Morning music
Vorkuta
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorkuta
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorkutlag
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/01/27/europe-s-easternmost-city
I have only ever met one person who has been to Vorkuta, and his was an involuntary visit that lasted for many years; a Pole sent there as a young man, I think in or about 1940, along with many others. I believe that he somehow survived a decade there, and was eventually repatriated to his family in Bielsko-Biala, south-west Poland. Maybe about 65 when I met him and his family in 1988, he was a bit of a tough guy, and he must indeed have been tough, in more youthful days, to survive for 10 years as a prisoner and slave-labourer in Vorkuta.
Looking at that film (above), I am again struck by the harshness and brutality that humans can inflict on each other, but also by the incredible resilience and ability to create that humans have.
Vorkuta, like other cities in inhospitable areas and harsh climates (Magadan, Norilsk etc) which were wholly a product of the Stalinist period of the Soviet system (Vorkuta did not exist even as a hamlet until the 1930s), had at one time (1960s, 1970s, 1980s) a real city life, with a railway station, buses, an airport, a city theatre, hospitals, cinemas, sports centres, even a symphony orchestra; also, some fairly impressive-looking official buildings.
See also: https://philanthropicpeople.com/tag/book-burning/; https://www.thebarentsobserver.com/arctic-mining/coal-tycoon-buys-vorkuta-mines/106789; https://www.new-east-archive.org/features/show/11764/vorkuta-documentary-photography-russian-arctic-gulag-Roman-Demianenko-russia-z
Vorkuta had, at one time, 115,000 inhabitants. The real population is now thought to be well below 50,000, perhaps as low as 30,000.
See also:
My point is that civilization is not a simple continuum. Rudolf Steiner, Valentin Tomberg etc have described human evolution as a staggered spiral. There can be breaks in the spiral. Civilizations or cultures arise, but also decay and disappear. Amazing places can be created and built out of “nothing”, but those same places can fall to pieces and disappear even from memory and/or from recorded history.
The beautiful city of St. Petersburg was created from swamp and forest by the vision, in origo, of one man, Peter the Great, and still exists, now with millions of inhabitants (it is commonly said to be the 4th or even 3rd-largest city in Europe, depending on whether Istanbul is accepted as European). On the other hand, famous Sparta left almost nothing behind it but memories become history. Troy was, for many centuries until its site was rediscovered in the 19thC, thought to be not even legendary but mythical. New York City was created from “nothing”, from the 17thC onward, and still exists, yet the huge cities which once existed in Mexico and Central America and elsewhere have either disappeared or been supplanted (as at Mexico City) by very different successors.
Vorkuta was built on brutality and suffering, but then so was Petersburg…
The world, particularly Europe but also the Middle East, North America, Russia, stands in peril from massive and probably nuclear war. The cities of the West and Centre of Europe also stand in peril from internal strife caused mainly by migration invasion by backward hordes from other parts of the world. Our present overall culture and civilization may not survive the 21st Century, not in their current forms.
We should all be thinking about these matters and about how to salvage as much as possible of our present advanced culture and civilization, should that become necessary.
Tweets seen
The Bar is riddled with traitors. I should know; until a pack of Jews procured my (wrongful and actually unlawful) disbarment in 2016, I myself was a barrister, and saw how corrupt and also stupid the whole system is.
The Bar of England and Wales is now, more or less, a dustbin.
Rare but not unprecedented. Israeli orgs, usually Shin Beth, have arrested Jews and others in the past on espionage charges; people accused of being agents of the Soviet Union, then Russia; also for Arab states.
Another Israeli war crime.
[“Why do we say that Israel was crushed by Iran’s strikes? A prominent American analyst answers! “The United States was forced to intervene to prevent Iran from destroying Israel.”
Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst: “Many people don’t realize that Israel was perhaps one or two weeks away from total defeat. Some say, ‘Oh, you’re just repeating Iranian propaganda.’ Well, then listen to me…”
“Israel has two seaports, and Iran closed them, so there was no sea traffic. Iran also destroyed two oil refineries — in Haifa and Ashdod — or disrupted their ability to produce fuel. Iran closed Israel’s only international airport.“]
So why the ceasefire? Israel will use it to regroup, resupply etc.
Russian travelogue
Looks like I missed out in a big way on my two visits (1993 and 2007) to Moscow! In some ways, at least… Still, they were business trips (mainly).
Having said that, there were huge changes visible in 2007 as compared to 1993, and it seems clear that the changes since 2007 have been at least as great.
I could do with some very cold vegetable okroshka on such a hot day as today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okroshka.
A different side of contemporary Russia
…and only 90-100 miles from Moscow…
Good to see how quickly Nature, the forest, is recolonizing the land, though.
More tweets seen
Letting existing sick and disabled people continue to receive help, but cutting off help (income) from similar people in the near future, is “morally wrong“, in my view. That is almost unarguable, surely?
That is the MP for Normanton and Hemsworth in Yorkshire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Trickett; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normanton_and_Hemsworth_(UK_Parliament_constituency).
Trickett cannot be bullied by Labour whips. He is already 74, so unlikely to contest another general election in 4+ years’ time. Also, he got over 47% of the vote in 2024, with Reform UK second on 29%. If deselected, he could, should he so choose, stand as Independent Labour, and so either win or let in Reform, which may have a good chance anyway.
Starmer-stein is too busy complying with whatever Israel and the UK Jewish lobby want done to actually do anything positive for this country or its (real) inhabitants.
So much of the msm/entertainment industry/music industry etc is in the hands of Jewish persons, and (as the Jew-Zionist orgs constantly remind us) about 95% of Jews in the UK support Israel, support the war in Gaza, the attacks against Iran (etc).
Even the Jewish anti-Zionist jazz musician, Gilad Atzmon, was targeted and persecuted by Zionist Jews, and his shows attacked or cancelled, to the extent that he eventually had to relocate out of the UK, to Greece: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilad_Atzmon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilad_Atzmon#The_Wandering_Who?
For once, I have to agree with O’Brien. The fact is that the Jew-Zionist element in Israel, in Palestine generally, and also in countries such as the UK and USA, France, Germany etc, is out of control. “They” have grabbed both influence and direct power, and are abusing that influence and power.
https://twitter.com/Timesofgaza/status/1939767598268227797
The Kiev regime forces are ebbing away.
https://twitter.com/Alex_Oloyede2/status/1939770322313781577
Disgrace.
Russia is slowly, painfully slowly, winning by attrition. It should never have come to this, but “we are where we are”…
[“The underlying discontent among rebellious and even loyal Labour MPs stems from what many would say is a pathetically late discovery: that what’s driving so much government policy is Rachel Reeves’s fiscal rules and the absolute power of the Office for Budget Responsibility in determining whether she is breaching those rules or not. Any illusion that this isn’t the single most important driver of government decision-making was shattered today by the revealed contradiction between its establishment of a supposedly fundamental review led by disabilities minister Stephen Timms to shape new criteria for awarding Personal Independence Payments, while nonetheless sticking with the contradictory stipulation that from November next year no one will be eligible for PIP if they don’t score four points on one of PIP’s existing criteria. It is absurd and illogical to characterise Timms’s review as the face of humane reform while simultaneously saying that this new four-point rule based on existing criteria will willy-nilly come into effect next year. So what’s really going on? The work and pensions secretary’s unspoken reason for sticking to the four-point reform is that without it, and under the OBR-assessed fiscal rules, Reeves would have to fill a £5bn hole in her finances in the autumn’s budget, and not the £2.5bn hole created by Kendall’s partial welfare-reform climb down. That is a big difference when it comes to any taxes Reeves may have to raise or any spending she may have to cut. So a growing number of Labour MPs see this subservience to the OBR and the fiscal rules as just the stupidest motivation for making today’s decisions that affect the lives of the most fragile of UK citizens – decisions that will, on the government’s own calculations, shift 150,000 vulnerable people into poverty. These MPs were bitten once by the OBR dog when Reeves chose to means-test the winter fuel allowance as proof of her fealty to the OBR’s jurisdiction over her own fiscal rules. With the disability reforms, many of them now feel twice shy. They don’t ask why a Labour government respects the OBR, especially after the Truss/Kwarteng fiscal debacle caused by their disrespect for the OBR. But they do question why the Chancellor and Treasury endow the OBR with an almost mystical ability to determine which policies are sensible and why Reeves has seemingly abdicated responsibility for trying to sell the government’s initiatives to the country’s creditors independently of the OBR and fiscal rules straitjacket. So whatever the outcome of the vote tomorrow on the welfare reforms, Reeves and Starmer are now under enormous pressure – probably irresistible pressure – to lose their OBR religion.“]
That bastard Timms again…
I think that people are generally awakening to the fact(s) that this is only a Labour government in terms of label. Labour-label. In reality, a Labour Friends of Israel government (misgovernment).
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 
Well, at least that Zionist Jew Israeli soldier admits to being a Nazi. Now, it is time for the Israeli state and its present PM to admit the truth as well and for the world to recognise the Zionist entity for the continual international law disobeying bandit Nazi state that it is.
If the Zionist state were nuked I would only feel sympathy for Palestinians and the anti-Zionist Nazi Ultra-Orthadox Jews who live in places like Mea Shearim in Jerusalem:
https://nkusa.org
It is high time the media here stopped lying by saying all Jews are fanatical Zionists and saying if someone is anti-Israeli they are automatically anti-Jewish. This is a bald-faced LIE.
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The Zionist entity of Israel should be peacefully dismantled and in its place there should be a single independent state of Palestine where Palestinians and Jews can live in harmony as they used to do. Jews there will be known as Palestinian Jews and be able to follow their religion and culture in peace.
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John:
As previously said, you seem to be more of an idealist even than me! That idea would only happen were there a supervening imperium ruling both Jews and Arabs benevolently but very firmly.
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So not only is the effectively unelected (https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk) and virulently anti-British moron in No.10 content to preside over a blatant ‘Two Tier’ joke of a criminal justice system without seeking to reform it he is now intent upon creating a benefits system on the same principle. Is there ANY depth of immorality and idiocy he will not sink to?
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John:
As far as Starmer-stein is concerned, both clueless incompetence and would-be cunning deceit vie for supremacy.
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He is just an utterly worthless puppet of the Zionist Nazi state. His loyality is directed towards them, the USA, India and every other foreign country and not towards us as it should be.
The Zionist Lobby has always had a bit of a grip on the Labour Party apart from under Corbyn and a short while after WW2 with Bevan as Foreign Secretary.
Shamefully, the Conservative Party is nowadays also under their strong influence. Even under Heath this was not the case.
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John:
Indeed, though the Foreign Secretary under the Attlee government after WW2 was Ernest Bevin, not (Aneurin) Bevan.
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Timms is supposed to be a Christian! A rarity in the Labour Party what with the party’s support for assisted SUICIDE and buchering innocent babies up until birth! What an utter FARCE!
The Labour Party is the Party of Death! NATIONAL British death through mass immigration, assisted suicides and the intentional destruction of wholly innocent babies in the womb for any reason up untill birth.
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John:
People who wear a big badge saying “Christian” are usually hypocrites, just as those who insist that they are “gentlemen” are usually not.
Timms is or was tied up with those ATOS fraudsters. I have no time for him, to say the least.
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ATOS and all those other fly by night private companies should be kicked-out of the benefits system. Since that idiotic cretin, John Major, began this privatization process in the 1990’s they have siphoned off billions of pounds of public money whilst not helping the unemployed, disabled people ect. They are all on the make and taxpayers are paying for it whilst driving benefits claimants into despair.
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Why is the benefits system broken, Two Tier Kier? Your war criminal mate, Bliar, supposedly ‘reformed’ it from 1997 onwards followed by fake Conservative Party ‘reforms’ with head dunce Dumbo-Smith in charge. Perhaps, the real truth is that the ‘reforms’ since 1997 by the two anti-Brit scumbag parties have made things WORSE and the economy is STILL NOT working as it should be and provide enough opportunities for BRITONS.
Get our economy working by ignoring those economically illiterate cretinous civil servants in the Treasury with their economic othordoxy theories and practices that will never work.
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John:
There is no point in hounding people, especially the sick, disabled etc, to “work” when said work pays so little that the employees cannot even live on a basic level on it, but must access “Universal Credit” to top-up the poor pay. That system is the nub of the problem. The taxpayer must stop subsidizing companies unwilling or unable to pay decent wages.
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Indeed. The fake Conservative Party is deeply hypocritical on this matter. As a libertarian globalist NOT REAL Conservative Party they are always saying the state is too big and should be made smaller but they have made the state enormous and oppressive when it comes to getting benefit claimants jumping through hoop after hoop to get a pittance in benefits.
This makes too many of them ill and inclined to commit suicide. There have been far too many tragedies because moronic cretins like dunce Dumbo-Smith have been in charge of the benefits system.
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True but there IS benefit in doing so if you are a terminally thick and bigoted Tory wanker like Iain Dunce Dumbo-Smith and want to gain the votes of dim idiots who he has long sought to pander to with his evil and baseless assertions about benefit claimants.
Dumbo-Smith has driven many benefit claimants to suicide. For that, he needs to suffer the ‘ultimate punishment’ ie [REDACTED].
https://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org
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To get sensible and WELL DESIGNED benefit ‘reforms’ to work may well require MORE money to be spent in the short term in order to save money in the longterm but British governments too often listen to the tired, old civil servants in the Treasury with their failed economic theories and reluctance to try anything new and manic desire to save money at all costs even if that leads the country to waste more money in future.
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The judiciary needs a comprehensive clear out. Too many judges are liberal-left PC globalists with comfortable existences in ‘nice Tory areas’. Put simply, too many are elitists from public schools who have no real experience of real life.
Where is this mania for ‘diversity’ when it comes to judicial appointments? Selecting judges from more ordinary backgrounds might well be of some benefit.
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I have watched the video about Vorkuta, horrible and very depressing. Some morons said that the narrator “exaggerated” the negative aspects; as if there were some positive ones!
The video “Life in Russia” paints a too rosy picture of Russian society; it sounds like old Soviet propaganda. Everything is wonderful and everyone is happy. Give me a break!
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Claudius:
I agree.
Anyway, “Life in Russia” is not the same as “Life in the more expensive enclaves of Moscow”…after all, Russia is still an enormous country (70x or more the size of the UK, 7x the size of Argentina) and, in most of it, life is not lived as it is in the tiny fashionable parts of one city.
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I have read and heard testimonies from Russians who say that most people led quite miserable lives and that the “prosperity” brought about by Putin is a lie. Obviously, these criticisms come from people who dislike Putin. Therefore, I take them with a grain of salt, but it cannot be denied that the quality of life for the majority of Russians has improved under his rule. What do you think?
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Claudius:
I saw Moscow as it was in 1993. Pretty much on its knees. Lines of elderly people selling things out of suitcases by the Kievsky Station (near my hotel, the Ukraina). They were unused to having to sell, and would just stand there silently, sadly. I bought beer and the odd tin of red caviar from some of them. Their Soviet pensions were all but worthless as the cost of everything exploded. Later, Yeltsin gave them the equivalent of USD 35 a month (in a city not much cheaper, in many ways, than somewhere such as London…). So in English money about £25 a month. Paltry. The amount now varies, but is around 20,000 roubles, I think. So, in English money, about £190. No fortune but still better, even taking inflation into account.
As for the average person, I think their standards of living went up hugely under Putin, at least until recent years.
Moscow of course is not Russia. However, if pay is far less in the provinces, so are prices.
You cannot judge it all by the salaries of expats or the monies of the wealthy. When I was discussing moving there in 2007, my pay would have been (after Russian income tax and including expected bonuses etc) about £200,000 a year. Of course, that was 18 years ago, so maybe (?) £300,000 today. Whatever. However, the kind of apartment I would have taken on (rented) would have cost about a third of my pay etc. A “Stalin skyscraper” apartment, probably, or maybe even a house in my favourite area, Kropotkinskaya.
I think that this one is a museum, not sure:
Anyway, water under the bridge now.
I do not think that many Russians are worse off now as compared to the Yeltsin gangsters and Jew “oligarchs” period of the 1990s, but there may be many who are worse off as compared to the late Soviet period (1970s, 1980s), when pay was low for most, but many things were free or almost free (most health and education, urban and some inter-city travel, *basic* foodstuffs, utilities, rent etc).
There are, of course, quite a few poverty-stricken parts of Russia, but such areas exist in the USA, and for that matter the UK, too.
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Thank you very much for your comments. It sounds awful; it must have been very sad to see the poor people so humiliated and forced to sell their belongings. I am sure that the Russians are now, in general, much better off than 20 years ago.
A similar phenomenon happened in Brazil when Lula took power in 2003. I am sending you a section (Política económica = Economic Policy) from Wikipedia´s biography of Lula, it is in Spanish because the English language version was written by someone who hates Lula and denies all his achievements. Brazil IS a great power thanks to Lula.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luiz_In%C3%A1cio_Lula_da_Silva#Pol%C3%ADtica_econ%C3%B3mica
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Claudius:
Thank you. I read it. Not an area I know much about (Brazilian politics).
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These are fragments from a lengthy article by a Russian friend. I believe they describe the current situation very well:
“The new generations born after WW2 imagined themselves to live in an age of universal happiness and plenty. Everyone supposed that economic growth and real income increases would continue indefinitely. The apex of this delusion was reached in the 1990s when people in the West genuinely believed that they had entered the golden age of peace, tranquillity and bottomless plenty.
This false outlook encouraged people to live a more materialistic life and have less concern about collective identity. Everything seemed to be too good to suspect any coming trouble.
Certainly, I mean only the mainstream crowd. Clever White people understood clearly enough what was to come; they saw the coming dark times and they warned about the dangers of materialism and selfishness. But hardly anyone took notice.
Those dark times have come. The whole civilisation rapidly descends into chaos. The total war of extermination is inevitable; not in some isolated places but everywhere. The promised nebulous multiracial paradise turned out to be the real hell. The worst is yet to come.”
Many fools in Great Britain think REFORM will be the solution. This terrible crisis is the result of decades of decadence, and voting will NOT solve it. Our enemies learnt the lesson very well, and they will not allow another January 1933. Even if there were a really big NS movement anywhere in Europe, it would be outlawed, and their leaders would be killed or put in prison. Look what happened to “Golden Dawn” in Greece.
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Claudius:
Yes. Very true, all of that.
We must look to the far future. Les rivieres pourpres…
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Some cretinous morons on GB News welcoming the move of that supremely ugly, expenses cheat off the taxpayer (along with her equally corrupt husband, Ed Balls) sick joke of a Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, to ban Palestine Action and two other groups on account of their so-called ‘terrorism’.
When are these idiots ever going to get a brain? Firstly, Islamism is not really connected to the Israel-Palestine question since ALL people of good will, common humanity, and different religions including some decent non-Zionist Jews oppose the Zionist Nazi state’s frequently abhorrent and cruel actions and secondarily it is all too easy for a Home Secretary to continue down this road especially for a thick, petty tyrant like that hag to ban any group they do not like.
Then again, GB News is not exactly a high brow station (more like the televised version of The Scum ‘newspaper’) and therefore it does not attempt to educate its viewers into knowing the difference between Zionist fanatic Jews and those who are not that way inclined.
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John:
If you label every manifestation of dissent “terrorist”, you devalue the term.
The Jew-Zionist orgs such as the “Campaign Against Antisemitism” (and more influential Jews) are behind it, of course.
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That´s right. GB NEWS is another organisation tolerated by the System because, like Farage, it fulfils the useful role of “controlled opposition”. Let´s not forget that Paul Marshall, the founder and director of GB NEWS, worked for Soros, and perhaps he is still doing so…
“Marshall co-founded Marshall Wace LLP, now one of Europe’s largest hedge fund groups, in 1997 together with financier Ian Wace,[15] and serves as chairman of the company.[16][17] At the time of its founding, Marshall Wace was one of the first hedge funds in London.[13] The company started with $50 million, half of which was from George Soros.” (Wikipedia)
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The so-called ‘Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’ must be one of the most misnamed organisations in Britain if not the world. They do not really care about REAL anti-semitism since, as ZIONIST pro-Israel fanatics, they benefit from it. Indeed, they like to see it since if there are increased levels of REAL anti-semitism in Britain then more Jews feel uncomfortable living here and then have an increased willingness to move to the Zionist bandit state thus strengthening it.
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We have a Home Secretary in Yvette Cooper that will not say a firm NO to troublemaking, fanatically pro Zionist bandit state, Jewish Zionist organisations like the so-called ‘Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’ so she does their bidding all the time and this is dangerous when it is combined as it is with her already existing petty tyrant nature and clear contempt for basic respect of democratic principles such as freedom of expression.
If only her naked authoritarianism could be deployed to better effect such as preventing utter fraudsters from invading our beaches and sending illegal immigrants back to where they came from.
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Too many people just do not ‘get it’. Zionist pro-Israel Jewish nutcases do not have any real empathy with Britons concerned about Islamic extremism/Islamism. All they care about is Israel and the welfare and security of Zionist Jews.
So, when a pathetic dogsbody and blatant puppet of their lobby groups such as Yvette ‘refugees welcome but NOT in my numerous taxpayer funded properties’ Cooper does their bidding it DOES NOT mean Cooper is concerned about Islamic extremism/Islamism’s effect upon us. She and they do NOT care about us. It is just the case that the more devout muslims tend to care more passionately about the Palestine issue.
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