Morning music
Historical note
On this day in 1938, Austria became part of the German Reich, the forces of the Wehrmacht having crossed the border unopposed on the previous day, welcomed enthusiastically by crowds of Austrian people passed en route:
“On the morning of 12 March 1938, the 8th Army of the German Wehrmacht crossed the border into Austria. The troops were greeted by cheering Austrians with Nazi salutes, Nazi flags, and flowers.[57]
For the Wehrmacht, the invasion was the first big test of its machinery. Although the invading forces were badly organized and coordination among the units was poor, it mattered little because the Austrian government had ordered the Austrian Bundesheer not to resist.[58]
That afternoon, Hitler, riding in a car, crossed the border at his birthplace, Braunau am Inn, with a 4,000 man bodyguard.[53] In the evening, he arrived at Linz and was given an enthusiastic welcome.
The enthusiasm displayed toward Hitler and the Germans surprised both Nazis and non-Nazis, as most people had believed that a majority of Austrians opposed Anschluss.[59][60]
Many Germans from both Austria and Germany welcomed the Anschluss as they saw it as completing the complex and long overdue unification of all Germans into one state.”
[Wikipedia]
“Most people...” in the UK etc were no doubt being informed, or misinformed, by newspapers owned by or influenced by “the usual suspects” (the “you-know-who”…). The enthusiasm of Austrians for Anschluss was therefore a shock to them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anschluss
From the newspapers
Sam Melia and Laura Towler
The heroic couple from Yorkshire [see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-68448867; and https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/03/04/the-tyrannical-jailing-of-sam-melia/] continue to stand up for the future of this country’s people.
Their crowdfunder [https://www.givesendgo.com/sammelia] has now reached £60,532. The minimum level of donation is a mere £4. Help these people and their cause.
Sven Longshanks (James Allchurch) also has a crowdfunder: https://www.givesendgo.com/SupportSven.
I myself do not, at least as yet, have any crowdfunder, but am due to be sentenced this week (for allegedly having written unwelcome truths on this blog).
Tweets seen
“Russia responded to unprecedented Western sanctions with an “indecent gesture” – CBC.
In early February, Vladimir Putin joked that he wanted to show a “well-known gesture” to the sanctions-imposing West, but would not do so because there were “many girls in the room.”
Instead, the Russian president boasted about the country’s economy and its ability to expand its military-industrial complex in the face of unprecedented sanctions, writes CBC journalist Briar Stewart.
Indeed, over the past two years, the Russian government has managed to circumvent sanctions and limit inflation while investing nearly a third of its budget in defense spending. He also managed to increase trade with China and sell his oil to new markets, in part by using a shadow fleet of tankers to get around a price cap that Western countries hoped would reduce the country’s military budget.
In 2022, Western countries froze Russia’s sovereign assets worth $300 billion. Then more than 16 thousand sanctions were introduced. European airspace was closed to Russian aircraft, and hundreds of Western companies left Russia or curtailed their activities.
But today there are the latest iPhones and MacBooks on Russian shelves because government and business have largely been able to adapt. Russia has relied on Asia, and especially China, as its main economic lifeline. Russia’s ability to produce weapons and use its oil money to finance them is a pressing issue for Ukraine, which is struggling with arms and ammunition shortages, and for its allies.
“However, there are no simple steps left to tighten the sanctions regime. It’s a game of cat and mouse. Any delays in making decisions on additional sanctions give Russia the opportunity to adjust its policies and its economy,” the article says.”
People do not really want Labour, but they do want rid of the present Government. The misnamed Conservative Party is toast.
The “Conservatives” have given up trying to win, or even not badly lose, the 2024 General Election. They are now focussed on giving whatever they can while they can, not to their “core voters” but to the very core of that core, the wealthiest 1% or 2%.
Ukraine has never been famous for great minds, but that quoted remark must take the biscuit for recent comments by members of the Kiev regime. That man is the Chief of their General Staff!
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable” [John F. Kennedy].
That is the level on which much of the police force seems to be, now. Incapable of doing their proper and authorized job(s), and wasting enormous time and money behaving like a poundland KGB or Stasi, spying on tweets and blogs, and “monitoring” what the British people say about the migration invasion, about corrupt and/or useless MPs, and about those “special interest groups” and cabals which hide in the shadows, controlling or influencing events to our detriment.
Ingrained supremacism…
“Senator Ron Johnson: “I think it’s time for politicians in Washington to face reality.
Chuck Schumer came out of a meeting at the White House and said, ‘It’s simple, $60 billion and Ukraine will win. If you don’t give them $60 billion, they’ll lose.'”
How they plan. We’re now in a two-year bloody stalemate, and I think you really need to start asking yourself, is it worth spending another $60 billion to fan the flames of the bloody stalemate? Because every day more and more Ukrainians die, more and more Russian conscripts, more and more Ukraine is destroyed. If you care about the Ukrainian people, you should worry about this too.
We don’t have a winning strategy. The administration does not lay it out. If we are going to support Ukraine, it must be done in a way that forces Putin to come to the negotiating table and end this war. I don’t hear it at all. I hear that President Biden hasn’t even talked to Russia on this issue. And I would be very interested to know what happened in Istanbul shortly after the war began, when Boris Johnson, essentially halfway through the Biden administration, torpedoed the peace agreement.
So we really need to do a complete re-evaluation of this issue. And we should secure our own border before sending $60 billion down the rat hole to secure other countries.”
Quite. In fact, you could give the Zelensky regime USD $60BN or $600BN, and it would make no difference. “Ukraine” (Kiev regime) cannot “win”, even to the extent of “taking back” Crimea, Donetsk, and Lugansk, let alone anything more ambitious.
The present Ukraine is a failed state, and in fact a fake state.
“Russian troops advance even though Zelensky says Moscow’s forces are ‘stopped’ – Newsweek.
“Russia’s offensive has been stopped,” Zelensky told French broadcaster BFM TV on Monday. “Our command, our military stopped Russia’s offensive in eastern Ukraine.”
But Western analysts say Russian troops continue to advance in the Zaporozhye, Donetsk, Kharkov and Luhansk regions. “Russian troops recently achieved confirmed successes in the areas of Bakhmut, Avdeevka and Donetsk amid ongoing positional battles along the entire line of contact on March 12,” Newsweek quotes analysts.
In the Kupyansky direction there is progress in the area of the village of Sinkovka. In the south, Russian troops are regaining positions lost during the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the summer of 2023. Fierce fighting broke out around such settlements as Robotino, Urozhainoye and Staromayorskoye.
To repel the Russian onslaught, Kyiv has mobilized some of its best units, equipped with American-made armored vehicles and tanks, Newsweek notes.“
Quite right. Don’t trigger a Russia-NATO open conflict that would leave Germany devastated for the second time within 80 years.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 