Brian Whitmore — The Daily Vertical: Why Navalny Can't Lose (Transcript)

• Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is a United States government-funded broadcasting organization that provides news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East, where it claims "the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed".[3] RFE/RL is a 501(c)(3) corporation that receives U.S. government funding and is supervised by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an agency overseeing all U.S. federal government international broadcastingservices.[4]

Just how is this different from RT and Sputnik International? Oh, right, it's "us" and not "them."

In facts, this is basically fake news to promote Navalny. Navalny has virtually no constituency in Russia, where Putin is overwhelming popular. In the case of a change of government is almost no chance that Navalny would be in the running to take the reins. He is unqualified to run a county, especially the size and complexity of Russia.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The Daily Vertical: Why Navalny Can't Lose (Transcript)

• Brian Whitmore

• 
  

Anatoly Karlin — Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Navalny

Karlin sympathizes with the protests but is also willing to call BS when necessary, like when the Western media go off the rails with their propaganda.

The Russia wide protests organized by Navalny on June 12 were a flop.
This was not unexpected, given the lack of enthusiasm on social networks – in Moscow, there were 20% fewer people expressing interest in going to this eventrelative to the March 26th protest on Facebook. The earlier event had translated into 8,000 people, which is pretty much a “fail” so far as a 13 million population metropolis is concerned.

In the smaller Russian cities, where the June 12 protests went ahead as agreed with the local authorities, turnout was unimpressive, typically numbering in the low 100′s.…

The Moscow city authorities gave Navalny permission to stage a meeting at prospekt Sakharova, a relatively central and spacious location. In Saint-Petersburg, they offered a location at Udelnaya, which is less central, but still spacious and easily accessible by metro.

In the last few hours before the protests, Navalny made a location change, to Tverskaya in Moscow and The Field of Mars in Saint-Petersburg, both of which are at the very centers of those cities. Moreover, Tverskaya in particular was already hosting a massive historical reconstruction festival [for Russia Day]....

This time round, Navalny and his crew purposefully crashed a separate event where people wanted to cosplay historical battles, not participate in an actual one against the police. This would have been irresponsible and unethical course of action for anyone with pretenses to serious politics. That this was very likely based on a lie makes it outright disgraceful. These are the actions of a two bit rabblerouser....

That said, Navalny is undoubtedly extremely talented at playing the democratic martyr for the Western cameras.

Therefore, the main part of his constituency – Western consumers of CNN and Buzzfeed – will have to keep on wondering why the collapse of the Putin regime keeps failing to pan out for the nth time.

The Unz Review
Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Navalny
Anatoly Karlin

See also

The Vineyard of the Saker
Fake news? Nobody beats the western media
The Saker

Sputnik International
Moscow Authorities Released Almost All Minors Detained at Unauthorized Protest

STOLYPIN: Bastrykin’s manifesto for the 'North Koreanisation' of Russia

This post is quite funny. Everything that Galeotti attributes to Russia has been true in spades of the US since 9/11. In fact, the US is far worse in some areas.

The American elite simply cannot recognize that they are projecting their own "stuff" on others, as psychologists would say.

Americans also fail to recognize that security and order are more important to many peoples than the American conception of individual liberty. 

Moreover, the author admits that Alexander Bastrykin is not even close to Putin.

The most recent and striking comes from Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigations Committee – a powerful body which in US terms is half-way between the FBI and the Office of the Attorney General – who is often one of the most authoritarian outliers in the apparatus. In an extensive piece in today’s Kommersant newspaper, he sets out what in many ways could be considered a manifesto for Russia’s comprehensive declaration of independence from the world.

To an extent, one can discount this precisely because Bastrykin is an outlier. Furthermore, as a figure who lacks any close personal relationship with Putin or a strong network of allies (quite the opposite, he has a talent for collecting enemies), Bastrykin often must play the role of the attack dog. One of his functions is to bark and growl fearsomely enough so that any less rabid repressive measures adopted end up looking like moderate compromises.

In addition, most of what Bastrykin has been put in place in the US since 9/11. For example, it is very doubtful that Russia has anything as comprehensive and sophisticated as US domestic espionage aka total surveillance. Russia just this week established the National Guard as a unification of domestic security under a single command, similar to the Department of Homeland Security in the US.

BNE News

STOLYPIN: Bastrykin’s manifesto for the 'North Koreanisation' of Russia
Mark Galeotti is Professor of Global Affairs at the SPS Center for Global Affairs, New York University and a Visiting Fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations

Also

The so-called liberal opposition that isn't. It's actually pretty funny.

One of the top opposition leaders promoted by the West is Aleksey Navalny, but as the post points out, he has zero qualifications to be the president of the Russian Federation. He would obviously just be a sock puppet.

As Navalny has never served in any official capacity, most Russians find it hard to understand why he should be considered a candidate for the top job.

MOSCOW BLOG: Caught with its pants down, Russia's opposition blows up

Ben Aris in Moscow

Gilbert Doctorow — Agent William F. Browder: The Smoking Gun

The plot thickens.

And so that we may understand why such talents and contacts could be useful to British (and by extension to American) intelligence, a further flashback to 28 August 1986 shows us a CIA document entitled “Change the Constitutional and Political System in Eastern Europe and the USSR” signed by the agency director Wiliam Casey. Among the specific actions within the scope of this program would be “getting control over financial flows and removing assets from the economies of developed countries.”

That's still the plan. Russia and China are aware of this and taking steps to neutralize US attempts at regime change though color revolution and hybrid warfare. Needless to say, the stakes are huge. This is going to be a fight to the death.

La parole franche
Agent William F. Browder: The Smoking Gun

Gilbert Doctorow

See also

the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens
Bulgaria in the trap of neoliberalism
system failure due to insufficient evolution?

Navalny also intends to initiate a lawsuit against the authors of the news segment, he stated today on his website.

A lot of questions should be answered in the course of this law suit.

Meduza.io
Navalny to sue major state-owned TV operator for upcoming error-filled documentary ‘The Browder Effect’

Alexander Mercouris — Face It: Liberals in Russia Are Just a Fringe

The heavy focus on the disastrous showing in Kostroma of PARNAS, the liberal party of Navalny, Kasyanov and of the late Boris Nemtsov. where it only managed to win 2% of the vote, in some respects distorts the picture. Of much greater importance is that the far bigger and much older “establishment” liberal party, Yabloko, which in the 1990s was considered a major political force, also did poorly across the board.

In aggregate all the liberal parties taken together failed to poll more than single figures.

Whether one likes the fact or not, liberal parties are not a significant element in modern Russian society or political life.

Even the Guardian’s Alec Luhn, wandering around Kostroma, was obliged to admit widespread support for United Russia there.

Given that this is so, it is baffling that in his report he continues to give so much emphasis to the doings of PARNAS. which on the basis of its results, is quite obviously not a real political party at all, but just a fringe protest group.

Certainly there is no justification for referring to the liberal parties as Russia’s “main opposition forces” as the BBCdid in its report of the elections.

Russia’s real opposition parties are not the liberal parties, but the three parties (the Communist Party, the misnamed Liberal Democratic Party of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and the social democratic A Just Russia) that Russians typically vote for when they vote for their parliament. 

Reporting on russian politics in the Western media is based on wishful thinking instead of reality.

Russia Insider
Face It: Liberals in Russia Are Just a Fringe
Alexander Mercouris

Alexander Mercouris — Navalny Is a Crook and a Racist - and a Loser Not a Winner

The people — Michail Khorodokovsky and Aleksey Navalny — that the US is banking to replace Putin in a party that only garners 3-5% of the vote. Bonkers.

Russia Insider
Navalny Is a Crook and a Racist - and a Loser Not a Winner
Alexander Mercouris

RT — Ukrainian Maidan scenario will not work in Russia, Communist leader tells US ambassador

Russian people are interested in better relations with foreign nations, but the country will never succumb to pressure from abroad or follow imposed policies, Communist leader Gennadiy Zyuganov said during talks with US Ambassador John Tefft. 

“Russian society has the good intention to strengthen the relations with both East and West, but we will no longer allow anyone to torment us. This is our principled stand,” the leader of the Russian Communist party was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti. 

Zyuganov also told the US diplomat that Russia would never have its own “Maidan,” adding that the plans to install anti-corruption blogger turned opposition politician Aleksey Navalny as the Russian leader are doomed to fail. The politician also compared Navalny to a young Boris Yeltsin and noted that the only difference between the two figures was that the former remained sober. Russian people have had a good vaccination against “Yeltsinism,” the Communist leader said.

RT
Ukrainian Maidan scenario will not work in Russia, Communist leader tells US ambassador