Afternoon music
Tweets seen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Octopus_Teacher
Aristotle, apparently, called the octopus “a stupid creature“. Aristotle was wrong. It seems that he said that because an octopus will approach a man’s hand in water. We now know that that is because the octopus wants to be friendly, and is sometimes willing to take the risk that the man may not be. Aristotle can now be both understood and corrected.
That would result in Reform UK having 189 MPs (Lab 181, Con 162, LibDem 58, Greens 4). A hung Parliament requiring a Reform-Con agreement of some kind.
The forces of the Russian Federation are now advancing daily in all sectors of the front.
Talking point
Zelensky is a dictator, or at least the figurehead of a dictatorship. That is a fact. Elections “delayed” and not expected to be held for years, if ever. Dissidents arrested, with some imprisoned, some even shot. Trade unions banned. Opposition parties, opposed to the war, or favourable to negotiation with Russia, banned. Military recruits simply seized off the streets and brutally pressganged.
That’s before you even start with the pervasive corruption, which is worse the higher you get in the Ukrainian fake state. Every kind of international gangsterism and moneylaundering is there.
Zelensky and his cabal is now sidelined as a near-irrelevance. Why? Because the Kiev regime is not a real player in the war. Stop the arms and ammunition (and vast amounts of US, EU, and UK taxpayer monies) going to the Kiev regime, and the war will stop within weeks. The war juggernaut cannot run without that fuel.
There are only two real players in the war, Russia and the USA, and now, thank God, they are both interested seriously in a negotiated peace, or at least a negotiated armistice.
The EU states and the UK are not serious players because the amount of arms, ammunition, and money they are wasting on the Kiev regime is less than half of the total spend. If the USA stops funding the Kiev regime but the EU and UK continue, the war will continue for a while until, before very long, Russian forces prevail and the Zelensky dictatorship collapses (in 2025 or 2026).
Ukraine is not a proper state, and was not even when it was established, in the 1990s. I have heard tales of corruption and degeneracy that would make your hair stand up on end. Now, even basic State functions are only carried out because of the Western money being funneled to the regime.
Trump may not be a particularly likeable man or leader, but I seriously think that, to put it in traditional terms, “God is on his side” in trying to close down this terrible war; in other respects as well.
Russia has been partly to blame. I blame the leadership (from high to low) of the Russian Army, air force, SVR, and also the political leadership, for not having conducted a swift and unstoppable coup de main and coup d’etat in early 2022.
I have written about this previously on the blog. Something akin to the way in which the Afghan government was removed in 1979.
Swift. Relentless. Remorseless.
Had that been done, civilian casualties and environmental damage would have been minimal. The whole thing would have been over in a few days.
Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, the minor would-be players, such as Starmer, and (if the idiot is worth even mentioning) David Lammy, are just making themselves look ridiculous. They talk about “British boots on the ground in Ukraine“, when only between 5,000 and (at very most) 10,000 troops could be sent, and they would be irrelevant in such a situation, quite apart from quite likely sparking a major Russia-NATO war.
Little lawyer Starmer is out of his depth. He should leave Ukraine alone and start to do something (if he even wants to, and if he is capable of doing anything useful) about the invasion of Britain by blacks and browns.
Late tweets
As said, Zelensky can be regarded as a dictator or, perhaps more accurately, the figurehead of a dictatorial cabal of thieves, those thieves posing as a legitimate government.
Late thoughts about Ukraine, NATO etc
People in the Western msm, and System politics, are now waking up to what I have been presuming for some time, namely that, if a European NATO state calls upon the “mutual aid” Article 5 of the NATO treaty, regarding a situation arising from the Ukraine situation, and if that state wants other NATO states to weigh in against Russia, the USA (all the more so now Trump is President) might well say “no” in respect of US forces, or nuclear weapons, getting involved.
NATO has outlived its usefulness.
The idea that Russia wants to occupy central and western Europe, or even most of eastern Europe (Poland, the Baltic states), is ridiculous anyway. Those EU states and others throwing money at the Zelensky “government” in Kiev are a joke. Wasting money which should be going to improve the lives of their own citizens, whose taxes are being stolen, in effect.
Britain should be ready to normalize relations with Russia now. In fact, that is the only way that Brexit can work properly. We can form a mutually-beneficial trading and strategic connection with Russia. The rest of Europe (within or without the EU) should do the same.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 