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Tuesday, February 3, 2015

RUSSIAN LIBRARY BURNS…

As I was scheduling this week's blogs yesterday, this article was sent to me by many of you, and it raises questions and our trademark "high octane speculations" if you're like me, for this one sends the "suspicion meter" into the red zone:
A Moscow library containing rare UN documents, ancient Slavic texts, and 14 million books is on fire
The first thing to note here is that this was a very extensive library of social sciences texts, founded in 1918 after the Bolshevik/Communist revolution, and hence, one may surmise contained a great deal of research and insight from the Soviet Union's always extensive research on propaganda techniques, psychological warfare, and social engineering. Indeed, its very name - the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences - says it all. Note the contents of the library according to the article:
"According to RIA, the library was founded in 1918, and is home to more than 14 million books, including rare texts in ancient Slavic languages, as well as documents from the League of Nations, UNESCO, and parliamentary reports from countries including the US dating back as far as 1789 (links in Russian). One of Russia’s most important libraries, INION maintains a book exchange with 874 partners in 69 countries.(Emphasis added)
A library containing copies of things such as Hansard's, or the Congressional Record back to the founding of the American oligar....er...republic, not to mention League of Nations and presumably documents from the UN (besides UNESCO) would be a treasure trove for such research.
So far, the information about what caused the fire remains rather scanty, which permits, perhaps even begs, some high octane speculation.
With tensions currently being as high as they are between the Anglo-American elites and Russia, one has to entertain the possibility that this might have been some sort of covert operation by the West, one designed to reach into the heart of the "beast," Moscow, and send a clear message. The choice of such a target would be, from this point of view, logical, for a library, not open at night, would be a target of choice if one were seeking to minimize human casualties, and a library such as INON a choice target, simply for the information contained. In short, if one wanted to minimize human casualties while striking a serious blow and sending a message, it would seem to be the ideal sort of target. And with Russia sending nuclear bombers into the English Channel in recent days(see today's tidbit), such a move would seem to fit the tit-for-tat maneuvers between Russia and the West that some are calling the New Cold War. A move such as we are speculating and hypothesizing, would be consistent as well with the West's favored method of dealing with target nations in the last decade and a half: covert warfare and operations, and "color revolutions" to install vassal puppet governments.
The strategy is, however, not without its risks, as one can imagine. And thus far, information from Russia about what actually started the fire is not yet forthcoming in any detail. So time alone will tell if this high octane speculation has any merit. But if there should be the slightest whiff of Russian allegations that it suspects a Western covert operation, and should any evidence be prima facie convincing, then one may expect my oft-reiterated warning that two can play the covert operations game to come home to roost, both in Europe, and perhaps in North America as well. After all, the West is not the only geopolitical power bloc that has the resources to indulge in state-sponsored acts of terrorism. The Soviet Union had its own considerable connections into that world, and while Russia has been "behaving' in this respect in the last two and a half decades, this is not to say that those connections were allowed to wither away.

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