, other things have also come into play since October 7. Erdogan has purchased the port of Alexandria from Egypt, and intends to install a military base there. Supposedly, the idea is to keep a close watch on all this Eastern Mediterranean oil and gas exploration activity, since Turkey feels a lot of it is rightfully theirs, as extension of their rights from Northern Cyprus. So now there are other machinations abroad. Does Lebanon have a play to make, for instance? Hezbollah is part of the civiliain government there, and wouldn’t mind some free money, presumably. And what about Egypt itself? Some of this gas and oil presumably lies off the Sinai peninsula.
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I think the idea of some kind of concerted plan is… perhaps too cinema for reality in this and much of the world. The play seems to be “the current direction does not serve our interests, thus we will break things and take advantage”.
It’s chaos then. Flipping the table and playing the rest of the game on the floor from where the pieces fall.
Gaza, the Middle East, Central Asia and all the adventures in-between are far too complex to trace back to a single directive or even a set of directive players. The “Greatest Game” is not some kind of rugby scrimmage, but a shopping slam-dance in a Black Friday Best-Buy.
Analogies aside, what this means, practically, is that the different layers in EACH organization party to the chaos are moving *separately* in ways their collective and leadership view as “correct”. You can only discern the fault planes in motion by asking the questions “who benefits” and “to whom is this person loyal/influenced?”
Taking Hamas for a moment: ideologically linked and controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood (itself a product of British intelligence), intended to block the PLA from a unity government that could implement a functional two-state solution, funded with great energy by both the US and Netanyahu governments (among others), leadership sits in comfort in Qatar and London, political wings hold elected office (and siphon aid) in Gaza, mid-tier collaborate with Hezbollah and IRGC, low-tier trains and recruits from oppressed masses, violence fuels the Israeli military-industrial-political complex. And everyone operates knowing they could be spied on and/or assassinated, which leads to some very non-linear behavior.
So as an organization, Hamas functions more like a brand portfolio than a coherent going concern. It’s no surprise that it’s schizophrenic in its activities and capable of both greatly surprising it’s “handlers” while at the same time functioning well within the overall chaos “box” it was created for.
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Good stuff from the great Zakharova. Another great lady is Karen Kwiatkowski. Her article about how the US’s foreign policies will come home to roost is just excellent:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/03/karen-kwiatkowski/when-proxy-wars-come-home/
Since the Western destruction of Libya I’ve repeatedly said that what they’re doing to Libyans they’re fully capable of doing to Western citizens. (And in the spirit of Hillary C. they will gleefully cackle when you die.)
Karen K. shares this sentiment but she ingeniously couples it to the fact that the US’s only remaining foreign policy skill is to foment wars and instability abroad. And since the US, without exception, always loses these wars it’s just a matter of time before the war is turned against US citizens. (Don’t worry, you still have time, Europe is to be destroyed first).
You may argue that the US doesn’t have true subversion skills since everything they do abroad ends in abysmal failures. But I’d say that every country that hasn’t yet been raped by the US continues to see it as a good protective daddy. Countries like Germany and Poland, and even Ukraine, are still soundly asleep. So the future victims of the empire’s economic and kinetic wars willingly line up, and the show goes on. But eventually the circus caravan will return home.
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Yes, I have watched some of Kwiatkowski’s interviews with Judge Nap, and she seems very sharp-minded.
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Kudos to Zakharova for defining the problem accurately and publicly, but that is only helpful if the message is widely understood and we then elect better leaders. What is the contingency plan if that fails? What if the puppeteers guiding Western governments remain in place and continue to sow discord and enable violent acts of terrorism in service to their covert agendas? What is Plan B?
Yes, we can favor and cheerlead an optimal solution that relies on education, persuasion, and electoral change. But as Russians know all too well, the Soviet model dragged on for 80 years of misery before collapsing. Both the USA and EU are now on a collision course with a repeat of that disaster, and this time, it could end in a mushroom cloud.
There needs to be a Plan B if hope alone fails us.
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“Those in political command who have been favoring an outcome to the war that falls short of regime change in Kiev and extension of demilitarization to the Polish border,” observes a Moscow political source, “have lost their voice since Saturday night.” John Helmer, Dances with Bears
https://johnhelmer.net/the-evidence-on-the-crocus-gang-attack-in-moscow/#more-89588
In order for the Neocolonicons, that dominate politics in DC/London, to reach an “come to Jesus moment” the Russ have to “up their game” to the point that DC/Londoners denial is no longer sustainable, still, the Russ have held back…I think that is about to change.
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Even NOW Putin is still holding back. There are even some disturbing signs that he plans to try that old “We fight the same enemy” gag on the Americans. I read somewhere that he was proposing some kind of “alliance against terror”, like he did after 911. Pretending that he doesn’t know exactly who is ordering all these so-called “jihadist” terror attacks. Deep down in his Liberal heart, I think he still believes he can reach some kind of accommodation with the West.
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“[Putin] still believes he can reach some kind of accommodation with the West”
And he is correct in this assessment but, not with the current “ruling-class” of neocolonicons, they have to be swept from power. Using the purposely loaded terminology, the US needs a “color-revolution”. And just like all of DC/London’s 3LA “color-revolutions” this “revolution” will require violent foreign intervention.
The people who would be able to negotiate [and keep an agreement] are being held from power. Short of all out nuclear war, only a swift and humiliating victory over DC/London’s stepan-fetch-it-Galician-goons will accomplish the task of removing the Hillary/Cheney/Obama/Biden cabal from, nearly, absolute power.
Again, as I have repeatedly stated here, time is a factor in war and Russia’s High Command has made no effort to shorten this war, instead, they have done everything to ensure that the enemy can remain reasonably well supplied and they have enabled the English to plan for a long-simmering neocolonial war. Putin does not dictate Russian military war tactics, they are following Soviet doctrine, “fighting the last war”, this falls solely on Russia’s High Command…not Putin.
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Sadly, Hillary is not in the photo…
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Not to be Captain Obvious but…all that can be done has been done by DC/London’s 3LAs to hamstring any effort by a Trump/Gabbard Administration to restore some semblance of the relationship between Russia and the US. I’m not talking about a “good” relationship, just to the state it was in before Team-Biden ordered the 3LAs stepan-fetch-its, the Galician-goons, to shell the civilians in Donbas region into a smoking ruin back in 2021.
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The U.S. will never have a color revolution. Simple reason: Color revolutions only ever happen in nations where there is a U.S. Embassy. And U.S. does not have a self-Embassy in its own country!
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Y,
I was speaking, as I so often do, metaphorically…but my point stands, Russia’s High Command have executed to a very high level on the field of battle but, have utterly failed to grasp that war and particularly…this war, is an extension of politics.
If the war is not over in the next few months, long before a change of administration, the neocolonicons will walk away largely unscathed…free to offer up the world another spoonful of Nuland’s “special cookie recipe”.
Somewhere inside Russia there is a colonel/Lt. General that knows the way to douse this inferno and do so in a manner so proficient and deft that it destroys those who conjured this hell.
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Notice the confusion?
When geopolitics turns critical confusion goes into overdrive, and The Plan, when all others fail, becomes “strategy of tension”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension
So, whose plan?
Certainly not Russia’s. The official Russian explanation, as opined by Maria Zakharova, follows a pedantic logic. And in “Dances with Bears” John Helmer examines the building codes that were or weren’t operative at the Crocus concert hall. U.S. intelligence tells us they issued their Russian equivalent with a warning of a potential terrorist attack for 48hours from March 7. Highly likely, and predictably, the Russians would think of the scheduled Shaman concert as the target, and Shaman apparently supplied his own beefed up security on the night (and he is paying for the victims’ funerals in an act of generosity). Maybe the operation was delayed, or perhaps the whole warning was a ruse. The most consistent and effective weapon of U.S. intelligence in times of chaos is plausible deniability.
But the wild side is in overdrive over at- just as an example- Anne Applebaum’s X-excerpts. I took a peek. Yikes! Much conspiring to promote the enemy as theorists of conspiracies. (Plus, as a reminder, neoconservatives need that dough for Ukraine tout suite!)
The U.K/U.S. intelligence agencies, in Atlanticist alliance, have established that this is an ISISk terrorist attack. This is something that their western audience will understand. To link the attack with Ukraine would be cognitively dissonant for said audience, despite their knowledge of the war fighting enmity of Ukraine towards Russia. Even for us supporters of Russia this is confusing.
I’ve spent a lot of time in Muslim countries and am most appreciative of Islamic culture and religion, and at one stage was supportive of political Islam. If we bracket Iran, this means Muslim Brotherhood. But after sailing up the Red Sea, stopping for extended periods in Yemen and Egypt (engine mount problems- another story), before that Oman, later, two years in Türkiye including Syria, then Tunisia and Morocco- all during the “Arab Spring”, the destruction of Libya and the commencement on the war on Syria, (Obama administration), my opinions changed radically. The Brotherhood wants a “Caliphate”. It wants a centrally controlled umma. What it emphatically doesn’t want is secular Arab nationalism. So this Brotherhood pipedream is nurtured by the colonial powers, and then weaponised, all the better for hegemonic control. The Muslim Brotherhood are easily recognisable: very well groomed with small beards optional, nice suit and shirt but no tie. Ismael Haniyeh, a leader of Hamas, is a classic brother. Qatar is now the home and the bank for the Brotherhood. I can imagine that many upwardly mobile, U.S. Sunni Muslims are Brotherhood. This is also a class thing.
Those terrorist mercenaries in Russian captivity don’t look too classy, or even very Islamist ( no black, no banner, not even a kamikaze Allahu Akbar). And they were for hire, not for “glory”.
Ah hah. For hire. Now, there’s the twist. They can’t receive the death penalty, so there’s time to leverage confessions. Can’t wait to hear to hear what goes down in Türkiye.
Türkiye: the training ground and finishing school for spies. Possibly ditto for terrorists.
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Very interesting observations. Thanks especially for the “fashion expertise” in how to recognize a Muslim Brother. It’s convenient when enemies make themselves visibly recognizable! Like the Ukrainian Nazis with certain haircuts and tattoos.
Yeah, those Tadjik terrorists are a sorry lot, no fashion sense at all, and seem like a group of bumblers. Except experts say they knew how to handle the weapons properly, shooting in short bursts, etc., so they must have had some training in shooting into crowds. Not to mention handling explosives. Probably in Türkiye, like you said.
As for the building code violations stuff, well, every time something happens, whether it’s a terror attack or just a “natural” fire, you always find out that people didn’t follow code, whether in the building or doing stupid things like locking the exits. (Probably to prevent people without tickets from sneaking in.)
I have learned to discount all of that as “not a part of the conspiracy”, just some side-factors, like a constant variable in the equation. In other words, it’s just human nature to fuck up, so that should not be considered as part of the conspiracy planning process.
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I’m slow with commenting on your observations, OzLady, because I’m offline most of the time and with the International Dateline difference between when Yalensis writes things and I see them, there’s a lag. But I second his thanks for the mini-primer in what a Muslim Brotherhoodie looks like. Now that you mention it, yeah, that’s a “tell.” I’ll be looking for it in the future when I see photos of Hamas-linked personages. Not in a racist way, but because when one is part of a group that has behavioural ideals, these are reflected in how they think it’s proper to present to the world.
It’s been a while since I read about the religio-political platform of Hamas and the Brotherhood. It got some coverage when Morsi was deposed in Egypt and Sisi stepped in. The Caliphate dream is on the nose for me — it would lead to Sunni totalitarianism if it happened. I’m still barracking for Hamas to break the Zionazi regime, but I hope that if/when that happens, their other dreams won’t come true. In a fight between a little scorpion and a big cobra, I will reluctantly cheer for the scorp.
You have also noted something that’s only been glancingly referred to in pro-Russia commentary — the Tajikerrorists were mercenaries, not fanatical Muslims. Guns for hire. Mostly, the Russosphere has been speculating about how they might have been deployed by the U.S., Brutannia or Kiev, but it hasn’t gone heavy on how those guys were just another version of Blackwater mercs. (The pro-Westie writers can’t get beyond saying “they admitted on camera to being part of ISIS-K, so that’s all we need to know.”) What kind of person would say “yes” when approached on shadowy Internet channels with a job offer of “We need people who are willing to machine-gun civilians. We’ll pay you to shoot up a theatre in Moscow and then set it on fire. Getaway car provided gratis!” I wonder what other war criminal stuff those guys did in the past?
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I’ve bloviated before on your blog about how “to be an American is to live in fear.” I can still flash back to a rant I had on that line with the chief psychiatrist of one hospital ward where I often worked. Dr. Raj was entertained by that, not merely enduring. And Indians tend to think highly of America! Especially the uppercaste ones.
I slag off Amerika a lot, but I do it in an informative, cynically funny way, not just the sour grapes of an aggro expat. Not EVERYONE wants to hear someone tearing strips off the U.S., but plenty do. Especially during the Cheney presidency, that was a gare-on-teed way of getting in good with Europeans when the X an I were on holiday there. If someone who spoke English heard an American taking the piss outta Bush, they’d know we weren’t one of the jingo types.
I’m glad Zakharova sees the fear phenomenon. Makes me feel like I’m not a lone nutter. She probably did not go into a lot of the social and economic reasons for the fear. Your Day 2 post of the translation did not hit upon that, but you weren’t trying to provide a complete transcript. And I don’t care enough about the issue to dig up a machine-translated version of the ‘view.
The trouble with frightened entities is that they sometimes lash our violently because of their fear. Not everything cowers in terror when it’s scared. Especially when it thinks it still has some power. I’m not talking the frenzy of a trapped rat here. I mean a mean pit bull which is off the chain and is going to sink its teeth into the human confronting it. Not contemplating that the thing in one of the human’s hands is a golf club and in the other is a gun… Welcome to the United sPits of Bullmerica!
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I did actually provide a complete transcript, as far as I know. I translated the entire op-ed, did I miss something?
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Nah, I presumed she went on more about “fear in America.” I apologise for thinking you were incomplete.
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That’s okay. She only mentioned the fear, and then I waxed on with my own thoughts on the matter!
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