Would be interesting if Arab/North African voters resident in France, and who mostly vote for Melenchon, were to take this as a signal to vote for Marine le Pen in the second, or run-off, round. That might assure her victory. Very ironic, like a Greek tragedy. Or should that be comedy?
Last year I had a nasty falling out with my sibling because I was unvaccinated. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was unwelcome to visit our parents as I "would give them covid". This same sibling currently has covid and has given it to our parents. All triple vaxxed.
[Daily Mail map showing the state of play as of 12 April 2022]
The latest news is that 1,000 Ukrainian fighters have surrendered in Mariopol. Russian forces have all but taken those southern hold-out cities.
As blogged previously, the strategy now is probably to go north from the Russian-held Sea of Azov littoral, to push to and/or through Zaporozhye and Dnipro [former Dnepropetrovsk] and then north again, to meet with Russian forces pushing south/southwest from the Kharkov and Izyum areas.
As previously blogged, if the Russians can draw a line —and hold a line— approximately Kharkov-Dnipro-Zaporozhye, then all Ukrainian forces east of that line are doomed. Once that happens, attention can again turn to both Kiev and Odessa.
Independent American journalist in Ukraine and Russia
The post-war settlement that called itself liberal and progressive has met no real resistance since its inception. It is now a great darkening wave ready to break over us.
— Africans in Irish Adverts for some reason (@BillTroy7) April 13, 2022
Scientists discovered ultraviolet filters in the stems of Posidonia oceanica, a seagrass species found on the coast of Mallorca and endemic to the Mediterranean Seahttps://t.co/TSDFwR8R5S
Readers of the blog may be aware that persecuted singer-songwriter and satirist, Alison Chabloz, will be sentenced tomorrow (Thursday 14 April 2022) for having supposedly contravened the notoriously poor Communications Act 2003, s.127. She has posted the following:
More accurately, both NATO and the EU are distinct but connected components of the Western power matrix as it now is. The New World Order/Zionist Occupation Government [“NWO/ZOG”] matrix.
What could possibly be weakening children's livers & immune systems? No connection with the young athletes' heart attacks, because there's no common denominator one can think of – without getting purged from Twitter. "Look over there, a war".https://t.co/v5caD8dTau
[Daily Mail map showing the state of play in the east/southeast of Ukraine as of 9 April 2022]
It seems that Russian forces have withdrawn not only from the Kiev area but from the area north of Kiev generally. Without taking Kiev, there is no real victory, no matter what else happens.
It seems now that the Russian strategic aims in the short term are to secure and hold the Donbass area, encircle and capture or destroy the Ukrainian forces there, then to push from the north (Kharkov area), the south, and the east, creating a line broadly Kharkov-Dnipro [former Dnepropetrovsk] and down to, or linking with, Russian forces already occupying the Sea of Azov littoral.
If the Russians can do all that, then (once Dnipro and Zaporozhye are taken or besieged) they will have about a fifth of Ukraine (half of Ukraine east of the Dnieper) under their control.
In other news, it seems that the UK is sending anti-ship missiles to Odessa. If Russian ships start to be sunk from Odessa, then it is not unlikely that the response will be swift and brutal. The city of Odessa may be completely destroyed by missiles and artillery if the Russian Black Sea Fleet comes under serious attack. Very sad from the historical and aesthetic point of view (and, of course, the humanitarian one).
It looks as though the Russians are degrading the Ukrainian fuel reserves and supply lines. Without fuel, the Kiev regime forces will become little more mobile than the armies of Napoleon and Wellington.
Ammunition continues to run out for the Ukrainian forces.
Despite msm reports etc, this still looks like a winnable military situation for Russia, in the short to medium term. I read today that (as predicted in this blog) Russia is now calling up recently-active reserves, i.e. former soldiers who are still reasonably “current”.
Politically, of course, and in terms of public relations, this Ukraine adventure has been disastrous for Russia, not because of the invasion as such, but because of how it was so badly planned and executed. Also, because of how unsuccessful it has been, overall. Pathetic, and terrible in all ways.
I have often thought how Russia needs a degree of isolation in order for the seed of that future age not to be poisoned by whatever now exists in the world, centred on “the West”, meaning on North America, Britain, and then western and central continental Europe.
Ironically, it now appears that it is the West itself which is sending Russia into that isolation, via economic and cultural sanctions.
Russia is one of the few countries in the world which can, if necessary, do without the rest of the world, in economic terms. 72 times the size of the UK, and 2-3 times the size of the USA (depending on whether Alaska is included), Russia has the land, the climatic zones, the varied natural and human resources, to make autarky work.
Russia could create an entirely different form of human society. It tried and failed already, with Marxism-Leninism, but that was building houses of straw. On another basis, such an attempt can succeed.
More tweets
A quiet revolution is taking place north of the river Tweed: Scotland’s forests are the largest they have been for 900 years 🌳 https://t.co/yYvWG3Or2x
The country now has nearly as much forest as it did 1,000 years ago, according to data from researchers at Our World in Data. pic.twitter.com/lz2g0FuoUy
The rewilding and climate movements mean that reforestation is now wildly popular: some 80% of Scottish people supported the reforestation of the Highlands in a 2021 survey. 👇https://t.co/yYvWG3Or2x
France, presidential election: Centre-left candidate Anne Hidalgo (PS-S&D) endorses incumbent Emmanuel Macron (EC-RE) for the second round of the Presidential election.
Hidalgo received 2.1% of the vote in the first round (Ipsos-Sopra Steria exit poll). #presidentielles2022
The once-mighty French Socialist Party…2.1%. UK Labour should take a look at that. That is what happens when you do not really have opposing policies behind the surface rhetoric.
All of the Zemmour vote will go to Marine le Pen in the second round, putting her around 31%, with another 19-20 points to make up from somewhere. It is possible.
The Conservative Party suffered a major defeat in the #Presidentielle2022 with only 5% of the votes 🇫🇷🗳️
FRANCE 24's Ellen Gainsford at Valerie Pecresse's headquarters said it was a "catastrophic result" ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/Tox6MxDnHg
Look at the big picture: Marine le Pen around 24%, Melenchon around 20%, Zemmour around 6% The three most radical candidates scoring together over 50% of the vote.
Late tweets
Huge explosion reported in Nikolaev, powerful strike on the Ukrainian armed forces. pic.twitter.com/iK83kMRpAl
“Boris”-idiot must love the Ukraine (war). He can now once again play the Poundland Churchill, and pretend that the ever-greater problems at home do not exist— inflation, cost of living, cost of housing, lack of housing, mass immigration, migration-invasion, finance-capitalist exploitation, violent crime etc.
Huge amount of blank space(s) where Twitter has expunged tweets, and often also “cancelled” tweeters, over the past year.
Tweets seen
There is a definite trend in the UK and USA, of not publishing photographs of perpetrators, when they are not white. They are trying to conceal from us, the extent of a massive violent and deadly crime wave by non whites. https://t.co/v0xbKjTveD
At present it seems that Russia is abandoning any attempt to take Kiev, but only the capture of Kiev will signal —even a bitter and perhaps Pyrrhic— “victory” in this invasion that has become a war.
JUST IN – Germany: Grocery giant #Aldi is raising prices on 400 products by up to 30% starting tomorrow and expects other discounters like Lidl, Edeka, and Rewe to follow suit.
I remember well driving down the deserted Gallipoli Peninsula in April 2001, eventually reaching the ferry across from the collection of small buildings on that side, to what is now called Canakkale, the town on the other side of the water. Darkness was about to fall as we drove, with only a handful of other cars, motorbikes, and small trucks, onto the deck of the ferry.
[the Canakkale ferry]
I see from the Daily Mail report that the —I presume— now-superseded ferry crossing took 90 minutes. In my memory, the crossing took only about 30 minutes, which shows how faulty memory can be, I suppose.
[the very recently opened Canakkale Bridge, Turkey]
The return journey, three months later, in July of 2001, and in a very hot daytime, was considerably busier; the small ferry was full of cars, though mostly Turkish. As mentioned, I had driven in April from the UK to Turkey (eventually to Mediterranean Turkey), but only a very few foreigners from Western Europe then did that (and maybe few do even in 2022).
I spent about 3 days in Canakkale in April 2001; a large town, though not busy at that time of year (it was rather cold, with even a dusting of snow on the ground one day, and drizzly another day).
I suppose that most if not all traffic will now use that impressive bridge.
21 years ago. It seems almost like a different life…
Ukraine
I read that, for the first time, a Ukrainian missile has destroyed an arms storage area in Russia itself, at Belgorod, some 50 miles inside Russian territory. That certainly plays into the hands of Putin, who makes the point, at least impliedly, that Moscow is only 300 miles from Ukraine at the nearest point.
We read in the Western msm that Russian troops are pulling back from some areas near Kiev (or, as BBC, Sky etc have decided to call it, “Keeev“).
Kiev is essential to the outcome of this invasion which has become a war. Failing to secure Kiev means, pretty much, losing the war, especially for Putin and Russia.
If the Russian plan was (as I think, and suggested, was the case) to take over at least both Ukraine east of the river Dnieper, and the littoral areas of Ukraine on and near the Black Sea and Sea of Azov coasts, i.e. about a third to a half of the entire country, then Kiev had and has to be taken, because a. it is the accepted capital of Ukraine; b. it is the largest city (3 million inhabitants, pre-invasion); c. it sits on the river Dnieper between the east and west of Ukraine.
If Putin really does stick just with the two regions of the southeast centred on Donetsk and Lukhansk, or even those regions and also the eastern cities (the largest by far being Kharkov), then Russia has, despite any gained territory, lost this war.
Putin and Russia can only succeed if Kiev is taken and held, if all eastern Ukraine is taken (and held), and if all coastal areas (including the city of Odessa) are taken and held.
What should have been and could have been a swift operation lasting maybe a week, and resulting in both an easy victory and in little loss of life, with the Jewish regime of Zelensky eliminated, and a new government installed, has become a bloody, painful, and horrible mess because the Russian General Staff failed, because the GRU failed, because the SVR failed, and because the organization of Russia’s vast army has been shown to be sluggish, shambolic, and unfit for duty. The same seems to be true of many of the Russian soldiers.
Stalin would have shot a hundred senior military and intelligence officers by now.
This brings into question the whole nature of the “Putinist” regime in Russia. The old Soviet Union was dying in the 1980s (“the Soviet knight dying inside his rusting armour“, so to speak), but even so still functioned.
Yeltsin’s chaotic regime, which I myself saw at first hand in the Moscow of 1993, permitted the (mainly) Jew oligarchs to exploit the bejesus out of Russia. Putin came in as national leader in 1999, and since then has in many respects improved life in Russia from what it was under Yeltsin, and also upgraded the armed forces. What Putin has not been able to do is to formulate an ideology that goes beyond Great-Russian nationalism.
The “Putinist” facade of ideology, following on from Soviet Marxism-Leninism, and also following the crazed and chaotic crony-capitalism under Yeltsin, is a mere pastiche: some Great-Russian nationalism, a bit of Russian Orthodox traditional religion, a more statist form of crony-capitalism, a bit of Western consumerism; a bit of this, a bit of that.
When push came to shove, the ideological emptiness at the core of Putinism was unable to withstand any pressure. Look at the stories coming out of Ukraine: soldiers deserting, with their weapons (including a tank!), and for money and a passport out; soldiers having to loot grocery stores because they are not fed; ill-discipline generally.
Even if some of the stories are Kiev-regime propaganda, not all are. Morale in the invading army is obviously at rock-bottom, and the lack of any proper ideology is central to what must be seen as near-failure to complete the mission in Ukraine.
The death, hurt, and destruction now being inflicted on civilians and their companion animals (and their homes) is quite sickening, and need never have happened.
Having said all that, Russia can still at least complete the outline of this invasion. It must now either take or destroy the cities of the east and south now being besieged. With extra armies brought from reserves, it must be possible to take most of those cities almost intact; how much more fuel, food, and ammunition can the defenders have?
Once Russia has secured the major cities and rural sections of the east and south, it can move on blockaded Odessa (the third-largest city after Kiev and Kharkov) and then, with the entire east and south secured, on Kiev itself.
Everything would be easier for Russia if Zelensky himself could be located and either captured or eliminated. Why was that, in the pre-invasion period, not prioritized and carried out by the GRU or SVR?
Even if Russia prevails, it will now be a bitter victory, and a bitter harvest, but the alternative is for Russia to lose, and that will be followed at some point by the fall of Putin, and by a Russia in chaos again, bearing in mind the Western sanctions.
Russia needs to find a new ideology in which it can believe.
Russia in Ukraine needs to make some game-changing moves. Soon.
Unless somebody coughs. Then all children are denied the right to an education until our clutch of demonic witch doctors deem it 'safe'. https://t.co/2ickgER2N7
What sign shows most clearly how screwed the UK is, and is becoming?
The fact that part-Jew chancer and liar “Boris”-idiot was ever made MP, Cabinet minister, and now Prime Minister?
The fact that the sheep-population accepted, most of them, the “Covid” police state, facemask nonsense etc?
The fact that the sheep-population will not do anything serious to protest against, stlll less stop, the black/brown migration invasion (even to the extent of voting for anti-immigration candidates)?
The fact that many, perhaps most, Brits seem to think that Ukraine is somehow allied to the UK, and that the corrupt Jewish regime there is somehow worth supporting, or even going to war on behalf of?
The fact that there is, really, no Parliamentary Opposition now?
How about the fact that, by maybe as early as 2040, the UK will probably be majority non-white?
Of course Blair still wants it. He’s evil, and a creature of Evil.
Sharron Davies says 'we spend millions trying to spot people having the tiniest advantage by taking drugs… but yet women are supposed to move over so that males are able to come into their sports'https://t.co/hOTr09v3Rs
With Tory MP #JamieWallis in the news for his trans announcement, here's a reminder of an earlier escapade – specially for lazy & incompetent journalists. #beyondsatire "Bridgend, twinned with Gommorrah, Phuket & Greenwich Village".https://t.co/T110Twd9nB
Well, credit where it's due. The #BBC does an actual piece of investigative journalism & concludes that #ukrainianheroes are torturing POWs. Mind you, if it wasn't for the scraps of freedom still left on social media, no one would know & they'd be silent. https://t.co/4FHfb6bKCz
I raised the question about Kiev-regime treatment of Russian prisoners days if not weeks ago, and about how Western journalists seemed not even to be asking “where are you keeping your prisoners?“.
A very unsuitable person to be an MP, or in any position of responsibility. Now being treated as some kind of “hero” (or should that be “heroine”?) because of his adherence to the “trans” stuff, but look at his record of dishonesty! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Wallis#Career_before_politics.
The House of Commons is now a kind of Augean Stable…
I doubt that I am the only British citizen downright angry at the collection of idiots, corrupt criminals, mediocrities, foreign agents, moneygrubbers —and simple fuck-ups— now sitting on the benches of both houses of Parliament.
No, the notion that diversity is an unalloyed good is, and always was, absurd. It was invented to shut up members of British communities who could see that mass immigration was imposing unwanted cultural change. Their unease had to be dismissed as irrational and immoral.
One of Mrs Sunak's companies, Digme Fitness, has gone bust, owing around £6.1million in what is understood to be unpaid VAT and PAYE. They also received up to £635,000 in furlough payments I bet @RishiSunak doesn't know anything about this company eitherhttps://t.co/D2EUqV7Hok
— Simon says, DO NOT TRUST RISHI (@GapsinSupport) March 31, 2022
Import the blacks and browns, import their behaviours and ethics…
Censorship: It will be seen that a number of tweets cited by me in that blog post a year ago are now expunged by the Twitter organization. Freedom of expression is all but dead in the UK now. The Jew-Zionist element is behind much of that.
Tweets seen
It's 2014, the beginning of the war, this is me and President Biden. He asked me how to help Ukraine. I answered: give us weapons. It's 2022 and I repeat, give us weapons. We need jets, air defense systems, tanks, artillery. Small tactical weapons will not allow us to repel Putin pic.twitter.com/x8ch83ByoF
As I have been blogging recently, the Russians are still, though very gradually, “winning” in Ukraine, appalling though the human cost is on both sides.
If you were only to see the usual BBC/Sky (etc) propaganda “news”, you might imagine that the Russian forces are “losing” this small-ish and very unpleasant war. However, the reality is that, albeit at huge cost in every way, Russian forces still just about hold the initiative.
In brief, the Russians have a large air force, only part of which is presently engaged in Ukraine; the Kiev regime now has no air force left. The Russians have a large navy, part of which (including what is or used to be called the Black Sea Fleet) is now blockading the Black Sea coast and the coast of the Sea of Azov, and is executing a blockade of the third-largest city in Ukraine, Odessa; the Kiev regime has no fleet. The Russian Army is huge, is only partly in the Ukraine-area theatre, and has thousands of tanks and other armoured vehicles; the Ukrainian Army consists of mostly outdated armour, and a mass of infantry.
The Ukrainian forces can use the donated Western weaponry (anti-tank weapons, ground-to-air infantry missiles) to inflict damage on Russian tanks and planes, but Russian forces also have such weapons, and have reportedly destroyed most of the Turkish-made drones operated by the Ukrainian forces.
We see no large-scale counter-offensives by the Ukrainian forces. Probably they are short of fuel and ammunition. There was no attack at all, it seems, on the 40-mile-long convoy north of Kiev. Had the Kiev regime a functioning air force, there would have been an attack.
As previously blogged, the Ukrainian strategy seems to be to turn major and some other cities into fortresses, stop the Russians from storming them, and at the same time equip as many soldiers as possible with the donated Western hardware.
I have seen no information as to where the bulk of Ukrainian forces are located. I presume, in Kiev, in the south-eastern region, and also in the so-far not invaded west of the country.
As I have written previously, the Russians are waging war in an almost mediaeval way on the Ukrainian-held cities: encirclement, bombardment, starvation. Eventually, unless those cities are relieved from without, which seems very unlikely, they will fall. God only knows what will by then be the condition of the civilians forced to endure the sieges.
Once Russian forces have encircled the main cities, and thus trapped not only the civilians but also Ukrainian military forces, they can roam relatively freely throughout at least the east and south of Ukraine.
Kiev must remain, psychologically, the main target for the Russians. If they have sufficient force to contain the other major cities of the east and south, surplus forces can be committed to Kiev, with the idea of either tightening the siege, or (later) storming the capital.
We should not forget the size of the country. Krivoy Rog or Kryvyi Rih is well over 200 miles south/southeast from Kiev, and Krivoy Rog is nowhere near taken, or even approached as yet. Kharkov is a similar distance from Kiev, to the east.
Usually, commanders would be concerned about lateral attacks on such long lines of approach, but I doubt whether the Ukrainian Army has the overall wherewithal for such attacks, except on the small and local scale.
Putin is not going to back down. While I doubt that he will use chemical or biological weapons (as claimed by the msm), he may eventually use even more destructive conventional methods and weapons than seen in use so far.
The West is “helping” the Kiev regime by supplying advanced weaponry, but not the weaponry that might actually make a difference to the end result— planes, tanks, heavy artillery etc. The present ordnance being supplied only prolongs the agony of the civilian population, by prolonging the war.
It seems very much at present as though the Russian (expected, by me at least) “victory” over the Kiev regime will echo that of Rome over Carthage. I think that it was Tacitus who remarked, about the fall of, and levelling of, Carthage, that “they created a desert, and called it peace“…
First Lady Jill Biden was kind enough to invite me & the other Congressional spouses to a reception at the White House. I just have to take a COVID test, & as an unvaccinated person (with natural immunity) I won’t be allowed to eat, drink, or talk to anyone. Should be a blast! 🥂 pic.twitter.com/3guk1742BN
The payments concerned were in the USA, but we see all over the Western world this basic dishonesty around “Covid” and the “panicdemic” narrative, and as seen also in the “climate change” narrative, the “refugee” and mass immigration narratives etc. Same overall stable.
It goes beyond that. Soon, 99.9% of UK citizens will be able to be tracked everywhere they go, 24/7. Anyone even marginally politically-active will be continually monitored. The old East German Stasi would have loved this technology.
Obviously, as in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the pleb element of society will be only occasionally of interest. The politically or economically powerful will be, together with the few people in the political vanguard, whatever their ideology.
New Zealanders have never been known for intellectuality —with notable exceptions— but why they elected that clown-woman as Prime Minister surpasses all understanding.
It is profoundly wrong and immoral to continue sending "lethal aid" to #Ukraine and to continue cheerleading for a war that Ukraine cannot win. It means that thousands of people will needlessly lose their lives and thousands more will be horribly injured.#GivePeaceAChance
On the contrary. The Ukraine military were shelling their own people in Donetsk and Luhansk following the coup that overthrew Yanukovych in 2014. They've killed 14,000 people in that time and injured 50,000 others. I want to see peace and avoid unnecessary loss of life.
As in past situations (Iraq, Libya), the UK public is getting only a one-sided picture from its corrupt and wrongheaded msm. The same is probably true of USA etc.
It seems that, with support from several EU member-states, Ukraine is now looked upon favourably in its desire to join the EU. What incredible nonsense.
In the past, EU membership was, officially at least, only granted to states exhibiting behaviour and status compatible with EU membership. According to the “Copenhagen Criteria” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_criteria], a state wishing to join the EU must have “the institutions to preserve democratic governance and human rights,…a functioning market economy, and accept the obligations and intent of the EU [including, in principle, the Euro]” [Wikipedia].
The EU rules, particularly re. economy, tax etc, were bent and effectively broken in order to allow some present members to join, most obviously Greece.
Now look at Ukraine. First of all, Ukraine may not even exist as a state in its present form for much longer. Its borders are now uncertain. A quarter of its territory is under Russian occupation or threat of occupation, and that might soon be a third, a half, or even the whole of the country.
Secondly, from the economic point of view, Ukraine scarcely has a functioning economy at all any more, certainly in about a third of the country. As for the currency, while the hryvnia is currently valued at about 3 cents (European), and while that is historically quite high, its future must be regarded as uncertain.
Rule of law? Civil rights? The Zelensky regime has just “suspended” no fewer than 11 political parties, and a member of the Kiev government’s own peace-negotiation team has recently been shot in the head by Ukrainian security for having allegedly been an agent of Russia.
Ukraine has had corrupt and shambolic governments for 31 years now. The Kiev regime can only fight Russian forces at all by reason of the arms and ammunition being funnelled into Ukraine by the US, UK, and other, mostly NATO, states.
If Russia decides to play real hardball, and cuts off gas to the EU, the EU states may all face political upheaval. The EU may even collapse. Welcoming a fake state or failed state like Ukraine into candidate or actual membership may just be enough to do it.
“Diversity” nonsense
Happened to see a few minutes of ITV News. A piece about a drama called “Bridgerton“; have never watched any. American, but set in Regency London.
ITV News, of course, “celebrated” the “diversity” (i.e. white people, who actually existed historically —unlike say Othello— being played by black/brown theatricals).
The propaganda aspect is not really aimed at adults (despite their probably comprising the bulk of the audience), but at those too young to know that shows of this sort are totally ahistorical or, to put it more bluntly, lying rubbish.
A more-accurate (though with some artistic licence) version of Regency London:
Late tweets
🔴 A report has found that ethnic minorities are paying more for car insurance than white people in Wales and England
Ah. Another £212 million just completely wasted by Boris-idiot’s “government” of clowns.
I read an article yesterday abt a 34 yo mother of 2 who died of bowel cancer. She had been denied access to her GP over last 2 yrs & was told she had IBS via 6 zoom calls. She finally got a diagnosis after begging to be seen & died 3 weeks later. Heartbreaking. How many more?
How can you build a better, more advanced society when a considerable and growing part of the population consists of untermenschen of that sort? Answer— you can’t. Conclusion— get rid…
"There is a sense of hopelessness which comes over persons who are trapped or imprisoned, when all their efforts to attract attention & assistance bring no response. This is the kind of feeling which… we are experiencing in the face of the continued flow of immigration."
“We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go Always a little further; it may be Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow Across that angry or that glimmering sea.” [James Elroy Flecker, The Golden Journey to Samarkand] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Elroy_Flecker%5D]
More music
[IRA volunteers, 1920]
[Black and Tans —an officer and a private soldier— question a suspect, Ireland, 1920; note that the soldier has a fully-cocked revolver, probably a Webley, as well as his main long weapon; the officer too may well be holding a weapon in his right hand. Note also the body of a woman, as it seems, lying behind them in the road]
More poetry
“Now I go East and you stay West And when between us Europe lies I shall forget what I loved best Away from lips and hands and eyes.“
[James Elroy Flecker, The Sentimentalist].
Ukraine
The horrible bloody mess gets worse. The Russian General Staff and GRU, as previously blogged, both need shaking up. Much. Also, it seems obvious that those orgs, and the FSB, and possibly SVR, are (to quote Major Strasser in Casablanca) “riddled with traitors“, in this case probably in the pay of Western intelligence agencies.
Russia has been here before, in the First World War, when a combination of incompetence, negligence, and treachery led to huge losses against the German Empire of the time.
The lost war, effectively a lost war, of 1914-1917 led directly to the first Revolution of early 1917, followed some months later by the Leninist/Bolshevik seizure of power.
As previously blogged, if Russian forces had executed in Kiev and elsewhere the kind of swift and overwhelming Blitzkrieg and coup seen in Kabul in 1979, there would have been almost no civilian harm, little bloodshed, and we would not be seeing the present agony, which will be made even worse now by the funnelling of Western arms to the forces of the Kiev regime.
As the military commentators in London and Washington have noted recently, and many others saw weeks ago, the Russian military machine is sluggish, as it has been throughout much of Russian history. I admit that I myself thought that the reforms and upgrading since 2005 must have improved Russia’s capabilities. Seems that I was too optimistic in that. If so, I was not alone. Putin, too.
The problem Russia has may lie partly in the inflexibility of its officer training. When German forces attacked Russia in 1941, intercepts of Red Army communications recorded Red Army and Air Force officers frantically asking Moscow by radio and telephone, “We are under heavy attack by German forces. What shall we do?“
The German officers of the 1930s and early 1940s, including general officers, were famous for their quick reactions and boldness, which resulted in stunning victories on all fronts.
The Israeli Army (IDF) learned lessons from the Germans of WW2. It is said that their General Staff officers in training are given a week to formulate a plan of attack on specific criteria of geography, forces, equipment, supply etc. A day before the presentation, they are told that the criteria have changed radically; they are ordered to formulate a new plan. A short time before the presentation, perhaps only 10 minutes, they are told that the situation on the ground has changed completely again, and that a new plan must be immediately adopted. The exercise then proceeds on that basis.
That is the kind of flexible improvization that the Russian command structure seems to lack.
Present situation:
[state of play as of 17/18 March 2022]
As blogged yesterday, Kryvyi Rih [Krivoy Rog] is the only large urban area between where the Russian forces west of the Dnieper now are, and Kiev. However, the distance in between is 260 miles.
If the Russians can take Krivoy Rog, and hold it (the pre-invasion population was 635,000), then the southern flank of Kiev lies open.
The Russians cannot lose the war, as such, unless they become so depleted in men, arms, and supplies that they have to withdraw from areas now under their control or, ultimately, into Russian Federation territory. That last would be taken to be a defeat in the whole enterprise, and is very unlikely.
The Ukrainians, by contrast, cannot win the war in the sense of defeating the whole Russian Army, Navy, and Air Force, but what they can try to do is to hang on to their main fortress-cities of Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, and Dnipro [former Dnepropetrovsk], the four largest cities of Ukraine, and to carry on a kind of guerrilla war (but with advanced weaponry) elsewhere, as well as denying Russia occupation of most of western Ukraine.
Next moves? I cannot see Putin simply giving up. That would be psychologically and indeed politically crushing for him. In any case, his forces are carrying out the present plan, but at only glacial speed.
Kiev is slowly being encircled. Other cities, in the east and south, the same. There is a slow, agonizing, vice-grip closing on the southern coastal cities. Odessa is being rocketed and shelled now, from the sea.
All of the southern and eastern cities (except Odessa), and Kiev, must be running out of food. The Russian forces may also be running low, but can be resupplied.
The Ukrainians (Kiev regime) say that Kiev cannot now be taken. A bold claim. I have no idea whether that claim is true. Is there a city which cannot be taken?
There is, I suppose, a “Devil’s alternative” possibility, that Putin will all but destroy the remaining eastern and southern cities, and drive out the whole Ukrainian population of those cities to the west and to other countries. That would be a terrible thing to do, a terrible thing to happen.
Tweets seen
⚡️ Ukrainian military strengthens defenses around Kyiv.
According to Oleksandr Gruzevich, deputy chief of staff of Ukraine’s Ground Forces, the military is working on the third defense line around Kyiv.
“The city is preparing like a fortress,” he added.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 18, 2022
As expected. How long, though, can a city continue to resist when food stocks run very low? There were 400,000 civilians stuck in Stalingrad when the city was attacked. Stalin refused to allow evacuation. However, the Soviet forces and others could be resupplied, up to a point, across the Volga.
If Kiev were to be surrounded, which as yet has not happened, the Russian forces would interdict resupply to the city, which still has, it seems, about a million civilians and others within its boundaries.
I am presuming that, following bombardment, the battle-hardened Syrian mercenaries being recruited by Putin via President Assad of Syria will be used for the inevitably brutal close-combat penetration into the central parts of Kiev.
“It was a horror for the kids. The bullet hit the windshield and their mother who was there just a moment ago is gone,” Andriy Vilson said, as he recounted his family's escape from war-torn Kyiv Oblast.https://t.co/hZDW1mBX4R
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 18, 2022
An example of the human cost of the war. The Kiev regime has made the most of the public relations aspects of the conflict, to which (outside Russia itself) Putin seems oblivious and uncaring.
Putin may consider that there is no point now in trying to show any better side to the world. That being so, he may have few scruples in pulling out all the stops to achieve something that can look (especially within Russia itself) like “victory”.
As for the peace talks, it seems doubtful that they can succeed, even in bringing about a temporary all-Ukraine ceasefire.
If a ceasefire occurs, it gives the Ukrainian side the opportunity to import more free advanced weaponry from the USA, UK and elsewhere. True, the Russians would have the same kind of opportunity (resupply of arms and ammunition from plants and factories in Russia), but they need it less. Hard to see how a ceasefire could benefit the Russian side.
The Zelensky government is not going to agree that the “Russian” provinces of the southeast can break away and either join Russia as annexes, or become autonomous republics of Ukraine, let alone independent republics.
Likewise, Russia gains little from any Ukrainian pledge (even if credible) not to apply or to join NATO, in view of the fact that NATO at present is disinclined to admit Ukraine anyway.
If Russia withdraws its forces from Ukraine, it will have, without question, lost this war, and Ukraine will in time then build up a formidable army, and maybe even a nuclear weapons capability.
There is another point: even were there to be a quasi-permanent “peace” agreement going beyond a mere temporary ceasefire, the Western sanctions will continue, perhaps indefinitely; certainly as long as Putin rules Russia. Where, then, is his incentive to sue for peace?
What shabby behaviour by the P & O management and ownership. Where is decency? Where is loyalty?
Interesting that news organizations seem wary of giving even the name, let alone personal details, of P & O management. They must be in fear that “action directe” may occur…
I used to travel almost every week cross-Channel, usually on the excellent Brittany Ferries from Plymouth, occasionally from Poole or Portsmouth. Had to go P&O from the Kent ports a few times. Rubbish.
That “banned” tweet should be copied and pasted everywhere by every thinking British person. After all, if it wakes up even one person…(especially if that one person then takes action for the future of race and culture).
Between 70 and 100 thousand British citizens were made homeless by this government implementing insane, immoral and unnecessary‘public health’ measures over 2 years. Most of the people calling for us to shelter Ukrainians literally stood on their doorsteps and applauded this.
Our moral perceptions are being deliberately distorted, inverted and destroyed. We are ordered to ignore mass murder one week and be outraged by it the next. Embrace tyranny on Tuesday then start a nuclear war to defeat it on Thursday. This will not end well.
I happened to see the pdf link below, which is a tribute (a collection of eulogies) to John Lloyd, a barrister who was in my chambers when I practised in Exeter (2002-2008):
John Lloyd, who was born in 1941, died in 2017, a fact of which I was unaware until I saw the link yesterday.
I usually follow the maxim de mortuis nihilnisi bonum (“about the dead, nothing if not good“), but Lloyd did die about 5 years ago, and some matters are of historical interest.
I rather liked John Lloyd, someone who was unfailingly polite, and with whom I shared a room at Chambers, though he was rarely at his desk. I was under the impression that most of his work was done in London or at home. I believe that he had property in both London and Exeter.
Lloyd had taken on the English or Oxbridge eccentricity displayed by some affluent and financially-successful persons, of riding an ancient bicycle, in his case to Chambers, at which times he changed his “Gromyko” black wide-brimmed hat for a bike helmet.
Lloyd was one of the highest-earning members of Chambers (I believe in the £300,000+ bracket, which would be good now, let alone 15-20 years ago). His work came, I was told, mainly from Labour Party-controlled local councils in London.
I myself only encountered John Lloyd once in Court, in — I forget which— Plymouth or Exeter County Court, and in an unusual matter in which three members of Chambers were briefed for different parties in the same case; incidentally, the matter ended satisfactorily for all in the end.
Though I liked John Lloyd, I knew that he had been anti-apartheid, and had strong political views, though (like me) he rarely spoke about political matters in Chambers. I have to say that, despite quite liking him, there was some element there that had me wondering whether he was entirely trustworthy or open. Nothing concrete, just a vague sense of something hidden.
John Lloyd was diagnosed with cancer in or about 2007, but lived for another decade. I myself ceased active Bar practice at the end of 2007, though remained notionally in practice until mid/late 2008. I think that I last saw him sometime in 2007.
I was aware that John Lloyd had been dropped as prospective Labour candidate for Exeter several years before I met him, but did not know much detail, though I knew from someone at the Bar that it was connected with his having given evidence against a terrorist in a bombing case in South Africa. The local Exeter Labour Party was (quelle surprise) all in favour of the anti-white terrorism in South Africa, though by the time Lloyd was binned (mid-1990s), South Africa was already under ANC control.
The half-witted Nelson Mandela (an ex-law student who had failed his law degree three times) was 46 when convicted in 1964 of plotting to start a race war): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivonia_Trial.
The defendants in that trial were all either Africans or Jews.
I have just now been looking at what is available about John Lloyd and South Africa at that time.
The “ARM” started to blow up electrical-power pylons etc before graduating to the operation that destroyed it and also led to convictions for most of its small membership. That operation was the planting of a bomb in a whites-only waiting room at Johannesburg Railway Station.
One old lady of 77 (or as the apologists would have it, “only” one person) was killed; many others “only” injured. One was a 12-year old girl, Glynnis Burleigh, the grand-daughter of the murdered old lady.
[Glynnis Burleigh, a young girl who was one victim of the Johannesburg Railway Station Bomb of 1964; she was badly mutilated]
[Glynnis Burleigh in 2016, still bearing scars, 52 years later]
The bomb at the railway station was mainly made of sticks of dynamite wrapped around a core consisting of cans of petrol; it seems that some phosphorus was also included. A simple but wickedly-deadly device.
It is now claimed that the bomb was “symbolic”, having been placed in a whites-only area. Tell that to, say, Glynnis Burleigh.
It is also pleaded, by (in my opinion) apologists, such as a London (I think Jewish or partly-Jewish) lawyer whose father was apparently the bomber, that “a warning was given“.
You can see from Wikipedia etc that the same claims are made about the Jerusalem bombing of 1946 as about that in Johannesburg in 1964: a “warning” was given, and “the authorities may have deliberately not acted on the warning” (in order to incite hatred against the bombers). Pretty unconvincing in both cases.
As a matter of fact, the Johannesburg “warning” was telephoned to police only six minutes before the bomb exploded; the police did act on the warning but by that time the device had detonated.
Incidentally, there may even have been a link between the two bombings. It seems that a leading member of the terrorist cell in South Africa was an Israeli Jew who had held senior rank in the Israeli military apparat:
“The [Johannesburg Railway Station bombing] operation was planned by Lionel Schwartz, who was ARM’s most militarily experienced operative, having served as an officer in WW2 in the British army, and in the IDF in Israel’s 1948-49 Independence War. He served as a senior (Brig. General) in the IDF until he returned to SA in 1953 or 54.” [Wikipedia].
Having said that, there is no direct evidence (that I have seen) of a link (i.e. that Schwartz was also involved in the 1946 bombing).
The said Schwartz may also have been a Soviet agent, which would fit:
“In recent years, however, it has been suggested by Eli Bardenstein in his article ‘Traitor or Liar?’ in Maariv (22 July 2003) that Lionel Schwartz, a key Soviet spy who penetrated the highest echelons of Israel’s political and intelligence establishment in the 1950s, and who was heavily involved in the Lavon affair, handed over the Israeli network to Egypt“. [Spies Against Armageddon]
There is a suspicious dearth of information online about that Lionel Schwartz Jew.
Returning to John Lloyd, he had (probably fortunately for him) been arrested a day before the bombing, as the South African authorities rolled-up the small ARM network.
It is claimed that Lloyd was “tortured”; he was certainly ill-treated, made to stand in one place for two days. If taken to an extreme, that might amount to “torture”: in the days of Stalin, the “stoyka” or “standing” was a recognized technique of the NKVD, with some prisoners having to stand (because forced into vertical oubliette-style tiny cylindrical cells and kept there for days) until they died or “confessed”.
“I was made to stand on one spot. It is a devilish torture for would-be heroes. You torture yourself. I stood for two days. On the evening of the second day, a bomb exploded on the Johannesburg railway station. The police told me that 20 people had been killed. It was not until months later that I learned that, in fact, only one person had been killed.” [John Lloyd in the Independent].
Note the weaselling again, though; “only” one person killed (and no mention of the terrible injuries suffered by many other victims).
Whether because of his interrogation, or because he was shocked at the bombing having been carried out at all, or with such carnage, Lloyd agreed to co-operate, and eventually testified against several of his former comrades. It is also a fair conclusion that Lloyd did not want to be incarcerated with them. In return for immunity from prosecution, Lloyd turned State’s Evidence (became a prosecution witness).
Mandela, of course, morphed from being just a failed law student and failed or would-be terrorist leader into the West’s secular “saint” of the age, having mellowed in his (actually eventually quite comfortable) incarceration (in the last few years he was in a house reserved for him alone, and even had his own chef and other servants!).
John Lloyd never did become MP for Exeter. The Conservative Party made much of his early “terrorist” activities, while the Labour Party binned him because he had (as they preferred to look upon it) turned coat and “betrayed” his former “comrades”.
Ben Bradshaw, a mediocre and rather dishonest person who later became a Cabinet minister (and noted expenses cheat and/or freeloader), became MP for Exeter in 1997, as well as an “ultra-loyal” Blairite, and is still sitting there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Bradshaw.
So there we are. A few reminiscences, and a few more-general thoughts.
Postscriptum: I should add that, though I did spend some time in Rhodesia and Botswana (in 1977), I have never visited South Africa (unless you count my almost-overnight plane change at Johannesburg, also in 1977: Gaborone-Johannesburg-Frankfurt). I believe that my maternal great-grandfather is buried, or memorialized, at Cape Town, though.
I agree, in that you see newspaper readers’ comments, Twitter twit comments etc to the effect of “let’s bomb Russia” or the even more brain-dead “bring it on!“. People sitting in suburban England, who apparently cannot wait for their entire world, home, family etc to be utterly destroyed by nuclear attack. “Idiots” hardly covers it…
Then add in the pseudo-machismo. “Britain can take it” etc. Yes, Britain, which will not exist except in terms of geography after a nuclear attack, can take having all its main (if not all) cities and towns destroyed, irradiated, all the people killed, or mutilated and/or mortally-irradiated, all supplies of food and water gone, all services (NHS, financial, police, fire, even sewerage) gone. As I say, “idiots” hardly even covers it.
The West is weak. Britain is very weak. Look at the Russians. Look at the Ukrainians. They both have national and national-cultural sentiment. That has been large wiped out in the UK. A high proportion of the UK population is now not really British, nor even white European.
I understood decades ago that The Economist is more or less the house journal of what one might now call the “New World Order” [“NWO”] or Western establishment.
Britain will allow Ukrainian war refugees immediate access its publicly-funded healthcare system free of charge, they announced.#UK | #Ukraine | #NHShttps://t.co/J3CYT3GDI5
Putting some good use to some retired equipment, my new propagation station. 3 comfreys and 1 red veined sorrel potted on, will be mainly taking Taunton Deane Kale cuttings here in the future pic.twitter.com/WwRUIbsxHe
I hope that it survives the present conflict intact.
Early evening music
Late music
[Levitan, landscape, 1885]
Update, 15 November 2024
I happened to notice this piece about the London barrister whose father was hanged in 1965 for having executed a terrible terror attack at Johannesburg Railway Station in 1964:
That very political set of chambers was founded, inter alia, by Cherie Blair, though I looked for her name on the website without success (and she no longer practises from there): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherie_Blair#Legal_career.
As noted previously, interesting to see how many people, tweeting a year ago, are now “cancelled”, along with their tweets.
Ukraine
[state of play as of yesterday, 15 March 2022]
The above map from Sky News shows the position fairly clearly.
Russian forces are dominant in the south, both on, and inland from, the Black Sea. The same is true in much of the east and northeast but, apart from the southeastern city of Donetsk, which was already under Russian control, no major or even medium-size cities have been taken in the regions beyond the Black Sea.
Donetsk is the fifth-most-populous city in Ukraine, with over a million inhabitants [all population figures as of pre-invasion], Mykolaiv [former Nikolayev], 9th-largest city, has or had over half a million, Mariupol, 10th-largest (exc. Crimean cities), has or had over 400,000 people, Kherson has or had over 280,000, Melitopol about 150,000.
There seems to be a split in the Russian strategy: in the south, by the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, brutal and desperate fighting for the urban areas as well as the areas around and beyond the cities and towns; in the north and northeast, cities attacked by missiles and artillery, and encircled or being encircled, but not yet taken.
In the northeastern and northern areas, the Russians are encircling cities or skirting them, but in the south trying to take them, because in the south, what is important for the Russians is to control the entire Black Sea coast and littoral zone inland for some distance.
I still think that Kiev will be prioritized ahead of Odessa, but if there is a week or two of standoff in and around Kiev before the main bombardment and then assault starts, the Russians may try to retain the initiative by pushing to and possibly into Odessa. Odessa is the third-largest city in Ukraine, with a (pre-invasion) population of well over a million.
As I write, there is news of Ukrainian counter-attacks “in several areas“, but as yet no detail. Whether the Ukrainians can sustain any counter-offensive is doubtful, in view of their resupply problems.
Looking again at the map, the areas of focus for the Russians seem to be Kiev and the Black Sea/Sea of Azov coasts. Other areas are not prioritized at present. For example, there has been no push to take or even encircle Dnipro [former Dnepropetrovsk], the 4th-largest city (a million inhabitants before the invasion).
As for the inland areas west of the river Dnieper, and as far west as the borders with Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova, though the Russians have attacked some key targets, using missiles, there has been no attempt to gain ground there, so far.
The slightly conciliatory tone of Zelensky yesterday, admitting that Ukraine cannot join NATO, could be read as desperation. NATO has supplied anti-tank and portable ground-to-air missiles to the Kiev regime, but no planes, and no tanks or other large armour (it seems), and will not be imposing a no-fly zone.
The upshot of all that is that the forces of the present Ukrainian government are reduced to fighting a guerrilla war. In that, they may have considerable success against the unwieldy Russian forces, but in the end the superior Russian strength must begin to tell. The fact is that, unless Russian forces are very much reduced in numbers, equipment and resupply, they must surely prevail, taking the major cities (or whatever is left of them).
More music
Tweets seen
This is the problem with scrapping basic property law to grab the homes of #Oligarchs. While I have no time for them, once the precedent for such state-sanctioned theft is set, the only question is who's next?" "First they came for the Jewish oligarchs.."https://t.co/b591vLc45a
…and, most importantly, a fraction of those arriving “legally”…
The “refugees welcome” dimwits and virtue-signallers then start howling about how pay and State benefits are too low, and about how there are not enough houses, trains, roads, schools, NHS hospitals, doctors and nurses, and the rest.
Cue jokes from some people about “stupid Irish” etc, perhaps, but who are we to talk, when you see the state of the UK now? And yet more flood in, daily.
It is hilarious, though, albeit bitterly so, to reflect that the Irish have fought, literally, for centuries, to resist occupation by the English (and, in Northern Ireland, the Scots), only to allow themselves to be occupied without a struggle and without a fight, by the sweepings of Africa and Asia…
Sinn Fein has become one of the most pathetic examples of all that.
As Hitler said about the USA, “half-judaized and half-negrified“. Hitler was right…
They control the media they control the narrative, Stop watching the news stop buying news papers. Make sure any links no cookies turn them all off no matter how long it takes pic.twitter.com/YemILsycYf
— NinnyD 🇬🇧❤️🇺🇸 Waiting~4~the Revolution (@ninnyd101) March 16, 2022
That is of a piece with the rest of the “cancelling”, virtue-signalling etc around today. A kind of “iron fist in velvet glove” sub-Stalinism. The hypocrisy is everywhere, as well. You have fake outfits and people such as the “Free Speech Union”, GB News, Toby Young, James Delingpole, Julia Hartley-Brewer, and the rest.
When did you hear or see any of those parasites stand up for my free speech? What’s that? I am not prominent enough? Well, I was prominent enough in late 2016, after my wrongful (and in fact now admitted to be unlawful) disbarment. Google “Ian Millard, barrister” and you will see that there was plenty of coverage of me in the national press, including the Daily Mail and Independent. Nothing defending me, though, by the usual “free speech” controlled opposition types.
The same goes for others of a broadly social-national type, such as satirist Alison Chabloz. Not a word in support of her free speech from Toby Young and his type.
Well, since almost everything of any use, discovered or invented or developed in our world over the past two or three thousand years, was discovered etc thanks to white European or at least post-Aryan people, that’s our whole culture and civilization “cancelled”.
The blacks cannot create such a civilization; in fact, they cannot even maintain it when it has been given to them, as can be seen in Africa, Haiti, and elsewhere. They can only exist in it (when white Europeans and/or some others exercise control), or destroy it (if left in charge).
Andrew Neil seems to think that Ukraine in the winter/spring of 2022 is akin to Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43, i.e. heavily sub-zero. Not so.
There may have been some defective tyres, I suppose, but it seems more likely that that convoy was “stuck” where it was because the entire invasion was sluggish.
Some people have still not woken up to the fact that the migration-invasion is not somehow accidental, or the result of negligence of some sort, but a transnational conspiracy that reaches up to the highest levels of Western society. Google “Coudenhove-Kalergi Plan” or, indeed, “White Genocide“.
Ukraine update
The main news seems to be a Russian approach from the Kherson area towards the considerable city of Kryvyi Rih [former Krivoy Rog, “Curved Horn”], the 8th-largest city in Ukraine, with a pre-invasion population of about 612,000. This is the only city of any real size barring the way to Kiev from the south, to the west of the river Dnieper.
Late tweets seen
Ukraine just silently announced it’s the first country to implement the WEF's ‘Great Reset’ by setting up a Social Credit Application combining Universal Basic Income (UBI), a Digital Identity & a Vaccine Passport all within their Diia app.https://t.co/zg9Or4nIg1
The £650,000 profit Chris Bryant MP made from selling flats the taxpayer helped fund. He even had the barefaced audacity to rent out one of the flats when the rules changed and claimed £84,350 from the taxpayer to live somewhere else.https://t.co/VA0ljsvrDi
Well, this week, another victory over political journalist John Rentoul. I scored 7/10 as against his 6/10. I did not know the answers to questions 4, 6, and 7. I was lucky, in that I only learned very recently what a “doula” is (question 3).
“Fake news”
I see that Russia is castigated for bringing in legislation criminalizing the dissemination of “disinformation” etc on broadcasts and elsewhere. A police-state measure, they cry. Well, yes, but I have seen no msm sources as yet admit that the present UK government is also planning to bring in very similar measures this year, likely to include criminalization of “false” (dissident) assertions on social media..
LibDems
Seems so. Third time in a year LD have added to this list. Lab also got a record low in Amersham. 5 weeks after Airdrie LD won Amersham. pic.twitter.com/yOBDjQBbah
— phil ashley🎗️ ❤️ 🤍 💙 🙏 (@philashley2) March 4, 2022
First Past The Post voting results in “undemocratic” elections and/or apathy, but also in tactical voting. The recent couple of LibDem by-election successes, as at Amersham, have not shown the true picture, which is that, ever since the 2010-2015 Con Coalition, the LibDems have been declining from a major, or near-major, party to a minor and even fringe one.
The LibDems are now dependent on squeezing in at elections in places where the Conservative Party (usually) will win if LibDem and Labour voters do not vote tactically, but where the LibDems can win if Labour voters decide to vote tactically.
The results in general elections show the history: a peak in 2005 (62 MPs out of 646), under now-deceased alcoholic multikulti zealot Charles Kennedy, reducing slightly in 2010 (57 out of 650), collapsing in 2015 (8 out of 650) after the Con Coalition, then rising in 2017 to 12 out of 650; the 2019 result brought only 11 MPs out of 650.
In fact, FPTP voting never shows the full picture. In 2015, the LibDem collapse (from 57 MPs to 8) was not fully reflected in the popular vote (a reduction from 6,836,248 votes to 2,415,862, a far less-steep fall.
The decline in LibDem fortunes at Westminster has been mirrored in the devolved legislatures of Scotland and Wales. Scotland: 17 out of 129 MSPs in 1999, but only 4 out of 129 now. Wales: 6 out of 60 members in 1999, but only 1 out of 60 now.
All that having been said, I cannot see the LibDems doing other than continuing to decline. LibDemmery is a tradition which far predates the LibDem party, and goes back to the old Liberal Party, to the days when Liberals became Prime Ministers, before the First World War. Long gone days; the days of LibDem MPs may also be nearing their end.
After a conspiratorial campaign by a pack of Zionist Jews connected with the so-called “Campaign Against Antisemitism [“CAA”], I was finally expelled from Twitter in 2018. Nick Griffin is still just about there, but only just. His name cannot be searched for, and Twitter has restricted his content. It cannot be long before his Twitter account goes entirely (and I suspect that it has only been allowed to keep going this long so that State and Zionist organizations can see who interacts with it etc).
BREAKING: Russian state news agencies report the Russian military will observe a ceasefire in two areas of Ukraine starting Saturday to allow civilians to evacuate. the strategic port of Mariupol in the southeast and the eastern town of Volnovakha. https://t.co/xgkdAsVBqX
The ceasefire is declared for 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. today. The evacuation of civilians is set to start at 11 a.m.
Mariupol, of 440,000 people, and Volnovakha, of 21,000 people, have been largely cut off water, heat, and electricity.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) March 5, 2022
This is not an easy decision, but, as I have always said, #Mariupol is not just its streets and houses. Mariupol is its inhabitants – it is you and me” – Mayor Vadym Boychenko #Ukrainehttps://t.co/t7KFeJRj62
We in the UK, and across much of “the West”, are not getting accurate news or, rather, accurate comment. It seems clear to me that the invasion is slowly going Russia’s way, as far as the securing of main objectives is concerned .
Some hotheaded or biased talking heads and scribblers in the UK and USA are shouting for a “no-fly zone”, and suggesting that that would not necessarily mean war with Russia. Cloud-cuckoo land. It would. Others are suggesting that aerial warfare between NATO and Russia would not lead to a general war. It would. Yet others are suggesting that even a war with Russia would not necessarily be nuclear. It would.
Staff colleges in the West undertook exercises during the Cold War to see whether tactical (“battlefield”) nuclear weapons could be used without triggering an all-out strategic nuclear exchange, or whether such an exchange could be halted in its early stages. In all cases, the exercises ended with both sides using all their nuclear missiles.
The present madness is being stoked, as in 1939, by the Jewish-Zionist element in the USA and UK.
Madness? What else is it, when many brainwashed people are considering a major European war, or even nuclear war, acceptable, just because Russia has invaded a country which, until 1991, was effectively part of its own territory, with which country or territory the UK is not allied, and never has been.
More music
[Belvedere Park, Tunis, where I once, long ago, enjoyed the morning sunshine]
How can any advanced society be created with inhabitants of that sort? They are like something out of the Stone Age. In fact, even our existing society cannot be maintained, and is slipping into the mire.
“Liverpool Crown Court heard that the defendants lived in Manchester, Birmingham and London. They are all Somalian but come from a specific area with its own dialect of Bravenese and were assisted by the only Bravenese interpreter in the country.”
They should not even be in the UK, nor in any part of Europe. At best, completely useless, at worst a huge pest, and in fact a potential social danger.
If true, enormously important. Mykolaiv is the key to Odessa – with amphibious assault off the table as of this morning (fleet returning to port – more on this later), Mykolaiv blocks access to Southern Coast entirely and prevents linkup with forces staging out of Trandniestria.
— Dr. Giuseppe Buenaventura (@SucioAlejandro) March 5, 2022
[note: Mykolaiv is former Nikolayev].
It looks as if Putin will have to commit huge new military forces or reserves to the campaign if it is going to achieve its main strategic objectives.
Can you believe that this country is now, possibly, going to be (mis)led into a war with Russia, with inevitable huge destruction via nuclear attack, by idiots like Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Priti Patel, Ben Wallace etc? Jesus Christ! They make the British politicians of the pre-1914 or pre-1939 eras look like great minds!
We are having to pay double for gas and electricity. The cost of petrol is rocketing. Council tax, rent and food price are rising. Meanwhile the government are spending £4.7 million a DAY housing and feeding illegal immigrants. Oh – and MPs are getting a £2K rise!!
Are British journalists aware of the 1990 talks over NATO expansion & thereafter the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Objective understanding of history is rather useful in analysing the present day. Partisan commentary without historical context is fatuous #NATO#Russia#Ukrainepic.twitter.com/tUKteHOxJ3
I had completely forgotten about the by-election at Birmingham Erdington, occasioned by the unexpected death of the sitting MP, Jack Dromey [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Dromey] from sudden heart failure.
Even in the 1979 General Election that swept Margaret Thatcher to power, Labour held on in the constituency by a couple of points (46% to the Conservative’s 44.5%).
Labour’s highest point was in 1945 (60.8%), but it scored 58.8% in the Tony Blair “landslide” of 1997. Labour did almost as well (58%) in 2017, at a time when Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader.
Labour’s vote share in 2019 fell back to 50.3%, and in the recent by-election rose to 55.5%.
The Conservative Party peaked, scoring 68.1%, in 1931, but fell back, apparently terminally, after Labour won the seat in 1945. The lowest point was reached in 2005 (22.8%). Since then, the Conservative vote has been in the 30-40% range (38.4% in 2017, 40.1% in 2019, and 36.3% in this by-election).
The by-election attracted 12 candidates, the highest number in the history of the constituency. but apart from the two main System parties, none retained the deposit. The Trade Union and Socialist Coalition [TUSC] topped the list at 2.1%.
Interesting to see the Greens and LibDems doing badly: Greens 1.4%, their worst result in the constituency since they first stood, in 2015.
The LibDems have pegged out, at least in this constituency. In the 2010 days of Cleggmania, they scored 16.2%. By 2015, after the Con Coalition, the same LibDem candidate could only manage 2.8%. That fell back further to 2% in 2017, recovered slightly to 3.7% in 2019, but fell again, disastrously, to a mere 1% in this by-election.
There were no social-national candidates, though the pseudo-nationalist “alt-Right” set-up, Reform UK (the reincarnation of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party), achieved 1.7% (4th place).
Overall, my view is that the by-election shows a lack of enthusiasm on the part of the electorate. The turnout was pitiful, a mere 27% (nearly half of that in 2019, and less than half of the 2017 turnout). Only just over a quarter of those eligible bothered to vote.
The Labour vote-share rose slightly, the Conservatives’ fell back slightly. The real winner was apathy or, perhaps, disgusted cold-shouldering of a fake “democracy”.
Incidentally (?), demographics may account for part of the result, in that the new MP is a West Indian, a Labour councillor and former NHS nurse, aged somewhere in her early sixties, who has called for a black uprising in the UK:
“Near the end of the 2022 by election campaign, remarks made by Hamilton in 2015 were uncovered by GB News where she suggested she was torn between a democratic vote and an uprising to enable black people to get what “we really deserve in this country”.[4] The comments led to calls from some Conservative MPs for her to be suspended by the Labour Party, who responded saying the remarks were taken out of context.[5]” [Wikipedia].
As I have repeatedly blogged, the Labour Party core vote is now the “blacks and browns” and/or the public service workers. That is now being reflected, increasingly, in Labour Party MPs too. Look at this one, a West Indian woman who is or was an NHS nurse.
In fact, the new MP, though increasingly typical of the Labour Party, is not typical of the constituency: “The constituency is predominantly white working class and very deprived.” [Wikipedia].
I do not see this result as betokening a Labour Party revival under Jewish-lobby puppet Keir Starmer. Unimpressive.
[Paulette Hamilton, the new MP for Birmingham Erdington]
Ukraine
As far as can be gleaned from the msm, Russia’s glacial offensive is finally starting to take control of some major locations, such as the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, which supplies a quarter of the electricity in Ukraine.
Slowly, the odds are moving in Russia’s favour. Cities are starting to be taken, albeit at a terrible cost in suffering and damage; strategic targets such as power plants are being captured. Food has pretty much run out in those cities east of the Dnieper still controlled by the Kiev regime.
I had not expected the Zelensky regime to last this long. However, the taking of Kiev, which has been delayed (perhaps deliberately, so that many of its inhabitants can flee, which must help the Russian side of this conflict), will probably soon happen. When it does, Zelensky and his cabal will flee, or be captured (or killed).
If Zelensky et al flee to Lvov, it raises the question (noted by me in past weeks) of whether Putin will try to take over the western two thirds of Ukraine as well. I had assumed not, thinking that any Lvov government would be weak, economically strapped, and unable to cause Putin many problems, even if recognized by the Western allies as the “legitimate” government of the whole of Ukraine de jure, even if a puppet government based in Kiev were to rule a third, perhaps nearly a half, of Ukraine, de facto.
Now, I am not so sure. Any Lvov government headed by Zelensky or his group would now be supplied with advanced weaponry by the Western allies. There would be a long and vulnerable front splitting Ukraine. The Lvov regime forces would be more motivated than those of the Russian occupation in the east.
On those premises, Putin might eventually decide to go for broke, and try to occupy, or at least devastate, the rest of Ukraine. He may calculate that he has little to lose. After all, Russia’s reputation in the world has (via the biased reportage of the Western msm, so be it) already now been trashed, and Russia’s stock, both metaphorically and literally, could scarcely fall any lower.
Historical note
“[William] Douglas-Home was assigned to the 7th Battalion of the Buffs, which was converted to tanks as the 141st Regiment, Royal Armoured Corps. In the Normandy campaign, the 141st Regiment was assigned to I Corps (a British formation) within the First Canadian Army. In August, First Canadian Army was directed to mop up the German forces cut off and trapped in various seaside ports in Normandy and Pas de Calais. In the first week of September 1944, the Allies moved against the port of Le Havre. A German garrison under Colonel Hermann-Eberhard Wildermuth was dug in on the hill overlooking the city. Wildermuth had been ordered by Hitler to defend Fortress Le Havre to the last man, and not to surrender.
When the Allied forces invested the city in advance of the planned aerial bombardment and subsequent assault, Wildermuth asked the British commander if the French civilians could be evacuated from the city, but that request was refused. Lieutenant (acting Captain) Douglas-Home was near Le Havre, awaiting the completion of the aerial bombardment. He was to serve as a liaison officer in Operation Astonia, the Allied attack on Le Havre. On the second day after the aerial bombardment had started, he learned of the German request to evacuate the civilians and the Allied refusal. The consequences of the bombardment were apparent to the waiting Allied forces and Douglas-Home refused to participate in the attack. He gave two reasons:
The unconditional surrender policy, which he thought compelled the enemy to fight to the end. The refusal of civilian evacuation was morally unacceptable to him. which created a moral obligation for Douglas-Home and he declined to participate...
The aerial bombardment of Le Havre lasted four nights, killed over 2,000French civilians, 19 German soldiers and levelled the city. The Germans surrendered after two-days’ fighting and I Corps moved on to Boulogne, which was also subjected to a heavy aerial bombardment. At that time Douglas-Home, who had been placed under supervision (he did not consider himself at that time to have been “arrested”) wrote to the Maidenhead Advertiser and the publication of his letter in the newspaper prompted his formal arrest and detention.
Douglas-Home was charged at a Field General Court Martial held on 4 October 1944 that, when on active service, he disobeyed a lawful command given by his superior officer (contrary to Section 9 (2) of the Army Act 1881). He conducted his own defence. Regrettably neither the Field Court Martial nor Douglas-Home had a copy of the new edition of the Manual of Military Law, which had been prepared and published in April 1944 but not distributed to the troops in Normandy. Prior to April 1944 a British soldier accused of refusing to obey an order had no defence available that the order was illegal. Even had that been brought to the Court-Martial’s attention, the grounds of objection by Douglas-Home for refusing to obey Colonel Waddell’s order were rejected as he had to admit that the order, to act as a liaison officer, was not illegal. His argument, that he was being required to take part in an event which was morally indefensible, fell on deaf ears. He was convicted, and sentenced to be cashiered and to serve one year’s imprisonment with hard labour. The proceedings lasted two hours”.”
[Wikipedia]
Douglas-Home, later a playwright, was also the younger brother of the British Prime Minister of the early 1960s, Alec Douglas-Home.
So, there we have it. British invaders killed 2,000 French civilians in Le Havre (and another 3,000 in Caen, and many elsewhere). That is without even counting the perhaps 800,000 German civilians killed in 1939-45 by Allied bombing alone.
As for the Americans, both in WW2 and up to the present time, we need not even go there…
The Russian invaders of Ukraine, if sinners, are not the only sinners.
[Berlin 1945, after initial clearing of rubble post-war]
— Miriam Cosic @miriamcosic @miriam12.bsky.social (@miriamcosic) March 4, 2022
When Kamala Harris, Vice President of the USA, explains the Russian invasion of Ukraine, like this. It's a worry for all of us, over the age of 5. 🙄 pic.twitter.com/QoI6eLEIzd
Ecce the quality of the American top leadership (and the general level of the American public)…
More tweets seen
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday said the alliance would not impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine after calls from Kyiv to help stop Russia's bombardmentshttps://t.co/kHG1dS1zxd
Ukrainian military also reports continued Russian preparations for a landing near Odessa. Two Russian landing ships are positioned off the coast of Chornomorsk near Odessa. pic.twitter.com/xn1awOCbG6
Yet another “death from suspected heart attack” of someone not old, and in apparent good health. There seems to be an absolute epidemic (?) of such deaths. I wonder whether this cricketer, like most of those reported on, was “vaccinated”, “boosted” etc? Odds-on he was.
Strange…I do not recall Brown saying anything like that when NATO bombed Belgrade, or attacked a number of countries in the Middle East and North Africa…
Looks like he has a nice house for himself and his weird wife. Pity that he impoverished so many British people.
…or, for that matter, the Nightingale 'hospitals.'#MSM need a constant stream of headlines to arouse the empty minds of the hard-of-thinking. Attention deficit disorder affects only the pro-covid, anti-Brexit, pro-facemask, vaccine-injury deniers.@TruthVulgarians@stezia7
In his investigation of our relationship with meat, @Rob_Percival_ looked a cow in the eye before it was stunned. He was convinced that he had “witnessed a murder” – but he still eats meat. Should we? |✍️@queenchristina_https://t.co/ciHgBybEBi
I am rather outside the exact debate, on the personal level, having not eaten meat since the age of 21 or so (1978), though I still occasionally had chicken, quail etc until about 2005, as well as products such as foie gras.
A debate which should engage all those still buying and eating meat.
Please share our thoughts ❤️
This is Our Natalie. Our friend, Our colleague. The mother of animals in #Kharkiv.
— Naturewatch Foundation (@Naturewatch_org) March 4, 2022
Leaving partisan politics aside, one has to respect those who sacrifice their time, effort, and sometimes lives, to help animals, particularly those suffering because of wars or conflicts in the human sphere.
Barricades in the center of #Odessa, on #Derybasivska Street, whose name pays homage to Josep de Ribes, a 16th century soldier of Catalan origin, loyal to the #Russian Empire and the Bourbons, and one of the city's founders.#Ukrainepic.twitter.com/ZqQIJTam3G
[invasion of Ukraine: apparent state of play as of yesterday, 3 March 2022]
As previously blogged, Russia has to control the Black Sea littoral. That must put the focus on Odessa. In fact, about 25%-30% of the population there is Russian, though I daresay that they will be keeping their heads down.
At the same time, the most important Russian objective, psychologically, must be Kiev, even if the Zelensky regime flees to Lvov.
Hitler’s biggest mistake or failure on the Eastern Front in the Second World War was to try to take Moscow, Leningrad, and the Ukraine, simultaneously, in 1941. The better idea would have been first of all to decapitate the Soviet regime by an all-out drive on Moscow.
In 1941, the German advance came within a relatively few miles of Moscow. In fact, the point of furthest advance, at Khimki, is now Moscow outer suburbia.
I recall, on my first visit there, in 1993, being astonished at passing the “tank trap” memorial now there, en route from the old Sheremetyevo airport into Moscow, and seeing how close it was to the city. I think that my driver arrived at or near the Kremlin only about 20 minutes after we passed that memorial.
Moscow in 1941 was in a state of panic for days, as the Germans advanced. High-ranking officials fled with their families. Many have said that, had the Germans been able to land even a modest parachute force in those days, the Soviet regime would have crumbled. It was never to be.
The Russians must take Kiev while the preponderance of military force is on their side. They will then be able to link up with forces near Dnipro (former Dnepropetrovsk) along the river Dnieper. If they can do that, then all of Ukraine east of the Dnieper will fall.
Gavin Williamson
Williamson has been knighted. Strange.
NEW: Boris Johnson awards Gavin Williamson a knighthood.
Why *now*? In middle of Russian crisis?
He was appointed defence secretary in Nov 2017 at exact moment, FBI revealed its Trump-Russia investigation began in London.
Ian Robert Millard 