There is a running competition between myself and some other exasperated Russia-watchers to figure out who the worst ZAnon fan-fic writer is. Me, I’m quite partial to Simpleton and to Martyanov. They are also considered the “moderate” or more “grounded” Russia analysts. This, of course, is not true at all, but it is funny how people say that because of who they are usually compared to being so much worse.
Moderate or not, there are at least a dozen other bloggers/vloggers out there all spinning the same general Z-narrative though.
To understand the common thread that binds all of them, I strongly recommend taking the time to come to an understanding of what the nature of Kremlin propaganda really is. I strongly recommend you read my long and critically-acclaimed effort-post on the propaganda narrative justifying Putin’s rule. In short, a man named Surkov, who was involved in the occult and in marketing (same thing, I guess) designed the ZAnon propaganda product that is being sold to undiscerning Westerners today.
You won’t find anything comparable in the English language anywhere else:
Seriously, go read that article if you haven’t yet. It is so crucial to understanding what I am going to say next.
Don’t be lazy.
Go ahead and do that now.
I’ll still be here when you get back.
…
The ZAnon project is spook-curated, from the ideas it promotes to the people who are hired to promote them. I plan to cover every single Western Z-personality eventually with a separate article dedicated to each prophet in the pantheon. But, since this is the first entry in the series, I may as well provide a brief overview.
Let’s just take a cursory look at the list.
Today’s subject, Larry Johnson claims to be a former CIA agent. He used to brag about his access levels and the good times at the agency. Before he found his newfound faith, Larry was involved in drumming up the Islamic terrorist threat, and was one of the principle spin artists weaving the legend of the dastardly renegade anti-freedomz terrorist Osama Bin Laden, who, as we now know, was a CIA creation used to fight the Russians in Afghanistan and who had nothing to do with 9/11, which was a Mossad operation.
Larry later pivoted to a career of political activism, promoting sensational info-hoaxes about Obama while he was on the campaign trail. I don’t like Obama either, but I bring it up to prove that Larry has no moral qualms about getting paid to spread lies to the public. Perhaps he even believes that he is serving a “noble lie” of sorts. I don’t know, but somehow I doubt it. Idealists don’t usually work for the spooks, generally, I’ve found. Unsurprisingly, he is also good pals with Scott Ritter, claiming he went golfing with Scott at the Army Navy Club in recent years.
Curiously, these facilities remain open to these men, who, make a living out of claiming that America is the Great Satan while living in an America that ruthlessly persecutes people for protesting a stolen election. That uses private corporations to shut down bank accounts and the TSA to put undesirables on no-fly lists. I could go on.
But no problems for these brave dissidents.
No less illustrious a Z-prophet is Scott Ritter, who is a former Deep State creature who got in trouble for pedophilia on two separate occasions. He claims he was framed, but, well, what does your gut practically scream at you when looking at his photos?
Before he discovered his faith in Z, he was also involved in drumming up the fake “War on Terror” and blaming Saddam for bioweapons and other crimes. Saddam, of course, like Osama, was also initially set up to be a client US puppet in the region by the American spook state. And before his work in Iraq, Scott was involved in some kind of intelligence operations in Afghanistan against the Soviet threat there.
Speaking of Afghanistan, it is also worth mentioning the Saker next to complete our Big Three of Z shortlist.
The Saker aka Andrei Raevsky used to coordinate with Islamists in Yugoslavia and with Chechens and before that with Mujahideen. The much-missed Marko wrote up his illustrious anti-Russian career here before vanishing when the world needed him the most. In short, Andrei was also an anti-Soviet intelligence agent, just like the other two men. And he also was involved in the anti-Soviet intelligence operation there as well.
Quite the coincidence, no?
Isn’t it curious how the three largest Western Putin-supporters are spooks who all cut their teeth on anti-Soviet operations in Afghanistan?
But then, in his own words, he was visited by a spook from Moscow who convinced him that the Kremlin was good now. Shortly after, Andrei, who wrote that he was dispirited and out of work at the time, decides to start a pro-Putin blog.
These are/were the big three and I named them and provided a background about them because they prove literally everything I have been saying about how we live under a “spookacracy” in both the East and the West. I also often repeat that to be even allowed to participate in the political discussion, you have to be part of this clandestine international priesthood. Sadly, there is also relatively very little info about these Z-personalities available to peruse. You’d think that the Great Satan would have commissioned some opposition research on the big Z-personalities by now. Or that they’d have some trouble with the feds in the West. But no, you’d be wrong. They remain mostly untouched.
Again, rather curious, no?
Now, Kremlin foreign propaganda is very heavy-handed and tone-deaf and similar to official internal Kremlin talking points within Russia. All this stuff you hear about how the Chechens are these wonderful family-values Russia patriots, about how Putin has kicked out the oligarchs and saved the economy, about how Orthodoxy is compatible with Communism and that the Kremlin is an anti-Globalist alternative … this is what Russians are told by the Kremlin at home. They mock this propaganda and don’t take it seriously. But you’ve heard bits and pieces of this all before in Z-media, I am 100% sure of it, and chances are that you even fell for it at some point.
I know I did for many years. And if I have the courage to admit it, maybe you should too.
My point: is that if you see “alternative” blogger/vlogger propagandists spreading parts of this narrative or the whole thing, you have to assume that they are being employed by the spook state in some capacity. Even if I didn’t know that the Big Three were all anti-Soviet spooks who probably answered to the same CIA boss in the 80s in Afghanistan, I’d still know something was up based on their writing alone. The most on-the-nose propagandist has to be Scott Ritter but then he is also the most deeply integrated with the Russian spook state, so this makes sense. Being a twice-caught, once-convicted pedophile, it makes sense why the Kremlin would want to work with him. They seem to only ever employ criminals with kompromat hanging over their heads to ensure full compliance. From Prigozhin to Aussie Uzbek to Scott Ritter — a pattern emerges among the Kremlin’s chosen associates which is hard to ignore.
Which brings us to Larry Johnson, who is the main subject of today’s deep dive.
Reading his writing, one gets the impression that he is Surkov’s most devoted disciple. The others are shills too, sure, but few of them rah-rah-rah as vociferously as Larry. It serves a purpose though — because of just how extreme his blogging is, the others get to come off as moderate in comparison. But there is so much more to the Larry Johnson project than just that, believe me.
You will find that studying ZAnon’s lies in greater depth is a means to study the manipulation techniques employed by the spook state to manipulate the masses. The lessons are universal and not specific to the war in Ukraine and the narrative around it. They provide insight into America’s so-called “War on Terror” as well, and previous social engineering efforts like the Trotskyite armed overthrow of Russia and the subsequent clandestine subversion of America.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves here.
First, let us start with looking at some of Larry’s past predictions and seeing how well they hold up.
The Prophetic Genius of Larry Johnson
I more or less sampled these pieces by random. That is, I didn’t go back and systematically read his work to find the biggest blunders. I really haven’t got the time or the energy for that. Besides, this scattershot approach seems fairer somehow — like I’m taking a representative sampling of his writing. And it is pretty bad most of it, let me tell you. There are probably far worse examples to choose from to boot. Yeah, pretty much all of Larry’s reality-defying predictions look bad in retrospect so picking them at random works just fine.
Back in the summer of 2022, for example, he was predicting a massive Russian escalation and retaliation for one of the early red lines that Kiev flagrantly disregarded by attacking the Kerch bridge.
Here:
I think the Russian Special Military Operation is kicking into a new gear and that the United States and NATO are mystified and confused about Russia’s next steps. We do have a couple of clear benchmarks — the end of the grain deal, which means Russia is likely to take more aggressive actions in shutting down maritime traffic in the Black Sea that could benefit Ukraine, and the latest terrorist attack on the Kerch Bridge in Crimea. President Putin left no doubt that there will be a massive retaliation for the latest Ukrainian attack on Russian civilians.
Russia appears to be employing a micro-version of Sequential Operations, which was a center piece of the Soviet plan that defeated the Nazi armies during World War II.
The last bit, “Sequential Operations” yielded no results when I searched for it.
I don’t know how I am supposed to analyze his comparison of Shoigu’s strategies to Stalin’s “Sequential Operations” when no link is provided and no information shows up when I search for it. I don’t think anything about this campaign can be compared to WWII though. I assume it is supposed to refer to how the USSR went on the offensive against Germany following Moscow and Stalingrad? Perhaps it is some very detailed plan I haven’t heard of that only smart geopolitical analysts know? Maybe it is an MK-Ultra kill phrase. Or, maybe the emperor has no clothes.
Who knows.
In general, in terms of how he researches his work, well, we know the methodology because he explains it to his readers. That is, Larry simply cites Russian MoD reports and believes them totally uncritically or even assumes that they’re being modest because of how gosh-darn hyper-moral they are! In other words, he blindly repeats government propaganda.
In contrast, I always mocked the MoD’s claims and never pretended that the UAF had been destroyed twice over. I maintained that the UAF remained an effective fighting force that outnumbered the Russian army, which was understaffed, underfunded and constantly being sabotaged.
Back in the summer of 2022, Larry used the MoD data to conclude that the UAF was essentially eliminated at least twice over. He also claimed that if Moscow’s red lines were crossed, NATO and UAF commanders would be targeted and killed off. Serious stuff, folks.
Here:
The Russian MOD briefing also is providing a summary of military equipment destroyed. For example, the MOD reports that 3,995 tanks and armored combat vehicles have been destroyed. Ukraine started the war with 1472 tanks and 20 tank destroyers. We do not have the specific breakdown of how many tanks have been destroyed but a conservative guess is that the majority of Ukraine’s tanks are no longer combat effective.
Russia is playing its cards very close to its vest. While the MOD briefings provide a handy laundry list for tracking the kinds of losses the Ukrainians are suffering in men and materiel, Russia is not telling the full story of the devastation they are unleashing on Ukraine’s military. But the goal set by Putin–i.e., demilitarization–is being realized.
Up to this point Russia has not targeted the command headquarters of Ukraine’s military in Kiev. If the U.S. and NATO persist in ramping up the weaponry they send to Ukraine, Russia has the ability to hit the top level command posts. If Russia does this they will likely kill and wound U.S. and other NATO officers. Russia has avoided launching such an attack, but if U.S. supplied weapons continue to kill civilians in the Donbass Russian patience may reach its end and they will send a devastating message.
None of this occurred though.
The UAF would go on to take Kharkov and then force a retreat from Kherson. Russia would then have to order a flash mobilization of 300k men in the fall to plug the gaps to make up for the large losses over the spring and summer. Russia never retaliated in kind against NATO for bombing St. Petersburg, Moscow, the Kremlin towers, the assassination campaigns, the Crimea sabotage campaign, the shelling of civilians in Belgorod, Donetsk, etc.
Skipping ahead, we then were subjected to Larry’s reporting on the Wagner saga.
He claimed that the conflict was a clever plot cooked up by Shoigu and Prigozhin and Putin to trick Kiev into thinking that Russia’s military was divided. To lure Kiev into a trap.
Here:
I believe we are witnessing a 21st Century version of Russian Maskirovka. It is Bolshoi Military theater. I suppose some can argue that Prigozhin’s diva meltdown just a day after the failed Ukrainian drone attack on the Kremlin, which the Russians were quick to insist was an attempted assassination of Vladimir Putin. I do not buy it. Too convenient in terms of timing and narrative.
He “doesn’t buy it,” folks. Prigozhin demanding shells and warning that he’d march on Moscow didn’t fool Larry. Even when Prigozhin went ahead and did just that, Larry still wasn’t buying it.
Too obvious! Amateur hour! Pathetic, even!
That is because Larry is a hard man to fool. Someone who has already made up his mind can’t be convinced otherwise by something as insignificant as reality trying to intrude on his own personal head canon narrative.
Here:
I do not believe in coincidence. The fact that Prigozhin is linked so publicly with a military organization and an internet information operation that are all under the control of Russia intelligence, leads me to believe that he is an important actor in the Russian campaign to deceive and confuse the West about its true military plans and objectives. Last week, Prigozhin did his best to convince the NATO countries that Wagner was on the ropes and faced with a real risk of being overrun by newly energized and supplied Ukrainian troops.
All just an elaborate ruse!
He then even tripled down. When Prigozhin marched on Moscow he insisted that it was all green-lit by Putin to fool Washington! Seriously.
What if the Prigozhin “Coup” is Maskirovka? I want to explore that possibility. Earlier today (Saturday on the east coast of the U.S.) I was sketching out a piece with the catchy title, “PRIGOZHIN — PUTSCH OR PLOY?” Well, that swell idea was blown away like the Kakhovka Dam when the narrative about the Prigozhin plan to march on Moscow and personally strangle Russian Defense Minister Shoigu went full-on Nadia Comăneci — i.e., back flip. Prigozhin ordered “his” troops back to their bases, cut a deal with the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, to go into exile and will face no judicial punishment. WHAT????? No bloodshed? No miles of burning tanks? And no Mussolini neck tie for Vladimir Putin? What the hell?!!
Of course, eventually the Kremlin came out and started attacking Wagner and Prigozhin. So, Larry quickly changed his tune. He then decided that Prigozhin was working for Western intelligence the whole time, but that the omniscient Kremlin knew about this all along and had played along with the CIA and Langley just to give them a sporting chance. Really.
Here:
This is strong circumstantial evidence that Prigozhin not only went rogue, he became a traitor. Let me make one obvious point from a counter intelligence standpoint — providing NATO with the locations of Russian units is the equivalent of giving Eskimos a truck load of snow in January. NATO’s robust ISR capabilities makes it highly likely that those locations were already known to the U.S. and European military and intelligence officers. This type of corroborating intel is what George Smiley, the mole hunter in the British TV series, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, called “fools gold.” It looks like the real deal but, when properly evaluated, does not tell you anything you don’t already know. It simply persuades those eager to believe to swallow the bait.
I want to suggest an alternative possibility — Yevgeny Prigozhin was bait. The Russian military and intelligence chiefs are not deaf, dumb and blind. Since the start of the Special Military Operation, Western politicians and pundits stridently have insisted that Putin is weak; Putin faces serious political opposition; Putin is terminally ill; and Russia is teetering on the brink of economic and political disaster.
…
Russia was able to accomplish several objectives during this double-cross mutiny. It moved troops to areas under the guise of countering the coup that otherwise would have drawn attention and possible attack if carried out during normal wartime operations. Vladimir Putin gained a better appreciation of his popular support. Not even the Communist Party, which despises Putin, came out to back Prigozhin. The West continues to insist that this was a show of weakness by Putin. Really? No political opponent of any consequence jumped on the coup bandwagon. The Russian people did not flock to the streets in an Orange revolution rush calling for Putin’s head. Just the opposite.
This man should volunteer to finish George RR Martin’s last two books because he’s got quite the aptitude for telling good fantasy yarns. In actual fact, Russians in Rostov came out in the street to either gawk at or cheer Wagner on, which was captured on camera. And Putin’s popularity did NOT soar because of the mutiny because he came off looking weak and his entire regime hiccuped with uncertainty for the whole world to see.
The idea that the Kremlin allowed Prigozhin to mutiny to improve Putin’s approval ratings is probably the most bizarre ZAnon cope-take that I’ve ever heard during the entire SMO experience so far. And this story is why Larry occupies such a position of great honor in the pantheon of prophet-propagandists. He goes where few dare to go. His boldness knows no bounds.
“Chutzpah”, some might even call it.
In contrast, I maintained that the Shoigu-Prigozhin conflict was real the whole time as it was unfolding and I even predicted the march on Moscow.
This was a remarkable moment in blogging history, and it went entirely unnoticed sadly. I was able to predict what none of the well-paid and widely-respected and eulogized Z-bloggers were. But all I got for it was an increased flood of hate mail from Z-fans for being right which continues to this day.
No recognition of the fact that I was LITERALLY THE ONLY ONE who even bothered to translate Prigozhin’s speeches into English or to assess his odds of success should he march on Moscow. Given that the others were pretending that it was all a ploy to trick the CIA-Nazis, they couldn’t take it seriously. And even later, in the aftermath of the “SMO” and Prigozhin’s assassination, many started pretending that there was no mutiny after all.
Only NAZI NAZI NAZIS DIE DIE DIE! like myself still allow themselves to even remember the inconvenient events of last summer.
Anyway.
As for Larry, well, a pattern emerges in his writing. He literally never apologizes or admits that he got anything wrong. Instead, he doubles down on his outlandish theories or simply swerves into a plot twist that no one saw coming, least of all himself. You know, if this were a fan-fic submitted to a writing contest, critics would pelt him with tomatoes for breaking the necessary suspension of disbelief so often with his absurd plot twists. But, clearly, there are higher standards of realism in the field of fantasy books about dungeons and dragons than there is in the political blogging field.
So, the man who was part of an elaborate ruse to trick Kiev into letting down its guard (Prigozhin) was actually secretly a British spy the whole time, and no, these two points don’t contradict one another!
Here:
I think this leak to Pancevski provides additional confirmation that Prigozhin was acting in concert with Western intelligence operatives. What remains unknown is whether Prigozhin was genuinely cooperating with the West or pretending to spy for the West while actually being controlled by Russian authorities. I continue to believe it is the latter. If Prigozhin committed treason then Putin’s decision to go unscathed into exile in Belarus sends the message that you can go after Putin and live. That is not being magnanimous, that is madness.
Funny enough, Larry defended the honor of General Surovikin and claimed that rumors he was next on the chopping block were NATO disinfo. He literally did this right before Shoigu started purging the military of Wagner sympathizers.
Amazing timing.
Yep, toss Surovikin under the suspicion bus. Why in the world would the CIA or MI6 want to cast doubts on Surovikin? That could weaken him and affect his ability to counter the Ukrainian offensive. Oh, I got it. Never mind.
Surovikin disappeared shortly after and it was revealed that he was being interrogated and held in detention by the Kremlin’s spooks. He is no longer involved with the SMO, but he’s alive still; there were some leaked photos of him from a year ago in public trying to looking inconspicuous with his wife in tow.
Before that, Surovikin was a darling of ZAnon — the modern day General Zhukov who would take Kiev again and then Berlin. When he was purged though, his cheerleaders pretended that he had never even existed. It is eerie, really, to see this sort of scrubbing of the past still being employed.
Back in the day, they had to rely on more blunt methods.
But nowadays, they simply drown out the past and inconvenient facts with a sheer deluge of false information. That is the best way to censor things, as it turns out. Just think, we are two years into this Not-War and many of you newcomers have just heard of me for the first time in the last week. Believe me, I tried to be heard this whole time, but the disinfo artists have enjoyed a larger soapbox.
They didn’t have to censor me to make it so you didn’t hear an alternative perspective, did they? I hope you new readers stick around by the way! Don’t get overwhelmed by all the new info!
Just follow the “Welcome to the Slavlands” guide pinned to the homepage.
Now, moving right along, Larry would go on to claim that the referendums were a game-changer and that subsequent attacks on these newly annexed territories would be suicidal for Kiev because it would constitute a direct attack on Russia, which would be dealt with by extreme force. This was his explanation for Russia’s rout from Kharkov — that it was actually a strategic redeployment to guarantee the election integrity of these new annexed territories.
Here:
Remember three weeks ago when Putin and the Russian military were on the ropes and the Ukrainian army was steamrolling through Kharkov? That was then and Urkaine’s promised victory failed to materialize. With the benefit of hindsight, it appears that Russia abandoned the strategically meaningless territory in the Kharkov Oblast of Ukraine and re-deployed forces to the Donbas, Zaporhyzhia and Kherson. Why? To be in position for the referendum–i.e., to defend the Ukraine oblasts that would be given the chance to vote whether or not to reunite with mother Russia. Putin’s subsequent announcement of the referenda, which began last Friday, was not a Hail Mary pass nor an act of desperation. The planning for this had been in the works for at least a month, maybe longer.
(…)
It appears that the vote to reunite with Russia will be overwhelming in favor of becoming Russian republics. Once the results are certified the Russian Duma will act to accept the decision and Putin will put the cherry on the sundae and make it official. At that point–this Friday–the special military operation in Ukraine will end and Russia will be in position to defend its new territory.
LOL.
I expect Putin to speak commemorating the event and will put Ukraine, NATO and the United States on notice that any further attacks on Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporhyzhia and Kherson will be an attack on Russia. Ukraine and the west will be on notice. The ball will be in their court.
This will create an opportunity for what is left of Ukraine to seek peace. I doubt that Ukraine and the west will accept this chance. The attacks on the new Russian population will continue and Russia will act. In contrast to the restraint demonstrated during the course of the last six plus months, Russia is likely to respond with more aggressive tactics that may include turning off the power in Ukraine and attacking command centers, including Zelensky’s headquarters in Kiev. This will lead to a significant escalation in the combat, but Ukraine and NATO will have a limited capacity to respond. Why?
And then he doubled down because of course, this is Larry we are talking about:
Here:
The referenda are part of a dance with Russian law. Russia’s Duma has met and passed legislation that will govern how new territories, along with their citizens, are admitted into the Russian Republic. I must emphasize that the decision to hold the referenda this week was made some weeks ago. Ukraine’s continued shelling of civilians in the Donbas made this move an imperative.
Once the votes are completed and the results announced, the next move will be Russia’s–i.e., welcoming the former Ukrainian oblasts into the Russian Republic. Once they are admitted, any further attack by Ukraine on those territories will be an act of war against Russia. Putin has made it very clear that he will act against any nation waging war against Russia and its citizens. This move is putting the United States and NATO on notice. If they continue to enable Ukrainian attacks on Russian citizens then they will be targeted in response.
And what happened next?
Well, Russia abandoned part of the newly annexed territories without even putting up a fight.
Larry scrambled to explain this all away, of course, and his audience didn’t notice that he was completely wrong for the 6 millionth time at that point. Nor will they ever notice, it seems like. This is because ZAnon relies on religious-style thinking, which many people are very susceptible too because of their character flaws.
Just think: you can never convince a Christian that they’ve been duped once they have accepted the first lie, however noble or moral, that snares them in the Judeo-Christian matrix. So, for example, once they force themselves to accept that Moses was real and that he spoke to God, who gave the Jewish people special godly privileges and supremacy status over all nations and ordered them to genocide Gaza and so on, none of the subsequent absurdities will snap them out of the delusion.
It is the same for people who have accepted Putin as their personal political lord and savior. Many of these people had previously worshipped Trump because of a similar psychological manipulation operation called QAnon. They will probably worship Taylor Swift next, I don’t know, it depends on who the next internet prophet tells them is the hero who will defeat Satanism.
But I digress.
In contrast to Larry, I predicted the Russian retreat a month out while Larry was busy penning his erotica love letters to Shoigu and Putin.
And if truth motivated readers trying to make sense of politics and wars and whatever, that should have been the end of Larry’s career and the beginning of mine. Alas, being right is often a detriment to one’s success as a blogger. People prefer a dolt, I’ve found. They can relate to an idiot better because they see themselves in him, I guess.
Also, whenever they can’t make sense of something, they simply assume that there is a clever plan afoot. Dumb people ironically fall back on convoluted, twisted logic more than smart people, who instead are more drawn to clarity and simplicity. Dumb people are also very afraid of being found out for being dumb (as if we can’t tell) and so they hide this by using faux sophistication to clock themselves up in as if it were a kind of elaborate robe. So, whenever it looks like Larry has gotten tangled up in his own yarn, he simply reminds his readers that believing his lies makes them clever.
And who doesn’t want to think that they are cleverer than everyone else!
Thus, Putin is playing a clever 5 dimensional chess game with his opponents that only these very clever people understand because they read prophets like Larry.
Here:
Putin, so far, has shown no sign of panic or alarm. I have seen no evidence to suggest that he is out of touch with reality. Instead, he has worked methodically to shore up relations with China, India and the Gulf States. He realizes he can no longer rely on any hope of a working relationship with the United States and Europe. it appears that the referenda process, which culminated on Tuesday with the acceptance of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporhyzhia as new members of the Russian Federation, now paves the way for Russia to invoke the defense protocols of the CSTO. That means additional troops from allied countries like Belarusia can join the fight if needed.
It very much reminds me of a game of chess. Russia is now sacrificing pawns in the form of strategically useless territory, while Ukraine is rushing forward to seize symbolic territory without having the necessary reserves in terms of trained soldiers and equipment to sustain the attack and defeat Russia. Russia, meanwhile, is moving its Knights, Rooks and Bishops into position for checkmate. The question remains–what is Putin’s gambit?
We never did end up finding out what Putin had sacrificed all those “pawns” for. I find that it lends clarity to the situation if those sacrificed chess pieces are referred to by their proper name. Those pawns being sacrificed are, in commonspeak, also known as “Russians” i.e., real people are dying in their thousands to supposedly allow Jesus/Putin to checkmate Satan/Biden.
So, the above paragraph should actually read: “Putin is now sacrificing Russians to set up some eventual final checkmate against NATO. You know, kind of like what Jesus is doing in Revelation against Satan. In other words, Putin is pretty much Jesus. I don’t believe in this religious crap myself, but I know that my readers are rubes who do so I will use this kind of language deliberately to lead them into my trap”.
And fall for it they do.
Finally, in regards to Russia’s stated goals in Ukraine — denazification and demilitarization, Larry stated that Russia had accomplished pretty much all they set out to do only 8 months into the SMO.
Here:
"How is Ukraine supposed to force Russia to retreat without robust, effective combat air, guaranteed supplies of artillery shells and an ample tank force, not to mention healthy soldiers to operate these weapon systems? The answer is simple–they won’t and they can’t. The Ukrainian armed forces are degraded severely today compared to what they could put on the field of battle on February 24th. I challenge anyone to make the case that Ukraine is stronger, more capable today than they were eight months ago."
And yet here we are … 14 months later with no end in sight.
Despite this, and despite all of his failed predictions, Larry continues to write new installments in his fantasy novel series. Every time, Larry is dead-certain that Kiev will collapse in the next two weeks. That Russia will break through in the next two weeks. That the dollar will collapse in the next two weeks. That Jesus will return to reward the credulous and smite the skeptics in the next two weeks.
You know, I’ve got to hand it to him.
Larry is either the most die-hard Putin groupie in the world, or he is one of the most cynical propagandists in modern history, pushing the envelope of credulity to the limit to see if there is even any limit at all to the bullshit that he can sell his well-meaning, true-believing pious-idiot audience.
The Dark Side of ZAnon
Fun and jokes aside, the true purpose of Larry’s blogging appears to NOT be to inform or even to try at accurately predicting anything at all. Either he is comically wrong all the time and possessed with a kind of blind obliviousness and shamelessness about that fact or, perhaps, there is more to Larry and Zanon than meets the eye.
Like, if you just rolled the dice randomly, you would have better predicting power than Larry has demonstrated so far. Because, occasionally, you’d get a correct prediction just by chance. So, since all of it is so deliberately wrong, I am forced to conclude that the purpose of the project is more sinister. I believe that a program of active disinfo is being propagated and paid for by the spooks with a clear goal in mind. This, and not well-meaning amateurish bumbling is the only explanation that makes sense to me to when trying to explain the ZAnon phenomenon.
It almost certainly works something like this.
Remember: The average peasant can’t read very good nor can they remember much gooder. This isn’t even taking into account their ability to accurately analyze information that is presented to them. The average or even the slightly above average person simply hasn’t even the slightest ounce of ability when it comes to discernment at all.
But they do understand and remember emotions.
Larry and ZAnon is simply conditioning them to feel positive feelings towards the Kremlin by feeding them stories about Putin that are all eerily similar to Christianity’s core eschatological narrative.
The fake facts and wrong predictions are forgotten, but the emotions raised by the writing leave behind an imprint.
The great battle between Satan and Jesus. Little evils being used by Yahweh to bring about a greater good. Morality wars against “neo-pagan” sodomites. Vague allusions. and parallels to Armageddon and Judgement Day. You get the idea.
To keep the emotional narrative going, it is also important to keep ideological ranks at all times. ZAnon writers never really contradict each other. They only chide one another for not believing hard enough in Putin’s genius on occasion. Lost in the noise, no one can remember what the goals and objectives and hopes were last fall, let along when the SMO began.
For that, people would have to read Riley’s comparison of Putin’s latest to Putin of two years ago:
No offense, to Riley, but few people are going to do that.
Fewer still will read me.
But whatever. I’m over it.
And that’s all I have to say about Larry for today.
…
Mostly, I blame the peasants themselves for this situation where we can’t even have an honest discussion about what is going on in Ukraine (or Russia for that matter). No one forces them to consume info-slop, and yet they seek it out, squealing with delight as they are fed one rotten lie after another, gorging themselves on empty platitudes and false historical feel-good narratives. True analysis of the Not-War is hard to come by and when pearls of true info and insight are presented, the messengers are usually met by indignant squealing from the swine masses.
In fact, I liken reading ZAnon to eating at McDonald’s at this point. Everyone knows that it is slop. That it is unhealthy. That only weak slobs addicted to sugar and salt and GMOs still do so because they can’t stop. That there is nothing really even resembling food served there at this point. And yet, despite all this, there are hungry little piggies that still line up to eat there. And I don’t think these types are reformable, really. They just exist as a part of our reality, sadly and they don’t even have the decency to stay in their containment pens anymore.
So *oink* *oink*, you fat fucking svinya and gobble down down all the emotionally-satisfying but truth-deficient info-slop that you want.
I’m not stopping you.
But don’t come into my fine establishment and demand I start serving McNuggets of tantalizing secret info about Putin’s 5D plans to seize Crimea using hang-gliders like the other establishments do. I simply won’t do it. So get your stained sweat pants and oversized white T-shirt with chains bouncing on top of it out of here before I call the cops on you. Oh, and never come back! Because this is an establishment for decent folk.
Your kind ain’t welcome here.
I know Marko from a wonderful article he wrote about covid for Russia Insider in the early days of the "pandemic". It was a scary and lonely place back then when almost nobody dared to speak against covid. After that I forgot about him until the fake war started. Again - no info, just cheap propaganda. I found the anti-empire website and was reading it till he dropped because of the haters. I don't remember how I found out about your blog, Rolo, I think it was from the anti-empire website? Or maybe I read something from Riley about you. Riley is great, all of you are great. Riley made impression on me when he appeared in the Corbett show. I admit that I suspect anybody to be a spook including you so I never really clap like a monkey for anybody. But still you are doing a great job and it is a pleasure.
It was around 96 that he was under investigation for sharing top secret information with Israel