Morning music
Battles past
Tweets seen
See also: https://thegrayzone.com/2023/06/01/father-gonzalo-lira-american-jailed-in-ukraine-imprisonment/.
So far, nothing more on Twitter from Gonzalo Lira. Looks like he has been arrested. It seems naive to have posted the above tweets and then tried to cross the border. It occurred to me that Lira was going to try to cross a different border than the one specified, but that might not have made any difference in the digital age.
The rest of his important Twitter thread:
So far, no more news…
More tweets
Part of a huge transnational campaign by the forces of evil, the aim being to trash or replace what are sometimes termed “the Good, the Beautiful, and the True”.
Ah. That had puzzled me. Here we have a notably corrupt and shambolic “state”, Ukraine, which for 30+ years has become ever-more corrupt and shambolic. That state has now been invaded, a tenth of its territory occupied, and about 20% of the population has fled to other countries. Industry is largely idle, while agricultural produce cannot be, for the most part, exported. Despite all that, the exchange rate of its currency, the hryvnia, has not dropped through the floor. Why not?
From the newspapers
As far as the medical profession is concerned, very few of such incidents involve (real) British/English doctors, as everyone knows. The case reported on is no different.
More tweets seen
Local MP? Freeloading chancer Jackie Doyle-Price [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Doyle-Price].
Crazy Britain.
Online “grifter”, “Supertanskiii”, who apparently makes some kind of living partly via pretending to be an “anti-Tory” “activist” (i.e. she tweets ranting, repetitive, and boring remarks about “the Tories” several times a day, and is, or so I read, sent money by, I also read, pathetic middle-aged men, mostly), engages in dialogue with someone about better-known “grifter” “Jack Monroe”. Note also how “Supertanskiii” uses that stupid “they” thing when she means “she“.
The conversation was all about how MP Lee Anderson (admittedly not someone of whom I particularly approve) was evil etc when he claimed to be able to make food for 30p (while fraudster “Jack” claims to be able to do the same for 11p). Both totally implausible, in my opinion.
Louise Theroux and Nick Fuentes
Saw a recording of a recent Louis Theroux TV show. His usual modus operandi, i.e. try to appear friendly or at least honestly inquisitive, while plotting how to entrap his interviewers and/or make them look stupid. It often works. The only one of his interviewees (from the relatively few of his shows seen by me) who managed to put Theroux in his place was the late Max Clifford.
This show was about one Nick Fuentes and his followers in the USA. I had heard of Nick Fuentes, but knew little of him.
I have to say that Theroux did not have a difficult task this time. Weird people giggling and making jokes out of serious issues, these Nick Fuentes followers (and the man himself) came across more like silly boys aged about 10 (in most cases) rather than young or youngish men in their twenties and thirties trying to put forward serious points and maybe attain to political leadership.
Not that I disliked or disagreed with all that they said. They seemed to be fairly solid on the “Jewish Question”, though their views were pretty superficial.
Nick Fuentes himself seemed reasonably intelligent, and is plainly making a small fortune out of his activities, but some of his views are just mad, and I have nothing in common with the “nothing is serious”, or “making jokes to make a semi-serious point” tactics he and his followers deploy. I also have nothing in common in terms of lifestyle with these “gamers” and their Call of Duty (etc) interests. I have never played such a game, not even once. There again, I am now 66, twice or even three times the age of these —to me— strange young/youngish men (apparently there are a few women, but not many).
They all expressly disclaimed any connection with, or interest in, National Socialism, or what they termed “white supremacism“, or even “white nationalism“. That rang a couple of alarm bells for me. It occurred to me that Fuentes, and the movement as a whole might be a kind of plant, or at least being loosely manipulated as “controlled opposition”.
Here is a movement of the contemporary computerized era: no ideology to speak of (from what I have seen so far), no real programme, no administrative structure beyond whatever is necessary to publish their views online. A rag-tag bunch of followers, though quite numerous (Fuentes was said to be able to gather a crowd of several thousands at short notice, and in any state of the Union).
I enjoyed seeing the scenes of the U.S. Capitol invaded, but that did not amount to a putsch, even on the slightly comic-opera or tragi-comic level of, say, the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 in Munich, which at least had real aims, real ideology, serious people (Hitler, Himmler, Goering, Ludendorff, Rudolf Hess, Dietrich Eckart etc), and real courage and steel.
The U.S. Capitol “riot”, by contrast— no discipline, no ideology, no real leadership; chaotic, and with nothing to fall back upon afterwards.
Not very impressive (both Fuentes’ movement and Theroux’s show). The nagging thought is in my mind— what interests are served by a phenomenon such as that? It may be little more than a safety-valve for the System.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Fuentes; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Theroux.
More tweets seen
“The VBI” refers to the “Jack Monroe” invention (which does not in fact exist) of a so-called “Vimes’ Boots Index” of inflation monitoring of basic or staple products. Another “Jack Monroe” scam, in short.
Short answer— no. Maybe days later, but only as a useless rubbernecker (who later tried to scam more money using the situation as a painted backdrop).
Tweeter “Birdy Bart”: joined Twitter late June 2023, and only 1 “follower”. The latest “Jack Monroe” “sock account”. Pathetic, but not as pathetic as the 379 utter mugs still each sending the fraudulent “grifter” between £3.50 and £44 a month, a total of thousands of pounds a month.
Still, the tide has turned.
Last year, “Jack Monroe” was being chucked money by about 850 mugs (she having been endorsed by Jewish “celebrity” “foodies” Nigella Lawson and Jay Rayner).
In the latter part of 2022, that ~850 declined to about 400 or so as people started to wake up to the fraudulent and abusive behaviour etc by “Jack Monroe” and her fans; then the number declined further, to 396-397, and stuck there for quite a while, several months. Now— 379. Must still be several thousand a month, though, as noted. Even on the lowest level (£3.50 each), that is still over £1,300 in cash, though, every month, and taxfree. At a guess, she must still be pulling in about £4,000 a month from those mugs.
Late tweets seen
As I blogged recently, Baddiel is the unthinking man’s Jonathan Miller…
Because most Africans are incapable of organization.
There are other factors, of course: corruption, wars and civil wars and (yes) exploitation by outsiders, but that is last and least.
The blog has had only one or two hits from Burkina Faso in the past years. Maybe it was that President? Who knows?
In the future, say 200 years from now, will 2023 be classed alongside 1941, 1939, and 1914, and will earnest discussion among academics ask “could that war have been prevented?”
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 