Morning music
On the blog 3 years ago
On the blog 2 years ago
On the blog 1 year ago
Saturday quiz
Well, this week 7/10 (admittedly including one educated guess, i.e. question 1); political journalist John Rentoul scored 4/10. I did not know the answers to questions 8 and 9, and could not bring the answer to question 6 to mind, though I really knew it (in the back of my mind).
Tweets seen
[“RUSSIAN DRONE ATTACKS REPORTED ACROSS UKRAINE — JET-POWERED DRONES REACH LVIV*
Overnight, Geran-type drones reportedly targeted Dnipro, Mykolaiv, Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Lutsk, as well as the Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Lviv and Poltava regions.
Reports also indicate that Geran-4/5 jet-powered drones reached Lviv for the first time. The extent of the damage and any casualties require independent confirmation.
- The reported expansion of drone attacks toward western Ukraine highlights the challenge of defending a vast territory. Faster jet-powered variants could further complicate interception efforts and increase pressure on Ukrainian air defenses.
The key question is whether Ukraine can sustain nationwide air defense as the threat evolves in both range and speed.“]
I suggest that the Russian side leaves Lvov unattacked. Lvov is an ancient and interesting city, at one time within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lviv
Once Russia achieves victory and supremacy over Eastern Ukraine, and once Kiev ceases to be the capital of a fake state, a real Ukrainian rump state, autonomous but disarmed and neutral, can be centred on Lvov.
As European societies collapse…
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/christian-zedig-police-officer-denmark-37757950
“A convicted rapist who punched and killed a police officer at a World Cup fan zone has been jailed for just one year.”
[Daily Mirror]
Wall. Squad. End.
The occasionally-seen (in fact, becoming now “often-seen”) cases of that sort are the tip of the iceberg.
The European societies, including UK society, are slowly (?) collapsing via both —scarcely controlled at all— the mass migration invasion and then also the soon-upcoming demographic collapse (European people having few if any children).
More tweets
Late tweets
Either insane or just a total idiot.
Glad to read now that —contrary to many ill-informed tweets— the tiger, an Amur tiger from the former Soviet Far East, was unharmed and, as it appears, will not be killed.
The Amur tiger is the world’s largest and one of the rarest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_tiger
Zelensky— RAUS!
Can you believe that that woman is head of foreign policy for the EU? It is ludicrous. The personification of geopolitical irrelevance.
Burnham’s recent announcements will have bolstered Labour’s chances. The fact that Burnham’s announcements are mainly hot air, and will never be implemented, will not become apparent until 2027, 2028, 2029, or later. As yet, they are likely to be attractive to many voters who may perhaps regard them as something real and viable.
On that basis, a general election this year might be a possibility. However, Reform might do better than expected. It all depends on how turned-off the voters are with the main System parties.
Late music
The question about the Kurds in the Quiz, prompted me to ask AI which ethnic group the Kurds belong to. Here is the reply:
“The Kurds belong to the Iranian ethnic group (or are of Iranian origin), which is part of the broad family of Indo-European peoples. They are an indigenous people of Kurdistan, a mountainous geographical region spanning primarily southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northeastern Syria.
They constitute one of the world’s largest stateless ethnic groups, with an estimated global population of between 30 and 45 million people (in addition to a significant diaspora, primarily in Europe).”
The last paragraph was a big surprise to me. I thought the Kurds were not numerous, perhaps five million people. As my father said: “If you keep your eyes and ears open, you might learn something new every day.”
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Claudius:
As a barrister in London in the 1992-1996 period, I occasionally represented the Kurdish PKK now-disbanded political/”terrorist” group, but my involvement was not political; I just got handed one brief, did well with it, and so got others from supporters of the PKK. The usual position was that those people denied being PKK members (illegal, because UK designated PKK as “terrorist”) but admitted to supporting PKK ideologically (not illegal).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Workers%27_Party
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How funny, and English, if you are a member of a group considered “a terrorist organisation”, that is illegal/punishable, which is understandable; however, if you declare to be a supporter of that organisation, there is nothing wrong with that.
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Claudius:
In law, especially English law, the devil is in the detail.
To give active support, or even lip-service, to a proscribed organization, is itself illegal now, but the law was not so far-reaching in the 1990s. The Terrorism Act 2000 radically reduced the “support” for proscribed or designated groups that might yet be lawful.
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“In law, especially English law, the devil is in the details.” How true!
That must be the reason for the famous saying, “Do not forget to read the small print!”
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I am glad to hear that the tiger was not harmed and will not be killed. In the past, the f… morons in charge of zoos and similar places killed the animals that committed “the crime” of mauling or killing some idiot who thought it would be a good idea to tease the animal or play with it.
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Claudius:
Yes, it is a crime to kill animals because they have been provoked by idiots. Thankfully, it seems that this time that did not happen.
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