Igor Girkin- Arrested Sergei Surovikin-Dismissed Andrei Yudin- Dismissed/Detained? Vladimir Alexey- Dismissed/Detained? Zakhar Prilepin- Car Bombed Darya Dugina- Dead Vladen Tatarsky- Dead Yevgeny Prigozhin- Dead Dmitry Utkin- Dead
True, but that does not, or need not, imply that Putin, or any one individual or force (e.g. Kiev-regime intelligence service) is behind all of those events, though of course those thought to have been dismissed could only have been dismissed by Putin.
Not “claims“; it is simply a fact. In fact, the same happened with Gordon Brown (who went on to lose the 2010 General Election), Theresa May (who went on to win the 2017 General Election), “Boris” Johnson (who went on to win the 2019 General Election), and Liz Truss. Now Rishi Sunak. If a Prime Minister resigns, there should have to be an “immediate” (arguende, within 3 months) general election.
“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” [Shakespeare, Julius Caesar].
I part company with the Bard at this point; I think that both the good and evil live on.
As for Wagner Group, without Prigozhin and Utkin there is no top leadership so, as an independent “band of brothers”, Wagner Group, the so-called “musicians” or musikanty, has effectively passed into history.
The Guardian: Kavoli and Radakin with Zaluzhny for five hours on saving the Ukrainian counteroffensive and the army
THEY MEETED ON THE UKRAINIAN-POLISH BORDER AND ORDERED HIM TO ATTACK FOCUSED ON ONE PART OF THE FRONT
“Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson is convinced that it is already too late for the Armed Forces of Ukraine: “Because of the failure on the fronts, the troops may rise up against the head of state Volodymyr Zelensky.
Former adviser to the head of the Pentagon, Douglas McGregor: The current situation of the Ukrainian army can be compared to the situation in which the Wehrmacht found itself in 1944. Then the German army lost its air support. Therefore, although it had good weapons, even tanks that had just come off the assembly line, it could not fight effectively. The same is happening now in Ukraine.“
I watched about 15 minutes in total of BBC News and Sky News. Just hard-to-believe propaganda about how Ukraine is supposedly “winning”. Just rubbish.
More music
[Kennet and Avon]
More tweets
Ukraine wants a new president – a rally in support of him in the center of Kyiv pic.twitter.com/tIsQcZfXz9
“Olaf Scholz said that Germany is currently experiencing “unsatisfactory” economic growth. According to Bloomberg, the German Chancellor believes that the problems are related to the country’s dependence on exports.
The agency notes that Scholz refused to allocate funds to fight the crisis due to lack of money and the growing debt of Germany. At the same time, Scholz added that the country has “good prospects” in terms of the economy.
Earlier, the German media noted that in Germany there is a deep economic crisis and this country, as a “locomotive”, is pulling the entire EU to the bottom. Germany’s GDP declined, among other things, due to higher energy prices and spending on Ukraine.“
Late tweets
Ukraine will be forced to sit down at the negotiating table because Biden wants to end the war before the end of 2023 – Feigin pic.twitter.com/cwjlDdSbiw
🇨🇳 Chinese military experts announced that the tactics of the Ukrainian army are similar to those of the First World War, where significant manpower resources are used during attacks. However, experiences from this war have shown that victories in such battles were mostly pyrrhic…
Why he keeps wearing this kind of same clothes all the time is to make people think he is busy with the war and not looting what is left of Ukraine, whereas he is busy buying property all over the world.
The Chinese language is now becoming one of the main world languages in science, and therefore it will gradually be included in the programs of Russian universities that train researchers, but it is important to keep Russian as one of the main languages of communication…
I remember Bill Bradley from when I lived in New Jersey in the early 1990s. One of those “best President (or Prime Minister)who never made it” figures, like (in the UK) Rab Butler, Enoch Powell etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Bradley.
On the main question here, the Russia-Ukraine situation, we see above a number of figures from, inter alia, the U.S. State Department, the CIA, the British Foreign Office, not to mention the American, Australian and other political establishments, all warning against NATO expansionism and against stoking Ukrainian political and military aggressiveness.
Few of those political and diplomatic figures can be, plausibly, written off as “Russian shills” and the like, as we see all too often written on Twitter and elsewhere, as the unthinking “I stand with Ukraine” mob bay for anything up to and even including nuclear war with Russia.
The disastrous policy of actively supporting the Jew-Zionist kleptocracy in Kiev headed (or figureheaded) by Zelensky is bad enough in itself (and is soon going to result in recession and/or stagflation in the UK and the EU) but, worse than that, may develop into a military situation between NATO and Russia which may then slip or slide into a nuclear conflict which would devastate the UK, much of Europe, the industrialized parts of Russia, and the cities of the USA.
Other tweets seen
Andrew Pierce shredded by Ed Balls. Nothing more than a pathetic Tory apologist and hypocrite. Pierce now wants more government borrowing after years of supporting austerity. £2.5trillion national debt. Twelve years of total economic failure.@GMB@toryboypierce@edballs
I may not like moneygrubbing expenses cheat and Bilderberger, Ed Balls, and the same goes (double) for his venal, hypocritical, “refugees welcome” (but not in her own several homes) wife, Yvette Cooper, but it has to be said that Balls is a trained economist, and did criticize at the time the ludicrously wrongheaded “austerity” nonsense put forward by the part-Jews David Cameron-Levita and George Osborne from 2010-2015, a policy which has run Britain threadbare.
#GMB Andrew Pierce ‘Kwasi Kwarteng has a brain the size of a planet’
Says the man who spent nearly three years bullying and blackmailing the Bri oh what’s the point it’s the same shit every single time. https://t.co/dgSjYRkRHh
A salutary tale, and one which I have just reread, this time also reading many of the readers’ comments. Some had had similar experiences.
I was reminded, reading all that, of an experience of my own.
Over twenty years ago (how time flies in this world when one is no longer young), I was invited, with my wife, to the wedding of a friend, and former teacher at a language school where I had been a part-time student in the early 1980s.
I had become very friendly in the late 1980s and early 1990s with Ig, a noted translator of Dostoyevsky; Ig was divorced (from decades before) and lived in a semi-detached house with a large garden, in North Finchley (London outskirts).
Ig worked at a language school near Warren Street, in Central London, an institute where most of the Russian-language faculty were exiles of one sort or another. He himself had been born in Latvia between the world wars; when he was 14, his family fled to Germany, at the end of WW2, and as the Red Army advanced from the East. They had then settled in the UK.
I sometimes enjoyed a drink, and occasionally a curry in Drummond Street (also near Warren Street), with Ig and one or other of his friends, such as “Uncle John”, a divorced fellow whose wife, Alla from Leningrad, was another language teacher of mine at one time, or with Guy Churchill, a pleasant retiree and one-time SAS soldier (during the Malayan Emergency of the 1950s), who had the odd habit (never seen before or since) of breaking the filter tips off his cigarettes before smoking them.
Ig was rather eccentric, and sometimes did things which were very surreal, as when he took me, for no obvious reason, to have tea with the writer, Doris Lessing [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Lessing], at a cafe-bar near the language school. A strange, awkward, rather Kafkaesque experience.
It never occurred to me that Ig, not far off retirement age, might remarry and so compromise his bachelor life of Russo-Soviet culture, beer, and collecting railway clocks (several were in the main room of his house). I was therefore surprised to be invited to his wedding, at a Register Office somewhere on the extension of Edgware Road, far up that road, maybe near Brent Cross (I cannot now exactly recall).
My wife and I attended the short ceremony, and met the bride. She was Russian but had been resident in Latvia, where Ig had met her (not sure where or how; possibly at a bus stop or the like). She was supposedly mid-twenties (my wife thought older), and looked a bit lost amid Ig’s rather grey-haired friends, who included a couple of occasional teachers of mine at that language school, one being a one-time Army linguist (and keeper of goats), another being Gerald Brooke, who had spent 4 years in prison near Moscow before being swapped for the Krogers: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Brooke; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Cohen_(spy); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lona_Cohen.
That was the wedding. Some time later, Ig asked me to take his new wife to lunch at Lincoln’s Inn. She was friendly, pleasant, and told me that she had a law degree from Latvia, maybe Riga.
Scroll forward. My wife and I took on the lease of a large country house, one of the largest in North Cornwall.
We invited Ig and his wife to stay for the weekend. They arrived, but right from the start there was something wrong. For one thing, in a cold autumn, Ig’s wife came in a short dress, no coat, no gloves, perhaps unaware of how cold a large English country house can be, despite large fuel bills (one January, I spent nearly £700 on oil alone; plus coal and firewood. £700, in one month, 20 years ago).
Ig’s wife was actually quite rude from the start, not at all friendly to my wife, treated her like a serf, did not offer any help or whatever (we had the big house, but not any domestic staff as such), and just seemed to be sulking constantly. We assumed that the ill-matched couple had had a spat on the way down.
Anyway, after a weekend which —without going into great detail— tested my wife’s patience to the hilt, and when the pair were almost ready to go home, my wife thought to take some extra towels to their room (the house had originally had 26 bedrooms). She saw that Ig’s new wife’s suitcase was open on the bed; on top of the contents, a silk scarf belong to my wife, from Hermes. Ig’s wife had actually stolen the silk scarf (and other items, including bottles of scent) and placed them in her suitcase. The item were retrieved, and a diplomatic way found to raise the matter with the guest/thief.
Not an entirely successful weekend.
After that, I received calls from Ig’s Russian friends, begging me to think of a way to “save him from that stupid girl, who knows nothing but films and fashion“.
In fact, Ig did try to divorce her, after he overheard her talking to her mother in Riga, and the pair plotting to divorce him and so get half of his quite valuable house. In the end, the divorce never happened, despite preliminary court hearings.
Ig was prevailed upon to change his mind and, looking at that Guardian obit, they seem to have remained married until his death some 11 years later. I hope that the woman was not unkind to Ig in his last years, because he was a good fellow, but I never saw him after the disastrous weekend, and only spoke to him a couple of times when (maybe at her instigation) he wanted to bring her down again to Cornwall. I could not put my wife through that sort of nonsense again, though.
I presume that that woman got his house, I believe worth (in 2013) about £800,000 (and I suppose worth twice that much now), and other financial benefits.
However, not all Russians, Ukrainians etc can be tarred with the same brush. For example, I knew one girl (from Kiev) who was offered marriage by a British diplomat (who became an ambassador only about 2 years later) but refused him.
Many Russians (and, no doubt, Ukrainians too) are very fine people, but they come from a very different cultural and social background than English people. History has been harsh in those regions, and attitudes are fashioned out of such history.
Truss’ Cabinet picks are genuinely terrifying. We must brace for the utter turmoil which is no doubt ahead of us all. It’s going to be a long, dark winter.
The last Cabinet contained only sycophants prepared to ignore Johnson's epic unsuitability for high office. The new one will contain only sycophants prepared to ignore Johnson's epic unsuitability for high office who haven't criticised or upset Liz Truss. It's a narrowing field!
The main surprise is that Nadine Dorries is not there, it being rumoured that she is about to be elevated to the Lords. Well, why not? After all, a woman (Michelle Mone) who faked a “success story” about her insolvent bra company is there, as are several absurd black women, one of whom is only there because her son was killed in a scuffle with white yobs at a bus stop. Just a few examples of the deadheads in the House of Lords (Oona King is another one).
If Truss freezes energy prices but makes working people pay for it rather than the big oil and gas companies, she’s going to be out of office pretty quickly.
In principle, correct, but there is no mechanism, as we have seen in recent years, for the public to be able to dispense with even the most ridiculous Prime Minister, until given an opportunity at a general election.
New Foreign Secretary James Cleverly voted to reduce Corporation Tax 9 times, yet he has voted to cut benefits 23 times.
Not many people know Cleverly advocated scrapping the minimum wage in 2013.
Another humiliation for Britain, having this ridiculous creature as Foreign Secretary, complete with his “degree” in Hospitality Management from West London Poly.
In fact, apart from a couple of years as a sales manager, Cleverly seems not to have had a job for much of his life, unless you include his Territorial Army officer activity. He was never commissioned into the Regular Army, by reason of a supposed leg injury (unspecified); nor is it known whether he dropped out of Sandhurst or other training institution.
A couple more bits of news about the new Cabinet
That little pissant Robert Jenrick, a total puppet of the Jew-Zionist/Israel lobby, has been appointed a Minister of State despite his very “questionable” links to Jew property speculators.
Jewish wife; children brought up as if full-Jew. Completely in the Zionist pocket.
The other news is that ex-officer Johnny Mercer, who seemed like a rare breath of fresh air in the Commons at first (but who, disappointingly, turned out to be a moneygrubber, at least from what I have read), has been kicked out of Government, and his wife, seeing the extra salary etc disappearing up the chimney, is livid.
Prime Minister Liz Truss has been branded an "imbecile" by the wife of sacked minister Johnny Mercer.
Felicity Cornelius-Mercer said the cabinet system “stinks” and “treats people appallingly” after her husband was removed as veterans affairs minister.https://t.co/ghjIelYWOG
I suppose that Mercer was hoping against hope to be appointed at some later stage as Defence Secretary, though his “bring it on!” rhetoric about nuclear war with Russia hardly inspired confidence in his judgment.
As for Mercer’s wife, Felicity, of whom I knew nothing until today, I award her 9 out of 10 for honesty, 1 out of 10 for diplomacy, and another 9 out of 10 for making my day more amusing.
You see that sort of thing all the time on Twitter— a cavalcade of talking heads, supposed “comedians”, sports talking heads etc, all paying lip-service to the BBC which, in most cases, pays them. Sickening homage to patronage.
Look at that Sweet bastard (whoever he is). Begging for state censorship.
It was this @bobscartoons cartoon which the complainant took offence to. This is, from my perspective, a valid representation of school curricular overemphasis these days. But the point is that @WHSmith should be selling the FULL spectrum of opinion for us. Not choosing for us. pic.twitter.com/nKGeVI6ZLH
@kerr649, @louisemensch has never forgiven me for a long-ago column item in which I laughed at the way she wandered in and out of New Labour back in the 1990s, when she was still writing chick-lit. I actually agreed to meet her to discuss it. https://t.co/eXpofp8ZWw
Louise Mensch. A blast from the past, now just a washed-up, divorced Twitter twit who, after I was —both wrongfully and unlawfully— disbarred in 2016, actually tweeted directly to me, threatening (ignorantly) to have me disbarred in New York as well. Never heard anything more about it.
Louise Mensch was, inter alia, a drug abuser, and admitted that her drug abuse “messed up her head“. A rock “music” “groupie” at one time long ago (when at University), who became, at least metaphorically, an Israel- lobby “groupie” later.
Ian Robert Millard 