OOK PLUG. Phil Butler's "Putin's Praetorians". A number of us explain how we came to our present views on Putin and Russia. Many simply couldn't believe the absurdly one-sided accounts of, especially, the Sochi Olympics and Ukraine. A little digging uncovered the lies and they've never gone back.

REMINDER. A big nuclear forces exercise last week with an ICBM and 3 SLBMs fired. Dramatic night sky effects in Siberia: they saw their tax rubles at work.

GOLD. The Central Bank of Russia holds 1800 tonnes of gold. China (the world's largest gold producer – Russia is number three) holds a similar amount. Many connect this with the coming "petroyuan".

RUSSIA INC. Russia continues its climb up the World Bank's rankings for ease of doing business.

ELECTION. There's no real opposition to Putin. And why would there be? Sneering as much as it can, even the Guardian gets it.

PROPAGANDA. Putin attends the opening of a prominently-placed monument to the victims of the Soviet repressions. The monument. Paul Robinson catalogues how the lügenpresse spun this into an attack on Putin for supporting Stalin or being repressive or something. I read the Soviet media back then and it was non-stop lies, belittling, twisting of everything in the West: a complete reversal today.

SYRIA REVELATIONS. Perhaps not coincidentally with revelations on "Russiagate" and Hollywood, come revelations about Syria. First, Washington admits (quietly) that the Syrian "rebels" have used chemical weapons. Second, a senior Qatari official reveals that Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the USA began shipping weapons to jihadists in Syria in 2011. The Syrian army has found stocks of Western and Israeli weaponry in captured Daesh areas. Everything, Dear Readers, your governments and media have told you about Syria has been a lie. (BTW, how many US troops in Syria? Anybody know?).

WHAT NOW? Washington wants genetic material from Russians? Bio war? No, no, only a paranoid Russian would suggest that: for benign, even laudable, reasons. Of the US Air Force. More.

WESTERN VALUES™. RT says Twitter approached it with a scheme to sell ads during the election but RT turned it down. Twitter has banned ads from RT because of "election interference". We learn today that Twitter actually interfered by burying things harmful to Clinton.

AMERICA-HYSTERICA. It's rare that the alternative media and the MSM report the same thing on the same date, but it just happened. Philip Giraldi notes that, now that we know that the Clinton campaign paid for most of the Steele dossier, "Russiagate began within the Clinton Campaign headquarters". The WSJ says the same but still thinks that it was "Russia" that dunnit; but it dunnit to the other side. Jatras marvels that, despite the collapse of Version A, they still blame Russia. But not so fast, we're not there yet: the Steele dossier is 99% fake – enough money was spend to manufacture the wanted stories – "Russia", as in the government, had nothing to do with it even if individual Russians did. (But why bother to get actual Russians when you're making it up? We only have Steele's word for it that he did). One hopes we are only a few weeks away from the contrived mess exploding. Meanwhile, in what may be the very last idiocy, we are informed that "Russia Is Using Marxist Strategies, and So Is US President US President Trump". The suicide of American soft power, Andrew Korybko perceptively calls it.

HUNGARY CLEARS ITS THROAT. Ukraine's neighbours remember the OUN and its deeds. Poland put out the movie Volyn, for example. Now it's Hungary's turn. Kiev just passed a law insisting on Ukrainian instruction, there are a lot of Hungarian speakers (many of whom have Hungarian passports), Budapest has just announced it will block Kiev's efforts to gain greater connection to NATO. (More) The most likely future of Ukraine is that parts break off the edges.

A NEW CHERNOBYL? Not at all, merely the utterance of "information terrorists working in the interests of Russian propaganda." All will be well; better than well, even. (Read November 1, 2017 Update.) (Information terrorists – that's a good one, eh?)

UKRAINE. Another tent city in Kiev. Saakashvili has a plan. Crooks, clowns and nazis. Ten thousand casualties from non-military causes – morale is terrible. Life in Kherson. Ukraine continues to test the limits of Adam Smith's apophthegm that there is much ruin in a nation.

NEW NWO. Russia and the Philippines take another step in their courtship.

© Patrick Armstrong Analysis, Canada Russia Observer