Liberty Bristles

I offer this info in response to a couple of interrogatories from the legion of Liberty Bristles stalwarts regarding progress on this site’s development and fighting the war therefrom. The site is advancing full speed ahead, a tout vapor, volle kraft voraus, a toda estupidez. It’s just that ‘full speed’ is not giving the quite the rpms I’d like. As for the two-minute strategery videos that I promise, last month’s launch did not go quite as well as hoped. It turns out we do not have the optimal height of on-air talent.  In order to make up for what may be a lack of charismatic screen presence among the talking heads, I’m learning how to do video editing. It is a bit more of a mental slog, a steeper learning curve than expected.  Nevertheless, I promise to have at least several vids published before Independence Day. As for the War for America GIS Map, I only promise to have it up and running by the end of the year. I really think I’ll beat that, however, and should have a shell mounted and available for public comment before the elections – before my birthday. As for other-than-Liberty Bristles social media entries, I’ve improved slightly and am continuing to do some book advertising on a weekly basis. I assure everyone that all of my efforts will be made without the use of performance enhancing drugs (caffeine excepted, there might be caffeine). Also, my emotional, logistic and grammatical excellence support team is healthy and motivated. Ad Astra Per Awsomepera!

Warfare along the front line in Eastern Ukraine has been un-dramatic. In general, mappers record a slow, methodical advance by Russian Army units in about half a dozen sectors, but no big breakthrough, no uncontrolled route of the Ukrainians. The Ukrainian ground forces have done a competent job keeping the Russians at bay.  The Russians seem to be applying what I call a strategy of aggregate tactics, that is, no huge left hook sort of effort — no theatre scale advance across the steppe kind of thing — rather a composite of smaller actions seeking local weaknesses. The plan would be to overcome Ukrainian capacity to move reserves laterally or to universally maintain supply. Position and maneuver in the aggregate. Maybe it has worked, but Ukrainian coup d’oeil and underground castrametation have seemingly served well. That and cheap drones. The warfare has imposed a high price in materiel and lives on both sides. Now, however, the price paid by the Ukrainian civilian population has skyrocketed (so to speak), as the Russians started to dismantle the whole Ukrainian energy grid. Russian strategy-making always has deception built-in, and I won’t hazard guessing exactly what the deception is. But the basics remain and so the breakthrough is likely to come. Sadly, on the geostrategic level, it looks more and more as though the Russians have teamed up with the Chinese against the USA. A worse result for the USA I cannot imagine. I still predict a future Ukraine much smaller than shown in a 2010 world atlas.

He is risen indeed. Hallelujah.