Brinkmanship for useful idiots

If remembered at all, the Bavarian G-7 Summit will likely be recalled for the entertainment value it created, offering a platform for the “leader of the free world” to deliver a personal attack on the character of the “leader of the evil empire.”

Social media losing credibility as diplomatic tool

According to the Guardian, U.S. president Barack Obama “lambasted” Putin. But it was make-believe. This was not a televised debate or an “on the sidelines” conversation. Effectively, Obama was preaching to the choir that resides in the fantasy land of conversational social media.

Obama, showing more grey hair and projecting the image of a wizened leader, tried to show the world that he could bully Putin.

“You're wrecking Russia to recreate the Soviet empire,” Obama said with Putin nowhere in sight. Obama also said that president Putin's strategy (regarding Ukraine) is “wrong headed,” suggesting that the U.S. leader thinks there may be something wrong with president Putin's ability to reason.

CBS and the leaked "secret study"

The attack on Putin's character are where the leaked secret Pentagon study, obtained and publicized by CBS News comes into play.  CBS has been, historically, an important propaganda asset of the government of the United States dating back to World War II..

The study reveals that the United States since 2008 has been at work creating the image of Russian president Vladimir V. Putin as an unstable leader with a genetic history of mental illness.

If one is to believe CBS, the leaked study claims that all decisions made by Vladimir Putin reflect the need for “extreme control” because the Kremlin leader suffers from a controversial behavioral disorder discovered by Hans Arsperger, a pediatrician in Nazi-era Austria, who linked childhood autism with an inherited genetic disorder. 

The CBS news story claims that Putin suffers from Asperger's Syndrome or Arsperger's Disorder.

The article does not say whether the study, done in 2008 by what CBS identifies as a “secretive Pentagon think tank” known as the Office of Net Assessment, was leaked to them by a Defense Department source or not. Generally reporters and correspondents in U.S. must be taken to court and there are no guarantees (due to shield law precedents) they will reveal sources.

According to the article, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin obtained a copy of the report from an unidentified source. 

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg tagged with Arspergers in 2008, not Putin

On the eve of the 2008 U.S. presidential election an article appeared in Gawker online magazine claiming that Facebook "founder" Mark Zuckerberg, known at that time for being media-shy and having a short attention span, suffered from Arspergers.

Zuckerberg never said he suffered from the syndrome. But a groundswell of social media caused the world to think that he did.  Suddenly it became fashionable for celebreties in the West to say  "I've got Arspergers."  This is where social media crosses the line into being "big lie" media. And for Pentagon observers, the ease with which Zuckerberg was tagged with the disorder, which was never the subject of an official medical diagnosis, could have been a heads up for E-Ringers who were conjuring up psyops to run on the Russian leader.

The effort by former U.S.Secretary of State and presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton to link president Putin's thinking  with that of Adolf Hitler fits into the same construct.

Washington-London media offensive against Putin- a gaffe too far

On the eve of the Bavarian Summit Washington and London launched an unprecedented news and social media offensive designed to leverage anti-Russian sentiment generated by Fifagate into the ongoing strategy of ratcheting up sanctions linked to Ukraine and Crimea.

In a self-serving move British prime minister David Cameron is calling for tougher sanctions and for the FIFA 2018 Russia World Cup to be relocated to another nation in an effort to end the “cancer of corruption” that exists in association football (soccer). Of course, Cameron notes that London stands at the ready to host the next World Cup in order to “punish” Russia for alleged misdeeds in Ukraine.

Phillip Hammond, the smart guy behind Cameron who is secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs, and former defense secretary, backed up his PM, offering to station U.S. Nuclear missiles on British soil in an effort to mediate Russian agression. All of this inflamatory rhetoric is out of the news cycle for now, vanished into the ether and bait for hackers and deep web fans.

President Putin, meanwhile says that only an insane person could imagine that Russia would suddenly attack NATO. Doesn't sound like a guy who has Arspergers, particularly since the disorder has been discredited as a diagnosis by the DMS-V, the most prominent diagnostic manual in the United States.

Stay tuned for more adventures in retro-Cold War Brinkmanship ;