Money and war. Stimulating a refugee crisis? Preparing for normalcy. Covid holy scriptures.

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A reader recently asked which sources I trust. I trust Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi to be honest in their opinions. They have not sold out.

Nonetheless, I sometimes disagree. Glenn Greenwald thinks that there are better uses for $33 billion than to aid Ukraine in this war.  I agreed with a lot of his points in my recent post about holding your nose. Yes, the money will flow to the military-industrial complex. Yes, these are the people who pushed NATO so close to his doorstep that it squashed Putin's toes. Yes, these are the people who funded the BioLabs that brought us Covid 19.  Here is the transcript of his video – you may need to be a subscriber to read it.

Nonetheless, as I have written several times over the past couple of months, to me it appears clear in retrospect that this war was inevitable. Putin was bound and determined to reestablish Russia's domination over the areas that had been subjugated by the czars and the Soviet dictators. Like czars throughout history, such as Nicholas II who initiated the war on Japan, he was so surrounded by yes-men, so out of touch that he did not realize what a disaster would be. I think Greenwald is wrong to think that we could've avoided this war by treating Putin differently.

Greenwald suggests furthermore that the money might be better spent on schools and poverty programs. I think he is wrong there as well. It would be better off in the taxpayers’ pockets. Government programs to get rid of poverty have never worked, and government education is a putrid mess. More money spent on education does not translate whatsoever into improvements in learning. Right now, in 2022, education levels are as low as they have been in my lifetime, while spending is at an all-time high. There are a vast number of political and structural reasons why it could not be otherwise.

I recently posted a link to Edwards Slavsquat making the case that if military spending were ever justified, this war is that case. Yes, much money will be misspent. Military adventures are always inefficient. But in this case, it is worth the price.

I have subscribed to Breaking Defense for the past 20 years, since a young guy I knew in Washington DC joined their staff. Surprising to me, they pretty much ignored this war until just recently. Today they published this story entitled Russian troops held me captive at gunpoint for two weeks in Ukraine – here's what I learned. 

This inside story from Gostomel confirms what we have been hearing from a number of sources. The Russians are poorly organized. They have low morale. Their logistics and maintenance capacity is inadequate. Their planning was poor.

They are using ethnic minorities such as the Buryats and Chechens to do the fighting. In that regard, here is a sadly funny link provided by Gary in London. They use contract soldiers instead of conscripts because Russia has discovered, like the United States did in Vietnam, that it is dangerous to involve average citizens in a war in which they don't believe. This war is not being fought by the young men of Moscow and Petersburg.

There may be a sinister agenda afoot with this war – bankrupting the West and creating dependency here in Ukraine.  The amount of fear that the media spread prior to and in the early phases of this war was out of proportion to the real danger. That is not to underplay the horrific destruction that has taken place in Mariupol, Bucha, Irpin and along the border with Russia. It is also not to underplay the wanton brutality of the uncivilized troops that Russia has sent. Nonetheless, I suspect that powerful interests wanted to create a refugee crisis of enormous size to destabilize both Ukraine and the West. This one is sitting at about 4 ½ million people – something around a tenth of Ukraine's population.

In addition to sowing panic, a number of parties have facilitated travel to the West. The visa regimes were abolished almost everywhere. Ukrainians could enter with no difficulty. Travel to the West was streamlined. The EU governments have provided transportation, housing, and living stipends.

Yesterday Oksana talked to our babysitter Anna in Poland and to the Anna head of the Sunflower School that Eddie attended last year. Anna the babysitter is staying because she does not have to pay rent and she gets a stipend to live on. She does not have to work, and the prospects of a job do not appear to be terribly bright. She is learning Polish. An easier job than learning English, but I note that she made no effort whatsoever to learn English in the many years she worked with us. Her husband had always had a hard time finding work here. He will certainly do no better there.

Anna the schoolteacher is also receiving housing and a stipend. She will put her kids in school. Anna's husband had lost his job with the onset of the Covid panic. The school she ran had brought in all of the family’s money. As things stand she is dependent on EU largesse for refugees.

Gary, a subscriber here, will keep his children in Germany. He has work there and pays his own way, but is grateful that his Ukrainian children got preferential admission to an exclusive German Lycée and reduced tuition on the strength of being refugees. It's a twofer for the school. Doing a good turn for refugees and accepting kids who already speak good German.

I know at least a dozen more stories of the same nature. Details differ but they point the same direction. The implications to me are that:

·        Ukraine's best and brightest, who should be being instrumental in bringing the country back to life, have a financial incentive not to return and are being unduly scared into staying put.

·        Ukrainian refugees are being seduced into dependency. They are not being widely incorporated into the host country labor force, as had been the case for Ukrainian émigrés before the crises of Covid and the war.

·        Western Europe, which already had significant budget deficits, is creating ever larger imbalances to provide weaponry to Ukraine and to support Ukrainian refugees. The situation was untenable before Covid, became dramatically more untenable with it, and is now being exacerbated even further. Something has to give.

My opinion is that the Russian invasion has peaked. They gave it all they had and came up short. They have exhausted their reserves of manpower, ammunition, international goodwill, troop morale, and ready money. My crystal ball predicts that the West will be wise enough not to introduce its military into Ukraine. Improved weaponry alone will be able to increasingly stymie the supposedly invincible Russian ground forces. If the Russians persist in launching missiles from the Black Sea, Ukraine will find a way to feed those ships to the sharks.

Putin threatens to use nuclear weapons, but against who and what? Armies win and hold ground. They are tactical, whereas nuclear weapons are strategic. Putin's possession of nuclear weapons has forced us to confront head-on Putin's greatest strength, his massive army, and we are beating it. Now what? Only your bookmaker knows for sure, but my guess is that Ukraine's objective of regaining its 2014 borders, and the US objective of diminishing the Russian army to the point that it will not be a threat for at least a generation, will probably be satisfied.

It will take Ukraine a while to come back. Meanwhile, the economic situation here is weak and distorted. Oksana talked to Yuliya, wife of Roman the guy who took me shopping in his Lincoln Navigator during the first week of the war. Roman is a builder, and there isn't much demand. I just sent him an email suggesting that we to talk about taking advantage of the abundance of labor and lack of demand for building supplies to throw up some rental houses. I know - this is the opposite of what I wrote just a couple days ago.  It's worth investigating whether there are opportunities, and some of the strongest opportunities involve relationships. Building a good relationship with a reliable builder and a neighbor would be worth a lot.

I consider this kind of a boutique blog. Some commenters regularly disagree with me, but it is done politely. In the spirit of mutual respect, I offer a couple of notes on Covid.

Stillbirths and infant mortality almost doubled in Iceland in 2021. Bear in mind that Covid had been circulating throughout 2020 without affecting these statistics. The difference in 2021 was the jab.

The clinical trials were structured in such a way as not to result in adverse effects that would have gotten in the way of emergency use authorization. Nonetheless some dangers did make themselves evident. Here is an article on how Pfizer suppressed the bad news for pregnant women.

Some of you have quibbled about my using The Daily Exposé as a source.  If you look at their articles you will find that most of them include external links. Just as with this blog you are reading, you have to assess a blog’s credibility and utility by the quality of the articles that they find. Rhoda Wilson is one of their most prolific authors. I will not endorse everything she writes – I have disagreed with her about Russia – but I believe she is a dogged, sincere journalist. I recommend that you take a look at what she has produced and see if you don't conclude as well that whatever she writes is at least worth glancing at.

Erik Topol, like Katelyn Jetelina, is a member of the Covid Cult.  Fearmongering about the unknown danger level of coming mutations of Covid.  Counting hospitalizations.  No word on who is getting sick, ie, the effectiveness of the shots.  No word on alternative medications such as HCQ – Ivermectin.  These people live in a different world.  They cite their scripture from a different holy book.  They do have their strong adherents. I continue to glance at them from time to time, despite the fact it seems quite easy to discount everything they write. Actually, that's a good intellectual exercise – find 10 things wrong with this picture.  Every picture they paint.

Zoriana begs to go bicycling every day. Since I had to go to the grocery store anyhow, I plotted a 5 km route that stuck almost exclusively to unpaved roads and crossed only a single busy street. Eddie pleaded to be included. We had a great outing and got everything on the list.

That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the strong men, good-looking women and children alike are forgetting what missiles and artillery sound like. Life is back to normal – except for the dearth of people to share it with.

Graham