Don’t Dream It’s Over – Ukraine Struggles to Keep the War Going.

Uncle Volodya says; “What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.”

There’s a battle ahead,
Many battles are lost;
But you’ll never see the end of the road
While you’re traveling with me…

Hey now, hey now
Don’t dream it’s over;
Hey now, hey now
When the world comes in:
They come, they come
To build a wall between us
We know they won’t win…

Crowded House, from “Don’t Dream It’s Over”

“we know little of the things for which we pray…”

Geoffrey Chaucer, from, “Canterbury Tales”.

The recent attack by Hamas militias against Israel – quite apart from unleashing a barrage of pro-Israel propaganda which expresses astonishment that the barbaric Arabs should once again set upon such a benign and philanthropic peacemaker as Israel, and moreover to attack the most liberal and peaceful of its citizens when they were only harmlessly dancing and singing – has knocked Ukraine and Zelensky off the front pages. As we have seen repeatedly in recent history, once the messaging becomes conflicted, those who depend on the narrative expressing a coherent drumbeat of unflinching unity have cause to worry. Even before the blowup in the Middle East, the question of open-ended funding for Ukraine was causing a bit of a wobble, and differing priorities at the highest levels of the US government resulted in the unprecedented firing of the Speaker of the House. Kevin McCarthy sent mixed messages, but when your country is completely dependent on foreign aid to continue a war the donors led you to believe was unlikely to even happen, Russia would surely back down…anything other than partisan commitment sounds a warning. Additionally, the US government ‘discovered’ a $6 Billion ‘accounting error’ which would sound ludicrous if it hadn’t happened to an entity that pays little attention to accounting, since it can just print more money if it needs to. Perhaps the adjusted message could best be encapsulated in the subtext of this paragraph:

“The more this drags out and the more it looks like a stalemate and a war of attrition,” the less support it gets,” said House Foreign Affairs Chairman Mike McCaul, R-Texas. “And that’s why it’s going to be very important for Zelenskyy to talk about what is your plan for victory, what do you need? So we can go to the administration and say this is what they need in a supplemental.”

What is your plan for victory, Mr. Zelensky? Because the days of jaunty rhetorical flourishes and standing ovations, the days of ‘Zelenskymania’…are over. What is your plan for defeating an enemy that now – thanks to staggering combat losses – outnumbers you to a significantly greater degree than it did at the outset of hostilities, an enemy ramped up and humming at wartime production levels? An enemy that does not rely on international allies for any of its ammunition, aviation, artillery or armor, if you will permit a little alliteration?

I’d be interested to hear it. Because thus far ‘the plan’ appears to have been ‘stage a dramatic event whenever foreign dignitaries visit, or whenever it has again become necessary for the Ukrainian head of state to travel abroad on a fundraising tour’. This has not escaped notice, and while the accuser in this instance is Russia, even The New York Times acknowledged that a missile which plowed through a busy marketplace in Konstantinovka – killing 17 people and wounding another 30 or so – was probably Ukrainian based on evidence. As usual, though, western media did not wait around for ‘evidence’, but went into its customary shuck-and-jive pro-Ukrainian stenographic recitation of Ukrainian accusations – “Horrendous attack”, screamed Sky News: “Heinous evil and brazen wickedness”, moaned Zelensky. “Despicable” UN humanitarian envoy for Ukraine Denise Brown yodeled, like a hog caught in a gate, while the European Council of Bobbleheads chorused “heinous and barbaric”. “There will be retribution”, threatened Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, through his UK mouthpiece, the BBC.

The brazen, heinous, wicked and barbaric, despicable attack took place co-incident with an unannounced visit to Ukraine by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.

There was nothing – repeat, nothing – even-handed or driven by journalistic integrity in the Times report: it simply was first to acknowledge what could no longer be credulously denied. Once the probability of the missile having been fired by Ukraine was introduced, a magical transformation occurred, and it was no longer heinous, barbaric, wicked or despicable: no, it was ‘tragic’, a ‘mistake’; a ‘missile that failed to find its target’, although the fact that of the more than 10,000 civilians killed in Ukraine and the former Ukraine since The Glorious Maidan, Revolution of Dignity, the overwhelming majority were killed in Eastern Ukraine by shelling and Tochka missile strikes by the AFU…suggests the missile went exactly where it was sent. But I suppose we must allow grudging recognition of advancement on the deliberate idiocy which prevailed following the strikingly-similar attack on the Kramatorsk train station on April 10th, 2022. That attack, according to Wikipedia, left 63 dead and 150 wounded; the BBC published “What we know” about the attack. While it was, in retrospect, careful to point out that each side blamed the other, it announced that “The US, EU and UK have condemned the incident and have since announced additional military support for Ukraine.” Who does that look like they blame? Some guy who worked at a warehouse claimed to have seen a Ukrainian air-defense missile intercept another incoming missile like the one which struck the train station grounds; no such intercept took place. The appointed-by-Zelensky ‘Governor of Donetsk’, Pavlo Kyrylenko, immediately reported that the weapon had been an Iskander ballistic missile (which only Russia has) with a cluster-munitions warhead. He later retracted that and agreed with the abundant evidence that it was a Tochka-U, considering the smoking casing remained where it landed and the serial number of the missile was shown on European television. Never mind – I’m just surprised he didn’t say the warhead was filled with hatchets, or the skulls of murdered Ukrainian children or some similar poppycock.

And then a deafening silence ensued.

The Kings of Wishful Thinking Redefine ‘Progress’

Uncle Volodya says, “Think before you speak. Read before you think.”

…If I don’t listen
To the talk of the town
Then maybe I can fool myself…

I’ll get over you
I know I will
I’ll pretend my ship’s not sinking;
And I’ll tell myself
I’m over you
‘Cause I’m the king of wishful thinking…

Go West, from “King of Wishful Thinking”

Optimism can keep a fool from accepting failure.

Ernest Hemingway

You could certainly be forgiven, if it is your habit to trawl through the mainstream western news media to see what’s going on, the emergence of a certain…optimism. A certain general feeling that paradigm shifts are taking place, that tectonic plates, figuratively, are on the move and the world is shuddering, changing. And it is; no denying that. But a simple manipulation of language is fostering the belief – as it was designed to do – that the nature of the battle for Ukraine is altering; that the Ukrainians are focusing on something other than frantic mouselike jumping against the walls and that something…something long anticipated is at last emerging. There is a great sussuration of whispering throughout the west, led by the state media outlets, and the word they are whispering is ‘breakthrough’.

Once again, optimism raises its battered head.

And what did Hemingway teach us about optimism? Come on; it’s not hard, it’s right there at the top of the page. Yes, that’s right – optimism can keep a fool from accepting failure.

I think most of us would agree that optimism, in and of itself, is a good and necessary quality. If we can’t foresee a good and timely end to messy and unpleasant affairs, fewer efforts to conclude them would even be attempted. But optimism packaged by itself is like sausage that is all filler – optimism must be viewed together with reality, which is the meat, in this instance.

And the ongoing efforts by the western media to steer the narrative are all optimism…zero reality. Let’s look at some of them, shall we?

Set Spin to Overdrive – Losing is the New Winning

Uncle Volodya says; “A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide.”

“How happy had it been for me had I been slain in the battle. It had been far more noble to have died the victim of the enemy than fall a sacrifice to the rage of my friends.”

Alexander the Great

“Good guys don’t always win, especially when they are divided and less determined than their adversaries. The desire for liberty may be ingrained in every human breast, but so is the potential for complacency, confusion, and cowardice. And losing has a price.”

Madeleine Albright, from, “Fascism: a Warning”

I imagine all of us, at some time in our lives, have been the winner in a competitive event; something from your school days, perhaps – a foot race, arm wrestling, some minor test of skill or strength…only to have the loser confide, “Of course, I wasn’t really trying”. The obvious implication is that you didn’t really win; if your adversary had invested a serious effort, you would have been left in the dust, and so the thrill of victory should be hollow for you.

I imagine most of us, also, have some experience with the American Culture Of Winning, probably from major sporting events such as the Olympics.  Everybody wants their team or player to win, and we all cheer for our own, but American fans frequently take it to a whole other level, screaming “USA!!!USA!!!” from the sidelines until their blood pressure must be measurable in gigapascals, and their vision greying out at the edges. Magnanimous to a fault in victory, America likes to help up its opponent, dust him off and buy him a beer – but it is imperative to beat him first.

Grasping this, it is still astounding to see the “I wasn’t trying” defense employed at a national level, in an apparent attempt to snatch victory from defeat. But it gets worse. America is apparently taking the position that it could have beaten Russia in Ukraine…but pulled its best punches because it was afraid a too-big Ukrainian victory could cause the collapse of the Russian state, with its attendant consequences for the world.

I’ll give you a minute to wrap your head around the enormity of that. But what else are we supposed to infer?

“There is, of course, another American anxiety; one that is perhaps greater than the fear of drawn-out battle. That is a level of Ukrainian victory that could lead to collapse in the Kremlin and possible fragmentation and chaos across the country with potentially catastrophic geostrategic consequences and untold global economic harm. This immediate vision of doom may or may not be right – but it endures in the back of the minds of White House officials. 

It also goes some way to explaining why the US has been generous only up to a point on military aid for Ukraine. Far more could and should have been provided and much more quickly. Instead the administration has supplied just enough to achieve a certain level of success but not sufficient to inflict outright defeat on Putin’s regime.”

I know, right? Hard to interpret that any other way than ‘we totally could have waxed their asses, but we backed off because we were afraid they couldn’t handle losing’.

I expect this revelation will come as something of a surprise to the Ukrainians. Who have, you know, burnt through a couple of hundred thousand lives in increasingly hopeless assaults on Russian defenses as they turn ‘counteroffensive’ into a punchline. What an eye-opener it must be to learn that America only gave them billions in cash and tons of weapons to put a scare into Putin – but it was never in the plan that Ukraine would win, because they couldn’t handle victory. Probably cause a bit of a wobbler in Europe, as well, when they learn they lost over €100 Billion from closing out western businesses in Russia, but their lord and master never intended that Russia should be defeated. Considering, you know, that Jens ‘Mister Leadership’ Stoltenberg not only said that Russia must be defeated on the battlefield, he claimed that if Ukraine did not win, there could be no more talk of NATO membership. So if we connect the dots, we go from December 2021 where Russia said that Ukraine must never be a member of NATO to where the collective western alliance said pound sand, Russia, Ukraine will do as it pleases and the door is always open. Then to February 2022 where Zelensky – thinking America had his back – started a military push to take back the Donbas, inspiring recognition of the DPR/LPR as independent entities and a subsequent Russian military response to their request for urgent assistance to prevent their being overrun. To ‘peace talks’ in Istanbul in March 2022, where Boris Johnson and Antony Blinken talked Zelensky out of an agreement based on their appraisal that Russia – having ‘failed to capture Kiev’ – was just blowing smoke and hoping to steamroll Ukraine into a precipitate signature…to now, where (1) Ukraine has lost almost a third of its previous acreage, and (2) the United States never intended that it should win, because believe me, if America was really trying, Ukraine would have kicked their ass ’til it rang like a bell.

What do we extrapolate from this? America must have known, all through the time it was blabbering about an imminent Ukrainian breakthrough, that it couldn’t allow that to happen, because it might lead to a Ukrainian victory and a Russian collapse. So it held back a little…just enough to make sure Ukraine continued to squander the lives of its soldiers for a victory it had no chance of achieving. Because America mustn’t let it happen. America and its undernourished-but-pugnacious sidekick, England, talked the President of Ukraine out of a potential agreement which would have seen his country about a third bigger in square miles and 200,000 higher in population than it is right now, all the time knowing they could not allow Ukraine to win, and that any sacrifices it made subsequent to refusing the peace terms would be (a) irrecoverable, and (b) for no purpose. The only possible alternate explanation is that they are just making up that ‘we weren’t really trying’ explanation to avoid embarrassment. And, I mean, who would do that?

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Regime Change in Russia

Uncle Volodya says, “Fear of the unknown and the other is the root of almost all hate. It is born of ignorance and fed by those who would keep us divided.”

I’m sick and tired of hearing things from
Uptight short-sided narrow-minded hypocritics;
all I want is the truth, just give me some truth.
I’ve had enough of reading things
By neurotic psychotic pigheaded politicians:
all I want is the truth, just give me some truth…

John Lennon, from “Give Me Some Truth”

“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.”

Ray Bradbury, from, “Fahrenheit 451”

There’s a lingering hint of Santayana in NATO’s recent Gathering Of The Elites in Lithuania; Santayana, who told us, “Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.” NATO has not precisely forgotten its aims, which are to first frame Russia as an enemy although they were once allies, and then to overturn and smash it; in fact, those aims remain crystal clear. What we have lost sight of is how far we are willing to go to attain the goal. And the answer, offered and repeated and echoed like catechism by all the NATO bobbleheads assembled, is “as far as it takes”. The Law Of Holes – which states that if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging – has been repealed, and trial balloons which have fallen to earth farting self-righteous sincerity are dusted off, reinflated and sent aloft again.

Sanctions, we were told, would wipe Russia off the board. Bear with me for a moment, if you will, while we review just how abysmally that has failed.

This is the Moscow Central Bank’s current balance sheet. The latest figure has fallen off a little, but I ask you – does this look like the picture of a nation in the grip of a fiscal crisis? May’s figures are 53,839,357 million rubles, off from April’s 54,758,811 million rubles. But look at the gain in values over the last year that Russia has been engaged in a bitter war against NATO’s resources in Ukraine. The key interest rate has remained unchanged at 7.5% since October 2022.

Per-capita GDP adjusted for purchasing power parity has likewise slipped a little, but to get a feeling for whether this is a disaster for Russia, note the difference between the most recent figure and 2015, when the Russia vs. Ukraine and the west crisis began.

How ’bout that price cap on energy exports, though? That certainly screwed Putin to the wall, right? Not exactly. Here’s what it did do.

The price cap was designed to keep Russia oil flowing and prevent a global supply shock, while crimping the Kremlin’s revenue and its ability to fund the war in Ukraine. Importers are unable to use Western services such as insurance and shipping if crude is purchased above the $60-a-barrel limit. That’s led to the emergence of a large fleet of shadow tankers to bypass sanctions.

A large fleet. Of ‘shadow tankers’, to bypass sanctions. Tankers which pay no fees to western shipping firms, and no premiums to western insurers. My, that was clever, wunnit? In fact, it kind of sounds…like disobedience to me. Oh, look; there’s more.

Asian buyers regularly use this flotilla to import crude from Russian and other nations such as Iran. Officials from two Chinese refiners said their purchases of Russian oil over recent months have mostly been executed without the use of Western financial, insurance and shipping services.

Do correct me if I am on the wrong track, but what I see is a widening gap between the overdeveloped western nations and their target emerging markets, especially given the price difference between western-defined ‘black-market’ energy and America’s own overpriced LNG. You know what else I see? An increasing willingness to do business outside the western currency market.

Indian refiners have tested the use of other currencies such as dirhams, rubles and rupees for Russian crude cargoes. More recently, Russian sellers of crude to India have been increasingly interested in using yuan.

Yuan; that sounds familiar. Isn’t that the currency of the nation NATO intends to humble once it’s completed its destruction of Russia? Yeah – I thought it was. Isn’t that just like those dirty Russians, to not even help with their own ruin? I have to say, I’m not very optimistic about NATO ruining China, if what we have seen so far is cutting-edge ruin.

Washington Seeks to Manage Zelensky’s Removal

“The greater the gap between self perception and reality, the more aggression is unleashed on those who point out the discrepancy.”

“A leader is a dealer in hope.”

Napoleon Bonaparte

“It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false. To admit that the false has any standing in court, that it ought to be handled gently because millions of morons cherish it and thousands of quacks make their livings propagating it—to admit this, as the more fatuous of the reconcilers of science and religion inevitably do, is to abandon a just cause to its enemies, cravenly and without excuse.”

H.L. Mencken

A big part – perhaps the biggest part – of remote-managing another country through a suborned leader is thinking several steps ahead to where that leader (a) will have crashed and burned; (b) can no longer carry on in your service due to diminishing returns, or; (c) decides for himself that he really is all that, like you say he is, and decides to strike out on his own without your sponsorship. Having successfully engineered the installation of your man in the driver’s seat, or – as happened with Zelensky – bowing to the inevitable when your own man is revealed to be a gold-plated turd, and instead working on capturing the new guy and making him your own, the very next thing that must occupy your thoughts is his successor. Having seized the country’s destiny and bent it to your own ends, you must continue to exercise control through future leaders, to forestall influence from outside interests which do not coincide with your own, or even – God help us – independence.

In the provocative “Zelensky’s Fight After the War”, Foreign Affairs magazine appears to give voice to the thoughts of the Beltway planners and schemers to a day when Zelensky will no longer be running the show. It also appears to do this from an imaginary state of Ukrainian victory – which would suggest it is not worth pursuing further – but let’s try to be objective and stick with it for now.

“Russia’s war against Ukraine has transformed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s image. Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, many regarded him as an untested figure whose former career as an actor and comedian did not inspire much confidence. After it began, however, he became—in former U.S. President George W. Bush’s judgment—“the Winston Churchill of our time.”

I think you’ll agree with me that’s very modest of the authors, to attribute to Russian action what was entirely the work of western image-management through media control; the characterization of Zelensky as the living embodiment of Churchillian principle was and remains an exercise in fiction. As was the shaping of Churchill as a military genius, really, which he certainly was not, although the real Churchill would have been as likely to pomade his hair with strawberry jam as he would be to throw succeeding formations of desperate and ill-equipped soldiers against Wagnerian forces in Bakhmut. Something Zelensky’s generals advised against, although that has been quietly expunged from memory in favour of stories that they were all ‘united in their resolve’, and even western think-tankers expressed alarm at the grim cost of holding on. No worries, though; the perception was adroitly refocused to where Russia was ‘obsessed’ with taking it, and Zelensky stubbornly insisted it was still anybody’s ball game long after Russia had taken all but a couple of streets of the town. Water under the bridge, now.

The Borg Has Lost Stephen Bryen – Katie, Bar the Door.

Uncle Volodya says, “Death is a beautiful woman, with wings and one breast almost bare; or is that Victory? I can’t remember.”

“If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people’s vanity and foolishness.”

Kurt Vonnegut, from “Hocus Pocus”

“When every little bit of hope is gone,
You know sad songs say so much.”

Elton John, from “Sad Songs (Say so Much)”

Something dramatic happened to Stephen Bryen on the road to Damascus; the scales fell from his eyes, and he could see again. And, taking stock further of his extremities, organs and capabilities, he discovered he had developed an immunity to bullshit. That’s as good an explanation as any for the miraculous conversion that sees him now so far off the reservation that he’s almost in a different postal code.

Just to establish a baseline – mostly for new or sporadic readers, because The Bryens are fairly well-known to regulars here – Stephen Bryen is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, and at The Yorktown Institute. The former has as its mission statement, “…to secure America’s founding principles and freedom through forthright national security analysis and policy solutions.” It is funded by “…generous contributions from individuals, foundations, and corporations.” To be perfectly fair, it does claim a history of ‘challenging establishment orthodoxy’, and if it really does that we should wish for it to do so more loudly and effectively. The latter is similar in its mission: “… securing American liberty, prosperity, and self-governance under the U.S. Constitution. These blessings have always confronted challenges: predation at sea, violent internal strife, and foreign continental hegemony, both armed and ideological. Preserving such blessings requires appreciation and protection.” Foreign continental hegemony…say, is there a mirror in that place anywhere? If you needed another clue, the Yorktown Institute has as one of its several objectives, “To enable American leadership”.

Once upon a time the world might have been okay with the uniquely American quirk that it must be ‘the leader’ in everything, like nobody else has enough smarts to find their way out of Children’s Wear at Wal-Mart without guidance, never mind solve global problems. I think it would be fair to say that time is past now; America’s example of managing global affairs has been…well…there have been a few stumbles, not to be too judgmental. Vietnam was an eye-opener to all but the dullest, but America could still have recovered; made an honest confession of clumsy execution in the blatant pursuit of self-interest, and it might have been accepted. But then came Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Syria. Hotspots around the world where the USA invited itself as leader and arbiter, judge and jury, despite breathtaking incompetence seasoned with bitter political infighting over who (in America, naturally) should be mostest in control. And America has enough problems of its own. Such as poverty: “…more than one in 25 people in America 65 or older lived in deep poverty in 2021, meaning that they’d have to at minimum double their incomes just to reach the poverty line.” Not so urgent that America could not send Ukraine $76.8 Billion, though.

Highest incarceration rate in the world, by a comfortable margin – We’re Number One!!! Boo-yah. Hey, there’s an interesting little factoid that kind of puts that embarrassing reality in perspective: the U.S. Department of Education noted in 2016 that the spending in corrections across the country increased at a rate three times the spending increases for education.

Anyway, let’s get back on track; it was not my purpose to rag on the United States – my point was meant to be how it invites such criticism by consistently putting itself forward for global leadership. So we won’t go too deeply into the other Bryen; Stephen Bryen’s wife, Shoshana. Mrs. Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center and former Executive Director and Senior Director for Security Policy at JINSA. She has worked with the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College and the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, and lectured at the National Defense University in Washington. That’s all lifted straight from her bio, and as I once remarked on the old blog, you could move the entire US Armed Forces to Israel and she would still fret about whether Israel was sufficiently secure. As a power couple in US politics, they are…umm… somewhat conservative in their worldview.

Which makes the recent writings of Mr. Bryen the more surprising – he sounds like Ukraine is…going to lose, or something.

The Storybook of Western Fables: Chapter 9 – “Sanctions Take Time”, By Josep Borrell.

Uncle Volodya says; “When a great genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”

…Every little white lie takes two
(To cover up the first one)
Said and done, nothing you can do

Got your act down pretty well
I know you believe yourself but
Little voice in the back of your mind
Gonna keep you awake at night

(Start telling the, start telling the truth)
It’s time to get real
(Start telling the, start telling the truth)…

Toronto, from, “Start Telling the Truth”

“The problem with dreams is that they are always futuristic and gives a deceptive impression that there is still enough time to actualize them. The tragedy, however, is that you soon realize that the time you thought you had to fulfill the dreams has melted away before your very eyes.”

Sunday Adelaja, from “How To Become Great Through Time Conversion”

The music quote for today’s post is from Toronto, an eighties rock act from – surprise! – Toronto, Ontario. It featured lead vocalist Holly Woods, and with a girl guitarist as well (Sheron Alton), they were a shameless ripoff of American rock icons Heart. Their sound was similar to that of Heart, and in another of those bizarre coincidences that litter the archives of popular music, it was Toronto who wrote “What About Love”, which was a top-ten comeback single for Heart after a lengthy period of musical decline. I saw Toronto perform live a couple of times, and they made an energetic and compelling show. Holly Woods in particular (real name Annie) stood out; while she did not have a great vocal range, she exercised tremendous power throughout it; she could sing, and she owned the stage.

Well, of course we are not here to talk about Toronto, or even music; Toronto was kind enough to set the theme, which is how you and I and everyone in the west is being led down the garden path to international bankruptcy by a collection of lying bags of shit. “Start telling the truth” is a meme mostly included for sardonic amusement, because it’s too late for that in every way – too late for it to make a difference, too late to earn some grudging respect for abandoning the policy of bullshitting us right to our faces…too late. Decisions taken by those entrusted to take them have set us on a course to grappling with the ‘new normal’, in which prosperity plays an increasingly diminished role except for the usual protected class.

If you were looking for a representative face for that class, you couldn’t do much better than Chief Fool of the European Union, Josep Borrell; in this piece he describes the western sanctions which are supposed to ruin Russia as a ‘slow-action poison, a little like arsenic’. In that assessment, he was not entirely foolish – it was in his attribution of that desirable fate that he erred, because it is not Russia which is being ruined by sanctions. It is us.

Oh, I know the tone of the article suggests ordinary Russians yearn for the western products that made their slatternly hovels bearable and their miserable lives less grim – if you nose around a bit, as a journalist, you can usually find a liberal in Moscow, some disadvantaged hipster whose lunch is ashes in his mouth if it is not garnished with French cheese. Like Holly told us, it’s time to get real, so let’s do that – I live in a country that is not touched by western sanctions, and I often go months without tasting French cheese, and Brie or Camembert from the Comox Valley tastes just as good to me. The writers of the referenced article – and Josep Borrell and other assorted Euromorons – would like you to believe that if Russian oligarchs cannot get access to baby-soft calfskin briefcases from Italy, they will fall into a fit of pique and start the ball of revolution rolling. To get a conceptual grasp of how stupid that was, and is, let’s review a definition of the term ‘oligarch’. Oh, look at that – Merriam-Webster has a special category of oligarch, called ‘Russian oligarch’. If you’ll permit me a brief digression, do you know why that is? It’s because the privileged who control great wealth and political power in western countries and their allies are never referred to as ‘oligarchs’ – that term has negative connotations. So although they are functionally oligarchs, they are labeled ‘entrepreneurs’, or ‘tycoons’.

Anyway; oligarch:

…in Russia and other countries that succeeded the Soviet Union : one of a class of individuals who through private acquisition of state assets amassed great wealth that is stored especially in foreign accounts and properties and who typically maintain close links to the highest government circles.

Great wealth, stored especially in foreign accounts. Well, the latter is less true as we go along, because when the west runs up against a law that prevents it from doing what it wants to do, it simply removes or rewrites it, or announces it is not a law at all in special circumstances such as those which arise when it wants to do something but a law would prevent it from doing it. This let-me-do-it re-imagination of the term ‘law’ has seen the west confiscate great swaths of Russian assets stored in foreign banks, so ‘oligarchs’ are increasingly careful where they locate their deposits and assets. But all of that is beside the point, which is whether western sanctions inhibit me, as a very wealthy and powerful individual, from getting my hands on a handmade calfskin Italian leather briefcase. Ha, ha! As if. Did you miss the part where it says ‘very wealthy’? I can call up a pal in Italy, maybe that nice Enzio guy who maintains the gardens at my villa, and send him a picture of the briefcase I want. I’ll have it almost as quickly as if I ordered it from Jeff Bezos.

Very Wealthy People, even when they have attracted the ire of the west by being Russian, can still get things done because they have money – in a strange way, the article in question, whether a leather briefcase or a Mont Blanc Meisterstück Glacier Solitaire Fountain Pen (a great deal, because the personalization is free!!) – takes on added cachet because they had to outsmart the west to get it.

A Knife in Search of a Gunfight.

Uncle Volodya says, “When a war breaks out, people say: “It’s too stupid; it can’t last long.” But though a war may well be “too stupid,” that doesn’t prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.”

Sittin’ around the house,
watchin’ the sun trace shadows on the floor;
Searching for signs of life, but there’s nobody home…

Better Than Ezra, from “Good”

“There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.”

Frank Zappa

I imagine most of you have heard the expression, “Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight”. The meaning is pretty self-evident, but the Free Dictionary helpfully frames its intent: “To come poorly prepared or equipped for some task, goal, competition, or confrontation. Often used in the negative as a forewarning or piece of advice.“

You are far more likely to come ill-prepared for some task, goal, competition or confrontation if you are stupid. In recent years many of us have become accustomed to stupidity in our elected and appointed officials, but watching Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly’s performance of her duties is like being chained to the village idiot. To put the situation in the context of the expression above, sending her abroad to represent even the flailing country this one has become is like taking six inches of dental floss to a gunfight. Perhaps while wearing a T-shirt with a bullseye printed on it. It’s asking to be sent home with a red face and ruler-tracks on your bum.

Melanie Joly is the Canadian Sarah Palin; she was a cartwheeling disaster as Heritage Minster. Heritage Minister!! The department’s mandate centers on “fostering and promoting “Canadian identity and values, cultural development, and heritage”. Sounds like a job the average drugstore manager could perform with distinction, especially if he or she had a whole department of more than 1,800 employees to help and advise him or her. But tasked with management of the festivities and ceremony attendant upon the 150th anniversary of Canada Day, Melanie Joly rolled out a train wreck that earned comments like “I have never seen such a poor, chaotic display. Shame on you Ottawa.” And: “Please, (Minister Joly), I beg you to step out of your protective shell and acknowledge what a mess Canada Day was and take some responsibility for it.” And: “Time for you to resign!” The local news of the village she is idiot of – Le Journal de Montreal – said “she sounds like a living answering machine having a nervous breakdown”. No need to wonder any further where the inspiration came from for the Sarah Palin reference. “Joly’s penchant for bafflegab made her a frequent target of cartoonists and humorists in the province — hardly what Trudeau was hoping for when he made Joly his highest-profile Quebec minister.”

Sacked from the stress-magnet job of Heritage Minister, Joly was shuffled downward – not resoundingly kicked from the top step of Parliament, remember, she’s a personal friend of our talking wig-stand Prime Minister – to bring her administrative talents to bear on the minor portfolios of tourism, official languages and la Francophonie.

And then, just when things looked darkest…she vaulted straight to Minister of Foreign Affairs, promoted by her good friend Justin Trudeau in what critics claimed was a reward for her loyalty in the 2021 election which saw the Liberals re-elected, as well as toads raining from the sky and a lightning bolt straight from the finger of Jeebus. And things went rapidly downhill from there.

“My guess is that during that very challenging campaign, she cemented her status as a trustworthy lieutenant,” Mr. Reid said. “When you fall behind during a campaign and then mount a comeback, you see up close who can be counted on. I suspect he saw that in her and decided he wanted that in Foreign Affairs.”

What struck me on reading the reference, though, was a comment she made in describing her vision for the Foreign Affairs responsibility. She was speaking about possible disciplinary action which might be taken against China, but she claimed, “I can tell you, however, that we have no illusions. Our eyes will be wide open.”

And then the Canadian Minister for Foreign Affairs, with her eyes wide open, concurred with the United States that the Russians likely blew up their own gas pipeline, all part of Putin’s weaponization of energy.

Asked by CNN anchor Jim Sciutto during a conversation in Washington, hosted by the Atlantic Council, who was behind the damage, Joly did not mention Russia by name but pointed to allies’ assessments that the attacks were deliberate. “At this point we’re still investigating, but obviously we want to make sure that we do things the right way, but we’re not naïve,” she said. “You’re not naïve as to who’s behind it?” Sciutto responded.“As I said, we won’t speculate but at the same time, we want to make sure that — the world needs to understand that this is very important European infrastructure that was sabotaged,” the minister added.

She added no gas was flowing through either pipeline at the time the leaks occurred.

Really? No gas flowing through either pipeline…at the time of the leak? Then how could there be a leak? Leak of what? The very next paragraph confides,

“On Thursday, Swedish officials discovered a fourth leak along the Nord Stream gas pipelines, vital energy links for Europe that have been spewing methane into the Baltic Sea since Monday following two underwater explosions.” Spewing methane. Natural gas is almost completely methane.

And NATO muttonheads were quite happy to pontificate and puff over these ‘deliberate, reckless and irresponsible acts of sabotage’ while they believed the perpetrator would never be identified.

But then, Seymour Hersh – one of the most credible journalists alive – broke a story on how American Navy divers had planted the explosives under cover of a NATO exercise, assisted by Norway, which explosives were later detonated remotely, destroying the pipeline. America had threatened it, had tried to stop its construction through sanctions and international bullying, had shopped proposals to Europe that Europeans buy American ‘molecules of freedom’ instead, and had flatly promised to stop it ever going into operation. Means, motive and opportunity. And yet, when America announced that Russia must have done it itself, Melanie Joly agreed. After all, we’re not naive.

To this moment there has not been any statement of which I am aware in which Melanie Joly recants or expresses doubt in her conviction that Russia blew up its own pipelines.

The Smile on the Face of the Dragon.

Uncle Volodya says, “Whole nations are transported, exterminated, their name to be forgotten, except in the annual festival of their conquerors, when sycophants call the names of the vanquished countries to the remembrance of the victors.”

There was a young lady of Niger
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;
They returned from the ride
With the lady inside,
And the smile on the face of the tiger.

Attributed to William Monkhouse

The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears, to clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.”

Genghis Khan

 The thrill of controlling a large, powerful and potentially dangerous animal is undeniable; to make it your servant and compel it to do your bidding is satisfying balm to the ego. How much more satisfying again it must be to control an entire country, and to bend the collective work and product of its people to your power and enrichment. America has long manipulated great-power politics to its own benefit, and the pleasure of doing so seems to be enhanced when the victim is helpless to resist. At least that’s the way it is consistently portrayed in the government-managed western media, for the enjoyment of the cheering assholes in the international bleachers.

Well, as another parable has it, riding the tiger is the easy part. The hard part is getting off. This is helpfully explained as “Once you have taken this path, there is no way back.”

The west – led, as usual, by The Exceptional Nation – climbed aboard the tiger in 2014, when it decided to initiate and support a coup in Ukraine and turn it into a heavily-armed foil to Russia. Admittedly the second part came later, but perhaps as early as 2015, when the Minsk II Agreements – with the ulterior motive for the west being the arming and strengthening of Ukraine until its army was powerful enough to not only take back the Donbas republics and Crimea by force, but powerful enough to drive Russia back over its borders if it dared to intervene – were signed. As I just suggested, the west took no serious note of the agreement’s provisions beyond opportunities to nag Russia that it was not holding to its responsibilities (although Russia is not mentioned in the accords at all), because the intent was to use the agreement to stall for time while Ukraine’s striking power was built up. Consequently when the time came to set The Great Game in motion once more, Russia massed troops on the border with Ukraine as a visible deterrent – we see what you’re doing, and if you try it, you’ll be sorry. It failed to deter President Zelensky, who ordered an artillery bombardment of the border regions of the Donbas Republics to soften up resistance prior to an armored and infantry attack…and now quite a few people are sorry. Just before the Russian military operation began, the state published a list of demands for the well-known supporters of chaos. The requirements were:

1. An end to NATO military activity in eastern Europe, including Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia;
2. No expansion of NATO membership, particularly to Ukraine;
3. No intermediate or shorter-range missiles deployed close enough to hit the territory of the other side;
4. No military exercises of more than one military brigade in an agreed border zone;
5. An agreement that parties do not consider each other as adversaries and will resolve disputes peacefully; and,
6. Neither Russia nor the United States can deploy nuclear weapons outside their national territories.

The referenced article was published well in advance of any formal reply from NATO, but Deutsche Welle was already confident the west would blow Russia off contemptuously. Why? Because riding the tiger is fun.

“Russia has released a series of security demands to NATO, including a veto on the alliance’s expansion. It is calling for an immediate dialogue, but NATO members aren’t likely to acquiesce to Moscow’s wish list.”

And the west did reject Russia’s demands, stingingly and entirely, because its combined coalition groupthink informed it that Russia would not bother with a warning unless it was weak, and knew it. Strong countries do not offer an opportunity to reconsider your options. They kick ass. And as many of us learned only recently, courtesy of Moon of Alabama, the pretense that nobody could have known what might happen will not be available this time. Because the influential RAND Corporation think tank warned the US government of potential consequences of each of its actions as far back as the Spring of 2019, all of which it took anyway. No longer content to simply ride the tiger, America began to hammer its ribs with its heels, and of course its simpleminded vassals loudly chorused approval.

It Will Be Easier to Blow Sunshine Up Your Ass When You Can’t Afford Pants.

Uncle Volodya says, “If talking to yourself when alone is a sign of madness, then listening to yourself in front of others is doubly so.”

“…But the fact remains, nevertheless, that you can’t help if they persist in the course of behaviour which originally got them into their trouble. For example, you can’t preserve people from the horrors of war if they won’t give up the pleasures of nationalism. You can’t save them from slumps and depressions so long as they go on thinking exclusively in terms of money and regarding money as the supreme good. You can’t avert revolution and enslavement if they will identify progress with the increase of centralization and prosperity with the intensifying of mass production. You can’t preserve them from their collective madness and suicide if they persist in paying divine honours to ideals which are merely projections of their own personalities – in other words, if they insist on worshiping themselves…”

Aldous Huxley, from “After Many a Summer Dies the Swan”

She likes to play for double or nothin’
tellin’ all the boys she’s hot;
And everybody knows she’s ready
To give it everything that she got:

She’s a roller, a high roller, baby, my, my..

April Wine, from “Roller”.

Yes, she’s a roller; my, my. The problem is, she’s rolling with your money – and if you live in Europe, the standard of living that you and your children can expect down the road depends on her telling you the truth. And I’m afraid the odds are just not on that possibility. Judging by performance to date, like.

In fact, although I’m not a psychologist and don’t even play one on TV, the conclusion I have reluctantly arrived upon is that Ursula Von Der Leyen believes you and all the other European voters are stupid. Oh, the extent of the global lumpenproletariat assumed to be too stupid to reason for itself goes considerably beyond Europe, and it’s causing problems which extend well beyond its shores. But it is Europe which is Ground Zero for her unwavering line of self-stroking bullshit, and it is Europe which will bear its effects, perhaps and conceivably to its ruin.

Did you think that if you could somehow struggle through this winter, the energy crisis would recede and the nightmare would be over? Au contraire, mon ami. But you could be forgiven your optimism, because Von Der Leyen – let’s just call her VDL, as her co-workers are said to do, for simplicity – wants you to think so, although the most elementary reading-between-the-lines analysis should give you that ice-water-down-your-back tickle of unease. Because the title of the article is fairly clear; the energy crisis could worsen next year. But never mind that for now – take a bow, says VDL; you guys were all brilliant with your self-sacrifice, wearing a sweater while you’re doing the supper dishes in cold water, skipping the shower…magnificent. You certainly showed that psychopath up in the Kremlin.

“We have been able to manage, we have been able to withstand the blackmail. We have acted, and we have acted successfully,” von der Leyen said at a press conference in Brussels. She touted Europe’s success in carrying out its plan to reduce Russian gas demand by two-thirds before the end of the year…

Considering NATO operatives blew up the twin pipelines carrying most of the supplied Russian gas to Europe in September, I’m not sure ‘blackmail’ is the right word. But keep that fact in mind, because other projections are not so sunny as VDL’s.

The bloc faces a potential gas gap between supply and demand of 27 billion cubic meters in 2023, according to the report. Such a situation could occur if Russia’s gas deliveries drop to zero and if China’s LNG imports rebound following a pandemic-related decline in 2022, the authors explained. “Many of the circumstances that allowed EU countries to fill their storage sites ahead of this winter may well not be repeated in 2023,” Birol said.

‘Such a situation’ IS going to occur; you can pretty much count on it. Russia could not send gas through either leg of the Nord Stream pipelines if it wanted to help such a worthless bunch of cretins as the Europeans are, those pipelines are now just so much scrap metal on the seabed. I think we can agree Russia is not going to send augmented gas supplies through the pipeline network which crosses Ukraine, and pay Ukraine transit fees that will immediately be turned into ammunition supplies to shoot at Russia’s soldiers; besides, the Ukrainian Gas Transit System is in nearly as bad shape as the destroyed Nord Stream lines. So this year, as horrible as it may have seemed to you, Europe got at least some Russian gas for an entire half of the year, and normal supplies for the first couple of months. Next year, it’s zero. Goose egg.

If Europe does not get any Russian gas next year, it is already looking at a deficit of nearly 60 BcM. Fifty-seven, according to the report. The Happy Days Are Here Again cheerleaders claim that the deficit will be partly offset – 30 BcM of it – by Even Greater Economies of consumption, mumble nuclear mumble and yes, even more renewables!!