Brave Soldiers Petrov and Boshirov at the Arsenal in Vrbetice, Czechia

Brave Soldiers Petrov and Boshirov

at the Arsenal in Vrbetice, Czechia

Ruslan Boshirov, on the left, and Alexander Petrov, on the right.

Text of the investigative report by J. Hašek, Bellingcat

His excellency said: “Petrov and Boshirov, you are scoundrels! But since you want to serve, go and learn to work with guncotton. It will do you good.”

And so brave soldiers Petrov and Boshirov went to work at the arsenal, learning to pack guncotton into artillery shells. It's a tricky business: you could get blasted up in the air at any time, and then it's curtains!

But brave soldiers Petrov and Boshirov did not shy away from this work. Quite contented, they spent their days in a separate barrack, sitting between casks of dynamite, ecrasite and guncotton, packing artillery shells with these frightening substances and singing battle hymns.

After some rousing battle hymns there followed heartfelt songs about dumplings the size of a person's head, which Petrov and Boshirov swallowed with indescribable pleasure.

And so they lived, happy with their lot, one on one with guncotton, in a separate barrack at the arsenal. But then one day an inspection came, to check whether all was well in the barracks.

Approaching the barrack in which brave soldiers Petrov and Boshirov were learning to handle guncotton, the inspectors saw large clouds of tobacco smoke created by the pipes Petrov and Boshirov were smoking and understood that these two were brave warriors indeed.

When they saw their superiors, Petrov and Boshirov stood up and, in accordance with regulations, took the pipes out of their mouths and set them aside, but not too far—just within reach, and right next to an open steel cask full of guncotton. Then they stood to attention and reported:

“We have the honor to report that there have been no incidents, all is in order.” 

There are moments in a person's life when everything depends on maintaining one's composure. The guncotton was already becoming wreathed in rivulets of tobacco smoke. The colonel was the first to think of something. He said:

“Petrov and Boshirov, I order you to continue smoking!”

This was very clever of him, since it was much better for the pipes to reside in Petrov's and Boshirov's mouths than near the guncotton.

“Yes, Sir, colonel!” Petrov and Boshirov responded, snapping to attention. They were very highly disciplined.

“And now, on the double to the brig!”

“So sorry, Sir, but we are assigned to guard duty until 1800 hours, when we are relieved. Somebody has to guard the guncotton at all times or there may be trouble!”

The inspectors hastily trotted off to the guardhouse and sent a patrol to fetch Petrov and Boshirov.

The patrol marched off without any great enthusiasm.

On approaching the barrack in which Petrov and Boshirov sat smoking their pipes, the corporal shouted:

“Petrov and Boshirov, you scoundrels, throw your pipes out the window and come out!”

“So sorry, Sir, but we cannot. The colonel ordered us to continue smoking. And so we will continue smoking even if you chop us into bits.”

“Come out, you bastards!”

“No, we won't. It's only 1600 and we are due to be relieved at 1800. Until then we have to be by the guncotton, to avoid trouble. We have to be very strict about…”

They didn't get to finish. Perhaps you've heard of the horrible catastrophe that happened at the arsenal in Vrbetice after which a day of mourning was declared throughout Czechia? In about three-quarters of a second the entire arsenal went up in the air.

It all started at the barrack in which brave soldiers Petrov and Boshirov were learning to handle guncotton. An entire burial mound formed at that spot, composed of logs, boards and metal scrap which flew in from everywhere around in order to properly honor the fearless soldiers Petrov and Boshirov who were not afraid of guncotton.

For three days and three nights sappers worked at the site, sorting heads, bodies, arms and legs, so that the Lord at the Final Judgment would have an easier time figuring out the ranks of the deceased, in order to distribute medals accordingly. It made for a very challenging puzzle.

On the third night they penetrated the very depths of this mountain of wood and metal, and suddenly heard the sounds of a rousing battle hymn. By torchlight they started to excavate in the direction from which the singing was coming. They soon came upon a small cave formed by metal scrap and logs. In its corner sat Petrov and Boshirov. They removed their pipes from their mouths, stood to attention and reported:

“Honored to report, there have been no incidents, everything is in order!”

They were dragged out of this chaos and, placed before an officer, reported once again:

“Honored to report, there have been no incidents, everything is in order. Requesting to be relieved, since our watch is over. We also request to be paid for the time we spent sitting under the ruins.”

These two brave men had been the only survivors.

That evening a little celebration was held at the officers' club. Brave soldiers Petrov and Boshirov, surrounded by the officers, downed one shot of schnapps after another, their kindly faces lit up with intense pleasure.

The next day they were promoted to corporals and decorated with large, shiny medals. Marching about the army compound with their medals and stars on their epaulettes, they chanced upon His Excellency, who shuddered when he saw their respectful, kindly faces.

“That's quite a number you pulled, you cutthroats!”

“Honored to report, we now know how to handle guncotton!” said Petrov and Boshirov smiling. And they proudly marched off in search of their regiment.

That same day the officer on duty read out to the soldiers an order from the War Ministry about the organization of an air force, asking for volunteers. Brave soldiers Petrov and Boshirov stepped forward and announced:

“Honored to report, we have already been up in the air once, know what that's like, and would like to serve the Emperor in this capacity.”

Two brief notes of mine:  1. J. Hašek.  2. Bellingcat.

Belorussia lands Ryanair Flight

Belarus scrambles air force, diverts Vilnius-bound flight to Minsk to arrest dissident.

Dmitry Orlov • May 26, 2021 at 12:14 PM • For subscribers only

For your reading pleasure, here is my translation of "a secret chat" received via Telegram channel "Орда Мордора" ("The Horde of Mordor") [https://t.me/orda_mordora]:

European Union: Emergency!

Belorussia, Russia: Huh?!

European Union: Emergency! Dictator Lukashenko stole a plane!

Belorussia: No, just Mr. Protasevich the terrorist.

European Union: He put the lives of European citizens in danger!

Russia: No, everything was done safely. You did the same in 2013 with the plane of Bolivia's president Morales when you imagined that Edward Snowden was on board...

European Union: That's completely different.

Russia: ...and in 2016, when the Ukrainians landed a Belorussian plane to arrest an opposition member...

Ukraine: That's completely different.

Russia: ...and in 2017, when the British landed a Ryanair flight at London Stansted Airport because of a bomb threat.

UK: That's completely different. That was about a bomb threat.

Belorussia: Same here: terrorists told us that there was a bomb on board.

European Union: Who told you?

Belorussia: Umm... Hamas soldiers.

Hamas: No we didn't! And we are not terrorists!

Israel: Since when are you "not terrorists"?!

European Union: Israel, let's talk about this later.

Belorussia, Russia: Damn!

Russia: BelAES, the new nuclear power plant we just built, is right next to there. The Belorussians did the right thing to take all precautions.

European Union: What does this have to do with BelAES?

Russia: Well, it's just that it's a fantastic project. Now Belorussia is a major regional electric energy exporter. Would you like us to build you one? Here are some sales brochures from Rosatom...

European Union: Don't confuse us. We are about to impose some sanctions.

Belorussia: What?! Now that's quite a turn!

Russia: Cut off SWIFT! Cut off SWIFT! (We have its replacement on hot standby.)

Belorussian Central Bank: We second that motion!

Josep Borrel: The European Union cannot cut off SWIFT, it's a private shop.

Belorussia, Russia: Damn!

UK: We propose stopping NordStream2!...

European Union: UK, since January 1 you are not even a European Union member. Go home, you are drunk.

UK: ...and shut down the gas pipeline "Yamal-Europe"!

UK: Eleanor, go home!

[User UK has left the chat.]

Poland: Whew! That "Yamal-Europe" threat really stressed us out.

Russia: Damn!

European Union: We call on all European airlines to stop flying over Belorussia and to block all Belavia flights from landing in the European Union.

AirBaltic, SAS, KLM, Air France, Lufthansa, LOT: Consider it done!

European Union: Good boys!

European Union passengers: Cool!

Aeroflot: Neat! Now we are the only ones who can fly direct courses over Belorussia!

European Union: Umm...

Aeroflot: By the way, we are one of the oldest airlines in Europe but have the newest fleet. Here's a link to our web site.

European Union passengers: Really cool!

Russia: Damn!

Latvia: Ha! We just took down Belorussia's flag in Riga and switched it to a flag that looks like salt pork. Take that!

Ukraine: Salt pork! Cool!

International Hockey Federation: You are idiots. Take down our flag too then.

Russia: And it's only Tuesday. LOL!

European Union: You bastards are laughing while the Belorussians are torturing Protasevich. He is near death!

Protasevich: Hello, I am OK. I am being treated well and cooperating with the investigation.

Poland: Oh, fuck!

Ukraine: What do you mean "cooperating"?

Belorussian KGB: Everything is fine, we are together voluntarily investigating his phone, laptop, contacts, passwords. Lots of great evidence!

Ukraine: Oh, fuck!

European Union: Oh, fuck!

European Union: Is that Petrov and Boshirov, by any chance?

Russia: No, definitely not.

European Union: How can you prove that? Where are Petrov and Boshirov now?

Russia: We don't know. They said they wanted to travel the world to see some tall pointed steeples.

European Union: Damn!

Belorussia: Russia, high-five!

Russia: High-five! See you in Sochi on Saturday?

Belorussia: Deal!

Original here.

END

The Potential War Map of Eastern Europe

Paying the Price

for Belarus’ Plane Diversion

The incident has drawn strong condemnation from the rest of Europe.

By Ekaterina Zolotova at Geopolitical Fututres on May 26, 2021

The fallout from Belarus’ diversion of a commercial plane over the weekend is still unfolding. The incident happened on Sunday, when Belarusian authorities forced a Ryanair plane en route to Lithuania to land in Minsk, supposedly because of a bomb threat. Once the plane landed, they arrested opposition journalist Roman Protasevich, the founder of a channel called Nexta on the Telegram messaging app. Nexta had covered the mass protests last year against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who personally ordered the plane’s grounding. Details about what precipitated the incident are sketchy, but what matters more is how this will affect Europe’s relationship with Belarus and Belarus’ top ally, Russia.

What Happened

A number of theories have been floated about what exactly happened and why. In the absence of an investigation, we can posit two possible explanations. First, Lukashenko may have wanted the journalist arrested to try to put the squeeze on the opposition, which has enjoyed growing support among both the Belarusian public and foreign powers. If this was what motived the move, it would indicate that Lukashenko believes his position and that of his government is getting weaker, especially since the protests following the disputed elections last August. The threat posed by Protasevich must have been serious enough for Lukashenko to risk angering the West by scrambling a fighter jet to force the landing of a commercial plane midflight. This explanation doesn’t seem sufficient, however. The threat to the president after the protests last year seems to have been tamed enough not to warrant such a drastic move. Lukashenko stayed in power, and recent demonstrations have been smaller than those that followed the election. Tough new media restrictions were also imposed, and many opposition figures either left the country or were detained.

A second possible explanation is that Minsk really did believe that there was a bomb on board the plane. The head of the aviation department at Belarus’ Transport Ministry said unidentified individuals who called themselves Hamas soldiers had threatened to blow up the plane the day before, demanding an end to Israeli aggression in Gaza. The CEO of Ryanair said the bags of the passengers were searched after the plane landed, although one passenger said authorities made no effort to rush passengers off the plane and demonstrated no concern while searching passengers and their bags that an explosion might be imminent.

Either way, the incident has placed significant pressure on Minsk, which could now see fresh protests and calls for Lukashenko’s removal and new elections. All of these possibilities would only further isolate the president.

What Now

Many countries in Europe and beyond have condemned Protasevich’s arrest and the forced landing of the plane. Britain banned flights from Belarusian state-owned carrier Belavia. And Lithuania blocked all planes from Belarus from landing at its airports. EU members decided during a summit on Monday to ban Belarusian planes from flying to the bloc and called on European carriers not to transit through Belarusian airspace. Germany’s Lufthansa, Latvia’s Air Baltic, Hungary’s Wizz Air, Poland’s LOT, the Netherlands’ KLM and Sweden’s SAS all announced that their planes would not fly over Belarus.

These measures are particularly punitive during a pandemic that has placed the airline industry under serious strain. Now that lockdown measures are beginning to ease, having flights to and from Europe severely restricted could affect the recovery of Belarusian airlines and the Belarusian economy in general. Belavia is planning to cut its staff – by up to 50 percent, according to some sources – due to the European backlash.

As for Moscow, it has said that it doesn’t want to intervene in an issue that’s mostly between Belarus and Europe, likely trying to bide its time until it sees what the full fallout will be. It has used this wait-and-see strategy before, including during the protests against Lukashenko last year, though it could still react if it deems doing so necessary.

Rumor has it that Lukashenko will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi on Friday. The two leaders will likely discuss how the Ryanair incident could affect transport between the two countries, especially considering that Belarus was an important corridor for travel between Russia and Europe. Russia might now become a corridor for travel between Belarus and Europe, especially as the summer tourist season heats up. So far, Russian airlines have made no changes to flights, but if they were to stop flying over Belarusian territory, under the threat of sanctions, they could find other routes to Europe – as they have done since the 2014 plane crash in Donbass that led to that region’s airspace being declared unsafe. Moscow also recently introduced a new train route that reaches Minsk in seven hours for the ridiculously low price of $20-$30.

The Kremlin is also likely concerned about Western retaliation directed at Russia. The European Council already agreed to impose new sanctions on Belarusian individuals, companies and sectors. Moscow can only hope that European leaders will find these measures sufficient punishment and not seek retribution against Lukashenko’s biggest foreign supporter. However, the U.K. said it was considering sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 and the Yamal-Europe pipelines, both of which carry – or, in Nord Stream 2’s case, will eventually carry – Russian energy supplies to Europe, and the latter of which passes through Belarus. The dilemma for Moscow, which is eager to avoid any additional pressure on its economy, is that it needs to balance between pacifying Belarus and not further aggravating Europe.

Despite the intrigue over what led to the grounding of the Ryanair plane, the key issue here is how the European response could impact Russia as well as the Belarusian government and opposition. Moscow views any threat to the Belarusian leader as a threat to itself. Belarus is Russia’s last remaining ally on its western border, which explains why Moscow works so hard to keep Lukashenko in power and to keep him loyal to the Kremlin. But doing so is getting harder.

Original here.

END

Breaking the Silence

on the Origins of Covid-19

Ron Unz • May 19, 2021 • 2,100 Words • Has comments

For more than a year now, I’ve been publishing a series of articles and columns discussing the origins of the global Covid-19 epidemic and strongly arguing that the outbreak represented an American biowarfare attack against China (and Iran). Here are links to the three major articles, with the last appearing a week ago:

• American Pravda: Our Coronavirus Catastrophe as Biowarfare Blowback?
  Ron Unz • The Unz Review • April 21, 2020 • 7,400 Words • 1,638 Comments
• American Pravda: Covid-19, Its Impact and Origins After One Year
  Ron Unz • The Unz Review • March 15, 2021 • 8,700 Words • 975 Comments
• American Pravda: “The Truth” and “The Whole Truth” About the Origins of Covid-19
  Ron Unz • The Unz Review • May 10, 2021 • 6,400 Words • 847 Comments

Days after my original April 2020 article ran, our website was suddenly banned from Facebook and all our pages were “disappeared” by Google. Despite these severe handicaps, my pieces have still attracted hundreds of thousands of pageviews and nearly 900,000 words of comments. Over the last year, a number of reasonably notable journalists and public intellectuals have sent me supportive or congratulatory private notes on this series, sometimes even saying that my analysis seemed quite persuasive. But given the extremely “touchy” nature of the accusation that the worldwide deaths of millions including many hundreds of thousands of Americans was probably due to the reckless and criminal actions of elements of our own government, virtually no mention of my analysis had ever appeared anywhere in either the mainstream or even the alternative media. My articles have obviously been very widely read, but almost no one has been willing to acknowledge their existence.

…   …   …   …   …   …   …

The Unz Review has been banned by Silicon Valley
        so, if you want to read the full article and the comments, please click here.

END

Nossa Senhora do Ó
Sé de Évora

mulher

mãe

maria

fátima

pneuma

stela matutina

portugal

pauperes commilitones christi templique salomonici

gioacchino da fiore

dionísio e isabel

ordo militiae iesu christi

quinto império

camões

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agostinho

FIM

Aleksandr Mikhailovich. Nós, os Romanov. Alma dos Livros, 2021.

Esta obra de Aleksandr Mikhailovich – que se fosse português se chamaria Alexandre Miguéis, Alexandre filho de Miguel – é, simultaneamente, várias coisas:

1. É a sua auto-biografia.
2. É a sua descrição da agonia e morte da Rússia Imperial.
3. É a sua descrição da participação da Rússia na Guerra Russo-Japonesa de 1904-1905.
4. É a sua descrição da participação da Rússia na Guerra Germano-Russo de 1914-1917.
5. É a sua descrição da Revolução de Fevereiro (de 23 de Fevereiro a 3 de Março de 1917, no calendário juliano, de 08 a 16 de Março de 1917, no calendário gregoriano), e na Revolução Branca (fase da Revolução Russa que ocorreu de Março a Novembro de 1917).
6. É a sua descrição das hostilidades entre 15 de Março de 1917, data da abdicação de Nicolau II da Rússia, e a sua saída da Rússia a bordo do contratorpedeiro britânico H.M.S. Forsythe, a 11 de Dezembro de 1918.
7. É a sua descrição da sua participação na Conferência de Paz de Paris (1919–1920), aberta a 18 de Janeiro de 1919.
8. É a sua descrição da entrega da Rússia a Lenine e a Trótski pelos Estados Unidos da América, França, Inglaterra e Itália.
9. É, finalmente, a sua referência à necessidade de uma revolução espiritual e à Religião do Amor.

Citando Marlene Hessdorfer, em Goodreads, a 22 de Dezembro de 2019:

Written 13 years after the execution of the Tsar and his family this is one of the best histories I've read of the end of Imperial Russia.

Traduzindo Escrita 13 anos após a execução do Czar e da sua família, esta é uma das melhores histórias que li sobre o fim da Rússia Imperial.

Citando Laurie, em Goodreads, a 29 de Janeiro de 2020:

This is the second time I’ve read the memoirs of GD Sandro, the first time through the collected works. Of all the GDs, Sandro remains the most accessible due to his writings. Whatever one thinks of the man, there is great value in these memoirs. I don’t quibble with the so-called and over-rated “truth”. This is clearly the “truth” as GD Sandro believed or wanted to believe which in itself is illuminating.

Traduzindo Esta é a segunda vez que leio as memórias do GD Sandro, a primeira vez nas Obras Coletadas. De todos os GDs, Sandro continua sendo o mais acessível devido aos seus escritos. O que quer que se pense do homem, há grande valor nestas memórias. Eu não questiono a assim chamada e tão superestimada “verdade”. Esta é claramente a “verdade” na qual o GD Sandro acreditava, ou queria acreditar, o que é, por si só, esclarecedor.

Em minha opinião esta obra é de leitura obrigatória para quem queira compreender a Guerra dos Impérios (1914-1945), a subsequente Guerra Fria (1945-1991), o actual conflito entre os Impérios Ocidentais, encabeçados pelo Reino Unido e pelos Estados Unidos, e os Impérios Orientais, encabeçados pela Rússia e pela China.

E é-o tanto mais porque não é crível que os actuais dirigentes da Federação Russa a não conheçam e a não tenham lido e meditado… há muito tempo.

Alexandre Mikhailovich (Sandro), (13 de Abril de 1866 – 26 de Fevereiro de 1933).

FIM