Hats Off to the King of Kope

Uncle Volodya says, “I guess in the end, it doesn’t matter what we wanted. What matters is what we chose to do with the things we had.”

“If you’re not in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?”

T.S. Eliot

“There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There’s something delightful about it, something naughty, secretive, forbidden, thrilling. It’s like a spell, of sorts. It deflates them, reduces them to the common denominator where they can be dealt with.”

Margaret Atwood, from, “The Handmaid’s Tale”.

I imagine all of us remember back a couple of years ago, when all the western bigwigs were confident that Russia could not withstand the two-front war against it – the double blows of concentrated economic warfare, and bloody combat with NATO’s proxy army of Ukrainians. Back then we were treated to regular shows of western political figures strutting and posturing and projecting with relish that Russia was not even going to be allowed the dignity of the negotiating table: no, Sir – it was going to be crushed and broken on the battlefield and its families driven into penury until they cried out to their wicked leader for relief. A fairytale to warm the cockles of the western heart, and I expect the intoxicating prospect was good for many happy dreams through peaceful nights of slumber in Europe’s capitals, and in Washington, DC.

And how did we come ’round to Wake The Fuck Up so early? For that time is surely at hand, despite the best efforts of the press and the strutting, posturing political figures and the flakey analysts and the bogus experts to forestall it. The red tide on the Ukraine map is creeping ever northward and west, and the Ukrainian command is busy shuttling the few remaining reserves around madly from breach to breaking point – there’s barely any defense left in the Ukrainian Army, never mind a Counteroffensive.

And that means the narrative is going to have to change, too – it’s already started, with new gory bedtime stories of how cruel and brutal the Russians are instead of happy mockery about them fleeing through the Kursk region’s forests with the bold Ukrainians snapping at their heels. But the big challenge of the coming weeks and months is going to be ‘splainin’ how we got from the agile Ukrainians running vicious circles around the Big Stupid Bear to why won’t Putin meet with Zelensky to hammer out a peace agreement that won’t be too embarrassing for the western meddlers who set Ukraine up to be slapped silly in the first place.

Such a mind-bending lurch is going to call for some serious rationalization – nothing less than what you call your ‘suspension of disbelief’. And ready to step into the spotlight, to grease the wheels of confusion; to search out that ray of sunshine that pierces the shroud of lowering gloom…is Conrad Black, known to some of his acquaintances as Lord Black of Crossharbour.

Yes, indeed; an honest-to-goodness Lord, as in the House Of Lords, although he was born Canadian in Montreal in 1944. But he was born into a wealthy and influential family in media publishing; after his father’s death, he and his brother controlled Hollinger International, which at the time was the third-largest English-language newspaper-publishing empire in the world. He founded the conservative National Post in Canada in 1998, and is still a columnist for that paper, in which the reference I chose to talk about today originally appeared. He renounced his Canadian citizenship to accept a Life Peerage from the British, whom he greatly admires, but regained his citizenship in 2023. He is married to Barbara Amiel, herself as conservative as an early foreclosure and also a frequent opinion columnist, usually relentlessly pro-American. To describe him as a colourful character…doesn’t do him justice. However, for today I’d like us to confine ourselves to his reality-spurning ruminations on the endgame for Ukraine, and how they play into his apparent worship of Donald Trump, currently holding down the Presidency of the United States whenever he is not called away to play The Pope, or the Last Of The Red-Hot Lovers, or King Solomon Whose Wisdom Shames The Pretenders.

Russia, Mr. Black tells us, was ‘totally defeated’ in the Cold War, “which caused the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the collapse of international communism, and the realignment of the left of the world as spontaneous environmental militants attacking capitalism from a new angle in the name of saving the planet.” Yes, I meant to warn you he gets a little defensive toward any entity which presumes to interfere with the usually-unfettered pursuit of wealth – kind of funny, when you think about it, because unfettered American-inspired-and-assisted plundering of the former Soviet Union hammered the final nails into its coffin, greatly facilitating its ‘total defeat’ coincident with impoverishing many of its inhabitants, to the credit of a handful of fabulously-wealthy oligarchs. These were the individuals wooden-headed Swede Anders Aslund referred to as ‘engines of capitalist development’, to which Black would doubtless nod in approval.

Is Mark Rutte Stupid?

Uncle Volodya says, “It’s too bad that stupidity isn’t painful. Ignorance is one thing, but our society thrives increasingly on stupidity. It depends on people going along with whatever they are told. The media promotes a cultivated stupidity as a posture that is not only acceptable but laudable.”

“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.”

Albert Camus, from “The Plague”

“For at least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity; idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.”

Aldous Huxley, from “The Complete Essays, Vol. 1: 1920-1925”

With the lights out, it’s less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us…

Nirvana, from “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

If the NATO Secretary-General is not numbingly, dropped-on-his-head-as-a-baby stupid, he offers an award-worthy performance of it – a talented actor who has fooled everyone. Expanding on an earlier discussion with a commenter, I’d like to take a closer look at the interview he recently gave to The New York Times.

Before the author even began to interview the ever-grinning Dutchman, however, she did her media duty to propagate the trope that Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty – the founding document of the NATO Alliance – obligates all members to come to the defense of a member who is attacked, as an attack against one is an attack against all.

“In theory, its member nations — 32 of them now, including most European countries, Canada, Turkey and the United States — are bound by a pledge of common defense: The alliance’s most famous provision, known as Article 5, states that an attack on one member country would obligate the response of all.”

In fact, it does not say that. It says;

“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

That is, the parties who form the membership of the NATO Alliance. Article 6 elaborates;

“For the purpose of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack:

• on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America, on the Algerian Departments of France , on the territory of Turkey or on the Islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer;
• on the forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Parties, when in or over these territories or any other area in Europe in which occupation forces of any of the Parties were stationed on the date when the Treaty entered into force or the Mediterranean Sea or the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer.”

Just so we’re clear, invocation of Article 5 binds signatories to make such response as they see fit; military force is an option, not an obligation, and no member can invoke it for the ‘defense’ of Ukraine, since it is not a member. Just so nobody who reads this can claim they were not told, the wording of obligation was at the specific request of the United States, which emphatically did not want to be dragged into a regional war every time some European princeling wanted assistance to crush a neighbour – to wit;

At the drafting of Article 5 in the late 1940s, there was consensus on the principle of mutual assistance, but fundamental disagreement on the modalities of implementing this commitment. The European participants wanted to ensure that the United States would automatically come to their assistance should one of the signatories come under attack; the United States did not want to make such a pledge and obtained that this be reflected in the wording of Article 5.

Moreover, Article 51 of the UN Charter, to which Article 5 specifically refers as a platform, itself has no firm definition of ‘the inherent right of self-defense’. I imagine few will be surprised that the first to invoke it for its own interests was Israel; the historical record elucidated, “The Court had added, however, that the right of self-defence was reserved to the riparian state “up to a certain point” without explaining what it meant by the expression…In his report to the Security Council the Secretary-General stated that he had had to accept the commitments of the parties under the reserve of self-defence which “according to Article 51 of the Charter is an ‘inherent right'”. Such a reserve, however, was necessarily of an indeterminate nature.”

It therefore would be every bit as legitimate for Russia to claim to be exercising its inherent right of self-defence to protect Russian-speaking ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, considering the Ukrainian regime had more than signified its intent to return the provinces to Ukrainian rule through the exercise of military force. Its manifest intent to officially erase the Russian language throughout its domain remains extant, as plenty of reporting attests.

A Million and a Half Dead Slavs: What’s Not to Like – Right, London? Washington?

Uncle Volodya says, “Political rhetoric and sophistries do not exist, after all, in order that they be believed; rather, they have to serve as a common and agreed upon alibi.”

“I am not capable of true friendship. One of the two friends is always the slave of the other, although, often, neither of the two admits this to himself.”

Mikhail Lermontov, from, “A Hero of Our Time”.

“The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.”

Tom Waits, from “The Early Years; The Lyrics, 1971-1983”.

Since the Glorious Maidan Revolution of 2014, there has been a surge of interest – mostly on the part of nationalist Ukrainians and their European backers – to ‘prove’ that Ukrainians and Russians are totally different peoples; ethnically, genetically, culturally, you name it; that Ukrainians are European and Russians are…something else. The Other.

The conclusions of genetic studies – quite a bit like studies sponsored by cigarette companies which conclude that smoking is only peripherally related to the incidence of lung cancer – depend on the authority which financed them. And while the most unbiased studies find that genetically speaking, the East Slavs – the Belarusians, Russians and Ukrainians – are virtually identical, they also conclude that there is little difference – genetically – between the Slavic peoples and their non-Slavic European neighbours; surprise! We are all humans!

However, linguistically and culturally, the Russian and Ukrainian people have far more in common than, say, the Ukrainians and the French, or the Ukrainians and the Swedes. Even Ukrainian national sites stipulate that around 60% of Ukrainians speak Ukrainian in their daily exchanges while around 30% speak Russian, and nearly all Ukrainians can speak and understand Russian despite determined Ukrainian efforts to eradicate it, because the Slavic languages are mutually intelligible. No other European language spoken in Ukraine comes anywhere close to that prevalence.

Economically, Ukraine before 2013 relied heavily on Russian partnership, not only for many of its key industrial outputs – which derived from cross-border production processes – but for energy imports which allowed its inefficient and energy-intensive manufacturing to remain extant.

“Exhibiting the trade asymmetry associated with ‘the Hirschman effect’, in 2011 Russia accounted for nearly 28% of Ukraine’s trade, whereas Ukraine accounted for less than 5% of Russia’s trade. Ukraine relied on energy supplies from Russia and, with its hugely inefficient energy use and energy-intensive industries, was one of the largest consumers of Russian gas in the world. Despite being an energy-poor state, Ukraine behaved like an energy-rich state and heavily subsidised gas prices for residential users, meaning that low gas prices were of the utmost importance for the Ukrainian economy and state budget. Such asymmetry gives the larger country coercive power over the smaller, because ‘an interruption of the relationship would cause much greater distress in B than in A’. Furthermore, the economic dependence of Ukraine on Russia was exacerbated by Ukraine’s unreformed economy and outdated technological capacity (especially with regard to more value-added goods, such as machinery), which made it difficult for Ukraine to capture other markets, including the EU’s.”

And knowing all that – which it clearly did – the west, in an increasingly-aggressive pursuit, persuaded elements of the Ukrainian political elite (mostly nationalist adherents who had always believed they were European and progressive and would fit right in, to say nothing of the business opportunities they would reap) to a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement, and an Associative relationship with the EU.

It should be highlighted here, and remembered, that Yanukovych – then President of Ukraine – was onboard with this, but cautious and increasingly alarmed by what he perceived as an attempt to build enmity between Ukraine and Russia. It should also be highlighted here, and remembered, that right up until decision-time loomed, Russia was unconcerned by the original terms of the partnership. It was only when it became clear for what it was – an arrangement which would be all-advantage for the EU and an impossibility to implement for its nascent Eurasian Economic Union (EAU) – that Russia began to resist the developing momentum. This is reflected clearly in UK Parliamentary documentation.

“Mr Neil Crompton, Deputy Political Director, FCO, informed us that “Russia went through a long period in which it did not make a major issue of Ukraine’s signature” of the AA. Mr Chris Barton, Director of International Affairs, Trade Policy and Export Control, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, said that discussions on the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) were “not a surprise”, and that Russia “had not raised specific concerns about what it would like to see different in any free trade agreement.”

That’s because they hadn’t actually seen it. Which would kind of…you know…make it difficult to argue against it.

“Mr Fyodor Lukyanov, Chairman, Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and Editor in Chief of Russia in Global Affairs, in contrast, said that the European Commission “never showed any interest in discussing” Russia’s economic concerns: “sometimes it was just indifferent, sometimes it said quite bluntly, ‘It is not your business. It is our bilateral business.'” His Excellency Dr Alexander Yakovenko, Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the UK, asked whether there was advance discussion of the AA, told us that “there was none.” According to Mr Dmitry Polyanskiy, Deputy Director, First Department of CIS Countries, Russian Foreign Ministry, it was only in the summer of 2013, when the text was published, that the Russians had sight of the agreement. The detail in the annexes “clearly showed to [the Russians] that with such an agreement Ukraine would no longer be able to maintain the same level of relations” with Russia.”

Really? Why not?

“Mr Kliment told us that the Russians feared that Ukraine’s signature of the DCFTA would create a conduit for competitive European goods to “flood the Russian market and to damage the interests of Russian producers,” who were not able to compete with European producers. Mr Polyanskiy focused on potential dumping: export quotas offered to Ukraine were “very small—even laughable”, while there were “no limitations for EU products entering Ukraine.” As a result, Ukrainian products which could not enter the EU market because of EU regulatory standards or because of limited quotas would be dumped onto the Russian market.”

Nice Narrative You Have There; Be a Shame if Something were to…Happen to it.

Uncle Volodya says, “In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure no one listens.”

“The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone’s comfort”

Katherine Dunn, from ‘Geek Love’

I cheated myself,
Like I knew I would;
I told you I was trouble
You know that I’m no good..

Amy Winehouse, from, “I’m No Good”

The west has a serious problem; a lying problem. But it’s so much bigger than that. Often a lie, or even a cascade of lies results in nothing more than a broken heart in a single person young enough to bounce back in what is, seen in the rearview mirror, a relatively short time. Sometimes a lie, or even a cascade of lies results in a ruined business and a few more lives touched by disaster. But this lying problem has global implications – if it’s true that a lie can travel around the world while the truth is still getting its boots on, the lying in this case could have reached Earendel (around 28 Billion light-years from here) while the truth was still asleep, because the lying in this case is deliberate and as aforethought as malice, calculated to bring about a reality that now cannot be made to materialize. What happens now?

It might seem an unrelated place to begin, but I’d like to start off with a recent item from Hungary. Just the other day, May 13th, the ruling and democratically-elected government of Hungary tabled a bill titled “Transparency of Public Life”, the intent of which is to get control over the meddling influence of foreign regime-changers like the EU’s various Commissions and Parliaments, through their NGO’s and direct funding of opposition movements.

“Critics fear the draft Hungarian bill titled “Transparency of Public Life”, which was tabled in the Budapest parliament on 13 May, would offer the Hungarian government sweeping powers to crack down on the press and critical voices in civil society.

The law would enable authorities to register foreign-funded NGOs and media on a list, if the government sees them as a threat to national sovereignty, and freeze funding. Severe fines are envisaged where funds continue to flow from overseas sources.”

‘Critics’ being European politicians who are pretty committed to the model that if you don’t like a member government, you slip money to its opposition until the government you don’t like is overthrown. Not just an EU member government, but the government of any non-aligned nation as well, provided it permits the proliferation of western NGO’s. Essentially the administrative bodies of the European Union see nothing wrong with foreign nations being able to directly intervene to upset the government.

Unless it’s themselves who are targeted, of course – the EU’s own ‘Digital Services Act’, nicknamed the ‘Digital Surveillance Act’, is deliberately vague on what constitutes ‘disinformation’, or ‘hate speech’ or ‘harmful content’.

“However, its implementation raises grave concerns. By mandating the removal of broadly defined “harmful” content, this legislation sets the stage for widespread censorship, curtailing lawful and truthful speech under the guise of compliance and safety. The result will be a sanitized and tightly controlled internet where the free exchange of ideas is stifled.

Ultimately, the EU Digital Services Act will allow the silencing of views online that are disfavoured by those in power.

Freedom of speech is the cornerstone of a democratic society and includes the right to voice unpopular or controversial opinions.”

Naturally – or what passes for natural these days – the EU’s regulatory bodies argue this is necessary to ‘protect democracy’. This imposes the dual restrictions of willing compliance – who wants to be seen as ‘endangering democracy’? – and the force of law, so that if you want to insist your content is not ‘harmful’ or ‘disinformation’, you have to go up against the government in court, where you pay for the lawyers for both sides. Ordinary citizens cannot come close to affording that.

Anyway, I could go on about this for quite some time, but I don’t want to go any further down the rabbit-hole right now – my purpose in providing that background is to invite you to imagine how much harder it would be for President Putin to maintain Russian public support for his chosen policies if he was having to deal with astroturfed ‘street protests’ and orchestrated political campaigns against his leadership, bought with millions in foreign cash by parties in whose direct interests it is that he fail.

Simply put, in its overt support of Ukraine as a foil to Russia, with the express intent of damaging the latter and hopeful that its government would fall, the west made extravagant promises to its followers and admirers that even a cursorily critical analysis should have told it were unachievable. And that, in turn, is because the west began its tapestry of lies by lying to itself; that Russia was weak and its society fragmented, with a thriving and vibrant undercurrent of social discontent waiting to be tapped – that Vladimir Putin was a dictator who rules with an iron fist, but whose grip is slipping because he’s getting on a bit and the population has had ample time to get thoroughly tired of him; time for a change.

Europe is Fooling Itself.

Uncle Volodya says, “It’s too bad that stupidity isn’t painful. Ignorance is one thing, but our society thrives increasingly on stupidity. It depends on people going along with whatever they are told. The media promotes a cultivated stupidity as a posture that is not only acceptable but laudable.”

“Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.”

Barbara Tuchman

A compromise would surely help the situation;
agree to disagree,
but disagree to part…

10CC from, “The Things We Do For Love”

If wooden-headedness as a facilitator of self-deception typically plays a large role in government, then today’s European heads of government would give a terminal stiffie to an arborist’s convention, while the EU’s High Representative (certainly acts high, if you ask me, although I’m not an expert) for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy has a head of purest polished oak from ear to ear – if there’s such a thing as a miracle, it’s that she can hear well enough to attend and even chair important meetings, because technically she should be soundproof as a case of headphones. And if an aide was translating the proceedings by knocking Morse code on her forehead, you’d think it would be noticeable.

Anyway, I am moved to write this piece by the increasingly-unreal actions of European government figures, who are clearly so incensed by the suggestion that there is something they cannot succeed at – even though they publicly promised they would – that they have taken leave of their senses.

Consider: as the chairman of Estonia’s Parliamentary national defense committee, Kalev Stoicescu explained a short time ago, a bill submitted to the Estonian parliament would “give the country’s Defence Forces the right to sink civilian vessels in the Baltic Sea if they pose a threat that cannot be warded off by other measures”.

Just to put that in the correct eunuchish perspective, the Estonian Navy consists of eight ships, if we’re being generous, because two are police boats which were merged with the navy ‘to improve coastal patrol capabilities.’ The largest vessel is a 577-ton minelayer. The Canadian Navy’s Glen Class yard tractor tugs are half that, at 259 tons. A low-end Average Freight Rate Assessment (AFRA) Refined Products or Crude Oil Carrier is 80,000 deadweight tons. The biggest gun in the fleet is the 30mm gun carried by the former SANDOWN class minehunters Estonia bought from the Royal Navy.

The Brain Trust at EU Central is currently focused on ‘Putin’s Shadow Fleet’, which members of the Twitterati have correctly interpreted to mean ‘not registered in London’, where an imperial order to not do business with Satan’s Imp in the Kremlin would shut down Russia’s entire oil transport business. And nobody is more up for a fight than puny midget Estonia – Kaja Kallas herself is Estonian to the marrow of her deciduous bones, and the actions and ravings of members of her former government strongly suggest she is not just a barking-mad outrider, but more or less typical of the regulatory mentality. Estonia recently stopped an unflagged tanker in the Baltic which was registered in Djibouti – not an oblast in Russia last time I looked – which the Estonians were immediately certain is a guilty member of Putin’s Shadow Fleet, and they were so excited with the thrill of capture on the high seas that they are now debating giving themselves the right to sink such tankers if they do not immediately comply with instructions. In the context of a 30mm gun against an 80,000 ton tanker, it would be like flinging double-A batteries at it with a soup spoon. Whereas if the tanker decided to ‘accidentally’ drive over the irritating yapper 1/138th its size, it probably would not even feel a bump.

But Estonia’s loopy catnip-crazy antics are just part of a much-broader problem, and that is Europe’s political preoccupation with having a Great Big War if it can’t win this littler one it has been dabbling in from the first, in Ukraine.

Look at Friedrich Merz; a hairdo like a pole-dancer’s landing strip, shoulders like a brook trout. Anyone who would follow him to war would have to be blind, and just listening for footsteps. But Europe is inspired by his brusque removal of the ‘debt brake’, an action which will let Germany borrow like it’s 1923, when history records iconic scenes like German shoppers carrying money in wheelbarrows in order to buy basic necessities. Does he have plans for that borrowed money? I’m glad you asked, because he sure does – Germany must prepare for war with Russia.

“So in February 2022 a stunned Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared a national pivot in priorities, a “Zeitenwende”.

That’s when he committed a giant €100 billion ($108bn; £83bn) to boost the country’s military and keep “warmongers like Putin” in check. But General Breuer says it wasn’t enough.

“We filled up a little bit the potholes,” he recounts. “But it’s really bad.”

So €100 billion ‘filled up a little bit the potholes’. But was not enough; not near enough. I leave it to your imagination how much will be enough, but for guidelines you can use sugar-deficient wooden-headed nutbars Kaja Kallas’s and Ursula Von Der Leyen’s recent attempt to use a relatively-obscure clause to ram a $900 Billion rearmament plan through the European Parliament. Through that it’s-only-money filter, €100 billion doesn’t look like much. Well, except that Germany has been the developmental engine behind the EU, its ‘economic powerhouse’ for as long as there has been an EU, and Germany would be expected to come up with its share of the European Rearmament Plan as well as the slush fund Merz wants to create for Germany’s new enhanced military. And let’s not lose sight that unless there are some violent bedrock changes in American politics, Europe is also going to be mostly on the hook for Ukrainian reconstruction. Uncharacteristically, the Kyiv School of Economics low-balled the cost of that effort at around $155 Billion. For the sake of perspective, the USA alone has spent far more than that in Ukraine already just to prevent it from losing the war, which it is…well…losing. The World Bank was considerably more cavalier, considering it is spending mostly other people’s money, putting the cost at nearly four times that amount, although it was spread over a decade.

The ‘Far Right’ Has Grown Strong Enough That the Establishment Losers Fear It.

Uncle Volodya says; “Conformity is the last refuge of the unimaginitive.”

“They shake your hand and they smile, and they buy you a drink
They say, “We’ll be your friends, we’ll stick with you ’til the end”
Ah, but everybody’s only
Looking out for themselves
And you say, “Well, who can you trust?”
I’ll tell you, it’s just nobody else, it’s money…

Money changes everything
I said money, money changes everything
You think you know what you’re doing, we don’t pull the strings
It’s all in the past now, money changes everything”

Cyndi Lauper, from “Money changes Everything”

When a place gets crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.

Robert A. Heinlein

Perhaps it is a feature of all systems and models that despite their outward vigour when they are fresh and new, they eventually get flaky and unstable, requiring more and more fervent justification from the acolytes who keep the machine grinding along, a constant flow of new believers ready to die for the cause. Similarly, the rules might be few and simple in the innocence of beginning – but if your reaction to any setback or unpleasant experience is to create a new rule which allows you to continue without addressing the problem, eventually the model becomes unstable, insupportable; pieces begin to fall off, and the driving power that once throbbed and hummed begins to falter and stumble.

Thus it is with democracy.

Volodymyr Zelensky, commonly referred to here as Zeliboba or Zelibobik, ran out of presidential mandate in Ukraine almost a year ago. He made excuses that it is too difficult to hold an election during wartime, and his western backers said, that’s okay. You’re still the President, good enough for us. Imagine, if you can, Vladimir Putin in the same circumstances. NATO would howl like a banshee if he overstayed his mandate by a day, never mind a year – rules are rules, they would say. Except when they’re not, obviously. Exceptions can be made. Although NATO is plainly not happy with everything Zelensky has done and does, they paid a tremendous amount of money to get a president who will do as he is told, and they’re loath to abandon him until they are sure of a replacement who is just as malleable. So term limits are as long as they need to be.

An analogous situation has come up in Romania. Calin Georgescu, described in the referenced article and most western coverage as ‘a populist’ – which is not a compliment – was not expected to make a serious dent in politics, which in the west has evolved to a pedestrian and predictable process. The system screens candidates until it has decided who would make the best winner, and then sets about loading the dice to make sure that happens, insulting and demonizing his/her opponents, framing all but the desired winner as cats-paws of foreign destabilizers, and strumming harps while singing about the sanctity of democracy and freedom, which are guaranteed if the desired winner wins, whereas otherwise you are on your own.

Looking Down the Barrel of Disaster – The War in Ukraine Will Last as Long as the Western Public Listens to Idiots.

Uncle Volodya says, “How many times have those awful words – “I know what I’m doing” – been uttered throughout history as prelude to disaster? ”

“In the natural sciences, some checks exist on the prolonged acceptance of nutty ideas, which do not hold up well under experimental and observational tests and cannot readily be shown to give rise to useful working technologies. But in economics and the other social studies, nutty ideas may hang around for centuries. Today, leading presidential candidates and tens of millions of voters in the USA embrace ideas that might have been drawn from a 17th-century book on the theory and practice of mercantilism, and multitudes of politicians and ordinary people espouse notions that Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and others exploded more than two centuries ago. In these realms, nearly everyone simply believes whatever he feels good about believing.”

– Robert Higgs

“The end of an independent Ukraine is and always has been Putin’s goal. While foreign-policy commentators spin theories about what kind of deal Putin might accept, how much territory he might demand, and what kind of security guarantees, demilitarized zones, and foreign assistance he might permit, Putin himself has never shown interest in anything short of Ukraine’s complete capitulation. Before Russia’s invasion, many people couldn’t believe that Putin really wanted all of Ukraine. His original aim was to decapitate the government in Kyiv, replace it with a government subservient to Moscow, and through that government control the entire country. Shortly after the invasion was launched, as Russian forces were still driving on Ukraine, Putin could have agreed to a Ukrainian offer to cede territory to Russia, but even then he rejected any guarantees for Ukrainian security. Today, after almost three years of fighting, Putin’s goals have not changed: He wants it all.”

Vintage Robert Kagan.

Oh, I know the term ‘vintage’ traditionally means something aged, but carefully curated so that it stands the test of time. Vintage champagne, vintage cars, vintage fashion. But it also means, “… of lasting value, or showing the best and most typical characteristics of a particular type of thing”. And since we are speaking here of Robert Kagan’s philosophy as expressed by himself, the lead-in paragraph shows the most typical characteristics of Robert Kagan’s thinking; the only modification is the tone of frustration, of cheated bitterness.

You all remember Mr. Kagan; we did a review of his book, “The Jungle Grows Back”, about 5 years ago. Robert Kagan is part of the Kagan-Nuland Axis of Listen To Me If You Want To Lose, comprised of his wife, Victoria Nuland (AKA The Baker of the Maidan) and brother Frederick Kagan. As I mentioned in that review, he’s a very intelligent man, but intelligence should never be seen as an indicator of mental stability, and perhaps that’s our lesson for today. Examples abound of intelligent and crazy, intelligent and destructive, intelligent and a repeated maker of terrible choices. Is it possible to be both intelligent, and an idiot? Not according to the medical definition. In reality? You tell me.

Always a Bridesmaid: Ukraine Will Never Join NATO.

Uncle Volodya says, “I don’t want everyone to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.”

I think you like to be their simple toy
I think you love to play the clown
I think you are blind to the fact
That the hand you hold
Is the hand that holds you down

Everclear, from “Everything to Everyone”

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

George Orwell

The sun is setting on the conflict in Ukraine, and the west has arrived at a fork in the road. This way lies escalation, throwing good money after bad and the pursuit of diminishing returns, and that’s looking at it purely in economic terms – it should be remembered that these ‘diminishing returns’ represent fewer and fewer Ukrainian soldiers available to desperate efforts to hold the line, more young Ukrainian men dragged off to abbreviated military training and straight to the front because they walked down to the corner store for a loaf of bread, or got off the bus without looking around first.

That way lies putting a smile on losing and making believe it’s winning, accepting that we took on a task that was too big for us and let people who were all mouth and no brains do our talking for us, what the fuck were we thinking? There are no other options, and taking the first fork means ending up at the second fork again – just in a little while longer. Kicking the can down the road, pick your metaphor. Like Larry Hite said once; if you don’t bet, you can’t win – if you lose all your chips, you can’t bet.

Now some of the same crowd that is long on mouth and short on brains are peddling the argument that we can still win this, if we rush Ukraine into NATO – just give them membership, and the war will quickly end. I don’t know why, it just will, why do you have to bog the whole plan down with questions?

How stupid is this? Somewhere between putting the head of an immersion blender into your mouth and turning it on, and…well, I can’t think of a stupid enough example, I guess. You sort of have to ask yourself, how’s the western economy doing? Real good? Now ask yourself, how would it be improved by taking on responsibility for the poorest country in Europe, which has lost its domestic tax base to war casualties and frantic emigration, and had its overall poverty exacerbated by taking on a bunch of loans from the IMF that it can never pay back.

In a similar fashion to the way public health rewrote its reference material on vaccination during and after COVID, NATO periodically ‘updates’ its proud tenets and admittance criteria to reflect changing realities. Not all that uncommon, really – the IMF changed its lending rules in 2023 so it could keep ‘lending’ Ukraine fantastic amounts of money even though the probability it will be repaid is about the same as the likelihood John Belushi will be voted Sexiest Man Alive for 2025. So few may be surprised that NATO keeps the rules loose and vague, going hard on the harps and trumpets as it blathers about freedom, but allowing lots of loopholes so that pretty much nothing it does could be said to be strictly against the rules. In the same sense that the IMF insists it stands for the promotion of financial stability and discourages policies that would harm prosperity even as it scoops cash into big bags and hands it to a country that is completely dependent on foreign aid, NATO pretends to be strictly a defensive alliance which ‘ strives to secure a lasting peace in Europe and North America, based on its member countries’ common values of individual liberty, democracy, human rights and the rule of law’ even as it continues to play gunrunner to a country which is (a) not a member country, and (b) getting the shit knocked out of it for being a western proxy, all while baiting the world’s biggest nuclear-weapons power. Not to mention the ‘democratic values’ displayed by a wanna-be member whose President has twice refused to call an election even though his mandate expired more than six months ago.

So let’s take a look at some of what NATO officially claims are Best Practices, with a view to how Ukraine fits into them.

Destabilizers, Inc.; NATO will Squeeze Ukraine to the Last Drop.

Uncle Volodya says, “Most human endeavours, unless checked by public dissent, evolve into monocultures. Money seeks out a region’s comparative advantage, the field in which it competes most successfully, and promotes it to the exclusion of all else”.

Another park, another Sunday;
Why is it life turns out that way?
Just when you think you got a good thing
It seems to slip away…
Another park, another Sunday;
It’s dark and empty thanks to you
I got to get myself together,
But it’s hard to do…

The Doobie Brothers, from “Another Park, Another Sunday”

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

Plato

For my money, the Doobie Brothers never delivered a finer performance than the one recorded at the Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts in Vienna, Virginia in July 2004, from which the lead-in track is excerpted. For one thing, the sound and cinematography were superb, as it was being recorded for a film; concert videos are frequently filmed on a cellphone with a speaker the size of Kamala Harris’s brain, which virtually guarantees the playback will fall far short of live sound’s richness of depth and tone. But also, the Doobies were a mature band here; not as old as they are now, obviously, but as far from their biker-band beginnings as a peanut from a peacock. The sax solo at the end of “Another Park, Another Sunday” is a standout, as well. Although this track does not feature Tom Johnson’s lead-guitar work, others – like “Clear as the Driven Snow” – showcase the lazy, syrupy bends, endless sustain and melodic mastery of a vastly-underrated guitarist. Although the band has never been embarrassed for originals, carefully curated performances of cover versions like Sonny Boy Williamson’s, “Don’t Start Me Talkin'” lend strut and polish to what was already a pretty good song. I highly recommend the whole performance. Alternatively, if you can get YouTube, most of the concert is available here for free, although the fidelity is hit and miss because the recordings are from different sources.

Johnson is plainly singing about a lost lover, but it occurred to me – yes, there’s the segue, you knew it was coming, I’m so predictable – that similar grief and dislocation might accompany the loss of power you might once have casually exercised, and that here it is allegorical with the west’s inability to bend Russia to its will. Just when you think you’ve got a good thing, it seems to slip away…I’ve got to get myself together, but it’s hard to do. Yes, I imagine it is, and just like in love, I imagine it is harder to get yourself together if what you lost was something you felt yourself entitled to, that it was yours by right.

And NATO has been the entitled manager – some would say ‘dictator’ – of global stability for a long, long time. When it sees something it doesn’t like, it takes whatever steps it believes necessary to re-balance things to its satisfaction; options like revolution, regime change and human-rights investigations are like comfort food for the west. When these are deemed necessary, it is always because the target population yearns for the freedom and democracy only the west can bestow.

Who’s Running My World?

Uncle Volodya says, “Nearly all men can stand adversity; but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

There’s a rise in the waterline;
people get swept away…no doubt
Well I’m not goin’ down.

Who’s runnin’ my world
Who’s runnin’ my world
Who’s runnin’ my world, anyway?

Thundermug, from “Who’s Running My World?”

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”

George Orwell, from “1984”

Thundermug was a Canadian rock act formed in London, Ontario in the early 70’s. Critics said they were good but not great, and that for their style they were competent. Anyone remember the music magazine ‘Circus’? I used to buy it whenever I could, and devour it from cover to cover; I was crazy about music and idolized those who could make it. Anyway, their music critic had a code of symbols which designated his rating – a heart, unsurprisingly, meant ‘Loved It!’. The symbol for ‘Don’t Waste Your Money’ was a little boot.

The release by the Doobie Brothers of ‘The Captain And Me’ in 1973 received a ‘boot’ rating by this dork, I can’t remember his name now; Terry something. The album went double platinum, and was rated number 835 of the Top 1000 Albums of all time. Critics don’t know everything. Sometimes they don’t know anything.

Thundermug’s founding member, guitarist and main songwriter, Bill Durst, is – incredibly – still going. The band was active in the early 70’s, and I saw them live during that period at the old Halifax Forum; one of the best concerts ever in spite of the building’s legendary awful acoustics. I was there also for this concert in July 1977. Thundermug started up again around 1990, and that iteration produced “Who’s Running My World?”, which was a killer album, better than their early material. Durst’s clever use of pick-through hooks and suspended chords yields infectious melodies without descending to pop, while retaining a crunch like stepping on coarse-ground glass on a concrete floor.

Well, as you doubtless suspected, we are not here to talk about Thundermug or defunct Canadian rock bands; I just borrowed their song for the title, and the overall tone. Because most of us must be wondering, possibly several times a day, who is running this orbiting death star, this…this spinning shit sandwich. If I were wise at all, which I clearly am not, I would stay away from the news altogether, because every reading offers up a new revelation which makes me incredulous – I simply cannot believe that people behave as they do, right out in public or in print, and are not locked up. Every time I think, that’s it; people will just never stand for that…they do. In fact, it never seems to amount to more than a speed bump, as the great flaming tarball wrenches itself into another eccentric circle around the sun. Those who have maneuvered themselves into leadership positions and offices of influence over policy have reached a zenith of unassailable power where they could make you wear the ring of a toilet seat around your neck all day if they told you it would ‘keep you safe’.

There are a lot of things I’d like to get through today, because there’s a lot going on, and I wanted to start with the arrest of Pavel Durov, in France. Let’s be clear: Durov is the very image of a spoiled liberal dilettante, and it’s not my intention to rant about his cruel treatment – he is also a billionaire with the wherewithal to blast the French government’s petulant complaints to sand. The angle that interests me, as I suspect it does you, is the west’s determination to get control of his Telegram app, and thereby another outlet for ‘disinformation’, just another service by Government Incorporated to help keep you safe by regulating what you are allowed to see in your personal process of decision-making.

For their part, the Ukrainians are iffy on the Durov Affair; they love the idea of the west pulling the rug out from under another wealthy and influential Russian and frog-marching him off to cells…on the other hand, Durov has been as contemptuously anti-Putin as Khodorkovsky ever was, and the Telegram app itself was developed to facilitate communications out of reach of the Russian government and as a corridor for opposition. Listen:

“The controversy surrounding the messenger stems from its confidentiality. This was precisely Durov’s aim: to prevent state intervention and regulation.

He mentioned that the idea for the platform emerged during searches by Russian security forces due to his refusal to remove opposition groups from VKontakte. Pavel realized there was no secure way to communicate, so developing a program with encrypted communication seemed like a good solution.

In 2018, Russian security services threatened to ban access to Telegram in the country if Durov did not hand over the encryption keys. The court even fined the platform’s management 800,000 rubles for refusing to cooperate with the FSB. For a time, the messenger was blocked in Russia, but in 2020, Russians regained access to the app.

I imagine you saw right away that Durov’s brainchild was perfectly okay with official Ukraine, and with its western partners, as long as it was defiantly refusing the efforts of the Russian government to regulate and snoop upon its content.

“Overall, Telegram has become a convenient platform for tracking news and communicating with users from around the world, but it is also considered potentially dangerous due to its anonymous channels, where propaganda, calls for violence, and illegal activities can spread.

The British news agency The Telegraph describes the platform’s confidentiality as its “dark side,” making it a “safe haven for criminals.”

The Telegraph cites warnings from researchers that Telegram is a sprawling ecosystem of illegal and violent content linked to far-right conspiracy theories, extremism, terrorism, and child abuse.”

I don’t think I would be too far off the mark, then, in suggesting that what makes western governments nervous is Durov’s apparent unwillingness to treat them differently from the Russian government. In order for Durov to police the messenger service the way the west wants him to do, he would have to accept their guidelines on what constitutes ‘far-right conspiracy theories, extremism and terrorism’. The child-abuse item is just thrown in there to make the whole package sound wholesome and forthright. The accusations, then – I don’t think we can call them ‘charges’ just yet – against Durov are that by not agreeing to police his messenger service in accordance with western diktat, he is complicit in the allegedly illegal activity that occurs therein.