Morning music
On this day a year ago
Tweets seen
Looking at the replies to the above tweet by unthinking and/or brainwashed persons supporting the Kiev-regime, one realizes how the two world wars started, meaning from the standpoint of public opinion.
The anti-Russia tweeters, many cheerleading for actual war with Russia, seem to be oblivious to what nuclear war would mean for them, for their families and companion animals, for their homes, their neighbourhoods, for their whole way of life (assuming that they themselves even survive).
Reading those stupid tweets, for me the clock or countdown to the destruction of our whole society in Europe (in Russia and the USA as well) just ticked on by a couple of minutes and is not far from striking the hour.
Having seen the supine populations of Europe, North America, Australasia comply with the perhaps-deliberately absurd demands of 2020-2021 —facemask nonsense, “rule of six” in the UK, “lockdown” (shutdown) etc—, and seeing how only a minority seem to understand that the present downturn is mainly because of the shutdown of economic activity 2020-2021, I am not optimistic. However, hunger and desperation may sharpen perceptions and lead to real upsurges.
That “@jimmysecuk” tweeter used to gossip with (other?) malicious Jews about me, when I still had a Twitter “account”, that is until a pack of Zionist Jews conspired to have me “suspended” (expelled) in 2018. Formerly connected (a student?) with Exeter University.
If I recall aright, “jimmysecuk” used to be quite plainly very pro-Israel on Twitter.
“@jimmysecuk” claimed, in recent years, to be a journalist, though there seems to be no evidence of that (always uses the pseudonym, and I have seen no published matter with that byline), and now claims to be “Kyiv [Kiev] -based independent foreign policy/security analyst“. What organization, newspaper etc actually uses whatever he may produce? Or is that a kind of hobby, funded by a private income? I have no idea.
In that event, further escalation will be almost inevitable. This is not 1942. Russia has weapons that it has not yet used and which, at peak, could actually reduce the entire Ukraine to an irradiated wasteland, which would, obviously, be a terrible thing for Europe and for the whole world as well as for Ukraine and, indeed, Russia itself.
Had the Russian General Staff and GRU not been criminally negligent, the invasion of Ukraine (certainly Ukraine east of the Dnieper, and also including both Kiev and Odessa) could have been accomplished swiftly, and with minimal loss of life.
The whole campaign has been both “bitty” and sluggish. The lack of a firm directing hand has been evident throughout.
Compare that to the Red Army and Stavka, under Stalin’s dictatorship, during the 1942-1945 period.
This could rapidly become an existential crisis not only for Putin and his regime but for the Russian state itself. Russia has to regain the initiative, or be defeated in the field.
Russian upheavals and revolutions have usually followed military defeat, as seen in, inter alia, 1905 and 1917.
Late thought
My feeling is that sometimes monarchy is the best system (for a particular country, at a particular time in history), whether “constitutional” or “absolute”.
At other times, monarchy is not the best system, but the alternative is not simply “a republic” because that designation covers everything from utter despotism to a system such as that pertaining in Switzerland.
As to the new King Charles III himself, and as readers of this blog may have read, I met him once, briefly, at a reception overseas, and we exchanged a few polite words.
My view, based on that but also and mainly on what I have heard and read over half a century or so: well-meaning, somewhat but not highly educated, self-absorbed and possibly peevish at times, someone with firm but not always nuanced views.
Example of that last, his views on architecture, which tend to the pastiche and simplistic, as seen both in his Poundbury development and in his support for slightly eclectic neo-classicism (as with Quinlan Terry). Not “wrong”, but just slightly trivial and derivative, in my view.
Monarchy in the UK has changed out of all recognition over the last few centuries. While the late Queen was alive, I was willing to accept constitutional monarchy. Less so now, and not at all once the present King is succeeded by one of his children or any other.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 