Morning music
On this day a year ago
Once again, it is disturbing to see the number of blank spaces, the result of recent Twitter censorship.
Tweets seen
So 1,000 missiles per day? At what point does a state supplying such weapons in such quantities become de facto an active participant in the war?
Of the above news items, the only really immediately significant one is that the tough, indeed brutal, Chechen fighters attached to the Russian effort claim to have taken the city hall of Mariupol, i.e. the central part of the city (pre-invasion population around 450,000).
Morale in at least part of the Russian invasion force has obviously been a problem, which is no doubt why Putin has drafted in the determined and relentless Chechens; it seems that battle-hardened Syrian volunteers, motivated (by money) and experienced, may arrive before too long. That may stiffen the Russian line.
The EU really is a bad joke now. If Ukraine is admitted, then it means that all the supposedly carefully-worked-out EU membership criteria (social and political stability, territorial integrity, no part of a country being under occupation, economic stability, stability of currency etc) are worth squat, to put it colloquially.
Panicdemic
A graphic from a year ago, but well worth revisiting.
More tweets
It also shows, pretty clearly, that the Russian occupiers are not the monsters that are being portrayed in the Western msm…
The civilians in the occupied cities are plainly not much afraid of the Russian troops.
The Western arms being sent to the Kiev regime may well result in localized, and even wider, defeats for Russian forces in the short term, but will result either in the Russian high command (historically, the Stavka) committing more troops and equipment to the war (as it now is) or (and/or) using very powerful bombs, missiles and artillery to flatten cities in the south and east of Ukraine and also to attack, from long distances, strategic targets in the west of Ukraine.
So far, the Russians have not much targeted such as railway stations, railway lines, and major road links from neighbouring countries, in the west of Ukraine.
Neither have whatever Putin has in the nature of the old Soviet Spetsnaz forces been used to assassinate the highest-ranking members of the Kiev regime.
In Soviet days, so-called “Olympic Spetsnaz” (many officers of which were or had been athletes in Olympic competition) were assigned to be used against targets of the highest strategic importance— early-warning stations, missile launch sites, nuclear power stations and manufacturing plants, and the assassination of heads of state, heads of government, high-ranking military and naval chiefs etc.
When push comes to shove, Putin is not going to back down. The only question is how far his (it seems not very competent) General Staff and intelligence apparat will back him. As I said weeks ago, Stalin would have been shooting generals and spy chiefs right and left by now.
Jurors in Crown Court trial disbelieve Jew “victims” of alleged “antisemitism”
“The celebrity also claimed her daughters have been targeted by online trolls in the wake of the case.” [Daily Mail]
Probably the same pack of malicious Jew trolls who have been tweeting (etc) against me for years: see a few experiences I have had in recent years: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2017/07/13/when-i-was-a-victim-of-a-malicious-zionist-complaint/; and see also https://ianrobertmillard.org/2017/07/09/the-slide-of-the-english-bar-and-uk-society-continues-and-accelerates/; and see also https://ianrobertmillard.org/2022/01/15/diary-blog-15-january-2022-including-an-outline-of-the-failure-of-the-latest-jew-zionist-attempt-to-prosecute-me/.
On Her Majesty’s Not Very Secret Service
I happened to see this 2021 Daily Mail article by Craig Brown [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Brown_(satirist)]: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10487439/CRAIG-BROWN-spy-licence-tweet-MI6.html.
By chance, if you like, I have just finished reading the 2016 biography, Spymaster [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/11/spymaster-martin-pearce-mi6-maurice-oldfield], by Martin Pearce, the nephew of the subject. Incidentally, good value; bought used via Amazon— only about £6 even including postage for a hardback copy in almost new condition.
That book is well written, workmanlike, but unexciting. It covers much the same ground as “C”, an earlier and far more interesting study, written in 1985 by “Richard Deacon” [Donald McCormick; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_McCormick], an interesting writer whose books on espionage etc are always very readable.
Deacon’s book delved into Oldfield’s interest in astrology and numerology. For me, that was one of its most interesting areas. The more recent book ignores that area of Oldfield’s mind completely, which I think is a weakness in it.
The strengths of the 2016 book lie in its having more up to date material, and in the fact that the author could tell a few anecdotes about his uncle. Not enough, for me, and having read the earlier book long ago, as well as other material, I found the 2016 book rather derivative.
As for the now-tiresome recounting of what is publicly known about those over-rated people Philby, Burgess, Maclean, and Blunt, for me that was like seeing a merely so-so film for the tenth time.
Other aspects of the intelligence history (and indeed, general history) of the 20thC, I found very shallow indeed, and there were a couple of plain errors.
I don’t want to knock Pearce’s book too much. It is a fairly good read, and worth reading at that, but personally I would not give it more than 3 stars out of 5.
As for that Craig Brown article, I agree with much of what he says, but his points are weakened when he says that, for example, Maxwell Knight [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell_Knight] was “head of MI5“. Perhaps he should have been Director-General [“D-G”], but in fact he never was, though he was ranked as a director of the (then-small) MI5 in the 1920s.
When journalists and other scribblers cannot get basic facts right, it irritates, and makes the reader feel that their opinions are superficial (though, as said, I myself did agree with much of Brown’s article).
Incidentally, Martin Pearce has written but one other book, and that was about the Malayan Emergency [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayan_Emergency], focussing on its military and intelligence aspects.
I do not know whether Martin Pearce was (or is) in the same line of business as his uncle; neither Amazon nor the dust jacket of Spymaster give any detail at all about his education, residence, hobbies, or occupation.
Late tweets
In warm or hot weather “the natives (who are not actually native to these islands) get restless“…
One gets very tired seeing endless pictures and videos of that corrupt and evil Jew manipulator.
Paris is slowly (?) becoming a zoo, just like London, Berlin, Stockholm and other European capitals corrupted by NWO/ZOG misrule, and migration-invasion.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 