Germany
“The German government was left on the brink of collapse after the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, unexpectedly sacked his finance minister, plunging Europe’s largest economy into political disarray.
“The situation is serious,” Scholz added. “There is war in Europe, tensions are increasing in the Middle East. At the same time, our economy is stagnating.”
[Guardian]
More:
Tweets seen
I could suggest something about certain parts of London (mostly North and North-West), but in view of the fact that free speech in the UK is all but dead (by reason of the activities of “a certain tribe”), I think that, today at least, I prefer to keep my views to myself.
Russia only wants Eastern Ukraine (Ukraine east of the Dnieper river) and the coastline across to and including Odessa.
Historically, what is now Western Ukraine (based on Lvov) has made several different rulerships, including both Russia and Austria-Hungary.
While Putin would probably prefer to take all of Ukraine, I think that he would accept a peace agreement with a Lvov-based rump Ukraine willing to be neutral in future. That used to be called, from 1945 to 2023, “Finlandization”, and worked quite well for everyone until, quite recently, the Finnish government went mad and joined NATO.
That is a good thing. America is at its best when it is isolationist.
October Revolution
7 November (in the Gregorian calendar) is the day on which, in the Soviet Union, was set aside to commemorate the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917 (old-style, Julian calendar).
There were always parades in Moscow. I recall watching Soviet TV news in the old Channel 4 newsroom (then in the old ITN building in Wells Street, near Oxford Street) as a kind of guest, in 1984.
40 years ago, almost half a lifetime.
I recall it mainly because of the excellent picture quality on the satellite link; also because I had come directly from a tough afternoon taekwando session taught by a candidate-competitor black-belt destined for the 1988 Seoul Olympics (I don’t know whether he eventually went, though).
It was interesting to see people normally seen by me only on TV broadcasts. Peter Sissons, for one [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sissons]. I remember how surprised I was that he seemed rather fat when encountered in person.
When the Bolsheviks seized power from the Kerensky government in 1917, a tide of anger and unrest poured across, first Russia, then the rest of the world.
The history of the 20th Century was, to a large extent, the outcome of the fight against, or for Sovietism. The rise of National Socialism was also, to a large extent, the result of Bolshevism and the struggle to resist it. An Abwehr or “parrying”.
Even after the events of the Second World War, the subsequent “peace” revolved around the need in the West to “parry” Sovietism— the Yalta and other agreements, the Cold War, the “Finlandization” not only of Finland itself but also of Austria and Yugoslavia. The taking out of Central Europe, and the reduction of Europe into East and West.
Of course, Sovietism itself changed too, internally: Bolshevism and Leninism became Stalinism (with Trotskyist offshoots overseas), then post-Stalinist Sovietism under Khrushchev and his successors.
International revolution against finance-capitalist reaction became big-power and then superpower rivalry.
By the time I watched that 1984 TV news broadcast, the Cold War was still going strong, superficially, but the Soviet Union had only 5 years left. (Officially, the Soviet Union lasted until 1991, but it was dead by late 1989). It did not necessarily seem so at the time. The Dzerzhinsky Regiment (MVD troops) led that parade (the bit I saw), and the Soviet power still gave the impression of being fearsome. However, as a character notes in one of my favourite films, The Russia House, adaptation of a John le Carre novel, the Soviet knight was dying inside his armour.
Now we are in a rather different world. Still, after a 1989-2022 gap, the superpower rivalry is again there (if it ever went away), but this time as a conflation of a rump-Sovietism with a Great-Russian nationalism, bumping horns against an expansionist NATO led and ruled over by a USA which is, in effect, NWO/ZOG (New World Order/Zionist Occupation Government).
Where now? The front-lines of the conflict are in Ukraine (which the Western power wants to subsume into its sphere of influence) and, to a lesser extent, the Middle East.
Europe needs a new direction. So does Russia. The answer must be a Eurasian ethno-state, Europe joining loosely with Russia against the areas of the world which are comprised of peoples, in very broad terms, now the enemies of positive evolution.
Late music
Ian Robert Millard 