Afternoon music
Tweets seen
Ha. In a nutshell…
Not as surprising as it seems at first blush. After all, the Gurkhas were and to some extent are mercenaries or contract soldiers in British service. They have now switched, in part, to another employer. “Simples”…
The British Army still employs about 4,000 Gurkhas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurkha.
Lammy— both brainless and without principle.
Rachel Reeves— careerist and member (and Vice-Chair) of Labour Friends of Israel…
“Rachel, why won’t you talk to us?“…answer: because your name is not (((you-know-who)))…
“Russia counted on the honesty of its partners, Russian President Vladimir Putin said when asked why the special military operation did not start earlier.
We learned the true state of affairs only later, when the former chancellor of Germany and the former president of France said that they did not even intend to fulfill the Minsk agreements, Putin said in an interview with Russia on the 24th.
Speaking about the negotiations, he pointed out that the fighting in Ukraine would have stopped a year and a half ago had it not been for the West’s position, the Russian leader said.“
“Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that it is possible to start the undamaged branch of the Nord Stream gas pipeline in a week, but Germany shows no interest in that.
Can Nord Stream 2 (launch)? Can! Turn on the valve, say: We want (gas). He will get it tomorrow. It takes a week. But they don’t want to, said the Russian leader.“
Sometimes, I think that the “dirty democratic politicians” (in Hitler’s phrase) of Germany are even more stupid than those of the UK, but that would scarcely be possible.
Russia must and will win in the Ukrainian war situation, at the very least to the extent of maintaining its present position (control of Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimea regions, and some other —mainly coastal— areas). Indeed, there is every chance that Russia will be able to take over (or regain, if you like) control of the entirety of Eastern Ukraine (Ukraine east of the Dnieper).
The shambolic, brutal, and corrupt Kiev regime headed by the Jew Zelensky is fast running out of arms, ammunition and, above all, soldiers.
“Kiev. As the brutal reality of the war sets in on the #Ukranian people. The sadness and needless death imposed up on by Zionists and Anglo-Saxon elites on to the Ukrainian peoples. Ukrainian people and the world is slowly coming to the realisation; they have been taken for a ride.“
A lunatic enjoying his “15 minutes of fame”.
There is a kind of ingrained, hypocritical sadism in “them”.
“Putin: Ukraine regularly receives money for the transit of Russian gas.
So they say in Ukraine – aggressor, aggressor. But they regularly receive money for gas transit. They don’t smell ,” said President Vladimir Putin.
Putin said that a week is needed to launch the remaining Nord Stream line, but Germany does not want to.“
Interesting. So Ukraine (Kiev regime) is still getting money from Russia on a regular basis as transit fees for passage of Russian gas to the EU?! Very convoluted.
I wonder where those millions of US dollars end up?
One of the worst aspects of the collapse of the Soviet Union 35 years ago (the formal termination was in 1991) has been the proliferation of that strange semi-Americanized Russian-language rock and rap music. Ghastly.
The Kiev regime has only two chances: one, to join NATO, and then be able to call upon NATO forces under the Treaty obligations. That is why NATO states will not allow Ukraine to join, because it would lead to a world war before very long.
The second Kiev regime opportunity to avoid defeat would be a revolution or palace revolution in Moscow, and the end of the Putin administration. That is not going to happen.
The Kiev regime should cede to Russia all of Eastern Ukraine, and should then agree to make Kiev and Odessa “open cities” or, failing that, condominia. The present members of the Kiev regime can then fall back on Lvov (or disappear to Israel or the USA).
“Nancy Pelosi on Russia’s treachery: Russia has more people in the army than at the beginning, and they will replenish their human resources. They buy these people. They go around the villages, around the outskirts, and they pay them money so that people go to fight.” Instead of honestly grabbing people on the streets and catching them in transport and apartments, as is done in democratic free Ukraine.
Can you imagine a political system so screwed that someone such as Nancy Pelosi can attain to high office? As bad as that in the UK…
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Pelosi#Financial_status.
Not sure that I agree with that, though fraud (especially one person using another’s postal vote) is obviously a problem, particularly in areas with high non-white and especially Muslim populations.
Sophie Corcoran is a pro-Conservative Party, maybe pro-Reform UK —I don’t know enough about her exact views— talking head. She does not seem to have considered that both Reform UK and (maybe even more) the Conservative Party are those mostly voted for via postal voting, which affects the mostly middle-aged and elderly people most likely to have disabilities and chronic medical conditions.
Ms. Corcoran’s proposed postal vote ban would therefore probably be the final straw breaking the back of the Conservative Party.
Rochdale is a rather different situation. I shall blog about the upcoming by-election (29 February 2024) before the day.
Something just came unbidden to my mind.
When I lived in Almaty, Kazakhstan for a year (1996-1997) I had, in the course of my work, some limited contact with an Israeli businessman in his sixties or seventies who headed a large energy company with interests in Kazakhstan. The company was based in or near Tel Aviv, maybe at Herzliya.
The Israeli was (I was told by others) a former general in the Israeli Army. I accompanied him to a meeting with the UK Ambassador, at the British Embassy (which I visited fairly often). The Embassy was then in Furmanov Street, Almaty (the capital of Kazakhstan was then still at Almaty).
That Israeli (who from his accent originated in the UK, maybe in London) told me that (unlike the British Ambassador, whom he found insufficiently interested in his problems) every Israeli ambassador is given, by his superiors in Israel, a list of duties including how many contacts, including business contacts, to make in a year, how many business opportunities for Israelis to make or facilitate etc.
“They” are relentless.
Incidentally, I have no idea why he did not use the Israeli Ambassador for what he wanted. Maybe he did that as well. Probably.
Oddly, he did not have (at least with him) a UK passport as well as his Israeli one (I know that); so, despite the semi-“British” accent (and knowledge of London) he was probably not a dual-passport-holder. Not a hugely pleasant person, and (as I believe is common in Israel) rather abrasive in manner.
Well, that Israeli general and international business leech must have gone up the chimney many years ago now. This was in late 1996, over 27 years ago; so, in itself, it is just another of life’s memories.
More tweets
True, but the pro-“libertarian”, anti-State, pro-Israel, pro-Jewish lobby stances of Reform UK will limit its appeal, in all likelihood.
https://twitter.com/SprinterMedia1/status/1759209106924064985
79 years too late.
When I lived in New Jersey in the early 1990s, my first wife (an American) and I drove a couple of times to a small shop outside the centre of Newark, which shop had been left, as if washed up on the shore, after the race riots of the late 1960s, mainly 1967, which had trashed the (then) better parts of the city. That shop sold maybe 50, maybe 100 types of ground coffee. Guatemalan, Zimbabwean, you name it.
At one time, pre-1967, Newark had been fairly decent, but after 1967, 100,000 white people left the city, leaving it a drug-ridden, crime-ridden remnant. Having said that, I sometimes walked in the main streets there, or caught the PATH Line to Manhattan, and I never had any trouble. Maybe I looked too poor or too angry to mug.
My first wife’s office was by the Federal building in central Newark, though we lived at least half an hour’s drive south, in Middlesex County, and close to the Monmouth County line.
Actually, even the “Federal” enclave in Newark was not completely safe. Two FBI agents were held up and robbed at gunpoint in the same supposedly guarded car park that my wife and her small group of colleagues used. Strange; I believe that the FBI are supposed to be armed at all times when in public. Maybe they were caught napping. After the mugging, the local police had a patrol car parked by that car park every late afternoon and evening.
Cities can of course fall into desolation via social factors alone, without war. Drugs, poverty, cultural decadence, breakdown of social trust, breakdown of social order generally. It worries me what I see in the UK whenever I have to go to heavily-urban areas (thankfully now not often). What will Britain be like by, say, 2030, or 2040? God knows.
“The flight of the Ukrainian Armed Forces from Avdiivka threatens to turn into a serious problem, since the city is of strategic importance, retired US Air Force Colonel Cedric Layton said on CNN.
Due to the transfer of the city to Russian control, it will be much more difficult for the Ukrainian Armed Forces to organize attempts at a counter-offensive on Donbass – not to mention the fact that the Russian Armed Forces may move further west after Avdievka.“
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 
Lammy is both thick as two short planks as is clearly evidenced by his infamous appearance on Mastermind which is still on Youtube I think, completely unprincipled and frankly evil in that he fully endorses the genocide of Palestinians since he has been fully bought and paid for by Zionist extremists like his leader has been.
All of that makes him a perfect representative of the tired, ,pathetic, uninspiring, untrustworthy and profoundly undemocratic, anti-British rabble of New Labour 1990’s Tribute Act with added Likud Party otherwise known as today’s ‘Labour’ Party.
He also seems to have a bit of a chip on his shoulder about we Britons.
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John:
Yes. I agree with that. Lammy is only an MP because all the blacks, pretty much, in his constituency, vote for him because he is both a black and Labour. Just as was the case with Diane Abbott.
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Yes, there is a reason why Tottenham has such a ridiculously huge Labour majority and why the Conservative Party attracts a paltry vote share there now whereas back in 1987 the Tories came within just 5,000 votes of winning the seat.
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Yes, Sophie, we should end mass postal voting on demand but WHO was responsible for its needless introduction?
That would be so-called New Labour back in 2004 in an attempt by them to stop the BNP gaining council by-election victories and possible gains in the European elections on modest turnouts ie by getting more lazy Labour voters to cast a vote to block their election.
Did the so-called Tory ‘Opposition’ then try to stop New Labour from introducing this entirely unnecessary extension of postal voting? No, they collaborated with Labour to help block the election of BNP councillors etc.
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Of course New Labour 1990’s Tribute Act with added Bibi Netanhayu Likud is an utterly repulsive organisation. That goes without saying for anyone with a brain but I could have told you that years ago about the earlier version under war criminal Tony Bliar as well.
Mr Beckett, why did your union fund that evil and today’s evil? British unions really aren’t led by the sharpest pencils in the drawer, are they? Perhaps that is one reason Mrs Thatcher found it so easy to tame them in the 1980’s.
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John:
There is also the fact that trade unions have lost almost all of their power since the 1980s. Now, they can create a nuisance and worse for a minority of the population, such as London-bound commuters, or NHS patients, but really cannot shut down electrical power generation; and there are now no coal mines, and very few steel works.
I remember how, in the 1970s, at least two of the three then TV stations would carry the TUC conference wall-to-wall, almost all day long, for days. Imagine that now! The pronouncements of the union leaders such as Lawrence Daly, Scanlon, the KGB contact/agent Jack Jones etc were treated as very very weighty. Harold Wilson told Scanlon to “get your tanks off my lawn”…
Now, the union leaders are a “woke” joke, or anyway a joke, like that now-deceased “antifascist” idiot who headed the rail union (either ASLEF or RMT) until a few years ago.
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Russia is very unlikely to be defeated in Ukraine. It is one of the very few countries virtually impossible to defeat in a war. I think the last time they were was when we defeated them in the Crimea well over a century ago. If the huge armed might of Nazi Germany couldn’t defeat the Soviet Union then Ukraine hasn’t got much chance against only a slightly smaller Russia.
The West needs to be more realistic about this deplorable and sad situation.
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John:
Contrasts—
Population: Russia 144M, Ukraine 44M pre-war, probably now about 20M-25M under Kiev-regime control, maybe 10M outside Ukraine;
Army strength: Russia well over 1M, plus almost unlimited reserves; Ukraine 500,000 in toto, but only 200,000 active. Russia increasing its armed forces daily, Ukraine having to press draft-evaders up to age 65 into service…
Air: Russia nearly 4,000 air force craft of all types; Ukraine about 200.
Nuclear arsenal: Russia 6,000-7,000 of all types, Ukraine none at all.
Economy: Russia growing, finding new export markets, huge revenues from oil and gas; enormous foreign currency and gold reserves. Ukraine completely ruined economically, with little electrical power, little functioning industry, agricultural sector in ruins, and completely dependent on EU, UK, and US aid.
There is no comparison, really.
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I wonder how far the Tory vote will collapse in Rochdale? Any bets on a near total evaporation of it? I wonder if charismatic ‘Gorgeous George’ will be elected?
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John:
I do intend to blog about Rochdale. Have not looked at it in detail, but the best showing by the Cons was in 2019 (31.2%). In the past, the Cons have usually been between 10% and 20%, with a few results either side. I see that, this time, they have an English candidate, I think. The 2019 one was a Pakistani. In the past, both UKIP and the LibDems have done better at times than the Con Party.
Reform UK’s absurd choice caught my eye— the chancer and grifter Danczuk. They must be mad. He only got 1.8% when deprived of the Labour label in 2017. Brexit Party stood in 2019 and got 8.2%.
I imagine that, as things are in 2024, the contest will be between the disowned Lab candidate Azhar Ali and Galloway as “Workers’ Party” candidate.
I just looked at Betfair Politics. They seem to have reached the same conclusion:
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.224220834
Galloway is favourite, but not by much, over “Labour”/Not Labour Azhar Ali. Both around 2/1. LibDems 36/1, Reform UK 60/1, Cons 160/1, Greens 650/1. The other 5 candidates are no-hopers.
I think that that pretty much summarizes the contest…
I would be surprised to see the Con candidate get even 15% of the vote. Maybe about 10%.
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