Morning music
Battles past
From the newspapers
“Is Ukraine stuck?
…the large-scale recapture of the land lost to Russia in 2022 looks less and less likely as the days shorten. Those who invested heavily in a summer offensive against Russia have so far been disappointed. And what then?
The USA is still (wisely) dead set against involving itself directly in the war, so what will break the stalemate? Does this just have to go on and on filling graveyards and doing severe economic damage to Ukraine and Europe? With what aim?
…I can sniff the wind as well as anyone, and when the mighty US magazine Foreign Affairs publishes a major article with the title Will The West Abandon Ukraine? (to which the answer, in my view, is ‘quite possibly’) I think something is going on.
I’ve never been able to grasp what Britain’s interest is in sustaining a costly and risky war in South-East Europe between two corrupt and ill-governed hunks of the old Soviet Empire. A lot of US Republicans, not just the ghastly Trump, are also doubtful about the point of it.
Then there are recent reports of growing friction between Ukraine and Poland‘s government. I’m surprised this has not happened before, given the fairly recent (80 years ago) violent history between the two neighbouring peoples, in an area where events 500 years ago can still stir up bitter enmities.
And there is the current scandal of alleged corruption in Ukrainian military recruiting offices. This is no shock to anyone, as you can barely breathe in Ukraine without encountering corruption. But the point is that it suggests people in quite large numbers are paying to avoid fighting.
At the same time a lot of men of military age, banned by law from leaving Ukraine at the moment, are being caught trying to slip across the frontier with Romania. Which suggests that quite a few are getting through, and that this is a major difficulty for a country which has suffered terrible military casualties.
Honestly, if this war had not been so widely portrayed in crude storybook terms as a super-simple fight between total good and total evil, which it isn’t, we might have reached this stage before. But better late than never.“
[Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail]
I recall a discussion with some late middle-aged Poles in the snowy Polish winter of 1988; a week or two before Christmas. All three (a husband and wife, and the brother of that woman) had lived through the tumultuous events of the mid-20th Century in that part of the world. The brother had been captured with other Polish Army recruits, then deported by Soviet authorities to Vorkuta, where he spent several years but survived [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorkuta].
That family had originally lived in or near Lvov (now a major city in Ukraine) but had been displaced. They however were adamant that they were Poles, and never Ukrainians. They seemed rather hostile to Ukrainians, in fact. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lviv#Interwar_period.
Since the Russian invasion of 2022, there has been a warmer Poland-Ukraine relation on the official level, but it cannot be said how long that will last; it may be fraying.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12527349/Child-snatcher-jailed-abduct-boy-Aldi.html
“A child-snatcher has been jailed for attempting to abduct a three-year-old boy from Aldi – but was thwarted by the toddler’s seven-year-old brother.
Sergejus Paskevicius, 60, from Heywood in Rochdale, was arrested and charged for child abduction in July last year.
He was jailed for three years and two months at Manchester Crown Court (Minshull St).“
On the face of it, that sentence seems exceptionally lenient, albeit that there may be mitigating facts not given in the newspaper report. The defendant will be out in about 18 months.
“DAN HODGES: Betting, vaping and now driving… There is a merciless war on working Britons (and they’ve had enough)“
For once, I tend to agree here with what Dan Hodges writes.
Tweets seen
The BBC, Sky, ITN etc should all be purged.
More music
More tweets
Worth listening to, though for me it is clear that the Earth is reaching, perhaps has already reached “peak population” (especially as far as the non-European —i.e. non-white— populations are concerned).
Convergence of systems, or the same system?
One sees much discussion online as to what is “Marxism” or “Communism” (or “Socialism”), and as to whether the new emerging totalitarianism in the West is “Marxist” or not. Many (of varying viewpoints) question the equivalence, looking at what is aimed at, and what are the policies espoused.
In fact, much of that debate is too theoretical. When you look at things from a practical perspective, the similarities are far more apparent. Look at a few of those.
In the Soviet social system, an extension of the ideals of the French Revolution was preached: liberty, equality, fraternity. Needless to say, those ideals were more honoured in the breach than in the observance. Even before Stalin took full power, a whole system of special rations, special pay, special healthcare and (in reality) education began to be implemented for the favoured parts of the population, especially the Nomenklatura.
Those favoured lived very different lives compared to the rest, all delineated by reference to rank and favour. Spacious apartments instead of shared and/or cramped houses and flats, healthcare in special hospitals (the best being the so-called “Kremlin Clinic” in outer Moscow) rather than standard Soviet hospitals, and a graduated set of special food outlets (usually not even open to the general public), in which could be bought items rarely or never generally available (caviar, smoked salmon, imported foods, imported kitchen equipment), and so on.
At the higher levels, the nomenklatura travelled “soft class” rather than hard, could get internal air tickets when they were hard to get for the base population, and had cars for local and regional transport (even in the 1980s, a black person in South Africa had a greater chance of buying a car than a Soviet citizen).
At the very highest levels, this “class division” of travel reached staggering inequality. The top brass would travel by “private” rail car or aircraft. When Sakharov was told to relocate in order to help with the Soviet atom bomb and hydrogen bomb projects, he travelled in a rail car which had a bedroom for himself and his wife, a sitting room, a dining room, accommodation for guards and other staff, a staffed kitchen, and an observation deck. This railcar was tacked onto an ordinary train.
The disparity even extended to communications, the nomenklatura above a certain level communicating among themselves by means of a special system of reliable and secure telephones. This was the vertushka, or vertushki (there were several levels of service, all self-standing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertushka).
Now look at the rulers and beneficiaries of the Western system today. The lifestyle disparity between the favoured few and the rest came out all the more strongly during the “Covid” “scamdemic”/”panicdemic”.
At meetings of the G7 or G20 heads of government in 2020-2022, the top attendees went around unmasked, shaking hands, kissing the ladies who were governmental leaders or their wives. Meanwhile, right next to them, were the waiters, waitresses, bodyguards etc, all masked! Almost an insult, really, a finger put up to the sheep watching on TV or reading the newspapers.
Indeed, the same is true in terms of travel. Ordinary people were banned from travel, or allowed to travel only on sufferance and after complying with Kafka-esque conditions, but the wealthy few and the governmental leaders continued buzzing around on private jets, and in reality subject to few restrictions.
We see the hypocrisy even now. The Harry Formerly Known as Prince, with Meghan Mulatta, making several transcontinental journeys per month using large private jets, often in order to speak about how the travel of the bulk of the population must be restricted or banned.
Not just Harry and the Mulatta; look at, say, Bill Gates, Emma Thompson and the rest. All travelling on hugely polluting private jets, helicopters, superyachts etc and at the same time lecturing the rest of the population about how they must accept ever-declining living standards…
In fact, that wealthy and ultra-wealthy stratum already live lives very different from the main population. In the UK, for example. Private jets for overseas travel. Helicopters for intra-UK or short-distance European travel. If cars need be used, that would usually be for short-ish distances, and the vehicles will be those that insulate the occupants from the outside. Range-Rovers, Rolls-Royce etc.
Needless to say, the wealthy rarely if ever require the NHS. Private healthcare only. As for security, the police are only needed as a backup for those in staffed country houses or London penthouses etc. Private security, maybe even bodyguards.
One could continue, but you see the point. This is a matter of the exercise of power, as well as that of privilege. The discussion “socialism” v. “capitalism” is largely sterile.
Everywhere you look now, you see the masks coming off: “15-minute cities”, 20 mph speedlimits, ULEZ, “social credit” ideas, the banning of most cars (in the medium-term and even short-term), the threat of further faked biosecurity “health” measures such as the facemask nonsense, “lockdowns” etc like a Sword of Damocles waiting to fall.
Add to that the black-brown migration-invasion and the obvious implementation across Europe of the Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan.
The black-brown hordes coming to Europe and including the UK are almost all coming from relatively poor living conditions in their home countries. For them, it does not matter that the NHS is failing, that the roads are falling to pieces, that pay and State benefits are low, that the police forces scarcely work, that the justice system is disintegrating etc. Why? Because all that is still far better than where they come from.
I am glad to see that a large part of the British population is at least becoming aware of the outline of what is happening.
More from the newspapers
“Welsh people have started fighting back against the country’s new 20mph speed limit by painting over newly-erected road signs for the newly-restricted zones.
Furious locals spray painted over signs for the 20mph limit after Wales’s new rules came into force today as lorry drivers also vowed to show their opposition by driving at 19mph.
Photos show furious drivers have now started fighting back against the scheme by vandalising the newly-erected speed limit signs themselves.
Drivers taking to the road were also left confused as many local authorities failed to put up the new signs ahead of the 20mph limit coming into force.
Some drivers said they were ‘scared’ to go out in case of being trapped by police, static cameras and mobile speed vans, with one elderly couple having cancelled their trip to Aberystwyth to visit family due to their fear of getting a £100 fine.“
[Daily Mail].
The whole point is to frighten people. Wake up…
Interesting. Not a new idea (it goes back a hundred years) but it looks as if it will not be long before robot domestics will really be part of everyday life.
More tweets
Almost everyone knows that Keir Starmer would —and probably will— be an appallingly-bad Prime Minister, but after (to take some of the most recent and most obvious) David Cameron-Levita, Theresa May, “Boris”-idiot, Liz Truss, and now the Indian money-juggler, Sunak, I am not sure that many people really care.
The present Government is dying in an atmosphere of total public derision at its incompetence and pointlessness. Jewish-lobby puppet Starmer is almost a nullity, dull as ditchwater and disbelieved on all sides, but the 2024 General Election is his to lose after 13 years of pseudo-Conservative misgovernment.
Having said that, if the Government pledges to keep the Triple Lock on the State Pension, and if it uprates the same before the 2024 Election, that may help to keep on board the pensioner vote which is most of the hard core Conservative vote. Then it will be a question of whether any other groups will vote Con (if only negatively, i.e. to keep out Lab).
Late tweets
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 