There’s Never Been a Better Time for NATO to confront Russia. As Long as You are Russia.

Uncle Volodya says, “All my misfortunes come of having thought too well of my fellows.”

Masquerading as a man with a reason,
My charade is the event of the season;
And if I claim to be a wise man, well
It surely means that I don’t know…

Kansas, from “Carry On Wayward Son”

“I ended my time in Intelligence convinced that my country’s operating system—its government—had decided that it functioned best when broken.”

Edward Snowden, from “Permanent Record”

There are no great thinkers left in the west.

Well, maybe that’s not entirely accurate – but if there are, they are not in national leadership positions. Instead NATO nations are led by simpletons like Liz Truss, who did not know that Rostov and Voronezh are part of Russia, or perhaps thought that if Britain did not recognize Russia’s sovereignty over these regions the Russians might become confused, and give them up. This issue came up in February 2022, when Truss was Britain’s Foreign Secretary, and showing off her talking-tough chops by ordering Moscow to pull its forces back from Ukraine’s borders. The forces which were the subject of their discussion were inside Russia, which is a completely unsurprising place to find Russian forces.

Or Annalena Baerbock, who insisted Putin could completely change the unfolding of events in Ukraine if he would ‘turn by 360 degrees’ from his present course, which would of course put him exactly back where he had been.

Or Jens Stoltenberg, who claims it is ‘still not too late for Ukraine to win the war’ when Russia is pounding it with as much as a ten-to-one advantage in artillery and has more than three times the population. I don’t suppose I have to tell you that Jens Stoltenberg not only was never in the military, but never made any serious study of military history, or he would know that none of the realities of Ukraine’s present military situation argue in favour of anything that might look like success. But when reality might be too scary, you can always listen to the patter of happy talk coming from the Ukrainian government, which convinced US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo that Russia, in the opening stages of the war, had fallen so short of the semiconductors used to build precision-guided missiles that it was taking them from dishwashers and refrigerators. She heard that from the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Denis Shmyhal, who must have laughed his ass off to see such evidence of gullibility.

“She said she has heard anecdotes from the Ukrainian prime minister that some of the Russian equipment left behind contains semiconductors from kitchen appliances because the defense industrial base is having a hard time producing more chips on its own and is facing export controls that limit its ability to import the technology from other countries.”

Electronics at the level of precision-guidance systems is fairly exacting, which leads us naturally to the question of how the Ukrainians knew semiconductors in Russian military equipment came from kitchen appliances. Was ‘refrigerator’ coded into the circuit board somewhere? If not, are certain semiconductors perhaps common to both? The whole concept is bizarre – if high-level and hard-to-find chips needed to build missile-guidance systems are contained in home refrigerators, how are sanctions ‘working’? Couldn’t Russia simply import hundreds of thousands of refrigerators and dishwashers? They’re not sanctioned. Listen to what is coming out of your stupid mouth, how about? And while you’re being quiet, think about next time picking allies who are not clowns from a comedy show, although that doesn’t necessarily imply you need to repeat whatever they say without reflecting upon whether it might sound as if you are suffering from early-onset dementia.

Whatever You Have to Tell Yourself

Uncle Volodya says; “You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you, but nothing forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute.”

“We seem to be unable to resist overstating every aspect of ourselves: how long we are on the planet for, how much it matters what we achieve, how rare and unfair are our professional failures, how rife with misunderstandings are our relationships, how deep are our sorrows. Melodrama is individually always the order of the day.”
― Alain de Botton, from Religion for Atheists

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
― Jane Austen, from Pride and Prejudice

A Captain I occasionally work with uses the title phrase to suggest the person he is speaking to is getting a little above himself – that he might be getting an inflated view of his importance and worth. An updated version, I guess you might say, of Pascal’s “Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of yourself”, although I think we can agree that would be an unwieldy phrase in an era where nobody talks like a 17th-century French philosopher. But in that context, it is an extremely useful and utilitarian means of conveying subtle mockery without being openly insulting. And on a national scale, the United States – or at least its government – has elevated getting above oneself to an art form.

Consider this recent example: on the occasion of the ‘retirement’ of Victoria Nuland, principle neoconservative architect of The Glorious Maidan and the Revolution of Dignity – and, to a large extent, the subsequent hot war between Russia and Ukraine – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken offered this tribute via X:

“Russia is weaker militarily, economically and diplomatically. NATO is bigger, stronger, and more united than at any time in its nearly 75-year history”

All, presumably, attributable at least in part to the selfless pick-and-shovel work of Victoria Nuland, who made it a lifelong project to fuck over Russia by any means necessary, at any cost and using every resource at her disposal. Including, obviously, the lives of Ukrainians, the American government’s proxy army. By Mr. Blinken’s reckoning, her tenure as the US Department of State’s Big Anti-Russia Boxing Glove has been a rousing success.

Has it?

We Come Not to Praise Zelensky, but to Bury Him.

Uncle Volodya says, “Some people are in such utter darkness that they will burn you just to see a light. Try not to take it personally.”

Old adversaries, when they meet again,
Are as familiar as two old friends…

Wide Mouth Mason, from “Sugarcane”.

“I hate stupidity, but what I hate even more is when people actually brag about it.”

Bill Maher, from “When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden”

There’s a sort of stink that surrounds Volodymyr Zelensky these days, and follows him wherever he goes. The miasma of failure, surely, since The Great Counteroffensive of 2023 turned out to be a military success like…well, like playing the President on television is like being the President in real life. Which is to say, not at all like a military success. But it’s more than that. What accompanies Zelensky these days is the stink of the walking dead, politically speaking.

And you could actually see it coming pretty far out; first there were gentle criticisms of what a grifter he is, not only always asking for money but downright acting as if he was entitled to expect it from you, as if he believed that guff about Ukraine being the front line of defense of western democracy. Ukraine is actually about as much like a functioning democracy as a…I can’t actually think of an appropriately ridiculous comparison, but suffice it to say a country that puts off elections with the absurd excuse that elections inspire disunity and the country really needs unity right now, even s’posing it is enforced unity, is not a democracy. That’s not really as stinging a criticism as it might appear, because the western countries which are supposed to be the models of modern democracy are actually not much like democracies, either, to be fair.

Anyway, after another of his public appearances, in which he grunted like Vin Diesel with a speech impediment and demanded more money and ever-more-exotic weapons, a few skeptics might say, “You know, every time I see that guy, he’s demanding more money. You’d think he would be a little bit grateful for the billions we’ve already given him.” But the mainstream media continued to lavish uncritical attention on him, and his critics mostly held their tongues.

Just as an aside, Zelensky comes across as a steroid muscle-head for a couple of reasons; one, he’s an actor, and he’s playing a role. Two, his English is laboured and not very good. He was not only eloquent, he was compelling when he spoke Russian – would you like to see? Here he is, introducing a couple of guys from the popular Russian TV series ‘Kadyetsva’, singing a completely forgettable pop song while accompanied by leggy eye-candy girls pretending to play guitars. Russian is Zelensky’s mother tongue, although now he affects to hate everything Russian. And leaving your roots behind is perfectly okay, provided you are successful at reinventing yourself. Zelensky is not.

Anyway, let’s not wander too far. So, first gentle criticism. Then, a dramatic drop in public appearances with foreign leaders. Zelensky was the public face of Ukraine, and apparently willing to travel anywhere, anytime so he could get hold of the microphone and advertise the country’s need for more money to thrash Russia. The I’m-so-over-Zelensky moment most remember is that photo from the NATO summit, in which Zelensky was left completely alone by all the dignitaries, standing around in his Fidel Castro fatigues and looking like a spare prick at a wedding. I’m still trying to be fair, and it’s likely he was just unoccupied for a minute or two while his missus was chatting with some other dignitary’s wife about where to buy a diamond-crusted back-scratcher or some other essential item. But there was definitely a backing-away from the previous Zelenskymania, in which he was compared favourably to Churchill and his countrymen were rated the fiercest warriors since the Aztecs, and venues such as the UN General Assembly, the US Congress and the UK Parliament vied for the honour of being addressed by his anthropoid monotone, washing him in the comforting waves of ovation after ovation. How are the mighty fallen!

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.

This Year’s Recipient of the Double-Headed Eagle Prize for Being the Antithesis of the Degenerate and Hypocritical West.

Uncle Volodya says, “Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”

“For me, the most ironic token of it is the plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon that Apollo 11 took to the moon. It reads: “We came in peace for all Mankind.” As the United States was dropping 7 ½ megatons of conventional explosives on small nations in Southeast Asia, we congratulated ourselves on our humanity. We would harm no one on a lifeless rock.”

Carl Sagan, from “Pale Blue Dot: a Vision of the Human Future in Space”

Before we congratulate the winner, a bit of background. This is an entirely new award, and its origins call for a bit of explanation. As most readers will be well aware, western nations – and most typified by the United States of America – have a wide range of honours and awards which recognize a significant and valuable contribution to the human condition. Recognition for advances in medicine, science, awards for inspiring moral courage, medals for bravery and skill and excellence in a plethora of professions.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Winners should be proud of the contribution their  skill and perseverance made to the betterment of mankind. There is also a number of awards made to advancement of more amorphous concepts – such as ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, two words that politicians like to sprinkle over everything like kids in control of the sugar bowl. The politically-minded have displayed a tendency in recent decades to honour those the west perceives as ‘Russian dissidents’ for no apparent reason other than that they appear to believe it makes Russians crazy with frustration and rage. Real contributions to such concepts as freedom and democracy – of which those handing out the honours have only the most rudimentary and imperfect understanding themselves – are much harder to measure. Being rewarded with a trophy for scientific excellence because you are the inventor of carbon fibre, for example, is easy to quantify and understand. Making a contribution to ‘freedom’ where most countries are already quite free is therefore often subjected to political spin, and politicians enjoy being able to give a shout-out to their proteges and friends, and to pretend that yahoos who are greatly disliked in countries those politicians regard as enemies are actually some kind of virtuous saints.

Look at the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for example. The highest civilian award in the United States, it was established by President John F. Kennedy in 1963. It is traditionally awarded by the President and is awarded to a person of his or her choice, or as a result of recommendations. It recognizes “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” It can be and frequently is awarded to non -Americans. Although it is a civilian decoration, it can be awarded to military figures, and when it is it may be worn on the uniform.

Colin Powell was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom twice. It would be difficult to deny his overall humanity and compassion in such cases as his obvious anguish in recall of how Saddam Hussein murdered the Kurds after they were persuaded to rise up against him by American instigators, who then whistled and looked out the window as if there were something interesting going on across the street while Saddam’s forces rolled over them like a sandstorm. The world turned its face away, blubbered Powell in memories of the event. It sure did – including Colin Powell, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time it happened. The President he served then – George H.W. Bush – is on record saying “There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: and that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations’ resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations.” That was on February 15th, 1991. On February 24th, one of the ubiquitous ‘Free Insert Name of Nation Here’ radio stations the CIA frequently sets up to influence the national population, in this case Voice of Free Iraq, broadcast an exhortation to the people of Iraq to rise up and overthrow their leader.

Here’s an excerpt from CNN, with Brent Sadler: “Iraq’s infrastructure: bridges, roads, water, and electrical power systems were severely damaged. Many Iraqis lost services, vital to daily life. By war’s end, one of the most prosperous and modern Arab countries in the Middle East lay in economic ruin; if Iraqis had expected life to improve, they were mistaken. Indeed, 10 years on, their economy is barely functioning. Iraq’s oil revenues are managed by the United Nations, and strict sanctions remain in place on what can and cannot be imported. These trade restrictions have contributed to a spiraling humanitarian crisis for the country at large. A recent UNICEF study drawing a world health organization support and Iraqi data, states that half a million Iraqi children under 5 have died unnecessarily. Under prewar living conditions, they would have survived.”

But that wasn’t enough: the United States for some reason did not kill Saddam Hussein that time around, so it went back for another whack at Iraq, in 2003. Some countries were pretty reluctant, and required coaxing and convincing at the UN. Who convinced them? You know, don’t you? Colin Powell. Using fabricated evidence, pretending to be absolutely sure of facts when many were just assumptions based on Iraqi ‘defectors’ telling the Americans what they wanted to hear, and including Powell’s personal embellishments of recorded intercepts so that they appeared to show the Iraqis attempting to hide prohibited materials from inspectors. Those embellishments were not on the original intercepts.

But he got the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Twice.

The Rise of GloboHate; Washington’s Doctrine of Bullying and Ethno-Hatred Inspires its Admirers.

Uncle Volodya says, “Never do a wrong thing to make a friend, or to keep one.”

Well, we’ve come a long, long way..
Look at everything we know;
We’re getting smarter every day
Ah, but where’s it gonna go?
For all the words that go by,
I’ve got a feeling inside,
That after it’s all said and done:
Though we’ve come a long, long way.
This old world’s not much better than it was…

Ian Thomas, from “Long Long Way”

So we learned recently, via the intertubes, that celebrated American horror writer Stephen King has entered the political fray – unsurprisingly, on the side of Ukraine. In addition to sternly ordering Russia to get the fuck out of Ukraine, he has officially suspended the publication of all his new books in Russia, and also banned the renewal of expired previous rights.

Of course, that’s his privilege, and I wish I could say I never acted like an arsehole through ignorance, but that would be a lie. It’s not my purpose to hold him up to ridicule for his political beliefs or suggest his opinions are of no consequence; I’ve always enjoyed his fiction and have read nearly everything he’s ever written. In fact, in writing, I learned to use snatches of popular music or poetry to set the stage for things I wanted to say or to establish mood from reading King, and it remains a favourite technique. I think he’s wrong on this issue, but we can’t be right all the time, and in most cases we can say later, “You know, on that thing we talked about – I was wrong”, and the world will continue to turn with no serious harm done.

Nor can we guess much, from a short social-media statement, of what he actually knows about this subject, or if the belief he expresses holds true for all countries – if it’s not your country, you have no business there in a military capacity uninvited – although I am bound to say if the latter is true, he must not get out much. The country of his birth, residence and which he doubtless supports (considering he could probably live anywhere he likes) has never been shy about entering other countries with military forces, and when it cannot think of an excuse for doing so which will be broadly accepted, it simply makes one up.

No; the real reason I wanted to feature his declaration up front, together with all it implies about any belief he might harbor that he speaks for the nation, is because of a delicious serendipity. You see, in ‘The Stand’ – one of his best books, in my opinion – and through the character of Harold Lauder, King wrote a mini-manifesto that rings like he was speaking of America itself.

It’s said that the two great human sins are pride and hate. Are they? I choose to think of them as the two great virtues. To give away pride and hate is to say you will change for the good of the world. To embrace them, to vent them, is more noble. The world must change for the good of you.

If you ordered The United States from Jeff Bezos, when the Amazon box with the big smile showed up on your doorstep, the packing slip would read “The United States of America. The world must change for the good of you.” Because America considers itself the original model, upon which all others are based; you don’t have to pattern yourself after us. But if you want our endorsement, you will, and you can’t be a real country without it. And don’t try that “Hi; I’m your new neighbour. Any chance I could borrow a cup of democracy?” because we own the trademark on democracy, and if it don’t read “Made in the USA”, it ain’t the real thing.

Did the United States invent democracy? Hardly. The modern concept is generally acknowledged to have its origins in 5th-century BC Athens, although social groups which arrive at decisions through consensus predate that by a significant period, a social construct referred to as ‘tribalism’. That term, in fact, much more accurately describes the political environment in Washington today. Anyway, when democracy was a’borning, there wasn’t anything in what today is the United States, not even beavers and Indians, although it’s not polite to call them that anymore.

Oh: but look at this, though.

“Modern representative democracies attempt to bridge the gulf between the Hobbesian ‘state of nature’ and the grip of authoritarianism through ‘social contracts’ that enshrine the rights of the citizens, curtail the power of the state, and grant agency through the right to vote. While they engage populations with some level of decision-making, they are defined by the premise of distrust in the ability of human populations to make a direct judgement about candidates or decisions on issues.”

Is the present-day United States even a democracy? Is there a social contract between the US government and the people which enshrines the rights of citizens? Sure is; it’s called the Constitution; more accurately, the Bill of Rights, which is the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Saying a document has the force of law, though, is not the same as saying it protects citizens from violations of it by government. Let’s just look at a ‘for instance’; the First Amendment provides that the government “shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech.” But further back than The Creepiest White House Press Secretary Ever, Ari Fleischer, who told Americans they ‘have to watch what they say, watch what they do’, the United States government has taken steps to limit the freedom of speech, and along about 2020 they discovered the magic formula – if you say Things We Don’t Like To Hear, you are ‘spreading disinformation’, and we have to shut that down hard, to protect right-thinking citizens. Since then, Watching What You Say has gone into high gear.

An Ipsos survey in 2020 found that more than half of Americans said they had become more concerned about their online safety and were spending more time trying to determine if their Internet searches were safe. That’s good news but also an unfortunate sign of the times that so many of us have become paranoid about what we read online.

Determining if their internet searches were safe…from whom? The Russians? The Chinese? Or their own government? How many people said ‘their own government’?

The Changing Face of Foreign Affairs: the West is in Serious Trouble.

Uncle Volodya says, “”We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events. The more we try to explain such events in history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to us.

Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run;
There’s still time to change the road you’re on…

Led Zeppelin, from “Stairway to Heaven”

“They were careless people…they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made….”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, from “The Great Gatsby”

    I led off with that snippet from ‘Stairway’ for two reasons – one, a lifelong love of Led Zeppelin. Two, an opportunity for ironic amusement. Because the time to change the road we’re on slid into the rearview mirror along about the time the USA summarily refused all Russia’s demands for security guarantees, in exchange for resumption of the uneasy peace which had prevailed. Although the forces and pressures which set the current military operation in Ukraine in motion had been steadily increasing for some time, years – that was the moment the wheels of inevitability began to pick up speed, until the windows hum with their turning.

The time to change the road we’re on has come and gone, and the world is now committed to whatever will ensue. We’re in the back seat, while our lunatic ‘leaders’ jerk the wheel this way and that. Each day brings new astonishment to stoke our incredulity, from Germany’s Annalena Baerbock’s ringing declaration that Germany will not waver from supporting Ukraine no matter what its voters think, to Liz Truss’s promise that Britain’s support this coming year will at least equal, if not surpass that of the year currently bleeding out. The UK has committed £2.3bn so far this year, so figure on at least another £2bn in 2023. That’s in an environment where inflation has topped 10%, and the Truss government is planning to borrow about $120 Billion for spending on subsidies to cap British energy prices. The inmates have taken over the asylum – who does Truss imagine will be on the hook to repay a borrowed $120 Billion? The taxpayer, of course. For Germany’s part, in July of this year it recorded its first trade deficit since Helmut Kohl was in his penultimate term as Chancellor. An export-based economy, Germany had been posting the highest trade surpluses in the world; 8%, 9% of GDP, or €20 billion a month. German industry is being ruined before its electorate’s horrified eyes – it is the nature of business that when conditions are imposed upon it such that it can be neither productive or profitable, it relocates to where that potential is again within reach. The German Greens, like Baerbock and Robert Habeck, don’t give a fuck – they hate industry anyway; it uses too much energy and generates so much smoke and pollution that it’s hard to see the dear little windmills turning. Don’t forget, in the next day or two, Germany is expected to announce the nationalization of gas-import giant Uniper; this was supposed to cost the German taxpayer €19 Billion, but according to Oilprice.com the cost has ballooned to €30 Billion, added to the €100 Million Uniper is losing each and every day in its flailing efforts to replace Russian gas. Along with that bizarre action, Berlin also seized the local unit of ROSNEFT PJSC. In case you were unaware, ‘seized’ means ‘stole’. This invites retaliation and escalation from a country which has no worries at all where its gas is coming from, and has customers eager to buy the volumes Europe resolutely turns its stupid face from. Russia continues to realize record profits from energy sales even as the volumes it sells decline.

“Despite efforts to massively damage Russia’s economy in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow’s energy industry appears that it is continuing to boom, with Vladimir Putin’s state-owned gas company Gazprom posting record half-year profits on Tuesday thanks to soaring natural gas prices worldwide.

The company has since announced that it has totally halted gas deliveries to Europe via its major Nord Stream pipeline for what are ostensibly reasons to do with repairs, leaving bigwigs in Europe to sweat over whether the supply will ever be turned back on again.

According to a report by Der Spiegel, Gazprom posted a six-month profit of around 2.5 trillion rubles, roughly equivalent to $41 billion.

This is compared to the company’s previous record annual profit of 2.09 trillion rubles which it posted last year, a much smaller sum especially when the value of the now surging ruble is factored into the equation.”

Two years in a row of record profits, coincidentally two years of concerted NATO efforts to bring the country to ruin, during which it has steadily descended to pretty much every dirty trick in the book. Russians are the same as people everywhere; they see it when people blindly follow prejudice and disinformation to foment hatred against them. Despite this, Putin remains steadily and constantly popular with those he leads. The Conversation has an explanation for that – Putin owns the news media, and it pumps out Putin-love propaganda day and night. As well, people are too scared Putin will come into their room at night and kill them – he does that a lot – to criticize the war.

“Alexander Hill, a professor of military history at the University of Calgary writes that the Russian leader has the support of pretty much all of the country’s news media (unsurprising, as he controls pretty much all of it). So ordinary citizens have been fed a non-stop diet of propaganda since before the invasion was launched. Meanwhile, thanks to oil and gas revenues, the economy is in reasonable shape still. And, Hill asserts, people may just be too scared to admit their opposition to the war.”

I am encouraged to think Americans actually believe Putin is an unstable tyrant who rules with an iron fist, at the very same time that his hold on the public is so sclerotic that criticism from addled dotard Alla Pugacheva is the final straw which will bring his rotten empire crashing down around his pointy ears. The author cheerfully asserts that Pugacheva remains as popular and influential as she ever was, even though she is 73 and her last album was released ten years ago, relying on go-to western-shoe-kisser Stas Belkovsky, and a Russian blogger who writes…Christ, I don’t know if I can get this out….COOKBOOKS! You all remember Stas Belkovsky; you’ll be happy to know he’s still at the National Strategy Institute. They were damned lucky to get him, if you ask me. Strategists like Belkovsky – who predicted in 2007 that Putin would leave politics that year because Russia was too dependent on agricultural imports, the economic outlook for average Russians was deteriorating and Putin wanted to go someplace to enjoy his stolen wealth – don’t grow on trees. Incredibly, he didn’t stop there; Putin, he said, would need a prestigious international apolitical position to insulate him from the fury of Russians when they realized the extent to which they had been duped, and forecast Putin might become head of the International Olympic Committee. Well, he is only 70; still plenty of time for a second career. And in 2021, Russia became a net exporter of agricultural products – way to light a fire under that incompetent bastard, Stas.

Complete Gas Shutoff – Terrible! Resumption of Deliveries – Even Terribler.

Uncle Volodya says, “You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”

Energy can be directed;
I’m turning it up, I’m turning it down…

From “Switchin’ to Glide” by The Kings

“The most dangerous irony is, people are angry with others because of their own incompetence.”

Amit Kalantri, from  Wealth of Words

I came by the reference I want to talk about in this post through a roundabout and somewhat bizarre path. More than a decade ago, a friend implored me to join LinkedIn so that I could add an endorsement to his professional qualifications. I did both, but my LinkedIn account has lain more or less dormant since then. If you’re not familiar with LinkedIn, it has some things in common with Facebook, and they are mostly the reasons I have avoided Facebook. Both send you a non-stop stream of clickbait: “Mark Chapman, you appeared in 4 searches this week!” so that you will be overcome with curiosity as to who could be looking for you, and down the rabbit-hole you go for hours and hours. Both use algorithms and things you have written or read to match you with people who might be acquaintances, and try to get you to build a network of friends and contacts that the program uses to link you to other networks, and so on and so on.

Which is how I keep getting notifications that Edward Lucas has posted something. Yes, that Edward Lucas, the talking spittoon, Estonia’s first digital citizen, fighting cock of the Baltic Republics and noted Russophobe, onetime compiler of birdcage carpeting at The Economist.

The foregoing considered, it will not surprise you, then, that I would be as likely to eat soup made from boiling turnips and Boris Johnson’s bicycle seat as I would be to pay attention to further gobbling from Lucasville. Normally I just alternate between my LinkedIn messages and the ‘delete’ button. This time the message said “Edward Lucas has shared a link”, and although I could not care less if he shared a bathtub with Satan, something in the tagline made me pause: “Edward Lucas, prospective political candidate for….”

You have got to be shitting me. But no! It’s true. Edward Lucas, as addled as a pithed frog, is dipping a toe in the turbulent waters of national politics – as a Liberal Democrat, no less.

Let’s take a look.

“Hello, I’ve finally reached the point of no return. Democracy is in danger. We need to save it.

I’ve tried journalism, writing books, thinktanks, punditry and advising governments. None of it has worked. We are being cheated and lied to at home. Our enemies are menacing abroad.”

Well, he started out far more honestly than most politicians do, although I would suggest he went past the point of no return several stops back. But it can only be a gift for political dissembling that resulted in the phrase “None of it has worked” when the truth would have looked more like “I sucked at all of them”. Perhaps he is destined for politics.

We could probably go on like this for quite some time; it’s been a while since I got going on the subject of Edward Lucas, and I’d forgotten how much I like it. But to tell the truth, I also checked out the post he linked, and it is the subject of today’s discussion.

As you’re all aware, Russia ordered its western gas customers to pay for the commodity in rubles, to Gazprombank in Russia so that the funds would be safe in Russia from western ‘confiscation’ The reason for this was the theft of approximately $300 billion from Russian accounts in western banks, which had served to receive payments by western gas customers. By seizing these funds, western countries announced that they were helping themselves to Russian gas for free, while the blatant theft served as warning that if Russia continued to supply contracted volumes of gas, its western customers would consider it a gift, since payments could be confiscated at any time. The order to pay in rubles, or to make other arrangements for gas deliveries, was effective at the beginning of April this year.

There was a great show of unified resistance, and Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša announced huffily that ‘nobody in Europe’ would pay for gas in rubles. That proved to be one of those predictions like “telephones will never be taken seriously as a means of communication” by the President of Western Union in 1876, or the official rejection of The Beatles by Decca Records in 1962: “The Beatles have no future in show business. We don’t like your boys’ sound. Groups are out. Four-piece groups with guitars, particularly, are finished.” Within a month of the directive, nine EU member states had opened ruble accounts with Gazprombank and four of them had already commenced payment in rubles. Poland and Bulgaria vehemently and loudly refused – in Poland’s case, likely because it believes itself a natural leader and that if it hung tough, everybody would follow: I’m afraid it is forever getting that wrong. Poland and Bulgaria had their gas supply cut off, and became dependents of the Union. Just a few days ago, Latvia’s supply was also shut off, making the naughty-corner occupants Poland, Bulgaria, Latvia, Finland, the Netherlands and Denmark, all of whom refused to comply with the ruble-account requirement. Additionally, delivery to Germany’s Shell Energy Europe was terminated. Latvia replied, “So what? Who cares?” and told anyone who would listen that it had already planned to cease all imports of Russian gas as of January 1st, 2023. How they plan to do that must still be a closely-guarded Latvian state secret, since Latvia’s dependency on Russian gas in 2021 was 92%; probably they meant “the EU will give us free gas”. Eastern European countries frequently attribute magical powers to the EU major states which are second only to those of Gandalf.

In mid-July, Russia declared force majeure on its contracted gas supplies, due to the refusal to return a critical gas turbine which had been sent to Canada for scheduled maintenance, whereupon Canada refused to return it, citing sanctions. Gas supply was reduced to 40% of contracted volumes, and after the scheduled maintenance on Nord Stream I was completed, reduced to 20%. Force Majeure is a mechanism employed in “those uncontrollable events (such as war, labor stoppages, or extreme weather) that are not the fault of any party and that make it difficult or impossible to carry out normal business. A company may insert a force majeure clause into a contract to absolve itself from liability in the event it cannot fulfill the terms of a contract (or if attempting to do so will result in loss or damage of goods) for reasons beyond its control.” Russia’s reason for the declaration apparently is that the turbine has still not been returned, although Canada reversed its decision and claimed the turbine had been returned to Germany for shipping onward. Natural-gas prices in Europe have risen 450% year-on-year.

Whatever Russia is, it isn’t Desperate: Hardball and Soft Heads.

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

“…But not me, baby; I’ve got you to save me
Oh yer so bad, best thing I ever had
In a world gone mad, yer so bad…”

From, “Yer So Bad”, by Tom Petty

“Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.”

Marcus Aurelius

If you can’t be good, be careful. If you can’t be careful – be lucky. And many over the years have noticed that fortune favours the bold.

Are you familiar with the blog, “Moon of Alabama“? Most readers here are, but if you are not, you should be. It’s kind of like newspapers used to be, back before they were owned as business investments, staffed by corporate whores, written by political hacks and read by simpletons. A place you can go to read what happened, and draw your own conclusions based on what you read. As some professional writers counsel in workshops, write the book you want to read. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it is not partisan, because everyone who writes for the public is a little bit biased one way or another, and it’s hard to keep that from creeping into your writing – moreover, a lot of stories on Moon of Alabama and other blogs I like to read appear after a shameless attempt in the popular press to shape and steer the narrative; a casserole made of layers of bullshit seasoned with a soupçon of lies. And it’s hard to write uninflected straight talk when you’re angry, or at least it is for me; writing a rebuttal presupposes you disagree.

Anyway, a big draw at Moon of Alabama, as well as the quality analysis by the author, is the quality of the comments and the valuable leads featured therein. Nobody is more aware than I that your writing effort is a fraction as effective as it might be without astute commenters who can put it together and run with it, making the whole greater than the simple sum of its parts. And I often discover quality sources and links from the comments as much as the story itself – that’s what keeps a story alive. Sure, those stories were already out there; the commenter is guiding you to it by offering you the link. But too often to be coincidence, the first place I find sources that substantiate the way things are really happening is at Moon of Alabama.

Like this one: Gazprom sent some of its turbine compressor units back to the manufacturer for what appears to be routine maintenance. The comment – from karlof1, which links back to one Karl Sanchez – was not supported by a link but featured a quote from a news story. So I checked it out in a search, and it appears to be accurate. Sending bespoke technology back to the manufacturer for scheduled maintenance is common practice, or sometimes a field service representative shows up onsite where the equipment is installed if it’s too hard to remove and ship. The point is that if you continue to operate the system past the date it is scheduled for routine maintenance and examination, and something breaks or burns out, you have voided the warranty. Some sources claim the gas-compressor turbines, which were built by German company Siemens, originated in Canada, while others claim they were supplied by the UK.

Either way, the Siemens representative host country accepted the turbines – and then claimed to be unable to return them because doing so was prohibited by sanctions.

So – and again I am interpreting what I read, because it is not spelled out and sometimes is masked by diplo-speak – it appears that Gazprom responded by taking other compressors which were coming up to their scheduled maintenance date offline. On the face of it, Gazprom looks to have little choice; sending the compressors for maintenance will result in them being impounded, while using them beyond their scheduled maintenance deadline will void their warranty. Pretty much the textbook definition of ‘impasse’.

But the important thing here is the immediate effect – a 40% reduction in the pipeline gas supply sent to Europe via Nord Stream 1. And that news comes on the heels of an explosion and subsequent fire at the LNG terminal in Freeport, Texas, which has knocked an important supplier of US LNG out of service for what was originally projected to be about 3 weeks, and now looks more like 3 months. European natural gas prices that were already at or near record highs jumped another 20%.

Some might be moved to suggest this is great news for Ukraine, which likely will once again volunteer its pipeline network for additional volumes to help its generous European benefactors. But let’s not forget where the gas comes from. Russia has thus far declined to send additional volumes across Ukraine, and is about as likely to do so now as it is to hit itself in the face with a cast-iron skillet. Ukraine has been shrieking since 2014 that Russia is the enemy and an unapologetic aggressor, and the two are fighting a compartmentalized but hot war right now. So it looks like Europe is going to have to tighten its gas-burning belt again, just when Uncle Sam cannot ride to the rescue with molecules of freedom. I’m sure Rick Perry is abjectly sorry he ever came up with that term, but I just enjoy saying it.

Quite a substantial number of people have already speculated that Europe is in for the winter of its life. And it might be, but it is going to feel the closing jaws of crisis well before the snowflakes fly – much of Europe is currently broiling to a tasty golden brown under a merciless heat wave (the trendy term is a ‘heat dome’) that is warned to worsen in the coming days and weeks. That has sent European electricity prices wiggling frantically upward. And Italy, the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands all generate more than 30% of their electricity needs from industrial plants powered by natural gas; in Italy’s case it is nearly half.

We Have Become the Soviet Union Our Parents Used to Frighten Us When We Were Children.

Uncle Volodya says, “Anger is an acid that destroys its own container.”

“Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would smile at the beauty of destruction.”

Markus Zusak, from “The Book Thief”

And you tell me over and over again, my friend;
You don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction…

Bob Dylan, from, “Eve of Destruction”

Most of us are familiar, in that casual way of recognizing something heard before without really pondering its import, with this Nietzsche quote: “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster . . . when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” It is just as apparent that the west’s political leaders have never read it, or if they have, have decided to ignore it in favour of becoming the monsters they condemn. And so, slowly at first but with gathering speed and breathless momentum, we are ‘fighting those who hate us for our freedoms’ by giving them up, or at least remaining silent while they are taken away for our own good.

Journalism such as we once knew, at least the older among us, has given way to ‘shaping the narrative’, and authors take pride in steering people’s beliefs in various directions regardless what is actually happening; I’ll give you an example. Give this a quick read.

Finished already? Let’s start with the opening sentence: “As the war in Ukraine goes on way longer than Vladimir Putin appears to have anticipated, the Russian leader is getting increasingly aggressive.” This is typical of a fairly-recent phenomenon in what used to be journalism, in which you tell your readers what the target’s objectives and reasoning are, and then mock him for failing to achieve the objectives and for commencing on such half-baked reasoning. Nobody outside Russia has the slightest real idea how long the Russian government expected a war it entered into with the greatest imaginable reluctance, and only after being pushed and baited and prodded by the west, to endure. The imagined and much-touted hammerstroke which would have had the Russians in Kiev in just 72 hours is and was always a western invention, based entirely on unsupported assumptions – in this case by America’s top soldier, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley. But you can google the phrase “Russia could be in Kiev in 72 hours analysts” and come up with pages of predictions by ‘people familiar with the assessments’ and unnamed ‘security officials’ which line up behind the purported lunge at Kiev, with the entirely fictional goal of “remov[ing] the country’s democratically elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky.”

Russia has never said or published any timeline for the operation, has never said it intended to seize Kiev, has never in any way implied that removing Zelensky is an objective. In fact, as reported by Jacques Baud in The Postil Magazine’s “The Military Situation in the Ukraine—An Update“, there was never any reason to strike at Kiev, although a feint was made toward it simply (a) because that’s what the west expected based on the silliness broadcast by its quacking analysts and its soldier-politicians, and (b) to prevent reinforcement of the bulk of the Ukrainian Army, which was poised on the line of contact of the Donbas/Lugansk Republics to effect the violent capture and return to Ukrainian control of those republics, and for which military operation the artillery bombardment had already commenced.

“Moreover, Ukrainian forces are never indicated on our maps, as this would show that they were not deployed on the Russian border in February 2022, but were regrouped in the south of the country, in preparation for their offensive, the initial phase of which began on February 16th. This confirms that Russia was only reacting to a situation initiated by the West, by way of the Ukraine, as we shall see. At present, it is these forces that are encircled in the Kramatorsk cauldron and are being methodically fragmented and neutralized, little by little, in an incremental way, by the Russian coalition.

The vagueness maintained in the West about the situation of the Ukrainian forces, has other effects. First, it maintains the illusion of a possible Ukrainian victory. Thus, instead of encouraging a negotiation process, the West seeks to prolong the war. This is why the European Union and some of its member countries have sent weapons and are encouraging the civilian population and volunteers of all kinds to go and fight, often without training and without any real command structure—with deadly consequences.”

Another effect of this vagueness is that Ukrainian casualties are whatever Zelensky and his and the western PR machines say they are; consistently low-balling Ukrainian losses and wildly exaggerating  Russian casualties contribute to a tentative western belief that Ukraine is ‘winning’ and that pouring more weapons and money into Ukraine will propel it to success rather than condemn more Ukrainians to death by dragging out the war for as long as possible. Anyway, I could go on all day with that one sentence; let’s wrap up, because we have somewhere else to go. The opening sentence closed with “…the Russian leader is getting increasingly aggressive.” The ‘aggression’ referred to here is the shutting off of gas supply by Russia to Poland and Bulgaria, both transit countries for Europe, because they had refused to pay for gas in rubles as required by Russia and had let the compliance deadline pass. So, by refusing to sell gas to those countries on their terms, Russia is ‘being aggressive’. Why would it take such steps? I can explain in two words; “Michael McFaul”.