Hey, Democraps, Trump is clearly not under Putin's thumb

I had originally scheduled a piece about pumping the breaks on calling Trump a fascist for this time slot. 

In the wake of multiple news stories from the G7 summit this week, I've moved that back to next week, and this makes a good lead-in for that.

The first was from Tuesday, where Trump said he supported returning to the pre-Iran war level of oil sanctions against Russia.

The second was from yesterday, with the background of French President Emanuel Macron playing Trump, a cheap pawnshop fiddle, as though he were a Stradivarius, including making the Donald think he is a Strad.

The upshot of that story? This:

The G7 countries, including the United States, backed more sanctions against Russia and on Wednesday pledged “unwavering support” for Kyiv, promising new defense capacities while praising its “new momentum” on the battlefield. 

“The tide is turning on Ukraine,” European Council President António Costa tweeted. 

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said: “There has been a change in the United States’ position in the discussions on Ukraine, we consider this position to be more realistic regarding the situation on the battlefield.”

Beyond Democrats, I am wondering how two other classes of people will play that.

One is the "realists" of political science and international studies, the John Mearsheimers.

The other is the Russian flaks, flunkies and fellow travelers on Substack like Simplicius.

Contra both groups, I don't think Russia is winning. Mearsheimer has talked about the war becoming frozen at some point, while continuing to claim Russia is currently still winning.

I disagree. I think the battlefield is close enough to being frozen that, per Spock, the difference makes no difference. 

I'm more curious what fellow leftists, and non-imperialist conservatives, have to say.

Setting aside Trump's flightiness, any commitment to further Ukrainian armament by the US, along with the return of previous oil sanctions, let alone new ones, will squeeze him harder. Will he take inspiratoin from Trump TACO-ing to Iran and finally pull back from his maximalist demands? How much CAN he afford to pull back? 

All's fair in love and war but gads the Russkies are stupid

Supposedly, according to the Beeb, the son of a senior Russian official, himself a diplomatic official, recruited a Ukrainian national to set fire to British Prime Minister Der Starmer's [sic] house.

OK, here's teh stupidz. It is the same teh stupidz of Guccifer 2.0, the Russian hacker who got into Democratic National Committee computer servers — AND into Republican National Committee ones as well, the best refudiation of the godawful Seth Rich Conspiracy theory nutters. For more on the truth of all of the above, see my very long piece.

Anyway, here's teh stupidz, per the Beeb's reporting on the trial of the originally recruited person and two confederates:

There was no mention in the trial of what the posters put up by Lavrynovych on EL's orders actually advertised: a purported far-right group called Direct Action UK. 

The group sought to appear as an organic British creation. But we found that Direct Action was created online by Russian operatives to cause division among ordinary people in the UK. 

Messages sent in the group bore a Moscow timestamp, used Cyrillic letters, and placed pound signs at the end of numbers, rather than at the start - as in Russian.

Can you NOT hide this better? (EL is the initials of the diplomatic official.) 

As for the amateurishness? Julian Assange used the similar amateurishness to claim that proved Guccifer 2.0 was indeed Russian. No, it proved they were amateurs, though not as much as this time — unless the bad timestamps and other things were deliberate, as part of sending a message. 

This piece sounds about right on Putin and Russia

Beyond Putin's "tightening the screws," which we'll get to, first, per Kai Ryssdal (who's actually a neoliberal ass) "let's take a look at the numbers" in this piece from the New Yorker. 

It acknowledges that the Russian economy grew by 4 percent or so in both 2023 and 2024, but saw that rate contract in 2025, and that the economy is actually shrinking 2 percent so far this year. And, per the US definition of two consecutive quarters of contraction, yes, Russia is not quite two months away from officially being in recession.

Not a horrible one, but a recession. 

At the same time, inflation continues to rise. Russia's central bank has its prime rate at 14 percent, nearly double that of the pre-war era.

Ahh, that.

I call the invasion neither justified nor unjustified.

I do call it botched, though.

Contra people who, going beyond condemning NATO to being full apologists for Vlad the Impaler, his original plan was to capture Kiev, which Joshua Yaffa notes in this piece. And by not devoting enough men, machinery or materiel to the original effort, Putin blew it. Period. People like, at least halfway, the problematic Simplicius, who claim that was not the original plan, are lying. There's no way to — and no reason to — put it more politely. Indeed, after that initial January 2025 callout of him at the link in this paragraph, by last fall, I was wondering if he's a Russian disinformation agent. Speaking of, and ignoring what Yaffa rights, that Vlad the Impaler has downsized the regular Victory Day parade on Red Square because of the Ukrainian drone threat, Simplicius plays up Moscow's counterthreat if Kyiv tries something.

Here's the reality:

Earlier this month, the Kremlin announced that this year’s Victory Day parade, held every May 9th in Red Square to commemorate the Soviet victory in the Second World War, which is typically a show of Russian might, would be a modest, small-scale affair. The usual columns of tanks and missile launchers and marching soldiers will be absent—they present too inviting a target for Ukrainian drones. (Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, acknowledged the “terrorist threat.”)

Straight from Putin's horse's mouth. 

Followed by this related in the next paragraph:

Then, on May 4th, multiple news outlets published stories on a leaked report from an unnamed European intelligence agency which describes disorder in the Russian security services over their inability to protect the country from Ukrainian drone attacks and assassination attempts.

Well, there you go. 

I said last fall, at the end of the piece, that I was "snarking" on him being a Russian disinformation agent. Maybe I need to nuance that snark with a bit of seriousness. 

Related to the economy of Russia now being officially in reversal, Russia's attritional gains are slowing down. (Simplicius does handwaving and gaslighting over that.)

That said, while not knowing if asking for less than maximalist demands would actually have led to serious negotiations or not, we know that Putin asking for maximalist demands a year ago tanked that idea totally.

The future? Yeah, per Yaffa, with Prigozhin blown to bits, nobody else is coming after Putin's crown. But, the atherosclerosis of hardening Russian arteries will surely be accompanied by the same symptoms in him. 

Reality Winner still appears less than fully in touch with her own reality

This is a moderately tweaked and moderately expanded version of my Goodreads review. It's certainly less expanded than many Goodreads reviews that I deem worthy of expansion either here or over at my philosophy and critical thinking site, but I thought it worthy of at least a bit of both.

I Am Not Your Enemy: A Memoir by Reality Winner
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

1.75 stars rounded up, and for the MAGAts who most likely are many of the non-review 2-star ratings, it becomes the first 2-star review. (It goes on my "Meh"shelf but not my "Disappointing" because I wasn't expecting much in the first place.) Speaking of?

This review is coming from a non-duopoly leftist who suffers neither from Trump Derangement Syndrome, NOR from Trump Delusional Syndrome, per the one 1-star reviewer, an apparent MAGAt. I venture her comments represent at least four or five of the non-reviewing 2-star raters.

Rather, it’s someone from the left with Trump Reality Syndrome, who knows Russia hacked both the DNC and RNC computers in 2016, but also knows that its efforts to hack state-level and lower election and voter verification websites were a semi-nothingburger.

I also knew early on that the “Golden Showers” was laughable. Trump is literally shame-less, so even if had had a Golden Shower or four with Russian whores — or pre-marriage with a Slovenian soft-core porn model who came to the US on a fake visa — he could not be blackmailed. (I mean, this is a guy whose granddad pimped whores to miners in the Klondike.)

Per what I wrote shortly after her arrest about Winner’s own stupidity as well as The Intercept’s, I wanted to see if nine years of life had smartened Winner up. On the political issue that led to her arrest, and to her overreading a semi-nothingburger document, it appears not to have done so, as least as judging by silence.

(Beyond the Intercept's belated apology, plenty of other people owe her apologies. Like Michael Steele the British ex-MI6 agent who bought "Golden Showers" hook, line and sinker. Or Jon Chait, with his blathering that Trump has been not just a Russian but a USSR actual "asset" since the time of Gorbachev. None of these apologies, nor a pardon from the USofA government, will ever be forthcoming.)

Also, getting through the early part of the book, and either forgetting or not knowing that she had converted to Judaism or other things, wanted to see if she had any comments on Zionism, and its threat to the US. Nope. None in the whole book, despite Bibi Netanyahu being more of a danger to the US than Vladimir Putin. Yes, not all Jews are Zionists. But, still.

I think Winner has realized she can’t save the world. But, beyond not talking about Zionism, she says nothing about what she thinks today about Russiagate, which means she likely still believes it.

Her last (I guess) attorney? Allison Grinter (Gunter)? The attorney full of crap and lies in the PRO Gainesville case? (This is why I’m a skeptical leftist.) It's kind of fun having a bit of personal connection to a book.

I otherwise have one takeaway about her post-arrest story. In talking about her trial, she claims, without using the exact phrase, that she was not Mirandaed at her initial interrogation and arrest by the FBI. Really? Then why wasn't this raised at trial? Somehow, I think her framing is off. For example, you don't have to be Mirandaed if police indicate in some way, even without shouting it out, that you're free to leave. (Or free to tell them to leave if they're on your property and don't present a warrant.) And, from the way she lays out the scenario, it sure looks like that's what happened.

Otherwise, this is a tale of sadness, sadness in some ways that Winner herself doesn’t seem to grasp.

Her life seems to exemplify a sex-neutral version of the second half of the first of the ten Divarim from Exodus.

“The ‘sins’ of parents visit themselves even unto the third and fourth generation of those that hate me.” Throwing out the ideas of god, whether Yahweh, Jesus, Zeus and the House of Atreus or whatever distributing multigenerational punishments for sin, as secular psychology this is quite true. Winner’s parents were both hurt people who entered college looking to work for CPS, to help hurt people. They probably married each other to heal each other. It certainly didn’t work with Winner’s biological dad, and beyond the “Momface,” a nickname never explained in this no-index (dinged!) book, may not have totally worked with her mom.

Winner was hurt too. There’s the bulimia which pops in out of nowhere and is never explained as to how or why it started. (Hold on to that thought.) There’s what she calls “marking” in federal prison, but which is normally known to counselors as “cutting.” Then there’s the whole psyche, at least before getting out of prison, and certainly before her arrest, as a person who simply cannot stand still, and in a number of ways, simply cannot stand being alone.

The “hold on to that”? I quote from my review of the book “Bottoms Up” by Kerry Howley, a person Winner touts several times. (The book is actually a 1-star effort, more disorganized and more shallow even than Winner’s own book. )

Winner appears to have had a highly compartmentalized, and highly fragile, psyche, held together and shielded only by a highly disciplined organizational self. That, obviously, was shattered. And, I don’t know if she was put back together again by Humpty Dumpty’s sources. (For instance? The admission of bulimia that shocked her mother? We're never told when it developed. While we read about a new boyfriend every six months, we never have Winner say why — if she even consciously knows why. Nor do we hear more about her sister's apparent long-standing feeling that Reality was often a jarring intrusion into her own life.)

We’re not told that last bit by Winner, either, who is all smiley-faced about her sister throughout the book.

I think Winner is more hurt than she may realize. Maybe she's more hurt than she wants to realize, for that matter.

Bulimia? Cutting? With lesser “tells” of not being able to be alone and having a new boyfriend every six months? Trusting people to the level of gullibility? (There's one or two other things, but those are the biggest.)

I could be wrong, but to me, this is screaming child sexual abuse.

Reality Winner, I deeply hope I'm wrong. I at least as deeply hope that if I am not wrong, you're able to see this past and get help for it. 

Even if it's not that, I still think there's something we're not hearing. It's Winner's right not to tell that, but it's also our right to say she's used up her 15 minutes of fame at th at point. 

Top blogging of 2025

As with my monthly roundups, while these were the most read pieces of 2025, not all of them were written IN 2025. 

And, as with the monthly roundups, I'll note the original date of "evergreen" pieces. I'll also, if they are older than 2024, take a guess as to their ongoing, or renewed, popularity.

And, with that?

No. 10: "Fuck r/NationalPark for a duopoly tribalist ban." It was an additional piss-off because I had extensive facts to document the non-duopoly comment that got me banned, and because r/Texas had pulled the same shit not too much earlier. 

No. 9 came from early in 2025, just a couple of months into Trump 2.0's reign, and explains the title of the short piece: "The Resistance 2.0 wants to relitigate Russiagate 1.0." That said, Trump continues to give BlueAnon and Never Trumper Rethuglicans ammo for this, and no, MAGAts, not in a trolling way, but in an increasingly Trumpian stupidity way. 

No. 8 was political prognostication. "Oh, Canada, can the Liberals win again?" They and PM Mark Carney did indeed, but Canada lost in large part due to the utter implosion of the New Democratic Party, which saw the radioactivity of its previous confidence and supply agreement with Trudeau come home to roost. Meanwhile, for denizens of parliamentary democracies who laugh at, or scratch their heads over, the lengthiness of US presidential elections, why does it take a full year for the NDP to choose a new party leader, or over in Britain, a new party, the Your Party, the same amount of time to choose an official first party leader. In addition, if your country's upper house of government is not that much more democratic than the US Senate (looking at Canada, Great Britain, Germany and France for starters), you have additional lack of room to mock.

Speaking of mocking?

No. 7, "The REAL Footprints in the Sand," mocked indeed that hoary old Christian chestnut. 

No. 6 was one iteration from the weekly Texas Progressives blog roundup. I have no idea why it trended, but it did.

No. 5 was from way back in 2018, about my approval of the St. Louis Cardinals trading for Paul Goldschmidt. I'm guessing it trended because of him being let go by the Cards after the 2024 offseason, then signing a deal with the Yankees.

No. 4 was a brief post from last summer, "Trump is actually right on California's high-speed rail." 

No. 3? Cannabis is always a good hot topic. That said, while I said, or claimed, back in 2021, that there was "More pressure on Texas to loosen pot rules," the state has done no such thing other than to have Strangeabbott and Dannie Goeb get in a fight over THC gummies last summer. 

No. 2? "Three Dems on SCOTUS, no environmentalists," summarizes part of why I'm a non-duopoly voter. 

And the most popular post of last year?

.....

Drumroll ...

Was from 2019.

"Early 2020 Democratic presidential oddsmaking, desirability" ranked all halfway serious contenders on both, the latter ranking from a non-duopoly leftist point of view. I wasn't totally wrong on odds. Saint Bernard of Sanders was No. 1 on that for me, followed by Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala is a Cop tying for second and Dementia Joe in fourth. 

Bernie of course got shivved by a mix of Dear Leader and Harry Reid, who rallied the insiders around Dementia Joe at the same time. That said, as I documented elsewhere, Bernie showed his own balllessness in the campaign, which didn't help. Kamala got the token (it was) Veep nod, while Gillibrand disappeared. 

John Mearsheimer talks truth about Russia-Ukraine

Kudos to The American Conservative, whatever one thinks of it otherwise, for doing an extensive transcript of Mearsheimer's Nov. 11 presentation to the European Parliament, specifically as part of an EP commemoration of Armistice Day.

Video is here:

And, with that, let's dig into the transcript. 

First and up front, the relevance to the date:

Europe is in deep trouble today, mainly because of the Ukraine war, which has played a key role in undermining what had been a largely peaceful region. Unfortunately, the situation is not likely to improve in the years ahead. In fact, Europe is likely to be less stable moving forward than it is today.

Mearsheimer later down gives a "realist" take on both World War I and II:

Remember that the U.S. entered both World Wars to prevent Germany and Japan from becoming regional hegemons in Europe and East Asia respectively. The same logic applies today.

I'd disagree on I, both on Wilson's motivation and the reality of the world stage at that time. But, hold on to that hegemony idea for a few paragraphs.

Then some of the specifics of what's gone wrong, including some of the lies by the US and/or EU. 

First, the EU-NATO relationship is succinctly spelled out:

Some might argue that the EU, not NATO, was the main cause of European stability during the unipolar moment, which is why the EU, not NATO, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012. But this is wrong. While the EU has been a remarkably successful institution, its success is dependent on NATO keeping the peace in Europe.

Exactly, EU. You still don't have that rapid reaction force; you still must hide behind the skirts of NATO. Post-invasion political science, with NATO expansion, has seen membership of the two organizations more closely align, too.

Next, it's post-Cold War unipolarity vs the start of multipolarity, which Mersheimer dates to 2017. Gee, what happened in the US then?  Anyway, here you go:

Russia is the weakest of the three great powers and contrary to what many Europeans think, it is not a threat to overrun all of Ukraine, much less eastern Europe. After all, it has spent the past three and a half years just trying to conquer the eastern one-fifth of Ukraine. The Russian army is not the Wehrmacht and Russia—unlike the Soviet Union during the Cold War and China in East Asia today—is not a potential regional hegemon.

OK, the pre-2014, if you will, stage has been set. Gee, what happened in 2014? 

But first, a side note on Israel. Noting the "special friendship" there, Mearsheimer adds this will always distract the US from elsewhere, no matter who's in the White House. 

Well, one more bit of final stage-setting, including a warning for the people to whom he's speaking at that moment:

Europe and the U.S. foolishly sought to bring Ukraine into NATO, which provoked a losing war with Russia that markedly increases the odds that the U.S. will depart Europe and NATO will be eviscerated. Let me explain.

Eviscerated, it will be. German carmakers, and to a lesser degree, others in Europe, bet wrong on both hybrids and full electrics, and China is eating their lunch more than Tesla, which has faced more of a backlash than in the US. A fair amount of the electronics world is either US companies building shit in China, or Chinese companies building shit ever faster, followed by Japan. Where's today's Nokia? Where's Europe sit on solar panel construction? Where's Europe sit without Russian natural gas? Oh,in the hands of either US or certain of the Arab petro-klepto states, even worse than it does on oil, where Norway and the UK have a fair amount still.

Then, truth vs lies.

The conventional wisdom in the West is that Vladimir Putin is responsible for causing the Ukraine war. His aim, so the argument goes, is to conquer all of Ukraine and make it part of a greater Russia. Once that goal is achieved, Russia will move to create an empire in eastern Europe, much like the Soviet Union did after the Second World War. In this story, Putin is a mortal threat to the West and must be dealt with forcefully. In short, Putin is an imperialist with a master plan that fits neatly into a rich Russian tradition. There are numerous problems with this story. Let me spell out five of them. 

First, there is no evidence from before February 24, 2022 that Putin wanted to conquer all of Ukraine and incorporate it into Russia. Proponents of the conventional wisdom cannot point to anything Putin wrote or said that indicates he thought conquering Ukraine was a desirable goal, that he thought it was a feasible goal, and that he intended to pursue that goal. 

When challenged on this point, purveyors of the conventional wisdom point to Putin’s claim that Ukraine was an “artificial” state and especially to his view that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people,” which is a core theme in his well-known July 12, 2021 article. These comments, however, say nothing about his reason for going to war. In fact, that article provides significant evidence that Putin recognized Ukraine as an independent country. For example, he tells the Ukrainian people, “You want to establish a state of your own: you are welcome!”

There you are. 

Was Russia trying to conquer all of Ukraine, or was it indeed a "special operation"? Mearsheimer says the latter:

Second, Putin did not have anywhere near enough troops to conquer Ukraine. I estimate that Russia invaded Ukraine with at most 190,000 troops. General Oleksandr Syrskyi, the present commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, maintains that Russia’s invasion force was only 100,000 strong. There is no way that a force numbering either 100,000 or 190,000 soldiers could conquer, occupy, and absorb all of Ukraine into a greater Russia.

Note the Ukrainian agreement. (Mearsheimer notes Russia also had some idea about NATO upscaling Ukraine's armaments kit.)

Next, the various sabotaging of peace talks:

Immediately after the war began, Russia reached out to Ukraine to start negotiations to end the war and work out a modus vivendi between the two countries. This move is directly at odds with the claim that Putin wanted to conquer Ukraine and make it part of Greater Russia. Negotiations between Kiev and Moscow began in Belarus just four days after Russian troops entered Ukraine. That Belarus track was eventually replaced by an Israeli as well as an Istanbul track. The available evidence indicates that the Russians were negotiating seriously and were not interested in absorbing Ukrainian territory, save for Crimea, which they had annexed in 2014, and possibly the Donbass region. The negotiations ended when the Ukrainians, with prodding from Britain and the United States, walked away from the negotiations, which were making good progress when they ended. 

Furthermore, Putin reports that when the negotiations were taking place and making progress, he was asked to remove Russian troops from the area around Kiev as a goodwill gesture, which he did on March 29, 2022. No government in the West or former policymaker has seriously challenged Putin’s account, which is directly at odds with the claim that he was bent on conquering all of Ukraine. 

Fourth, in the months before the war started, Putin tried to find a diplomatic solution to the brewing crisis. On December 17, 2021, Putin sent a letter to both President Joe Biden and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg proposing a solution to the crisis based on a written guarantee that: 1) Ukraine would not join NATO, 2) no offensive weapons would be stationed near Russia’s borders, and 3) NATO troops and equipment moved into Eastern Europe since 1997 would be moved back to Western Europe. Whatever one thinks of the feasibility of reaching a bargain based on Putin’s opening demands, it shows that he was trying to avoid war. The United States, on the other hand, refused to negotiate with Putin. It appears it was not interested in avoiding war. 

Fifth, putting Ukraine aside, there is not a scintilla of evidence that Putin was contemplating conquering any other countries in eastern Europe. That is hardly surprising, given that the Russian army is not even large enough to overrun all of Ukraine, much less try to conquer the Baltic states, Poland, and Romania. Plus, those countries are all NATO members, which would almost certainly mean war with the United States and its allies. 

In sum, while it is widely believed in Europe—and I am sure here in the European Parliament—that Putin is an imperialist who has long been determined to conquer all of Ukraine, and then conquer additional countries west of Ukraine, virtually all the available evidence is at odds with this perspective.

This is all known to people who know, including the people whom Mearsheimer is addressing. It's the "Boris Johnson sabotage" in the first paragraph.

Finally, a bit of "look in the mirror":

What is the basis of the claim that NATO expansion was the principal cause of the Ukraine war? 

First, Russian leaders across the board said repeatedly before the war started that they considered NATO expansion into Ukraine to be an existential threat that had to be eliminated. Putin made numerous public statements laying out this line of argument before 24 February 2022. ... 

Second, the centrality of Russia’s profound fear of Ukraine joining NATO is illustrated by events since the war started. For example, during the Istanbul negotiations that took place immediately after the invasion began, Russian leaders made it manifestly clear that Ukraine had to accept “permanent neutrality” and could not join NATO. The Ukrainians accepted Russia’s demand without serious resistance, surely because they knew that otherwise it would be impossible to end the war. More recently, on June 14, 2024, Putin laid out Russia’s demands for ending the war. One of his core demands was that Kiev “officially” state that it abandons its “plans to join NATO.” None of this is surprising, as Russia has always seen Ukraine in NATO as an existential threat that must be prevented at all costs. 

Third, a substantial number of influential and highly regarded individuals in the West recognized before the war that NATO expansion—especially into Ukraine—would be seen by Russian leaders as a mortal threat and would eventually lead to disaster. 

William Burns, who was recently the head of the CIA, but was the U.S. ambassador to Moscow at the time of the April 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, wrote a memo to then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that succinctly describes Russian thinking about bringing Ukraine into the alliance. “Ukrainian entry into NATO,” he wrote, “is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.” ... Burns was not the only Western policymaker in 2008 who understood that bringing Ukraine into NATO was fraught with danger. At the Bucharest summit, for example, both Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy opposed moving forward on NATO membership for Ukraine because they understood it would alarm and infuriate Russia. ... 

It is also worth noting that the former secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, said twice before leaving office that “President Putin started this war because he wanted to close NATO’s door and deny Ukraine the right to choose its own path.” Hardly anyone in the West challenged this remarkable admission, and he did not retract it. 

To take this a step further, numerous American policymakers and strategists opposed President Bill Clinton’s decision to expand NATO during the 1990s, when the decision was being debated.

Well, there you are. 

Let me add that this is the same Merkel who said Germany and NATO deliberately used the Minsk accords as an "appeasement" stall tactic to help rearm Ukraine. 

That's just half of his speech. 

Mearsheimer then goes on to the course of the war so far, then prospects for a settlement.

PEACEful settlement? Unlikely, he says. 

Consequences? This is selected from a LONG pull quote. Read the full thing.

For starters, Ukraine has effectively been wrecked. It has already lost a substantial portion of its territory and is likely to lose more land before the fighting stops. Its economy is in tatters with no prospect of recovery in the foreseeable future, and according to my calculations, it has suffered roughly 1 million casualties, a staggering number for any country, but certainly for one that is said to be in a “demographic death spiral.” Russia has paid a significant price as well, but it has suffered nowhere near as much as Ukraine. 

Europe will almost certainly remain allied with rump Ukraine for the foreseeable future, given sunk costs and the profound Russophobia that pervades the West. But that continuing relationship will not work to Kiev’s advantage for two reasons. First, it will incentivize Moscow to interfere in Ukraine’s domestic affairs to cause it economic and political trouble, so that it is not a threat to Russia and is in no position to join either NATO or the EU. Second, Europe’s commitment to supporting Kiev no matter what motivates the Russians to conquer as much Ukrainian territory as possible while the war is raging, so as to maximize the weakness of the Ukrainian rump state that remains once the conflict is frozen. 

What about relations between Europe and Russia moving forward? They are likely to be poisonous for as far as the eye can see. Both the Europeans and surely the Ukrainians will work to undermine Moscow’s efforts to integrate the Ukrainian territories it has annexed into greater Russia as well as look for opportunities to cause the Russians economic and political trouble. Russia, for its part, will look for opportunities to cause economic and political trouble inside of Europe and between Europe and the U.S. ...

Relations between Europe and Russia will not only be poisonous, but they will also be dangerous. The possibility of war will be ever-present. In addition to the risk that war between Ukraine and Russia could restart—after all, Ukraine will want its lost territory back—there are six other flashpoints where a war pitting Russia against one or more European countries could break out. First, consider the Arctic, where the melting ice has opened the door to competition over passageways and resources. ... 

The second flashpoint is the Baltic Sea, which is sometimes referred to as a “NATO lake” because it is largely surrounded by countries from that alliance. That waterway, however, is of vital strategic interest to Russia, as is Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave in eastern Europe that is also surrounded by NATO countries. The fourth flashpoint is Belarus, which because of its size and location, is as strategically important to Russia as Ukraine. The Europeans and the Americans will surely try to install a pro-Western government in Minsk after President Aleksandr Lukashenko leaves office and eventually turn it into a pro-Western bulwark on Russia’s border. 

The West is already deeply involved in the politics of Moldova, which not only borders Ukraine, but contains a breakaway region known as Transnistria, which is occupied by Russian troops. 

The final flashpoint is the Black Sea. ... 

All of this is to say that even after Ukraine becomes a frozen conflict, Europe and Russia will continue to have hostile relations in a geopolitical setting filled with trouble-spots. In other words, the threat of a major European war will not go away when the fighting stops in Ukraine. 

Let me now turn to the consequences of the Ukraine war inside of Europe and then turn to its likely effects on trans-Atlantic relations. For starters, it cannot be emphasized enough that a Russian victory in Ukraine—even if it is an ugly victory as I anticipate—would be a stunning defeat for Europe. Or to put it in slightly different words, it would be a stunning defeat for NATO. .... 

NATO’s defeat will lead to recriminations between member states and inside many of them as well. Who is to blame for this catastrophe will matter greatly to the governing elites in Europe and surely there will be a powerful tendency to blame others and not accept responsibility themselves. The debate over “who lost Ukraine” will take place in a Europe that is already wracked by fractious politics both between countries and inside them. In addition to these political fights, some will question the future of NATO, given that it failed to check Russia, the country that most European leaders describe as a mortal threat. It seems almost certain that NATO will be much weaker after the Ukraine war is shut down than it was before that war started. 

Any weakening of NATO will have negative repercussions for the EU, because a stable security environment is essential for the EU to flourish, and NATO is the key to stability in Europe. Threats to the EU aside, the great reduction in the flow of gas and oil to Europe since the war started has seriously hurt the major economies of Europe and slowed down growth in the overall Eurozone. There is good reason to think that economic growth across Europe is a long way from fully recovering from the Ukraine debacle. 

A NATO defeat in Ukraine is also likely to lead to a trans-Atlantic blame game.... 

Then there is the all-important question of whether the U.S. will significantly reduce its military footprint in Europe or maybe even pull all its combat troops out of Europe. As I emphasized at the start of my talk, independent of the Ukraine war, the historic shift from unipolarity to multipolarity has created a powerful incentive for the U.S. to pivot to East Asia.... 

What has happened in Ukraine since 2022 makes that outcome more likely. To repeat: Trump has a deep-seated hostility to Europe, especially its leaders, and he will blame them for losing Ukraine. He has no great affection for NATO and has described the EU as an enemy created “to screw the United States.” Furthermore, the fact that Ukraine lost the war despite enormous support from NATO is likely to lead him to trash the alliance as ineffective and useless. That line of argument will allow him to push Europe to provide for its own security and not free-ride on the U.S. In short, it seems likely that the results of the Ukraine war, coupled with the spectacular rise of China, will eat away at the fabric of trans-Atlantic relations in the years ahead, much to the detriment of Europe.

He then has a conclusion with a final bit of knuckle-rapping. 

The Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ on both sides of the Atlantic, along with the NAFO Nazis, Uki-tankies, etc, will surely refuse to listen to these cold, hard facts. There’s 100 other nutters like Nadin Brzezinski on Medium.

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy has reportedly received a draft peace plan from Trump. 

And, with the details we have, "shock me" that Trump grift is in some way involved; it's the same old claim on Ukrainian minerals he floated months ago. And, the Axios piece to which they link says Ukraine must enshrine in its constitution: No NATO. It does allow Ukraine to petition for EU membership. It ALSO calls for NATO to amend its statutes to bar this.

Simplicius: Russian disinformation operator?

I have written about good old Simplicius and his questionable insight on the Russia-Ukraine war before, not just once with a general callout, but also calling out the further nuttery at his second Substack being conspiracy theory nutterism, including trafficking in some antisemitic conspiracy theories.

So? Per this piece, he's a nutter in general if he's postulating a Stuxnet (which he spells as "Stux-net"; is English not his first language?) type operation against the Russian drones that flew over Poland early this month.

The incident was obviously very strange because, while a few errant Russian drones had maybe fallen over other countries here and there—after likely being jammed off their course—this has never happened in such a large scale. This heavily suggests something very fishy, in the way of either a false flag or a coordinated campaign; that is to say, something like an Israeli Stux-net or “pager” operation where a large amount of Russian drones are “tampered with” before hand, whether that’s by digital infection of firmware via virus, or something else. 

There were several signs pointing to the ‘false flag’ explanation, for instance a photo of a Russian drone that landed on a Polish “chicken coop” that shows the drone taped together with literal duct tape

Hell, I think the idea that he's Russian-controlled disinformation is more likely to be true.  

As for the photos he claims show a false flag? WHOSE photos? Was this just rando NAFO nutter types?

He then abandons this to postulate that the seven Alternativ für Deutschland Nordrhein-Westfallen state election candidates who died earlier this month were surely offed. Snopes, with links to German media stories, says otherwise. 

He then pivots back to Russia, posting video from a racist like "Bebo."

Meanwhile? If Simplicius still thinks he understands Trump on Ukraine, the fact that the Donald talked to Zelensky at the UN General Assembly and then said he thinks Ukraine can totally roll back Russia (story notes it isn't clear if he meant pre-2022 boundaries or even pre-2014) shows he doesn't. That makes this Sept. 15 piece about how Trump "appears to have fairly cunningly outplayed Europe" incredibly stupid.

There's some stupidity in that piece otherwise.

If Ukraine were really launching drone attacks on Russia from the Baltic states, and it were serious enough, wouldn't Putin have a response?

As far as Simplicius getting back to tactical analysis? At that piece, one thing jumped out at me: None of his maps there have a distance scale. Maybe that's in general? You can make it look like Russia is doing a massive advance if you don't let the reader know the entire map, in its longer dimension, only covers 1 mile. Handwaving, it's called. 

I am snarking, of course, on the "Russian-controlled disinformation,' but he sure as hell opens himself up to that snark. 

BlueAnon opinion media continues to hold on to Russiagate

Old news, from several days ago, but, here's my non-duopoly take.

Mother Jones insists that the release of information from late-Obama era Director of National Intelligence John Brennan's investigation into his agency's research into what became known as Russiagate, by current DNI Tulsi Gabbard, is misinformation. 

Per the Federalist (no leftist sites popped up on Memeorandum), here's the reality, as they interpret it, about her release:

The experts did not disagree that Russia had continued its practice of attempting to sow chaos in presidential elections. They believed the intelligence indicated Russia sought to weaken presumptive winner Hillary Clinton and those efforts may have indirectly helped Trump. But they were concerned about the lack of evidence for the claim that became a cornerstone of the Russia collusion narrative, in which Trump was accused of conspiring with Russia to steal the 2016 election.

 That's about right.

The big picture reality? 

Prigozhin's Internet Research Agency, via various names, hacked both RNC and DNC computers, started both pro-Clinton and pro-Trump fake Facebook groups and more. 

Gabbard's release, and Mollie Hemingway's piece, do NOT promote the Seth Rich conspiracy theory or anything like that. 

Update, Aug. 6: That said, it is arguable Gabbard should have redacted her release better, per NBC. At this point, Gabbard is officially Just.Another.Politician.™, Trumptard division.

Haters in disguise of Ivan Katchanovski?

This is a prelude to what will be an expanded and amended version of a piece I posted earlier this month over at Substack about the Ukrainian-Canadian academic, called "The haters of Ivan Katchanovski, and other Ukrainian "traitors" like Marta Havryshko."

I only put a little bit about the Ukrainian "leftist" site Commons in that piece. Some of its editors might object to the word "leftist" in scare quotes. But, not everybody there may be leftist, and it's in scare quotes for another reason.

Katchanovski, for those deeply following not just the Russia-Ukraine war, but everything from the Euromaidan on, has claimed that the people killed at the Maidan were NOT shot by the Berkut security forces of then-president Yanukovich, but rather by far-right agitators, most likely to try to pressure his government into collapse, which happened soon after.

Here's a somewhat shorter piece of his. There and elsewhere, Katchanovski criticizes the investigation, including the later reconstruction of the scene, and above all, the use of AI as part of that reconstruction.

Here's what tried to sell itself as being an OK but not great, relatively neutral analysis of Katchanovski's claims about the Maidan. The author, William Risch, an American college professor, claims that he overstates some things, like conclusiveness of who fired from the Hotel Ukraine, while adding that parts of his big picture holds up. The "seems to be" is in boldface for a reason, as we'll soon see. 

The author has spoken on sites like CGTN America, an American TV channel part of state-owned Chinese Central Television. OTOH, in an interview elsewhere, he claims Minsk II (not sure what else he means by the 2015 treaty) "would've essentially broken up the state from within," a claim I have never heard before. He's also written for Moscow Times. 

Commons' site's "about" calls itself a left-wing Ukrainian media group focused on economic issues. Note that Katchanovski's first book was about labor issues and that's his background with Seymour Martin Lipset, under whom he got his Ph.D., from George Mason. 

First, some larger picture things with Commons, then back to Risch's article.

One of the lead editors notes how Commons left Progressive International over its failure to offer what I will call a desired "blank-check" condemnation of Russia shortly after the invasion. The same person, editor Taras Bilous, says in another piece that Zelensky is the most moderate leader Ukraine could have elected from 2019 on, and defends him on the anti-Russian language, and memories, "Ukrainification" of the country. IF that's true (and I believe it is) ... doesn't that say something about your country?

Well, it says this, per a piece of his calling out to the Western left:

Ukraine isn’t even a classic liberal democracy—here, every new president tries to amass as much power as possible via informal mechanisms, the parliament passes unconstitutional laws, and rights and freedoms of citizens are often violated. Even during the war, the Ukrainian government has passed a law curtailing labor rights. In this respect, it is not very different from the rest of Eastern Europe.

I wouldn't argue. I would add that, to the degree NATO more and more overlaps with the EU, it's another argument for the US to reduce its NATO connections.

Bilous here claims that Right Sector, etc's recent influence in Ukraine has been overstated. Even if Zelensky did even less to implement Minsk II than Putin, out of fears for his safety or whatever? See your own other piece's pull-quote above, Bilous; seems like, at least through 2019, their influence has NOT been overstated.  

And here, opposing a "Finlandization" of NATO, he comes off looking like a leftist who still wants the US, if not NATO, to keep "Badgering" Russia, per Pope Francis' term. (And, though retreating from his dipping of toes into liberation theology, he WAS from the "global south.")

I believe there's a phrase for people like Bilous: "Controlled opposition." 

There is something else at play here.

That is why, per some of Bilous' comments about the Maidan, why is the only piece you have on Katchanovski's shooting claims being written by an American?

Why would Risch not link to anything Katchanovski has written in English? After all, courtesy Springer, his own book on that is open access.

And, per a piece already on Substack, which will have an amended version here, I want to quote from this book's preface:

I am a life-long supporter of liberal democracy, human rights, and peace in Ukraine and was one of the first to publicly call for the European Union accession of Ukraine. I attended in 1988 the first small opposition rally in Kyiv in some 80 years since Ukraine became Soviet. I was born in Western Ukraine.

He expands this on page 38:

The author is a Ukrainian and Canadian political scientist origi- nally from Western Ukraine and attended the first Ukrainian opposition demonstrations and rallies in Kyiv in 1988–1991. The author faced expulsion from the Kyiv National Economic University in 1990 and was prevented from pursuing graduate education in the Soviet Union for writing the final undergraduate thesis (in Ukrainian) because it was based on theories of Max Weber and Western economists and concluded that the Soviet system was bound to collapse. The author is a life-long supporter of liberal democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and peace in Ukraine and publicly called before, during, and after the Euromaidan for the European Union accession of Ukraine, and opposed the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 (Dyer, 2022; Katchanovski, 2007, 2014b, 2018). However, it is professional and ethical duty of scholars to rely on evidence and not on political views or other considerations.

There you are. 

Let's add this, which many Westerners who run him up the flagpole and salute may not know:

Russia drastically escalated these conflicts by launching its illegal invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022

There we go. 

So, the idea that he's a "traitor" (he's been listed on a quasi-Ukrainian governmental intimidation and kill list called Myrotvorets) is laughable.

Why would you call it a "conspiracy theory," Risch?

After all, Katchanovski discusses global alleged (conspiracy theory) and actual false flags, and lists this among the conspiracy theories — one generated BY RUSSIA.

Various separatist and Russian politicians and media claimed that a downing of a Malaysian MH17 passenger plane in Donbas in 2014 was a false-flag attack. However, publicly available evidence, which was reported in the media, the social media, and a trial in the Netherlands, indicates that the plane was shot down with a missile by separatists from a Russian-supplied Buk because it was mistaken for a Ukrainian military plane.

(This, as well as earlier cites, are from his book.) 

Again, speaking of conspiracy theory:

With just some exceptions, these [Western mainstream media] reports without any evidence presented these snipers in the Maidan-controlled buildings or areas as Ukrainian government snipers or implied that they were the government snipers. But soon after the massacre, with some partial exceptions, these and other major media outlets referred to snipers in these Maidan-controlled locations as “a conspiracy theory,” denied their existence, or omitted this and other evidence of such snipers

You're busted, Risch. 

Why would Commons not give Katchanovski space to respond? Ask him to respond? He is NOT on the site's list of authors. 

Why would it wait until 2024 to have Risch write this? Was it because Katchanovski was "gaining traction" by then? 

(I have asked Commons all of this on Shitter, as well as to their most recent, as of the time I am typing, English-language Facebook post. We will see what, if any, response I get.) 

And, almost 18 months on, where is the book this is supposed to be part of? 

Speaking of books again?

In his book, Katchanovski has a callout of Risch, Taras Kuzio (mentioned in my Substack and to be mentioned in my part 2 of this, here), and one other person:

Kuzio, David Marples, and William Risch published their criticism in non-academic and non-peer-reviewed online publications.

No wonder Commons didn't ask him to respond. 

My bottom line? Katchanovski may be wrong about bullet issues. He may not be wrong. The use of AI a full decade ago, in its infancy, to "reconstruct" the Maidan shootings was horribly wrong. Look at what the botched autopsy of Jack Kennedy did here in the US. (I am NOT a JFK conspiracy theorist; I'm just saying that his autopsy, rushed at the personal pushing of Bobby Kennedy, and not done on site in Dallas by doctors who likely would have been cognizant of shooting angles, were one factor in opening the door to conspiracy theories.)

And with that, Commons goes too far in criticizing Katchanovski; he may not be right, but it's really impossible to prove him wrong on the narrow issue of the Maidan shootings. And, given Risch's statements, I think he's being willful in going too far.

Actually, it goes further than too far. It looks like it was looking for a hit piece that would throw a bone or two to critics to present it as something less than a hit piece. 

Elsewhere on that site, Howie Hawkins does an interview that throws Jill Stein under the "Putin's puppet" bus about as thoroughly as the Democratic National Committee has been doing for nine years and counting! Of course, Hawkins bit too hard on Russiagate in 2020 and has never backed off. 

That said, I wonder if it's been intimidated enough itself that it pulls punches. As in Myrotvorets intimidated. But, I don't think so. (It has one piece on Myrotvorets, but that from 2016.)

Let us also note that Katchanovski is NOT NOT NOT the only Ukrainian academic or public intellectual expat to tackle these issues. Here's Truthout with two others besides him at a conference, already in late 2014. 

More new thoughts on Simplicius (updated)

I offered a fairly complete roundup of thoughts on the Russia-Ukraine warblogger (and writer about other things at a second Substack at the start of this year.

Turns out he has a second Substack (and maybe more?). And, that's about futurism and transhumanism. Keep that in mind when you read anything on his primary Substack.

And, he's got "subverticals" within that. On one of them? This, which both approaches conspiracy theory and shows that he's got an ultimately Eurocentric view of history.

But first, the conspiracy theory part:

Without losing ourselves down the rabbit hole, we can say that Milner and his cohort—the likes of which included Lord Nathaniel Rothschild, Cecil Rhodes, and every other influential baron and titan of the day—orchestrated conflicts from the Boer War to WW1 to advance their stake

Uh, no, dude. Gavrilo Princip, from a Serbian "emerging state" that was still 50 percent pig farmers, wasn't controlled by any of those people.

That alone, let alone the "futurism and transhumanism" at the second Substack, makes me wonder how much of it is background to his primary.

Just a few tidbits beyond that.

One? I think he's one of those war porn type dudes, per his May 7 "sitrep" update, which has a number of war porn videos, the ones with the repeated use of zooming crosshairs, the war porn version of 1990s porno-techno music and so on. 

Related? Besides the war porn music being dubbed in, how much editing is done on these videos? (Ditto for ones posted by blank-check pro-Ukrainian bloggers, Shitters, etc.)

Two? On talking about Russian offenses/counteroffenses (or Ukrainian ones, for that matter) none of his maps ever have a distance scale. "Glorious" offenses covering just yards/meters rather than miles/kilometers ain't all that. That's why claims in the header of this piece about "major frontline breakthrough" should be taken with major grains of salt.

Three, to give some flowers, his piece on North Korean support for Russia, and the quality of both soldiers and kit, confirms what I recently wrote. 

Fourth, his politics? Supporting the broad outlines of Trumpism while saying his Cabinet and Cabinet parallel staff is still too much "swamp players," as he does here, is a hand-tipper. (You hit the paywall at that point, so I can't write more.) Call him a non-isolationist paleoconservative on foreign policy, especially the more "muscular" parts of it. I have never seen him write about domestic policy issues, so can't tell you. 

And, I didn't think about his Substack (and Shitter) name before. I'm wondering if it's an homage to the Neoplatonist philosopher? That might partially explain some of the stuff on the second Substack. As well as his primary Substack. So does the war porn, etc.

He's got one foot, at least, in the tech dudebro world. But, is he someone disenchanted? Someone who got squeezed out? He seems to have edges of dystopianism.

Update, Sept. 23: If Simplicius still thinks he understands Trump on Ukraine, the fact that the Donald talked to Zelensky at the UN General Assembly and then said he thinks Ukraine can totally roll back Russia (story notes it isn't clear if he meant pre-2022 boundaries or even pre-2014) shows he doesn't.

 

Most popular pieces in April

As is normal, not all pieces are from April, and will so be noted, but these were the most read pieces here last month.

10. In February, I doubled down on new Texas Court of Criminal Appeals justice David Schenck's call for judicial reform with my call for real judicial reform.

9. A January Texas Progressives roundup talked mainly about a Texas Lege preview.

8. I talked about the moderators at r/MLB's subreddit kowtowing a second time on all things Trump.

7. Coming into new prominence with the Trump-Zelensky rare earths deal, I looked in detail at North Korea's military aid to Russia.

6. My January piece about updating my blogroll and why continues to get attention. And, I still generally don't miss the people that haven't been carried over.

5. In March, I said The Resistance 2.0 still wants to relitigate Russiagate 1.0.

4. I noted in February that Quorum Report founder Harvey Kronberg was pissed off. He surely is even more so, two-plus months later.

3. A Texas Progressives roundup from February reminds us of the start of the Texas measles epidemic and other things.

2. I'm sure you'll see this one here on the next popular pieces roundup in a month: My thoughts on the death of Pope Francis.

1. A Texas Progressives roundup from last month gave a snapshot on the expansion of measles, along with Lege nuttery on water and Kenny Boy Paxton nuttery.

There's at least EIGHT sides on Russia-Ukraine, along with a deeper dive on Zelensky

About 10 days ago, I posted here about John Mearsheimer hitting a foul ball on this issue.

Then, after Bagger Vance as Trump's flunky sandbagging Zelensky, I expanded that on Substack to at least seven sides, along with an extensive rewrite.

But, I missed an eighth side, and missed some things about the original seven that I put into comments to the piece. So, we'll further rectify that back here.

1. Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ in the professional governmental and academic world, shading into neocons; almost all Democrats, and Never Trumper Republicans, fall here. So do the NAFO Nazis (sic) on Shitter and elsewhere.

2. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, et al, who probably still represents a plurality of Ukrainians vis a vis the shakedown, without a lot of concrete guarantees, being offered for peace. This of course does not excuse him not wanting a peace deal that would include letting go of the Donbas, without a Trumpian shakedown. (And, just because Boris Johnson allegedly sabotaged things in 2022 doesn’t mean that Zelensky would have gone along then, either. That said, he didn't actually sabotage them. We'll get there.)

3. Trump and his sheeple. (On Substack, I thought that would cut more than "MAGAts".)

4. John Mearsheimer-types who, while not Trumpian sheeple, have as their ultimate desire on this issue the desire of owning the neocons to the point that they can't condemn Trump. (A LOT of people on his Friday afternoon YouTube said, too bad he and Bagger Vance won't talk to Bibi that way. Mearsheimer wishes that were so, and the Trumpian sheeple do not. Link coming up below; his Feb. 27 Substack post, of discussion with Andrew Napolitano, pre-Trump/Zelensky clusterfuck, spills the beans enough.

That said, on March 7, he said he wants "Ukraine to get the best deal possible," about a minute into that short video. OTOH, he then quickly spoiled it again by saying that "Donald Trump wants peace. He wants to improve relations with the Russians and he wants to help create a security architecture in Europe so everybody can prosper and we don't have any more war."

No, he wants to create his own, transactionalist and grifting version of the American imperium. It's what he wants in Gaza, but Ukraine is too big for his direct control, unlike his dreams for Gaza.

Mondoweiss gets it totally right here, in talking about Trump and direct negotiations with Hamas, which have some in Israel worried.

Donald Trump is very difficult to predict. His mercurial, transactional, and self-centered approach to policy is often ill-defined and is subject to change on a whim as he fancies himself more king than president.

Well put. If only Mearsheimer would put that on an equal footing with his desire to own the neocons.

Trump may not be a warmonger, in part because he's like the bully afraid of getting punched in the face. But, peacemonger?

The difference between Ukraine and Gaza is there's nothing to exploit in Gaza, other than Israeli tourists looking for beachfront sand in Trump's eyes.

4A. Simplicius, if he's not in Group 6. Per his piece after the dust-up, I was open to putting him there. Sadly, but not surprisingly, he, unlike the Dissident and people like me, ignores that Trump wants to establish an American imperium, just like the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™. It's a different one, and a nakedly transactional one, but it's still an American imperium. 

That said, with this piece March 13 and this one March 11 about Trump's fake cease-fire plan, he has redeemed himself to a fair degree. But not totally. He still gets one skeptical eyeball from me.

5. Norman Finkelstein and types like him who think Putin’s invasion was “justified.”

6. Putin blank-checkers of various sorts. These are often Communists of some sort who, delusionally, think Putin is one. A subset is non-Communist anti-imperialists of the left, non-skeptical version, who can't condemn Russian and American imperialism both. 

7. Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté types. Grifters. They may have some sincerity of being in Group 6 as well, but still.

These two, 5 and 6, are in some degree triangulations on 4, but still separate.

8. People who read the likes of Ivan Katchanovski, and are well informed about Tsarist Russia, USSR and post-breakup history of Russia and Ukraine, but don’t fall into any of the above groups.

OK, now the hot takes.

The first group can shut the fuck up until admitting they’re Cold War 2.0 warmongers, with NATO expansion, etc. There's nothing further to be said to my typical audience.

The second group? Zelensky can semi-shut up, but still with fucks, until he can get non-US members of NATO, and the EU, to propose peace talks that accept some version of accepting reality on the ground. I covered this is much more detail in my "Zelensky as Churchill" piece.

The third group? Trump himself, Bagger Vance (Trump’s Dan Quayle, it appears more and more, see below), and Trump’s sheeple can definitely STFU, just as much as the Nat-Sec Nutsacks.™.

The fourth? Mearsheimer and any others in his orbit or line of thought? They can shut up for now, without fucks, until they, per the Dissident, accept that Trump is proposing his own form of American imperium. The more Mearsheimer cuts Trump blank checks by not calling him out, the further downward he goes in my estimation. (Trump’s sheeple already know this and are applauding.) To put it as bluntly as hell for the Mearsheimer types? Trump’s proposal is about as trustworthy as his plan to “own Gaza” and rebuild it as “Tel Aviv South Beach.” The only difference here is that in this case, Trump is trying to rope the American government in as backstop. Mearsheimer can also STFU until he talks to some leftists of the world, not just the Napolitanos and the RT-paid talking heads like Glenn Diesen, even if Diesen reportedly opposed Putin's invasion. Has a, say, Counterpunch Radio asked to talk to you, John, and you said no?

Simplicius? Not in comments because he only lets subscribers comment, but in quote/restacks, I first politely, then moderately less politely, called him out. If he gets worse, he gets a STFU up too, and I suspect that, by not getting better, he'll get worse.

The fifth? Without mentioning Finkelstein by name, nearly two years ago, I wrote a piece rejecting the idea of “justified” war in Ukraine. (Per Walter Kaufman, and rejecting the idea of “justified” vs “unjustified” on many serious moral issues, I also reject the idea of it being “unjustified”; trying to call it either one, for any of groups 1-6, is bad framing.) On the likes of Finkelstein, another reason I don't use "justified" or "unjustified" about the Russia-Ukraine war is that risks falling into another version of twosider framing.

The sixth? I've not directly run into anybody, by full posts, on Substack. But, they're all over the place on Shitter. 

The seventh? No, I don’t know if Max is getting paid in any way by Russia (or China); if he is, which is certainly possible and even plausible, it’s being laundered through sufficient third, fourth and fifth parties to disguise its origins. In addition, per Ken Silverstein, I just remember who Max’s dad is to think about the likelihood of his grifting. Also per Ken, I just think about Assad’s minders leading Aaron Maté around the nose several years ago. To the degree people like this are right, I don’t have to cite them as support. And won’t.

Let's not forget that, besides his long-ago RT work, RT was found to be laundering money to multiple conservative pundits last year. (That said, has there ever been a similar investigation related to Chinese $$, because I know Max is wrong on things like Xinjiang and plenty of good leftists have the goods on that? Folks, Max is full of shit on Xinjiang, on Danny Ortega in Nicaragua and more. And, I don't believe it's for entirely idealistic reasons. That said, beyond Max, many other alleged left-liberals and leftists, including Green Party thought leaders, are full of shit on Xinjiang; it's another argument in favor of the reality of horseshoe theory.)

The eighth? Maybe I’ll have further triangulation in the future, but that’s enough for now.

The Resistance 2.0 wants to relitigate Russiagate 1.0

Michael Sellers doesn't seem as nutbar on the surface as Jon Chait. But here he is, "ex"-spook and all, reviving the claim that Trump was "recruited," and not necessarily in the Gorbachev years, but with the Czechs leaning on Ivana's dad back in late Brezhnev times.

I said in a quote-tweet that, per Wikipedia with links (and Wiki usually has links, so you can trace its claims; in places where it doesn't, be more skeptical, that Yuri Shvets isn't that reliable. At a minimum, he's a blowhard who's made unsubstantiated claims about several things.

And, per Snopes, Alnur Mussayev is even less reliable with his "Krasnov" claims.

Sellers, who is presenting a whole set of Substack pieces with the — head fake, IMO — of "let us proceed cautiously with this," quoted my quote and doubled down on claims both have the straight skinny.

I have no doubt that there's plenty of other Michael Sellers people out there, and many others quoting him approvingly.

We've got 3 years, 10 months of tribalism left.

John Mearsheimer hits a foul ball on Trump and Russia; The Dissident gets some things right

NOTE: I have expanded and reframed this piece, including talking about all of the "sides" on Russia-Ukraine issues, at Substack. 

Note 2: Both here and at Substack, before posting that, I forgot to check Simplicius. Sadly, but not surprisingly, he, unlike the Dissident and people like me, ignores that Trump wants to establish an American imperium, just like the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™. It's a different one, and a nakedly transactional one, but it's still an American imperium. Simplicius may, or may not, have good battlefield analysis, but on the geopolitics of Russia-Ukraine, he seems content to, if not outrightly desireous of, nothing other than triangulating off Trump.

Yes, John Mearsheimer, in his latest, as of Friday, interview with Napolitano, is right about NATO expansion and Ukraine.

He’s half-right about EU expansion, at best, since the US is not a member of the EU and has conflicts with it, and will again the next four years over agriculture and other items.  

And, yes, the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ were and are indeed wrong, and so is Zelensky for playing to them. Speaking of? Zelensky is of course wrong to have cancelled Ukraine's presidential election. Hold the vote in the part of the country you still possess. (And, per a commenter on Substack? Zelensky's never "undeclared" martial law and asked the Rada to confirm that. When you do that, you can indeed still hold an election. Whether it's wise to do so, or not, is another issue, including whether doing this, like actually trying to enforce Minsk, would put a price on his head. That said, otherwise? We in America held a presidential election in 1864 despite Southern states still in rebellion; also, Lincoln never considered a nationwide suspension of habeus corpus and nationwide declaration of martial law earlier in the war, Sept. 25, 1862 as suspending elections. Later, upon the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act of 1863, he did both the habeas suspension and martial law declaration in Kentucky on July 4, 1864; the presidential and lesser elections were still contested in Kentucky that fall. Also, we held midterm elections in 1814, shortly after the British burned Washington and while the country faced other invasion threats. Per Wiki, with no uniform election date then, elections ran from April 26, 1814 to August 10, 1815. Eight states were between Aug. 29 and Oct. 11, 1814. Finally, more than once, and most recently this weekend, Zelensky has promised to resign — with new elections following — in exchange for Ukraine getting into NATO.)

He’s all wet for not mentioning Trump’s shakedown of Zelensky even though he has a clip embedded in his video of Trump talking about the shakedown. Neocon fellow traveler Bret Stephens got that right.

If Roosevelt had told Churchill to sue for peace on any terms with Adolf Hitler and to fork over Britain’s coal reserves to the United States in exchange for no American security guarantees, it might have approximated what Trump did to Zelensky. Whatever one might say about how Zelensky played his cards poorly — either by failing to behave with the degree of all-fours sycophancy that Trump demands or to maintain his composure in the face of JD Vance’s disingenuous provocations — this was a day of American infamy.

I don't totally agree with the framing; FDR hadn't been egging Churchill on, for example. But, Bret's framing isn't all wrong, and it's better than Mearsheimer simply ignoring this issue.

And, right as of the moment John’s Substack went live, he was behind the curve because Zelensky just told Trump and Vance to fuck off.  More here.

It's typical Trump transactionalism, that he's done for 50 years, since his 1970s Mob dealings in his early construction projects. It, to riff on a 2020 hashtag on Shitter, and an old Trump book, is "The Art of the Steal."

Mondoweiss gets it totally right here, in talking about Trump and direct negotiations with Hamas, which have some in Israel worried.

Donald Trump is very difficult to predict. His mercurial, transactional, and self-centered approach to policy is often ill-defined and is subject to change on a whim as he fancies himself more king than president.

Well put. If only Mearsheimer would put that on an equal footing with his desire to own the neocons.

Speaking of Dum Fuqs? Beyond both Trump and Zelensky being headstrong, it looks like Bagger Vance was a key fuck-up yesterday. And, no, Zelensky didn't campaign for Harris. Per Bagger Vance flapping his mouth, he wants Zelensky, under the guise of "accept(ing) there are disagreement" to "accept a cave-in." I mean, the WSJ editorial board, in an official editorial, said Vance massively screwed the pooch.

Finally, no, John, not all of Russia is Caesaropapist Orthodox worshipers with traditional values, no more than the US is. Look at all of Pussy Riot’s fandom. Gack. Do you really believe that? If so, you may be a great geopolitical strategerist, but a cultural sociologist you are not.

It doesn't make Trump right, contra either you or Noam Chomsky. God, what a Dum Fuq he was, and even more than Mearsheimer, in a position and of a mindset to know better. I still have no idea why Chomsky thought that. With Mearsheimer, I do. It's his idea of "owning the neocons."

I'm with The Dissident. This is clearly a both sides at fault issue. Zelensky has played to the Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ but at the same time, Trump did rip off the mask of empire. (Actually, he did that with the rare earth minerals etc. shakedown itself; this was a doubling down on that.) 

The Dissident is also right on the neo-Nazis in Ukraine putting Zelensky in a bind. If he did accept this, per the likes of Ivan Katchanovski, he'd be a walking dead man without something like UN peacekeepers.

The background to all this? The person to blame more than anybody else is Uncle Joe Stalin as Lenin's Commissar of Nationalities. No, really.

And, not a Dum Fuq but a Cock Whore? I thought Bret Baier's post-explosion interview of Zelensky would be better than him asking if he should apologize to Trump.

A lesser Dum Fuq? Danny Davis, who hosted Mearsheimer Friday afternoon. Their exchange starting here, followed by a clip of Zelensky talking to either the people of Ukraine or its government a day or two before coming here, reads things into what Zelensky said, at least then.

Then there's Mearsheimer taking off his own mask:

"What Trump wants is what's best for Ukraine."

WHAT? As I commented on his YouTube:

A real non neocon president who's ALSO not a shakedown artist wouldn't be offering Zelensky a take it or leave it holdup at gunpoint. As The Dissident said on Substack, Trump is just practicing a new version of the American Empire, different angles of play. And if you, and Danny Davis, Napolitano and others refuse to accept THAT, and to talk about THAT, you're part of the problem yourselves.

And, I stopped watching at that point. (That comment is at about the 11-minute mark.)

If we take Mearsheimer as a third side, there's at least four sides on the Russia-Ukraine issue. Actually, there's at least five. 

1. Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ shading into neocons

2. Zelensky, et al, who probably still represents a plurality of Ukrainians vis a vis the shakedown, without a lot of concrete guarantees, being offered for peace

3. Trump and his sheeple. (On Substack, I thought that would cut more than "MAGAts")

4. Mearsheimer-types who, while not Trumpian sheeple, have as their ultimate desire on this issue the desire of owning the neocons to the point that they can't condemn Trump. (A LOT of people on his YouTube said, too bad he and Bagger Vance won't talk to Bibi that way. Mearsheimer wishes that were so, and the Trumpian sheeple do not.)

So, I'm on the same side as, say, Ivan Katchanovski.

That said, about everybody of all stripes are right is that this meeting shouldn't have happened at this time in general and certainly not in public. Also, Zelensky should have brought an interpreter.

Update: It's interesting that Trump's advisors have spent the 48 hours since the meeting in massive spinning. Presuming the Guardian, AP, Beeb, NYT etc. asked him and them for comment, Zelensky and advisors are presumbly, albeit a bit too late, maintaining radio silence.

Trump and Putin — one talk is not day one

And, that precaution in the header is not just for the MAGAts but also the Simplicius types, who thought they had Trump pegged.

In reality, going behind the Reuters story?

We know that Trump's incoming administration was behind the late-Biden team's final energy sanctions on Russia. We know that Trump has not lifted them. We know that, while Trump and Elmo have paused, scrambled and fucked up foreign aid in general, Trump has not stopped sending bombs to Ukraine.

For the Simplicius types, those are all facts on the ground.

Trump and his team's general statements, from Jan. 1 on, before he officially was sworn in, come off as various ploys on trying to buffalo Putin. John Mearsheimer has talked about that on at least one dialogue with Andrew Napolitano. (Both also mentioned his cluelessness in claiming 1 million Russians have been killed.)

The new reality appears to be (I have to say "appears to be" because I'm not a Russia or Putin expert and nobody is a Trump expert) is that Trump seems to be accepting that the buffaloing has failed — or, at a minimum, that's failed without an accompanying "good cop" second track.

So, Trump's team and Putin's are talking. As noted above, buffaloing may resume in the future. If so, it will fail again.

Or, maybe they're not talking. Kremlin spox Dmitri Peskov refuses to confirm or deny any conversations. Putin will let Trump twist slowly in the wind a bit.

By the start of Ukrainian-Russian spring, when the possibility of events on the battlefield will start up again, Trump (or people working around him) will accept that buffaloing won't work, period. At that point, having wasted months already, they'll finally get around to talking more seriously to Zelensky. How those talks proceed then will depend on the start of this week's battlefield action. Also by that point, surely, some sort of appropriation will be needed for new Ukrainian arms, and of course will face trouble in the House.

So, approximately two months from now, skids may start being greased. But, even then, looking at it from now, we won't know where things will land.

Now, that said? Today, Mr. Skank, Deaf Secretary Pete Hegseth, said that NATO expansion to Ukraine was off the table and it needed to accept it wouldn't get pre-2014 borders. That still doesn't mean a lot as long as Trump is still sending bombs (and more) to Zelensky.

Also, an alleged upcoming meeting between Trump and Putin in Saudi Arabia guarantees no actual action. Donald Trump as peacemaker strikes me as nothing like Teddy Roosevelt. Besides, as of right now, the only guaranteed meeting appears to be representatives of both sides in Munich. And, all of this ignores what the response of Zelensky — or of European NATO members — will be to a proposed peace treaty by diktat.

Since then? It appears that for Trump, a Zelensky shakedown is first, an actual peace deal is second. Shock me. And, Zelensky has said no, at least in its current form.

I generally agree with the likes of John Mearsheimer and other paleoconservative types as well as fellow leftists that we need to get out of Ukraine; if an actual peace treaty is part of that, all the better. But, given that Transactional Don is at the helm, the possibility of this administration actually doing that continues to shrink. So, my header isn't a BlueAnon roasting of Trump; it's a leftist one.

If the MSM is dying, so too will, or should, certain forms of longform alt-journalism

That latter phrase is referring primarily to Substack and by extension to places like Beehiiv, if they're attracting any of the same people as a certain type of Substack.

First, I don't deny that fair chunks of the MSM is doing. Gannett's new deal with Reuters has the same Gannett lies as before about what the prospective savings will do. AP's lies earlier in 2024 about how little vs how much it still depends on US print journalism will come home to roost in 2025.

Among major individual papers, though I largely agree with with the non-endorsement angles of both of them, including the full background, the LA Times and Washington Post will both leak oil this year, and the Post is already shot itself in the foot again with how it's handling Ann Telnaes' resignation. It's leaking further oil since then; I'm no fan of Jennifer Rubin, but her leaving is another black eye.

Otherwise? Per The Hill claiming that Dustin Burrows' election as Texas Speaker of the House is a blow to the far right when it's really a blow to the far far right, is another reason the MSM, and its political analysis and news mags are failing. These people continue to willingly shift Overton Windows.

Then?

New Republic turning to semi-winger of old Mona Charen to discuss Bannon vs Musk? This is going to be a long four years if this is what the librul opinion mag version of the MSN thinks is hot stuff. 

But? Back to Substack.

The Substacks I'm thinking about are largely single-issue, including some, like Simplicius, who has made the "MSM is dying" claim. 

Update: Turns out he has a second Substack (and maybe more?). Off to blog.

Whichever of "two sides," or rejecting "two sides," one takes on Russia-Ukraine, as the war (not "special military option") enters its third year, especially if Trump doesn't end it anywhere close to his first day in office, appetite for reading about it, except among the most rabid Uki-tankies/NAFO Nazis on one side, and Putinistias/Russia-tankies on the other, will continue to ebb.

There's only so often you can write about one side or the other gaining or surrendering a whole 10 acres of generally meaningless ground on the steppes of eastern Europe before people who aren't into war porn or weapons geekery have their eyes glaze over.

For the rest of the steppe winter and early spring, there will be no land breakthroughs, no major new weaponry or anything else. 

And, assuming Trump, Putin and Zelensky come to no deal by April, there will be no big breakthroughs after that. Trump, his weathervaning and blather aside, will not make major cuts to current sanctions on Russia, though he won't add to them, either. China's Xi will do enough to continue to string Putin along, but major aid increases won't happen.

In fact, reports that Trump is behind the push for Ukraine to lower its draft age (a human capital version of "NATO members should pay more") is already throwing off the calculus of at least some Substackers, I'm sure. That said, Trump could still lessen the pipeline of US aid, and could still push for a deal with Putin. But, you know what? Trump has not said a thing about the Biden Adminstration's new sanctions on Russia's energy industry, including the so-called "ghost tankers." Now, Newsweek is trying to spin Trump's NSA designee Mike Waltz's push on the draft, saying that it could be setting a precondition for manpower to stabilize the lines. I don't buy it. See above; the lines are stable until at least April. Per "The Dissident" Substack, Trump gave private backing to GOP Congresscritters to vote FOR previous aid packages to Ukraine. And, we're again reminded that Trump 1.0 sold arms packages to Ukraine that Dear Leader Obama refused to do. Plus, Waltz has been a past supporter of the war. (As of a week ago, Simplicius was still saying "we'll wait and see" if this is Trump's policy or not; The Dissident's piece was from last year.)

Lather.Rinse.Repeat.

I pick that as a primary example, but other types of single-focus journalism will likely also struggle, if their single-focus isn't that big of an issue in terms of reader interest, and there's just not a lot new happening.

Update, Jan. 18: The cluelessness of some comments there?

==

That said, traditional MSM fellow-traveler opinion or analysis sites like Wonkette, having traveled to Substack, let alone the still-odious Never Trumper Jennifer Rubin leaving the post to pair with Norm Eisen, need to die as well, and probably will shrink, if not die.