Yesterday, the news was full of Zelensky regime advances near the long-contested ruins of Bakhmut. Noble NATO-trained & -armed Ukrainians advancing at high speed as bumbling Russian conscripts fearfully ran away. The head of Wagner decrying the cancer-ridden Putin even more forcefully than usual. The long-promised Ukrainian March to the Sea had begun!
Today … crickets.
The punter in the West is left having to try to guess what the silence means. To spare the Russians any more embarrassment? To avoid having to report that the Ukrainians stumbled into a trap?
Long ago, my father told me: Listen carefully to what people say. Listen even more carefully to what they do not say. Good advice, that.
Trumps response to Ms. Collins’ ( “America’s ex-wife” as some brilliant person on some site called her) question about” do you want Ukraine to win?” was effing brilliant:
“I want them all to stop DYING”.
Exactly! We the People cannot rely on getting accurate information from the media which tells whatever lies the oligarchs in government want spread. And we can rely on the fact that the rulers of our “democratic” government regard us as dumb cattle rather than citizens to whom they are answerable. Hence we have to use the old techniques of Kremlinology – we have to pay attention to what they do not say, and wait until actions in the real world reveal the truth.
And when the unavoidable facts result in helicopters desperately evacuating the nomenklatura from the embassy roof, we know it will be a one day story in a media which immediately refocuses on the next lies Our Betters decide to force into our consciousness.
Of course, the problem with Kremlinology is that its record for predicting significant events doesn’t seem to be much better than astrology. Over the years, the U.S. “intelligence community” failed to foresee:
Soviet atomic bomb test
Korean war
Chinese entry into Korean War (clearly coordinated with Moscow)
Hungarian uprising
Building of the Berlin wall
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
Fall of the Berlin wall
Collapse of the Soviet Union
Maybe this record is why they were interested in staring at goats.
I think the problem that fundamentally confounds understanding and predicting what the clowns running the U.S. establishment are thinking and planning is that they are clowns—they do not think, nor do they plan, or at least not for the long term. They just leap from fad to fad based on whatever they perceive at the moment to advance their lust for control and avarice for what they can fleece from the dwindling number of productive subjects under their rule.
I just received a cartoon from one of my substack subscriptions that shows a teacher at the blackboard with the word “politics” written on it. She says “the word is derived from “poly” meaning many and “ticks” meaning blood sucking parasites”. Seems to fit in this thread (and many others).
There are many sources of more current, and usually correct, info on Bakhmut and UKR situation, almost real-time. Telegram is one, and pages like southfront and strategic-culture also are quite timely in their reports. The MSM and ‘official’ outlets, on both sides, can’t report until they have focus-grouped the spin options and decided on their story and advised ‘everyone’ - usually 3-4 days late and beyond credible. Don’t know about Kremlinology, but yes the petty-functionaries do get it wrong, but overall the trajectory stays the same - note all the unsinkable aicraft carriers under US/UK ownership at key strategic choke-points. Frozen conflicts and chaos may not be a clean as open victory, but takes much less effort. Hubris tells them they will negotiate a better outcome from any situation than their opposition, and unfortunately they are generally correct. Most rational people want peace and stability, not endless war, so will settle. The US is an unpredictable loon wearing an explosive vest - a bit hard to negotiate with.
