Writing about Ukraine at the Asia Times, David Goldman — the analyst formerly known as “Spengler” — commented last week on the desperate strategic fantasy that continues to hold the GAE and NATO (but I repeat myself) under its spell. Goldman is a very smart guy, one of the few global-strategic-assessment pundits actually worth paying […]
I note with grim satisfaction the retirement of the maleficent Victoria Nuland, the meddlesome witch whose machinations in Ukraine gave us the Maidan revolution in 2014, and everything that has happened since. In my opinion she has the blood of hundreds of thousands, the collapse of the Ukrainian nation, and the useless expense of many […]
February 28, 2024 – 2:05 pm
American media consumers have been soaking for years in a poisonous marinade of lies about our role in Ukraine. With a hat-tip to Dave Benner at Twitter, here is RFK Jr with an antidote: a history lesson that is brief, concise, and accurate. For a decade, US involvement in Ukraine has been based on a […]
January 20, 2024 – 11:25 pm
One of the reasons that I laid off blogging for a while was that it had become just too dispiriting to try to speak the truth while living in a world of lies. Among the worst of these webs of falsehood (and outright stupidity) was the Narrative about our relationship with Russia in the post-Soviet […]
January 4, 2024 – 10:27 pm
The cataract of aliens pouring over our southern border has risen, in December of last year, to a rate of about three-and-a-half million a year. (Can anyone, at this point, doubt for a moment that this an intentional feature of government policy?) Meanwhile, as our efforts in Ukraine slump toward failure — as has been […]
December 28, 2023 – 6:13 pm
Philip K. Dick once said that “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” A great many people, including myself, have seen, and said, for a very long time now that there was never going to be any “victory” over Russia in Ukraine. Yet for the last two years we […]
December 11, 2023 – 10:51 pm
A great deal has been going on in America and the world since I last updated this blog with any regularity, so there’s an awful lot of backlog for me to pick up and comment on. Let’s start with Ukraine. When I left off, the war in Ukraine was still, more or less, the Current […]
December 10, 2023 – 6:53 pm
I know I’ve said this before, but I really am going to get this blog going again now. (I may start with a post about what happened to me to make me lay off for as long as I did, or I may not; doing so might be just a bit too omphaloskeptic — and […]
October 7, 2023 – 3:26 pm
All eyes are on Israel today after Hamas launched a vicious assault from Gaza with widespread atrocities against civilians. This is one of those days where the tectonic plates suddenly slip, releasing destructive energy and reshaping the landscape. The scope and coordination of the operation make it clear that it has been carefully planned; it […]
Now it’s Israel’s turn to fall apart. The country is engulfed in a constitutional crisis between its old-school Bolheveist left (cheered on, of course, by the usual organs of the Left, both there and here) and those in the center and on the Right (who, according to our mass media, are “authoritarian” “extremists” who want […]
Here’s the latest assessment on the situation in Ukraine, from ~finnem capital: Our latest analysis on the “counteroffensive”: Despite claims that the counteroffensive “has not begun,” in fact, after the Armed Forces of Ukraine were stalled by highly effective strikes on brigade level depots of fuel and munitions, not to mention troop concentrations behind the […]
What the hell’s going on in Russia? From the breathless coverage, you’d think it was a straight-up Wagner mutiny against MoD, with Prigozhin playing the role of Caesar, and already well across the Rubicon. But my sources (and I have some good ones) say that is way too pat. Yes, this is Russia, so sometimes […]
Some of the most interesting conversations in all of media for many years now have been the periodic discussions that John Batchelor has had on his radio program with thinkers such as law professor Richard Epstein, the late Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen, and war historian Michael Vlahos. For a couple of years Batchelor and […]
Here’s Colonel Douglas MacGregor once again, giving a blistering interview to George Galloway regarding this idiotic war and the West’s ruinous decades of prideful stupidity.
February 9, 2023 – 2:54 pm
Following on our recent posting of ~finnem’s assessment of the situation in Ukraine, here’s a podcast in which she and a colleague interview retired U.S. Army colonel Douglas MacGregor. We also have for you a three-part interview of Colonel MacGregor by the military historian and scholar Michael Vlahos, recorded back in December. MacGregor, a widely […]
February 6, 2023 – 9:50 pm
From the abstract of an analysis of the Ukranian war recently published by ~finnem, an online acquaintance of mine: In this research letter we intend to make the case that the present effort to obscure an essentially inevitable set of events represents the most significant contrarian thesis in several generations, and that, as the bitter […]
The Russian Embassy in Ottawa just posted this on Twitter: Wheels within wheels…
Curtis Yarvin. a.k.a. Mencius Moldbug, has posted a pungent item about Ukraine today at Substack. In it, he had this to say: A foreign policy conducted solely in the interest of Americans would not involve intervening in a civil war against a nuclear power on the banks of the Dnieper, for the reason that there […]
It’s good to see that Lewis Anselm, AKA “Diplomad”, is blogging again. Anselm, having spent his professional career working for the State Department all over the world, is always especially good on international affairs, and he’s just posted an excellent item on Ukraine. You should read the whole thing, but I’ll quote one longish passage […]
February 27, 2022 – 2:25 pm
Lee Smith has posted an essay at Tablet summarizing the decades-long runup to this war in Ukraine. It’s an excellent synopsis — brief, clear, and insightful — and I highly recommend it to you all. Greed, bluster, folly, and hubris — this story has it all. Read it here.
February 17, 2022 – 1:37 pm
You may have had some concerns about gathering tensions on the Russian frontier. (There’s much I could say about what it all means, and about our decades of folly regarding Russia, but I’ll leave that for another time.) Well, I’m happy to say you can put your mind at ease, and get on with your […]
January 18, 2022 – 11:15 pm
The chattering classes are atip at the titillating prospect of a Russian operation into Ukraine. The appeal is obvious: above all, they can imagine a surge of patriotic cohesion, a nation united against a familiar external foe — the Russkies — that much of our colossal Deep State still misses with a poignancy that is […]
August 23, 2021 – 4:17 pm
Australia, which started out as a prison colony, is returning to form under the shadow of the Wuhan Red Death. Despite massive protests, the government has imposed brutal restrictions in the name of “safety”, and nothing is off the table: censorship, forced confinement, criminal charges, social intimidation, propaganda, and all the other too-familiar tools of […]
August 17, 2021 – 10:29 pm
It’s important to keep in mind just who, or what, was just defeated in Afghanistan. It wasn’t the traditional American nation (and military), but rather those who have stunned it into helplessness and have been wearing its senseless body as a skin-suit. If there is any silver lining to all of this, it is the […]
August 15, 2021 – 11:27 am
I’m reposting this item about Afghanistan from December 2009, eleven years ago. * * * I watched the President’s speech last night. It was not encouraging. It had something for everyone: escalation for the hawks; an exit date for the doves; the usual rot about “distorting and defiling a great religion”, to keep the Muslims off […]
March 23, 2020 – 11:22 pm
Kind of a slow news day today, but here are a couple of items: First, we’ve all heard that things seems to be getting better in China, with Wuhan-virus deaths tapering off. We’ve heard it, that is, but we also know that the Chinese government, which lies about everything, is almost certainly lying about this […]
March 22, 2020 – 11:18 pm
I’m coming increasingly to the conclusion that our reaction to this Wuhan virus, if it keeps the economy comatose for any appreciable length of time, will do more damage than anything the disease itself might have wrought. On the more benign end of the scale, we have at minimum a crisis that has already been […]
February 14, 2020 – 11:22 pm
I’ll ask your forgiveness once again for the lack of substantial posts here over the past few weeks. Regarding the political scene, I’m finding it awfully difficult right at the moment to summon up the will to comment on any of it — not that there isn’t plenty I could say, but at this point […]
January 31, 2020 – 9:36 pm
Here’s a research paper, from a team of scientists in India, about the now-pandemic coronavirus. They are puzzled by an “uncanny similarity” of portions of its molecular structure to other dangerous viruses, including HIV, and say that the insertion of these novel sequences is “unlikely to be fortuitous in nature”. Perhaps we will be hearing […]
January 6, 2020 – 7:57 pm
Here’s a thing Donald Trump and I have in common: we both had Scottish mothers — mine from Glasgow, and his from the Hebrides. Here too is a thing that the Scots and many of the peoples of the Middle East have in common: they are tribal societies from remote places. In such circumstances — […]
January 6, 2020 – 12:34 pm
Lewis Amselem, a.k.a. “Diplomad”, has put up a rousing post on the Soleimani hit. Best of all, I think, was the bit at the end: Now is the time openly to tell the Iranians that we do not want war, but they should want it much less. We should openly tell them that we will […]
January 3, 2020 – 9:43 pm
Everybody’s abuzz about this Qassem Soleimani business. I don’t have much to say about it, but I’ll say this: First, it’s amusing that some parties seem so persnickety about the legality of striking down a man who made his career in terrorism and assassinations all over the globe. Second, I’m having a hard time seeing […]
September 26, 2019 – 2:06 pm
Given the accusations leveled against Donald Trump for asking Ukraine to assist in corruption investigations, readers might like to have a look at this: The White House, November 10, 1999. To the Senate of the United States: With a view to receiving the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification, I transmit herewith the […]
September 20, 2019 – 11:37 pm
So: In 2014, the Obama administration backs a revolution in Ukraine, intended to turn that nation away from Russia. Joe Biden, then vice-president, becomes the administration’s go-between with Ukraine. That makes Biden a powerful guy, as far as Ukraine is concerned. Biden’s kid Hunter ends up being on the board of a corporation over there, […]
September 19, 2019 – 7:10 pm
The militant Islamist group Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, is also one of the world’s biggest organized-crime cartels, dealing in drugs, weapons, and money-laundering on a global scale to support its jihad. During the Obama administration, the DEA mounted a massive investigation, and was prepared to mount an enormous legal assault on the syndicate — […]
The ground is shifting in Europe: nationalist parties, including Nigel Farage’s nascent Brexit Party, gained a lot of ground in the recent EU elections. Meanwhile, though, the Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz — who is routinely described as “far right”, despite being nothing more than a patriot who takes seriously any government’s duty to act as […]
Here’s European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker’s opinion of the little people: June 6th will mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day.
April 25, 2019 – 10:53 pm
Michael Anton, a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute who is currently a lecturer and researcher at Hillsdale College, wrote what became the most influential political essay of the 2016 presidential campaign: The Flight 93 Election. (If you haven’t read it, I’m surprised — but you can do so here. Readers may also recall our […]
Here’s the distinguished Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen on what he calls the “myth” behind Russiagate: the idea that Russia “attacked” the United States during the last presidential election.
January 29, 2019 – 12:53 pm
News from North Korea: North Koreans ordered to produce impossible amount of human manure every day to help save agriculture: report How much is that “impossible amount” of poop that each North Korean is supposed to provide? A hundred kilograms — far more than the average North Korean’s total body weight. Per day. At first […]
December 20, 2018 – 9:04 am
There’s been a ruction, unsurprisingly, about President Trump’s announcement that we’ll be pulling U.S. troops out of Syria. I have no objection whatsoever to this decision: Mr. Trump’s promise to disentangle ourselves from pointless and costly wars in far-off snakepits was an important part of why he was elected, and Syria, a viper’s nest if […]
November 27, 2018 – 1:19 pm
This over the transom during the wee hours, from John McCreary’s NightWatch: A brief living systems analysis of the caravan that trekked from Honduras to Tijuana provides insights about the phenomenon of the caravan. The caravan emerged as a living system when it left San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras. There is a history of […]
November 6, 2018 – 2:32 pm
Well, this is interesting: 73 years after the end of World War II, and 26 years after the Maastricht Treaty, French president Emmanuel Macron is calling on the European Union to begin taking responsibility for its own strategic security. This is another of the issues that Donald Trump campaigned on. The generous public benefits offered […]
October 23, 2018 – 12:12 pm
Judicial Watch reports on the “refugee” caravan snaking toward our border, and paints rather a different picture than our major news media: Besides gang members and mobs of young angry men, the Central American caravan making its way into the United States also consists of Africans, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans and Indians. Judicial Watch is covering […]
Following on our previous post, today we bring you a column by Angelo Codevilla about Monday’s conference in Helsinki. It begins: The high professional quality of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin’s performance at their Monday press conference in Helsinki contrasts sharply with the obloquy by which the bipartisan U.S. ruling class showcases its willful incompetence. […]
How wearying it is to watch the reaction of the press, and of his political enemies, to President Trump’s press conference with Vladimir Putin. The hyperbole — “Treason! Pearl Harbor! Kristallnacht!” — would be comical if we weren’t already at about the halfway point on the road to civil war. (This is the same crowd, […]
I’ve just read a good item, by Joel Kotkin at City Journal, about a conference in Normandy on the future of Western democracy. It is appropriately gloomy, and savvy readers will catch a whiff of the Iron Law of Oligarchy in the extent to which democratic rule in Europe is anything but representative, and proceeds […]
For as long as I can remember we’ve been lectured about the peaceful streets of England, and how that “scepter’d isle” should be a model for us of the blessings of a government that disarms its people. Meanwhile, old Blighty has been hard at work, for decades now, putting every aspect of its ancient culture […]
With “Dear Old Blighty” on the Motus Mentis radar these last days, we have for you a warmly dyspeptic assessment of the recent House of Windsor nuptials. (We thank, once again, our e-pal Bill Keezer for the link.) A sample: Both Harry and Meghan seem personable young people but the role of a royal is […]