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Transcript of podcast no. 5

Provided by the kind help of a wonderful lady “A”

 

Dear Friends,

Welcome back to my podcast, this is the Saker speaking.

Its been a long time, I expected to take somewhat of a holiday, and take a little break from the podcasts, and as probably most of you know, all hell broke loose, and I ended up having many, many problems in all sorts of different sectors of our community. I’ll say, its been a rough time. And I do really want to take the time to express my deepest gratitude to all of those who have been supportive through these very hard times. Who have helped, not only with donations, which of course are important, but also morally. I have to say that I went through very very difficult times. I cannot go into all the details, but lets just say that some people that I trusted, ended up being unworthy of that trust. Other people, that I thought would be close, people that would understand, and I thought of as friends, turned out to be not friends. And I’m being kind here. I’ve been threatened. I’ve been black-mailed. I’ve been threatened with a lawsuit at least twice. It has been truly, in Russian we say, Pogruzhenie vo tsmu, which means in English, I guess you could translate it by, ‘an immersion into darkness’. I mean it was brutal, very bad. But as often happens in similar circumstances, people showed up to help. To support, to express, not only their support in words or donations, but actually willing to spend time and money even to truly help our community. So I would not want to do that again, but I have to say, as it is so often the case, I think me personally, my blog, the entire community came out way way stronger. Not only have I learned a couple of painful lessons, but I’ve changed the way the community is organized, as most of you might have read on the blog. I have now retired from my previous, I guess, ‘role’ by default. Of community leader. I am not only not leader any more, but I’m ‘Founder’, and one of the bloggers. But the community is now run by a group of people that I know, that I fully trust, very very good people. We’ve created something we call “Saker Community Executive Committee”. I will not reveal the names of the people of that committee, for their own protection. But it means that even if I get personally attacked or sued, or something happens to me, the community will live on.

Secondly it gives us an element of redundancy. And secondly the other big important change is that I’ll be able to turn back, to return to what I wanted to do most, which is blogging, and not community organizing, which is an immense relief for me. And for those of you, those little group of people who are members of that executive committee; guys, thank you so much for taking over from me. This is the most beautiful present you could have given to me, is more freedom to do what I love most, which is blogging and not dealing with organizational issues. I think we’ve established, I’m not a very good organizer. So thank you so much guys, for doing that.

Other big news, we’re going to build redundancy in the community. Unfortunately in the past, especially for certain critical technological aspects, computer issues, I was really dependent, all of us were dependent on one individual. That is not happening again. We now have several persons including a team of experts. IT experts. Some of them with quite amazing resumes I assure you. Very high level folks, who have kindly stepped in and taken over. They have done two things; first of all they have, how shall I put it, they have dealt with the mess that was left over; they have cleared the mess; they have done what is necessary to repair the damage done; and now they’re making sure that this will not happen again. So my hope is that at the end of the day, the Saker community will never depend again on one person, very much including myself. And even on an individual blog level, every single team leader has one or several deputies, so if somebody gets sick, or something happens, we are all now replaceable.

Finally, I have created a corporation. Incorporated in Delaware, simply because its the easiest to do there. And that corporation will provide a legal umbrella for myself first of all, because I’m a prime target for abusive lawsuits. That I figured out !! But more importantly, we want to extend that to the other Saker blogs. So that basically for instance, domain names will eventually be owned by that corporation, because it can be touchy, depending on which country you’re in, to own a domain name associated with our community. So hopefully all these measures, and I have to say here, I was helped by an extremely kind lawyer, actually, first I considered one lawyer for money normally, a local one. Then two lawyers stepped in and gave me very good advice. One of them stayed and actually offered to set this up, and he did that now. I will not reveal at this moment his name. Eventually I will, because I would like you all to know that there is a good lawyer available, that can help and is an honest person. So I will eventually, once the new website is up and running, I will also put a page, giving information about that lawyer. For the time being he will remain anonymous, but he’s with us.

Saker Analytics LLC, which is the name of the company, now has an in-house lawyer to give advice. And hopefully to keep the risks of abusive lawsuits away from us. So that is the reason I have been very busy and I did not record any podcasts until today. We’re now the February 11th. So having explained all this, I think I’ll just turn straight to your questions. I’ll try to cover as much as I can today.

Now I will tell you, today they are right now finalizing the negotiations at Minsk, as I’m recording this. So maybe everything I’ll say here today will be in-valid by tomorrow morning. I hope that is not the case but you know, just be aware of the fact that if I had been more prudent, I probably would have waited now a week, before making the podcast. But anyways, so lets look at the questions !!

The first one is a question by Paul, he is saying “Is the situation starting to resemble how things played out in Yugoslavia ?” He adds, “If the Novorussian army becomes powerful enough to evict the Kiev forces from the two republics, what do you expect Kiev/Washington to do ? Instigate pogroms in Kharkov or Odessa ? Expel Donbass and say that what is left is going to be a pure Ukrainian paradise ?”

Ok, well this is a very broad question, but I think its an important one, so I’ll take the time to answer it. First of all, the parallels between the situation in Yugoslavia and Novorussia. Well, let me immediately tell you, if you look up on the blog archives, there’s one entry that I made that’s called something like, ‘Please Tell Me My Worst Fear Is Not Coming True’. As somebody who has lived through the Bosnia war minute by the minute, getting UNPROFOR intelligence on my desk every morning at the beginning of the workday, and I know exactly what happened there. I was truly terrified that it would have a second betrayal, very much along the lines of what happened in Bosnia. Because basically what you have to understand is one thing. I don’t know how much, depending on how much you know, you might not be aware of that, but Milosevic and the Yugoslav Federal Authorities did betray, very much betray the Bosnian Serbs and the Croats. The Serbs from the Krianas[?] which are regions borderline regions, by the way, Kriana, Ukrainia again proves to you, that this word Ukraine does not come from an ancient civilization of Uka, but simply means borderland. The Krianas were basically told to de-militarize, get rid of heavy weapons, and then eventually the Croats and NATO jointly attacked the Krianas. The Bosnian Serbs were not supported by the Federal Authorities, Milosevic basically made a deal against them. He even actually backed the boycott against them. Which most people don’t know. So that was really bad, I mean, Milosevic betrayed, you know in three waves, the Croatians Serbs, the Bosnian Serbs and eventually the Serbs from Kosovo. And yes, I was extremely afraid of that happening again in Novorussia.

But now I’m truly absolutely 100 percent convinced that this is not going to happen. This situation is massively different, and here are the objective differences between the two situations: The first evident but important point, Putin is no Milosevic. Milosevic is an ex-commie party apparachik[?] turned banker, turned nationalist, turned then grand betrayer. Putin, ever since he came to power has been wonderfully consistent. If you listen to his speeches in 2007 and 2002 and now 2015, he says exactly the same thing. Secondly, unlike Milosevic, Putin rules Russia, not because of, he came to power because he was a consensus candidate of key elites in Russia, such as the oil and big money business and the security services. Now however, his real powerbase is the people. The 80 percent plus popularity that he has. And in Russia, I can simply tell you as somebody who follows the Russian media every day, giving up Novorussia is simply not on the table. Its just not something that’s even discussed. And not because people are embarrassed by that, because they immediately discuss that “this is not an option”, and will not let it happen.

Furthermore, the one moment when I wrote this article about, you know, ‘Please Tell Me This Is Not Happening Again’, well, its something called, like ‘My Worst Nightmare Is It Happening Again?’. The key note at the initial, at the beginning of the Minsk Negotiations, for the first time, one of the things the Russians had agreed to, is to secure the border between Russia and Novorussia. And this to me, wreaked of what Milosevic did and the Yugoslavs did, which is they closed the border and they did try to impose a blockade of the Bosnia-Serbs, to force them to accept the terms of the Anglo-Zionist Empire. Now Serbian patriots did a stellar job trying to bypass that blockade, and Serbian patriots security services and the military made darn sure that their orders were not obeyed as well, so they did get some help. But the fact is that Milosevic himself certainly did no effort, there was no voentorg [store] organized by the federal authorities in Yugoslavia. Now the voentorg is not organized by the Kremlin either. The Kremlin is being very cute about it. The circles that organize the voentorg are what’s called “okolokremlevskie krugi” if you want to say it in Russian. It means ‘the circles around the Kremlin’. The para-Kremlin circles. But one thing I could assure you, if Putin wanted to lock the border, he could do it. This is not Yugoslavia, this is not, you know, this is a very different kind of regime in power there. If they want to lock the border, believe me, they would. And they have not. So that’s my biggest fear was, “If they lock the border, we’re clearly going down the Bosnian-Serb kind of situation.” But they didn’t.

And as a matter of fact, they tried to achieve a negotiated settlement, that did not work. And suddenly, POOF, the voentorg started importing weapons. Alot of them. The victories that Novorussians had in the summer would not have happened without the voentorg providing the firepower to that. If you look at the co-relation of forces now, as we speak, so we’re in early February, 2015, you clearly can see that the Novorussians are armed to the teeth, they have plenty of artillery shells. Thank you. Tank shells, not only little stuff, but big stuff has gone through. So its been done in a cute way, what the CIA calls, “plausible deniability”. But its been done. Milosevic ? There was never a similar situation with Milosevic. That’s another big difference.

And finally, the other, last but not least, is that Milosevic was not a super power, armed with nuclear weapons and one of the most powerful militaries on the planet. Milosevic was alone, betrayed as he was by Yeltsin’s Russia. For all my criticism of him, I have to admit that I am not sure, I mean I think things could have been done more morally than he did, but I’m sure they couldn’t have been done better. He was facing NATO all on his own. Today Russia has no military fear of NATO. That I can tell you with not the slightest doubt. Russia has a fear of NATO as a political alliance. Look at the damage its [NATO] doing in Europe today. Russia does not want to live with a hostile Europe being a banana republic, or a colony of NATO. For economics, social, political reasons etc. So its not that Russia’s not concerned. But the threat of NATO is not the threat of NATO tanks, with Polacks sitting on top of them, coming through the border and suddenly attacking Russia. This is absolutely nonsense. This is not happening. If there was a conventional war between Russia and NATO, I am absolutely convinced that Russia would, actually crush NATO. I’m not going to prove it, you can easily explain it away and dismiss it as a manifestation of my narrow-minded Russian nationalism. That’s fine. I don’t think, at this point of time I even think its relevant. My belief is that, first of all, Russia’s conventionally stronger than NATO, by now. Secondly, whatever the case may be, Russia has enough nuclear weapons, that if NATO prevailed in a conventional way, Russia could use their nuclear weapons on a tactical level. And if we’re going strategic, Russia can obliterate all of the United States, as can the United States also. But clearly, I don’t think NATO has any kind of, NATO is not a credible military threat. That’s what I’m trying to say. For Russia. It definitely was a credible military threat for Milosevic.

So you know how the thing is ? Milosevic happened [back] then. And we’re now. Russians have looked at what happened to Milosevic.

No. I really really completely exclude the possibility of a repeat of Yugoslavia, that’s why those bloggers who write now are screaming “They’re going to do the same thing they did to the Serbs”. There’s two categories of those. First of all, Serbs were traumatized and concerned and see similar language used. And I understand that. I had the same fear, so I’m not going to criticize Serbs, who say, “We’ve seen it all, and we’ve seen exactly that !” Yeah they’re right. I mean there are very strong superficial similarities. But they’re superficial. If you actually look at the co-relation of forces, the economics behind it, I mean all of it, well this is completely different. Its apples and oranges. Situation fundamentally different.

And then, there is this nasty little camp of people who basically are full-time professional Putin-bashers. And they, what distinguishes them from the, there’s two kinds of Putin-bashers. There’s the one guy, who basically has no traction at all any more in Russia, its you know, in Russian terms they’re called ‘liberals’, or democrats. In Western terms I don’t even know what to call them. Basically they’re the folks who believe that everything that comes from Europe is great and Russia is just horrible. And they would like Russia to become sort of like Poland today, I guess. But they have no, maybe a couple of percent of the Russian population sympathizes with them. But the leaders are irrelevant, they didn’t manage to get a single person into the Duma, so right now they have no credibility.

So there was a pys-op campaign organized to still get to Putin by doing an interesting dulatu [?] move, which is “Ok, if you’re not sold out to the West, then you are clearly about to sell out to the West anyway.” So instead of attacking him from the liberal point of view, (‘liberal’ in Russian is another word), they’re attacking him on a patriotic point of view. And this is the people who are constantly constantly, you know, “Oi vey, he’s about the sell-out sell-out sell-out. They say this is constantly going on. Every time something happens that they don’t understand or don’t like, they see a clear sign of Putin back-stabbing the Novorussians again. These guys got most vocal when Strelkov was removed. And they were screaming bloody murder that “This is a clear sign”. I remember Batman was killed and they said “Its the Russian Spetsnaz”. Except for you look, that they make such superficial statements and then the facts on the ground just don’t prove their thesis right.

If Putin had wanted to sell out Novorussia, he could have easily done it a year ago. If he wanted to trade it for Crimea, he could have done it a long time ago. The point is, he doesn’t want to do it because, well, as I said many times, I’m not a prophet, not a mind-reader, but if I had my guess, I think he’s actually a very idealistic and convinced person. He thinks its [invade] the wrong thing to do for Russia, an immoral thing to do, but on top of that, even if we assume that Putin is completely cynical, a complete cynical person, if he sells out Novorussia ? He’s gonna lose power in Russia. So he just can’t do it.

So that is again a huge difference with Yugoslavia. We’re dealing with a different person in power. A different dynamic. And the people who constantly say, the second group, were the Serbs who saw what happened to them. And those I don’t blame. But the second group is professional Putin-bashers. They will do any argument to try to prove how bad Putin is. You know, they have simple solutions. The solutions are you know, “Invade Ukraine” “Put the forces in Novorussia”. Some guys on my blog even suggest seriously that Putin should drive an attack straight to Kiev. I even have one guy which, I have to commend him for his dedication to his point of view, he happens to hate Indians and Englishmen. And he constantly tries to get comments through about the English race and the Indian race, and I suspect that he might be Pakistani. Well, he constantly wants to post comments that Russia should nuke London. Well, I try not to let them through. I think I’ve been good, I don’t think I’ve ever let THAT one through. But he tries several times a week. Its very funny. Some kind of obsessive- compulsive troll, who wants, you know, his suggestion is simple. Nuke London, you know nuke the city of London (laugh) and then, you know, everything will be fine. Well, these bloggers who give that kind of advice, they’re sort of irresponsible, they’re very good at giving, you know, general broad accusation against Putin and simple solutions. You don’t have to deal with the complexity of it all. And their analysis is just worthless.

And frankly, so are other blogs. And the best way to check that, is look at how many comments they get. Some of the most offensive blogs and their point of view, don’t ever get a comment. I mean zero comment, zero comment, zero comment. So it seems to me, most folks identify these guys for what they are. I think of them as rats personally. They’re basically in charge of blasting everybody that is not them. But setting aside those two groups, I really sincerely think and believe, and I’m convinced of it, that there’s no risk of the Yugoslav scenario, repeated in Novorussia.

Last but not least, oh, one more. Remember the bombing campaign against the Serbs ? This is not going to happen against the Novorussians. For obvious reasons. So.

The second part, (sorry for the long answer, but I think its worth setting the record straight on that.) Paul is also, Paul-11, sorry, is also saying “What happens if the Novorussian Army becomes powerful enough to evict the Kiev forces from the two republics ? What do you expect Kiev and Washington to do ?”

Well, first of all, I would tell you that that’s what’s happening right now. We’re seeing, right now, the Novorussian, the Winter Offense of the Junta, just completely failed. Its embarrassing. (laugh). Right now, just about an hour ago, I just saw the Ukrainian Chief of Staff, forgot his name, something Bunusovich [?] something, and he was seriously saying that there was no Debaltsovo cauldron at all. “We’re doing just great, everything’s fine”. But of course, you know, the fact is, the Winter Offensive was a complete embarrassment.

Zarkhenchenko wants to put 100,000 men under arms, begin with a volunteer mobilization and then if there’s not enough he might actually make a conscription. Well, that was a very good and effective threat. And the reason why, is that if you bring these guys, lets say, we’re in February, mid February, you could probably get some pretty good number within a month. So lets say March, and then, I see Novorussians speaking about a month of training, which is probably not good enough, I would say you need two months, so March/April to May, and by then, again, the Novorussians have declared, if my memory is correct, I don’t have any paper in front of me, I do that out of my head, but if I’m not mistaken, they have announced that they want to get three Motor Rifle Brigades. So we’re not talking about guys in charge of fancy weapons, or any kind of special operations, or any kind of, we’re talking about basic infantry. Not the best trained, particularly not compared to those who have been fighting for a full year and who, through a Darwinian process of survival, what’s left over, I mean there’s lots left over, but the guys that have survived a full year of warfare in Novorussia ? By now they’re very good. These guys [new conscripts], their goal is different. Its to man check points. To hold fronts. To secure defensive positions.

And civilians always misunderstand that thing, that if you want to mount an offensive, lets think of a chessboard. You know you have eight squares. In real warfare, you don’t move all your pieces. Forget about chess rules, but in real warfare you wouldn’t move all your pawns, BOOM, in one line forward. What you would actually do is concentrate, say in the middle of the square, maybe four or five of your pawns, and use them to punch through. But by doing that, you’re depleting [them], right ? Imagine visually, on both sides, you’re depleting your defenses. So in order not to deplete that, what you do, is, you put, you dig in these defenses, you dig in defensive positions, very prepared. The point of digging defensive positions can be precisely to ‘allow’ an attack from a group formed for that. Sometimes they’re called “Battalion Tactical Groups”. On a bigger scale they’re called “Operational Maneuver Groups”. Doesn’t matter. The idea is to concentrate, the rule of thumb is roughly a three to one advantage. So that’s how you use it. That’s in open terrain. If you go into cities, or highly, depends on where you go, it could go, now in cities, it could go six to one, seven to one, ten to one.

If its specially engineered mountain places of resistance, I don’t know how you call them sorry I don’t have the word now, but its like fortresses in mountains, you would have one to ten, would be needed.
So what you do, imagine, you concentrate your main forces on the main axis of attack, and on the sides you put your weaker, your maybe newer forces, but they being defense, can handle roughly triple amount of attackers. Does that make sense ? So that’s how you prevent yourself from being surrounded.

That was the big problem during the defensive, this summer against Mariupol, is that they went so fast in, and they were so thin in raw numbers that there was a really serious risk of them being cut off. And that is the mistake that Ukrainians were doing over and over again. Some people on the blog asked me, “Well how did they manage to always get into these cauldrons ?” Well, its very simple, what you do, you don’t have enough men, you go into the attack, the enemy retreats to let you in, and then closes the flanks around you. And unless you manage to prevent him from doing that, protecting the flanks of what you’ve, they attack, they punch through. You’re going to get surrounded. So it could have happened this summer with the Novorussians. It didn’t thank God, but I was very concerned about that this summer.

And that’s the one thing that Zarkhenchenko is sort of indicating to the Junta, which is “You know, by May/June, when the weather gets better and the mud starts slowly receding in drier weather, we’re gonna have another, maybe not 100,000 troops, doesn’t matter how many really, the numbers don’t matter, but we’re gonna have enough to protect our flanks. To mount a defensive position. To fortify, to have basic engineering work to fortify defensive positions. And the hint is “And we’ll use the rest to go on the attack.”

So that’s exactly what’s happening right now. And hence the panic. I think the negotiations that are taking place tonight, and by the time you will hear the podcast it will be over. I think that Merkel and Hollande went to Moscow, is the result of that. They all got it.[the message] Because they all have military advisers and everybody went, “Ok guys, this is serious. The Novorussians are fed up and they’re about to start gaining terrain.”

Now they’re never going to have enough to go to Kiev. That’s utter nonsense. Not with the kind of numbers they have. That’s not happening. But, could they take Mariupol ? Yeah. I think so. Could they take Slavansk ? Maybe. Kramatorsk ? Definitely. That’s very much within their capabilities. So it would be a painful defeat. And the other thing that I forgot to mention is that according to some Ukrainian, ah no, some Russian specialist, they were estimating that on the Ukrainian side they have, you know, whatever number of soldiers they have, but lets say, lets assume they have 100,000, I’m making up the figure now. Of these 100,000, the best majority are borderline useless. Of their combat-capable, I wouldn’t call them ‘crack troops’ but even in comparison to the death squads, which are useless in combat – they’re only good at terrorizing people but they’re not good against the military – they, about half of the combat capable Ukraine army is right now in the Debaltsovo cauldron. Ok ? About half. So not only would the Novorussians be able to threaten certain, well, Mariupol is a strategic point for sure, Slavansk and Kramatorsk are not that important, but they’re symbolic. I mean the Junta would be completely defeated. I mean the point is, to win the war the Novorussians don’t even need to get to Kiev. If they do enough mincemeat out of the Ukrainian armed forces, its over. So to answer, sorry for the really long answer, but I think its worth it. What happened is that, its happened already. The Novorussians have won.

And right now the West is trying to get some kind of compromise deal to try to save the Junta, try to save themselves. [Some people say “To avoid it, the Americans did something really stupid”] . I still cannot believe that the Americans would be dum enough to go down the little path that got them into Vietnam. Which is sending weapons. And then you need to send people to train people. And then you send them. And sure enough they get attacked. So you have to defend them. And then the defenders get attacked by the locals. And then you say, “Oh my god, they’ve attacked our national servicemen, so now we have to wash away the affront. And before you know it, you’re entering a full scale war. I just can’t believe they’ll be dum enough to do that. But maybe the Europeans know better. Maybe I’m just being naive about them. And maybe that’s not hot air, you know, that Obama is seriously thinking about sending weapons to the Junta. And that would be dum. But I guess he’s not going to be president for very long, so maybe he’s doing it to kind of look good. And then the other one’s going deal with the problems that creates. I don’t know. Whatever may be the case, I think that what we’re seeing right now is a rescue operation by the West of a defeated Junta in Kiev. And we’ll see what kind of deal comes out of it. I will not go again over all the arguments why Russia, at this point in time should accept a deal. I am a defender of the following:

Novorussia should remain formally part of the Ukraine for a good number of reasons. I’ve outlined many times on the blog, it would take another half hour for me to repeat it all, so I’m not going to do it. And I think that Novorussia should be de facto independent or very close to it, and I think that is the short-term objective to achieve, for a complete victory over Nazis in the Ukraine. But no, I’m not going to explain my rational for that. Go to the blog archives, and go through the archives of the podcast, and if really somebody wants to hear me explain it all, say so, and I’ll do it in podcast #6. Not this one.

Ok, next question. “Are we really faced with the depressing prospects of watching Ukraine falter, fall apart and become Afghanistan of Europe ?” Yes, I do think that this is exactly where the left-over, you know, the rump Ukraine, which I call Banderastan, as long as these guys, these freaks are in power. Yeah, that’s exactly where they’re headed.

Quick question, “How was Khrushchev the worst Soviet leader, even worse than Stalin ?” Well, that’s going to be a long answer. Basically, yeah, I do think that Khrushchev would be, was the worst leader, but you know, I have to apologize. I don’t feel comfortable going into a long historical discussion. I will just say that I think he was, I think he killed Stalin. I think he killed Belya, I think he replaced people who were, maybe they were, well, not maybe, they were for sure ruthless people, but they were at least not indifferent to their country. Khrushchev for instance, initiated a vicious repression against the church. His military policies were plain stupid, in my opinion. He let the country be corrupted and corroded from within. He did a lot of damage to Russia. Thanks. But I really, forgive me please, I don’t feel like going into details. If things calm down, and we can discuss other things. I gladly come back to the question, but not right now.

“Could Putin declare a no-flight zone over Ukraine and make it stick ?” Well yeah. Yeah I guess, I mean he could, but what’s the point ? You don’t want, when you have, when you’re in charge of a country like Russia, or the US, I mean hopefully that’s true for Obama too, you do not do things where you cannot measure the consequences with a high degree of certainty. Countries have known to be slouch, and slip and fall into war. You don’t want that. I mean what’s the point ? Ukraine air forces are a non-object. Its just, there’s hardly anything left. He did declare a no-fly zone over Novorussia.[because] He very effectively gave all the weapons needed for them to basically police their own airspace. So that’s a much safer thing to do. Ok ?

Lets see. “Do I have numbers about …?” No I don’t. ‘Chronology” No. Sorry I’m reading through the questions right now. Question – no, this I’m going to skip. “The wording of the referendum in Crimea ?” Sorry, you’ll have to look it up, I don’t have it right now with me.

“Explain the Russian use of middle names with the first name. Is it a common practice. Is it a middle name or is it linked to the family ?” Oh its very simple. The Russians, when they speak of somebody, they say the first name, son of whatever, like Bill son of Sam, and then last name. To use English names, if I take Bill and Sam, it would be Bill – Buill – in Russian. And then Samuilovich if its Samuel…we would call him Samuilovich, which comes from Sam, and the last name Smith. That’s all it is. Its very simple. And to address somebody by first name in patronimic, I think its called in English. Otchestvo in Russian, is actually very polite. If you speak to somebody and say, “Sergei Pavlovich or Pavel Sergeevich its a very polite way of addressing. Its a little bit informal and yet very polite. I like it very much.

I’m trying to go fast [looking through questions again]

Ok! “Hey, in light of alot of ‘anti-Pole’ in comments, its understandable, given the rabid Russophobe pandering to the Anglo-Zionists, what do you opine about the plane crash in Russia that killed most of the Polish government ?” I really don’t believe that Russia had anything to do with that, for two reasons. I know a little something about air forces, lets put it this way. I did some work with the air force. Aeronautics ? Fairly well. I’m not a pilot, I’ll confess to that immediately, but I know pretty well what happens in a cock-pit. Lets put it this way. This was a clear case of the Polish government themselves, the politician on board started to pressure the pilot to land. And if my recollection is correct, the Smolensk tower told them the conditions were bad, and they guy said “I’m going ahead, which is his right, by the way. The decision to land or not to land is taken by the pilot, not the control tower. And he went ahead, and he was short, and he crashed. The plane was in perfect condition. There was a pure case of human error in very bad weather. I’ve seen, I’ve read the reports, there’s no doubt in my mind that this is true.

But setting that aside, on the other thing: You have to understand that Putin comes out of the old Soviet KGB and on some level, the security services are very like the military. Very traditionalist organizations. They have traditions, they have ways of operating that they learn, and well established security intelligence organizations have a modus operendi. They are predictable. There’s alot of nonsense spoken about the KGB killing this or that. The KGB doesn’t do, I mean, that’s not true. Stop. Back track. Try again. The KGB very rarely kills somebody. Actually. Particularly under the Soviets, where, there was a moment, right after the war, where there were still a number of people that were killed by the KGB. But actually much less than more open governments like the Yugoslav authorities actually killed more dissidents, and there were also more diplomats shot by dissidents, or immigrates, than the Russians. To take the decision to actually eliminate somebody, takes a required and major decision of the politburo. So it was not a decision taken on a level of an individual officer in charge of a directorate, or in charge even of the full KGB Forreign Intelligence Service. The decision to physically eliminate somebody was taken on the politburo level. Now you can imagine, that these folks are running a superpower, they’re very serious people. They’re not like in the movies. Again, you become very responsible when you’re sitting at the helm of a country that’s a sixth of the surface of the, what do you call it, non-immersed, dry surface of our planet. And they learn their lessons hard. So no. [Only] very few people, in what concerns modern Russia, both, Soviet Russia [too].

There was a decision to kill Chechen Wahhabi insurgents. And notice, Russians never hid it. They never denied it. They are actually pretty proud of it. Well, they didn’t go, and Putin, they didn’t say “We killed that guy !” They didn’t do that. But on Russian TV you had, you know, interviews with people who were in the security services who, their face was hidden, their face was scrambled, but you could understand it, they were clearly open, the said “Yeah, you know, we killed Khattab, we killed Dudaev. They explained that. I mean, they will go and kill somebody when there is a clear case that if you get caught… first of all, there’s a need to do it, and secondly if you get caught the people will support you. No they didn’t kill Politkovskaia, and no they didn’t kill Litvenenko, because that’s all hallucinations from the Zionists’ media. Its all nonsense. You saw how they operate. And certainly not by using plutonium, by the way.

So no they would never take the chance, can you imagine if they got caught ? Killing the entire Polish elites in one thing ? I mean, and if they did that, do you really think they would do that over Smyansk ? Never. Never. They can dislike these elites with intensity and I think in this case they did. Its just not the way Russians operate, and even less so, Soviets. And not the people around Putin. They’re not crazy. So I think this notion that some, you know, I saw some video of guys walking through a forest, you know, and shooting surviving passengers. Its just nonsense, its absolute garbage and I have, I really recommend you ignore that kind of rumors.

Ok, lets go further on. Ok, a question about Jews. I don’t want to answer it. I have too many discussions about Jews. Sorry guys, I will come back to it, if you want later. I discussed that on podcast #4. I just don’t want to go back to it. You know, I think its an important and interesting topic, but I think alot of people say alot of, how shall I put it, half informed things. You know, there’s an element of truth to what they say, but superficial. They don’t look deep enough through it and they end up having the wrong conclusions. And sometimes very toxic ideas. So I don’t think we should be obsessed with Jews and Judaism and Zionism and all that. Its part of the modern world, its important, we certainly shouldn’t ignore it. And I got plenty of flack for even mentioning these topics because the politically correct issue, you know the stance in the West is what I call ‘Jewblind’. Don’t see it. Never mention it. Topic doesn’t exist. There’s a good time to discuss this, but not always. You know, the other extreme is to be Jew-obsessive. So I apologize to Anonymous, but I think I will skip that. You ask what literature [about the Jewish question] You know the main ones that I mentioned, Read -Shahak, Israel Shahak Read Gilead Atzmon, you can read Finklstein, Norman Finklestein. There’s plenty of good books. Just you know, read the reviews, get the good authors, begin by that, you’ll get a better sense of that. And I think, I would start with Israel Shahak’s ‘Jewish History, Jewish Religion” Its a very good book.

Ok, “Why could Russia invade South Ossetia to defend against Georgia, but cannot invade Ukraine to defend against Novorussia ?”

Well, simply because Georgia was not Ukraine. That’s a bad answer, but what I mean is that, this again, comparing apples and oranges. First of all, Russian peace keepers were attacked. So at the very least, they had to defend these peace keepers from being all slaughtered. Secondly, the Russians had been you know, dancing with a degenerate tie-eater, for too long, they just really got fed up. The sense of outrage in the country was huge. I mean, people were just really mad at that. Can you imagine the level of, what do you call it in English, just hold on a sec, what’s the word now, I’m not sure that’s English, but ‘falsity’ or ‘deviousness’ or ‘dishonor’. You know, you’re sitting together in a staff, as an observer, with Russian officers, you know Georgian officers. They go “Ok guys, I need to leave.” and then go away and then help shooting the people that were just sitting and enjoying the peace keeping mission. That was just unacceptable.

So at that point the Russians decided to move in and it was the right thing and it was never contested inside Russia. Very different deal with Novorussia. The risks are very different and the goal is different. Russia never had a goal to change the regime in Georgia. Russia does have the goal of changing the regime in Kiev. Big difference. Always keep that in mind. Novorussia is an intermediate objective to a much more important one. The only solution for Novorussia and for Russia is to get a regime change in Kiev. But I won’t go through it all again, I’ve mentioned it many times. So excuse me for skipping. Let’s see. You know what ? Since we’re making a comparison, there’s no questions about that, but I think there’s an important thing I would like to mention. You might have heard the following logic. On the Ukrainian side, they say “Why can’t we do with Novorussia, what the Russians did with Chechnya ?” Which is use force to you know, maintain national sovereignty, in borders. I mean its exactly the same thing, “You Ruskies had two bad wars, with Chechens, why can’t, how dare you criticize us now for having a war to do what you guys did ?”

Well, this is again a wonderful example of apples and oranges. First, if you look at the kind of people who were in power in Grosny, under the Wahhabis of Dadaev, and people after him, they were actually much closer to the Nazi junta in Kiev, than they were to the guys in Novorussia.

All the guys in Novorussia want is to speak their language, have autonomy and not give away all their taxes. That’s all they wanted in the beginning. Just a year ago they would have easily been fine. Its the stupid Junta who said, “Oh no, we’re going to ban the Russian language as a regional official language. We will give you zero autonomy, and basically screw you, and we’re going to declare that our national heroes are bona-fida Nazis.” Which got a reaction from there. And then when the guys locally said, “We don’t agree.” Its the Ukies that start shooting, not the Novorussians.

But secondly, lets set aside all the differences, there’s a key thing. The regime in Moscow, Yeltsin, did negotiate, he actually had the leaders of the resistance, one of them was, the one after Dudaev, oh whatever, the leaders were actually here in the Kremlin, he was actually negotiating with them. He didn’t say, “No negotiations with terrorists.” He was actually negotiating with them. That’s a huge difference. And then they tried to give them their autonomy. It didn’t work. So Putin had to come and clear it up, after they started, literally they attacked the Dagestan. So at that point, the Russians had no other option but to intervene, plus the Chechen people, the people themselves were suffering hell, but being ruled by these maniacs, of the same basic kind as ISIS.

So this is absolutely not comparable. The arguments, “This is the same thing, what’s happening today in the Ukraine” is absolutely ridiculous.

Ok, Odin’s Raven asks me, “How can the rebel areas survive economically ?” Well, they can’t. It has to go through several stages, like when somebody comes into the hospital and has a heart attack, you do the emergency treatment first. Then you cure the rest. The first thing that Novorussia needs is ‘safety from raining rockets and missiles’. That’s step one. Combined with that, humanitarian aid. Step two. Just keep these guys physically alive. And then, the key thing that has not happened yet, but I think, and cannot happen until some kind of deal is reached, hopefully it will be tonight, is starting to ‘contract them’. Just dumping money into Novorussia and giving them ready-to-eat rations and stuff like that is not a solution. This is a region with a lot of very skilled people, they were the most productive part of Ukraine. Smart folks. Really smart folks. They were doing, you know, engines, rockets, chemistry, you name it. There’s alot of skills. Now the place has been destroyed, that’s the bad part. The good part ? Lots of very skilled people. So what the Russian government should do is to give them, any company formed, maybe with a little injection capital at the beginning, from Russia, that is based in Novorussia, should get ‘affirmative action’ or ‘priority contracting’, over Russian firms. I think that’s essential for at least a while. Or maybe a tax break of some kind. Some way of making them productive. Because just putting them on the needle of external aid is just, is not a good idea. And that’s how they have to survive long term.

And I eventually think that what’s going to happen is that Novorussia will basically tie itself to the Russian economy. Because that one is now going through difficult times, but this is clearly due to three key reasons. One, that Russian economy needs restructuring, two, the price of gas of oil is falling, and three, the credit problem and sanctions. Well, these should and will all be resolved by restructuring the Russian economy. The price of gas will definitely go up anyways, hopefully not too fast so it will force Russia to restructure. Basically the long term prospectives of the Russian economy are excellent. They’re actually superb. Not only gas. The agriculture sector, lots of good land, plenty of good rain, plenty of water. Plenty of rare materials, very skilled population, so what the Novorussians need is to basically sort of pay, for a while, lip-service to Ukrainian unity, until the Nazis are kicked out of Kiev, and then basically the entire country has to re-integrate with Russia. The real solution at the end of the day is of course the full Ukraine becoming part of the Eurasian Economic Union. That’s where it would do the best. But that’s very far down the road.

Ok, most questions about Zarkhenchenko, ok, Hezbollah, we’re not gonna touch about that, here’s Patronimics, budgets, I’m just going through the questions, sorry I couldn’t prepare earlier, so we’ll have to do it with you. Lets see, pause button, yeah, I think I will. Hold on.

The Virginian is asking me “What about US backed NGO’s in Russia ?” Well, there are plenty of them, and they all got really taken care of by Putin in a very smart way. All he did was force them to do what any foreign entity does in the United States, which is declare themselves as ‘subsidized by the US’. Which in Russia is a sentence of death, politically right now. If you are paid for by Uncle Sam, you are alone. I mean its really the kiss of death.

So alot of them, I don’t know, some of them have left. And I think other ones are sitting miserable. And I think Putin very nicely, very democratically took care of the problem just by saying the truth about them. So you don’t need to gulag, to kill, to murder, to drink vodka and assassinate tons of people. He just passed a decree saying “Answer forth. Organizations that are subsidized from abroad, who deal in politics have to declare themselves, register themselves as an ‘agent of foreign power’. Boom. That’s it. Took care of the problem.

Next question. “Is it possible to donate to charities, without being labelled a terrorist ?” I get that question alot. I’m happy to hear it here. Ok guys, yes, I mean you just need to go to Colonel Cassad’s webpage in Russia, and he’ll give you the information there. However, I would not do it. And the reason is this. I was told by people in Russia, and in Crimea, don’t send money. And the reason why is it can get intercepted. And on top of that, its very hard to control what’s happening locally. A war situation allows for all sorts of very creative ways of explaining the money has been lost.

But besides that, there is a real risk of being in ‘material support of terrorism’. So there’s a real risk of freedom of speech. Even speech !! The US Supreme Court said that even speech can be considered as material support for terrorism. So every blogger, every person who writes a column is taking a little bit of a risk. Now I don’t think of the FBI as some think they are and I don’t see hordes of bloggers and reporters being corralled and sent to Guantanamo. But in theory, yeah, anybody who says anything good about somebody that Uncle Sam doesn’t like, can be declared in material support of terrorism, and retroactively too.

There was this case of Allerian,I think, this Palestinian teacher in Florida, who was sending aid to an organization who, at that time was also held by the US government by the way, as part of their policies in Palestine, and I think it was Hamas I think if my memory is not incorrect, it was a humanitarian social branch of Hamas. And then Hamas was declared a terrorist organization and so was this branch, and suddenly this guy found himself in court for being in material support for terrorism. So you don’t want to do that. Its even retroactive.

I mean, if you want to be truly paranoid, you shouldn’t send money to the British government, because Uncle Sam doesn’t need it, in case, if they get into a fight with them. It might happen. I’m just being goofey here. But in theory, you send money to anybody abroad, and then that somebody ends up on a list, and then you’re part of material support. Now of course, when this goes to court, and you know they could order a secret trial, but if its not secret, you know, you see how the EU steps in and other organizations step in, you’re probably going to live. But why ? Don’t do that. The most important thing is, the war 70% informational.

There’s plenty of money in Russia, there’s plenty of guns and ammunition and medical kits and everything else in Russia. Let them provide the material support. They do that safely. Here, what we need to do is resist the regime internally. And I’ve discussed in the last podcast how to do that, and I’m not going to do it again, but the basic thing is, Information Warfare. Spread the truth. Challenge the lie. Show disrespect for the government. Be the first to speak up and say “I don’t believe that, this is garbage.” People will start paying attention. Be the first one to say, “The king is naked”. As long as you don’t break the law. That’s really crucial. Don’t even think of wearing camouflage, or sending even a syringe to Novorussia. Because that’s going to be declared support for terrorism.

But as long as you, don’t have any contacts with these people, as long as you’re just speaking your mind, and using your first amendment right, you should be pretty safe. I’m not a lawyer, speak to your counsel before you take a decision, its just my opinion, but you know, I’m a foreigner here. If they want to catch me they don’t even, I’m not even a US citizen, so I’m taking a risk myself, but I think I’m actually ok, because, you know what I count on ? That folks in the FBI would fully understand, and also oppose the Empire. I’ve learned that there were lots of people in the ex-Soviet KGB who were actually very, believe it or not, they’re patriots. It doesn’t make them all crazies. And I don’t believe all American security guys have gone crazy either. Not for a bit.

And secondly, I’m not a Muslim, I don’t break the law, I don’t have a history of violence. I feel pretty safe actually. What could happen to me is the kind of stuff that happened over the past weeks. Provocateurs basically. Lets stop it at that.

Ok, lets see, Prophecy is asking about “Orthodox prophecies of the future”. I’ll say one thing to that, that I think is very interesting, that I learned. I don’t think I mentioned that in my last podcast. Patristic Christian writing, the saints of the early church, who wrote about the end of times, its called Eschatology, gave us a sequence of events which is inevitable. For instance, the famous coming of the Anti-Christ, is not something that we can cancel, no matter what we do. But what we can effect is, we can ‘push it back’. By our own resistance, and its not only by our prayers, but also by our actual actions here. If we come together and unite and fight evil, we can push back the date of these events. That is why nobody knows the dates but the Father. The ‘end times’ it says. Because, literally this has not been said yet. Our collective actions will impact the [end] times, and when it happens. So this is a very good reason to resist. Because there is a position among certain Christians, that go “Whoa, the anti-Christ is coming as the end of times ? What’s the point of resisting ? We can’t win.” True, but we can delay it and delay it by a lot.

There’s nobility in a struggle for what is right, which is, you can do it regardless of whether you win or lose. I think every real struggle, we should do on principal. Never for results. You do it because its right. So that’s a little optimistic, and I just want to put in, for those of you who are religious and pay attention to what the church fathers have to say. You can push back the end-times. So don’t let yourself be freaked out. Do what’s right.

Ok, lets see. Oh, I’m asked about the debate between Starikov and Strelkov. Well, I’m in a minority. I happen to think that Starikov was much more logical. To be honest, I have to say, that I think Strelkov makes a very very good military leader locally, I think he did alot of very good things. I thought his first big interview was actually pretty good. I thought he could be a good spokesperson for the interests of Novorussia. Right now ? Ah, Ne-ah … Strelkov for all his qualities, and I recognize them, has one, well he has two weak points, which are tightly intertwined. First, he tends to cry wolf alot. And we know that for a fact. Now I suppose if I was one-on-one conversation, he would say “I cry wolf to wake people up.” Ok. I accept that argument. I’ll never forget when he was saying that “People in Novorussia don’t want to fight. They sit with a beer, and watch War and Peace on TV and expect that Novorussian little green men will fix everything for them, and this is not going to go well, if this continues.” Well he had a point. But he was also not, he was making things sound worse than they are. I guess its his way of getting things done. The problem is he is prime material for manipulation by the rats. Remember I mentioned them ? The rats that I mentioned. You know these guys that are basically a part of a psy-op to trash Putin, by constantly spreading panic about “He’s about to sell out !~ He’s about to sell out !~” Strelkov is very nicely manipulated by that.

Secondly, I fundamentally disagree with him completely, of the notion of the Russians moving into Novorussia. That would have been a disaster. I don’t know why I’m explaining it all again. Why ? The bottom line is that that’s exactly what the neo-cons wanted and didn’t get. So I think Starikov makes much more sense, in that debate. But I’m in a minority. On the blog, alot of people were, the usual ones I think, but alot of people were very much more impressed by Strelkov, which is fine. And on the website that organized the debate, well that website’s not quite neutral, but a strong majority, I think two to one was in favor of Strelkov. Which puts me in a situation where I spent most of my life, well I was in a minority. After 51 years in a minority, I don’t get upset over that.

Ok, lets see. We’re coming to an end. Oh, big question. “What happened in Slavansk ?” Ok, fair enough. I will actually address that, its going to be the last question for today. But I think its an important one. I never had the possibility to write it up on the blog. How much time do we have left here ? I need to start finishing.

Slavynsk. You have to understand, first you have to visualize where we’re talking about. We’re talking about the Eastern Bosnia. Typically what you would have is a town, like say Srebrenica or Gorazde, etc, who were mostly Muslim. The countryside around them ? Mostly Serbian. When the war began, there was an entire, what they called an army corp, which is not an army corp, but there was lots of armed people, Muslims, in Srebrenica, who raided the villages around and massacred a large number of Serbs. And ALOT of them, including, if I remember correctly, a local Serbian military commander. [The Serbs] had to take a solemn vow to take revenge for that.

Guys, this is the Balkans, this is not Switzerland. Revenge is practiced there. On all sides. Anybody who denies that has never been there. So the Serbs eventually started, began prevailing, surrounded Srebrenica and blockaded it from all sides. The basically made a cauldron out of it. The war was long. The sequence I’m going to describe right now, we’re not going to put dates around it, but it took some time. And the UN said “Well you know the civilians in these towns need to be protected, so we’re going to make a bunch of safe areas. In theory, the safe area was supposed to be an area with only civilians, no military inside. And that was a joke. What happened was, from all these safe areas, the Muslims had weapons, they were using them, including artillery, to attack and shell the Serbian forces surrounding them. Same thing around Sarajevo, Igman, same thing around Tuzla. I mean the same pattern over and over again. Basically, the Empire gave the Muslims – some Muslims – because not all Muslims were a part of that, actually maybe I should stress that.

Not all Muslims in Bosnia were part of the insurgency led by Itzebegovich. A minority was not, and most of them were simply horrified. But I won’t use the term Bosniacs, its stupid because it implies [that] the Croats and the Serbs are certainly not Bosnians. Well, they are Bosnian. The term Bosniacs was an invented ethnicity. So I call them Muslims. I don’t have a better term for that.

So what happened was eventually the Serbs tightened the noose around Srebrenica more and more and everybody saw that happening. It was not a secret. So the French actually had a crazy plan that they wanted to send in their forces, by helicopter, into, if I remember correctly Gorazda, and maybe Srebrenica too, and I’m not sure if it was Grorazde too. You know I’m not exactly sure. Yeah, I think Gorazde, I think Gorazde and Srebrenica. And they wanted the Americans to provide them helicopters, for that. And the Americans, you know, just laughed and said, you know, “Thank you very much, you do it on your own. This is crazy.”

But they were such a goofy plans about how to help them – the Muslims – and what happened ? Eventually the Serbs were approaching closer and closer and closer. Now the local UN civilian chief, his name was Akashi, had asked several times, he was alerted by the Dutch battalion who was there, in charge of quote unquote ‘protecting Srebrenica’ which was impossible from day one. The Dutch local commander who asked for a close air support to stop the Serbs, was denied. Akashi asked it, it was denied.

So here’s the key thing I want you all to really pay attention to that. NATO refused to give the UN close air support, to attack the approaching Serbian forces. Now that’s important. Because after that, keep that thought in mind ok ? They refused to give close air support. I’ll tell you in a second why this is really important. So eventually the Serbs entered and since it was a high visibility town, Ratcomlad which was the head of the Bosnian Serbs, came in with a full bus of reporters, he wanted to show how great a general he is, and how humane he is. So actually he got in front of the local Serb/Muslim, terrified civilians and told them, “Oh guys, you don’t need to worry about anything, because you know, you’re under our protection. Nothing will happen to you etc.” He got on camera saying that.

The problem was that besides the civilians in Srebrenica, there were also a Bosnian army corp there. Now of course not an army corp in the NATO sense of the word, but lets say several thousand of armed Muslims. And they attempted to break out of the Serbian encirclement. They did exactly what Basaev did in Grozny. They tried to break out. Now breaking out, once you’re nicely surrounded is one of the most difficult and dangerous things to do. Basaev managed. And so did some of them.

Actually, I will tell you one thing very few people know, but I know it for a fact. Don’t ask me for my sources. A number of them [armed Muslims], a large number of them made it. Three figure numbers made it actually on foot from there to, Tuzla. So some of them made it. Some of them did not make it.
Alot of them were shot, attacked by the Serbs, who had every right, by the law of war, to shoot a retreating enemy, or an enemy trying to break out of a cauldron. Just like the Russians did in Novorussia now. [Those] who’s armed, have not surrendered, the law of war treats differently.

An armed person and a person called “hors de combat” which means, out of combat, which means ‘at that moment’ benefits. With protection, including the right to life. That’s one of the violations, most grievous violations happened. There were clearly instances of Serbian units around Srebrenica, who, when they caught the surrendering Bosnians, simply shot them. There’s no doubt about that. There was a number of massacres. That I know for a fact.

I also strongly suspect that this is probably true inside, you know, the UN were not everywhere in Srebrenica. The reporters were not everywhere. I am quite sure that there were local atrocities committed by Serbs against the local population. And remember what I said at the beginning. The Serbs were taking revenge for their own villages [being] torched, burned and their own families murdered and massacred. Is it right ? No. Is it smart ? No. But its a fact. You have to understand that. Ok, now I’ll continue. What happened then ? Once the so-called, it wasn’t called genocide then, but the massacre of Srebrenica became known. The powers that be, particularly Uncle Sam but of course always with the British poodle, then declared “Ok, this is the proof that the UN is incompetent. Can’t handle the situation, and we need to step in to prevent the Muslims from being massacred.”

Now remember, who are the guys who did not give support to the UN ? The UN does not have its own air force. The UN relied on NATO and NATO said no. Why ? Because they wanted it to happen. That’s the key thing. Srebrenica was a trap set by NATO for the Serbs. And the Serbs just waltzed straight into that. Because if there was no genocide in Srebrenica, and there wasn’t. And if not, Ratko Mladic didn’t give an order. He’s not, Maldic is not a stupid guy, not at all. You can like him or dislike him, that’s neither here nor there, but he’s not dum. He would not, if he wanted to organize a genocide, in Srebrenica, you know, where he would have been that day ? He would have been anywhere but Srebrenica. [That’s] the last thing he would have gone there, paraded himself in front of the media, assured, on TV, on camera, the civilians, “They were perfectly safe.” And then genocided them. That’s just not how its done, ok ?.

But did the Serbs kill people ? Yes. Were civilians killed ? Yes. Were retreating, armed Muslims killed, legitimately ? When they’re not, they hadn’t surrendered, and with guns in their hands shooting back ? Yes. Were some of them who did surrender, were they taken aside and then shot ? Also yes. So in Srebrenica you have a combination of factors. You have revenge, you have clear violations of laws of war, regarding POW’s. And you have deaths resulting from combat in the mountains surrounding it. What you don’t have is a genocide. That’s ridiculous and what you don’t have is an order given by the Serb authorities to commit any kind of massacre. That’s all folk lore. That’s the media folklore to just demonize them. Genocide sounds like WW2, hence we have Hitler and great. It was used. [But] the Serbs waltzed into that thing. If they had been more careful and more cautious, they would never have entered Slavinska to begin with. They should have stayed out if it. By the way, does that ring a bell ? Don’t go in, stay out of it ? Yeah, exactly, I’m talking about Novorussia. Not the same thing, but that urge to send troops in is something which idiot civilians like. If you realize the dangers involved and all the traps that can be set, you don’t want to do that. Stay out of it unless you have to go in. Is a smart way.

And the Serbians really blew it. They really did something that I mean, I’ll say, you have to realize that some Serbs locally were a mix of regular forces, but you also had militias, just like Novorussia, very much similar situation. Its a civil war. People locally organized. Some of these Serbian militias were truly dreadful. [And] some were very very respectful of human rights. Its not one thing. You know we’re brainwashed in the West to say, “Serb almost sounds like genocidal”… That’s nonsense. The people there, the Muslims the Croats and the Serbs were all a mix of decent average and thoroughly moral individuals. The civil war tends to foster the worst in every one of us. And irregular units are notoriously known to be dangerous. And I know for a fact that there were Serbian units. Now true enough when Milosevich waltzed into Srebrenica he sort of took moral responsibility. I mean he should. [It was] his task to secure that. And he truly failed at that. But I don’t think he gave an order to genocide anybody.

Ok, I think I’ve covered this one. I think I’ve covered the questions for today. I hope it was useful. If something needs to be changed, let me know. And guys, I remind you all, the purpose, as we’ve sort of agreed between you and I, of these podcasts, is to remind you to donate. That’s why I put a button next to the podcast. And to remind every time I put something about the podcast, to donate. So please help me do what I need to do. To provide information. Ok that’s it for today, thank you so much.