It needs roundtables, watchful eyes ...

... and reasonably open minds to possibilities, plus archiving what has already been fairly well established.

Political jigsaws are best completed by the collaborative effort of a few, each with his/her own angle, his/her own pet theory ... using a roundtable approach or brainstorming, with a genuine desire to know that which they currently do not.

It's essential that certain groundrules apply in that room ... egos be left at the door upon entering, the contributions perhaps forthright but nevertheless civil. At the end of the session, all can just gaze at what's on the table and the truth is probably somewhere in amongst all that.

What you do not need is diametrically adversarial voices in there ... for example, a Woke devotee or two in the same room as the antiWoke is not going to work. A proHamas Candace in the same room as a Jewish Shapiro is not going to produce anything but a clash.

Those at OoL certainly have diverse ideas on whom the ultimate bete noire is but short of "final proof", there's much else which does become apparent if it's allowed to.

The truth can come out of anywhere ... look at this one for example:

That was at Roobee's place and I added:

If a person such as an old Witanagemot colleague posts a "whoever could it be" tweet, listing all sorts of possibilities, it's obvious he's not been watching, which Roobee was. When his whole focus is independence for England ... fine, ok, no argument beyond saying it just increases the sum total of politicians paid from the public purse and all the wrong ones preselected again ... it does mean though he's not watching the bigger picture.

I can't get the whole picture myself either, because of my own set of betes noires ... but a roundtable with respected, not mocked contributions might just uncover some interesting connections ... and that's what it needs.

And always, some have gone into it in far greater detail than others. That's just the nature of things.

Another mind or two at work:

https://therealslog.com/2024/03/23/coming-crime-against-crimea-or-what-constrains-the-unprincipled/

Then The Civil Service Should Pay

The science secretary, Michelle Donelan, received government advice before she tweeted a letter in which she accused an academic of supporting Hamas, Downing Street has said. No 10 refused to say what advice officials had given her and whether she actually followed it, but insisted she had “acted in line with established precedent”.

Lame response - find out! Signed, a bill payer. 

Kate Sang, a professor at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, sued Donelan for libel after the minister published a letter to UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) in October urging it to cut links with her and another academic, Dr Kamna Patel of University College London. Donelan expressed her “disgust and outrage” at their appointment to an expert advisory group to Research England on equality, diversity and inclusion. However, in a statement posted to X on Tuesday, Donelan admitted she was wrong and had misunderstood the social media posts. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) later said it had paid £15,000 to settle the case without admitting liability, out of public funds.

Take it out of the civil service budget. She cleared it with them.  

On Thursday evening it was reported that Donelan’s letter was cleared by her department’s legal team. Politico said civil servants had flagged concerns during the drafting of the letter – to which numerous people, including top officials, contributed – but that the legal team had decided the position was solid.

Not that that stops Labour idiots grandstanding: 

The shadow leader of the Commons, Lucy Powell, asked whether Donelan had followed “appropriate advice” that was given to her, or had gone against it. “Because if [she went against it], then surely she should personally pay the costs,” Powell told MPs.

The person responsible for clearing it should pay. Not me and you, eh, Reader? 

Just who are the traitors causing this to happen?

This 👇🏻

Goodbye the west we once knew.

Not So Much A ‘Radical Flank’, Chris…

...as urban terrorists who are unhinged about global warning nonsense. Just the sort of people you want knowing your address.

Packham, 62, defended the right of environmental activists to target the homes of MPs, as long as their action was “peaceful and non-violent”.

Because that always happens, right, Chris? 

“I think that we need a portfolio of protests, basically, because we need a radical flank and Just Stop Oil are seen by many as that radical flank,” he told Times Radio on Monday.“They are the people who in some people’s minds go a step too far. And that might be, you know, standing outside an MP’s house. But the fact is that they are motivated, as I am, by a manifest fear for the health of our future.

“The science tells us we have to act. These people are frightened for my future, for your future, for the future of any children they might have. They need to draw attention to this issue.”

By destroying public art and preventing the emergency services reaching people in need? Well, I suppose it makes as much sense as urging people to buy their eggs from Cambodia rather than Britain... 

Packham added that Just Stop Oil “want a rapid just energy transition away from fossil fuels to a healthy, renewable energy system and they need to get that message across, and they’re desperate to do so. So I would support a breadth of protest.”

Which is something they don't appear to have. So, can we see you forgoing your cosy BBC sinecure and glueing your hand to the pavement in future? 

“That doesn’t mean that you and I need to go and stand outside MPs houses. I’m taking a legal approach, a perfectly democratic one, which is available to me as a citizen of the UK. But yes, we’re on the same sheet.”

Let's hope you end up in the same cell too then. 

Football, Dylan, and other lunacies

 

As a young man, I did consider pushing on and going to achieve a University education, but sometimes circumstances overrule plans; so instead went into an Apprenticeship (in the days when that term really meant something) in a mixed factory complex; attended Technical College on a day-release programme to bolster and gain both experience and knowledge. I sometimes wondered what my life would have been like if I had pushed on to a University Degree, but looking back is never going to change things. I chose a British Merchant Navy  life, and then I realised exactly how much more I had to learn; because on a ship, all problems electrical come straight to the Electrical Engineer: and you fixed them, because there is no-one else. I don’t regret my choice of life, because otherwise I would not have met the love of my life, we married after I had laid siege to her: we had three kids, a good life, marred only by a mental illness which gripped my love. I lost her after 53 years of marriage; lost her to an NHS hospital which simply did not care; and she was left to die, alone and un-comforted.

But the bitterness eases with time, and life does go on regardless; along with all the foolishness which has come to stand as ‘Just another Lunacy’ to those of us who shake their heads in silent disbelief at the sheer stupidity of many if not most of the ‘Woke’ biblical philosophies which are thrown at us almost every day. I was listening to the BBC Today programme this morning, and a slot came where Bob Dylan’s life and early years was being discussed, and I literally stopped in my tracks at hearing that there was a American University Degree Course in Studying Bob Dylan’s works, music and lyrics: now I always thought that, at my ripe old age, I had heard everything: but hearing lectures about Bob Dylan? 

But worse was to follow, because further along in the Today Sports schedule, was a piece about how Nottingham Forest F.C. had been deducted some League points because of financial irregular actions deemed to be outside the norm. The club was said to be appealing against the deduction because it would place them in the Relegation area. Now this must be fascinating to those unfortunates whose religion is Football; but the rest of us? The true lunacy was to follow, as the man asked to comment upon Nottingham’s travails was announced as a Senior Lecturer in Football Finance at Liverpool University. 

I rest my case

What a wonderful take on the Russians

So true, so perspicacious and so much my times ... at that time, you see, USA/USSR relations were my university research field ... I being anti-Nixon and anti-Watergate, calling for impeachment, fascinated with Segretti, even the evil genius Colson, Dean, anti-Haldeman the Gatekeeper, then Woodstein, G Gordon Liddy, Deep Throat ... ask me about Katie Graham's WaPo. And more widely ... Bill Ayers and the Weathermen whom I admired ... back then.

Then, as Holly Valance said in a recent interview ... we grew up, politically, we were now the Awoken. Mind you, I was always a wag ... even in schooldays I was reported for taking serious things too flippantly ... and still do I confess. Then, as did many student radicals, I got a job and the whole vista of full employment began, spouse, family etc. etc.

Then the visits to America began ... to the west coast, SoCal ... and not LA but further south by 70 miles, plus north ... my field then was Del Mar, Dana Point, Yorba Linda, La Casa Pacifica, Orange County ... I stayed just down the road from Disneyland ... different world altogether ... yep, these were GOP people and I was agreeing with them.

Strangely, I was seeing Nixon in a new light ... the man's grasp of foreign policy was first rate ... but many have said that ... there was just something "real nice" about the people I met ... we'd take a spin to Palm Springs in the Dodge wagon to shop on a 122 degree F day ... and so on.

Different America ... along that coast was the old America of the 40s and 50s ... and it was so nice.

But the clip above is also about Russia, where I lived twelve years and that hard negotiator versus Russian hospitality was big ... they're a big-hearted people, obviously with bad elements among them, just as we are. 

Now Putin's the enigma ... yes, he was full on CCCP (in Russian), KGB etc. but the power behind him that propelled him to power were the siloviki ... which actually means the power or force or strength. You don't mess with them. Not to put too fine a point on it ... state mafia.

And one thing they're superhot on is the Old Russia in all its forms ... this was the Russia I saw, with the people who were proud of what they could recall ... just as we are here on our side of politics. I for one can't see what's wrong with a people loving their own country ... not some muddy world-goo.

But something else then happens ... as globo-psycho take over the world with their dystopia, so we discover likeminded people who love their countries as they were. But shirley they would fight each other, would they not? Nope ... we love the Eva Vlaars, the Christine Andersons, the Martin Selners ... we support their fight against psycho-Wokery.

So I'm not inclined to put any of our allies down ... for what to do that? And the cumulative effect is that we're vastly more likely to bring world peace than any lefty ideologues with their faux friendships.

I'm Pretty Sure There's A Syndrome Here...

Gosh, what's it called? Something Scandinavian, I think.

 

Ah, yes. That's the one.

More than 50 survivors of terrorist attacks, including the Manchester Arena bombing and the London Bridge attacks, have signed an open letter warning politicians to stop conflating British Muslims with extremism. The signatories include Rebecca Rigby, the widow of soldier Lee Rigby who was murdered in south-east London in 2013, and Paul Price, who lost his partner, Elaine McIver, in the Manchester Arena attack in 2017. They caution against comments which play “into the hands of terrorists”.

Like these? 

Paul Price, who was badly injured in the Manchester Arena attack in May 2017, said terrorists exploited division, and politicians should focus on what unites communities. “Terrorists want people to take sides and for people to get angry,” he said. “It should be everyone against the terrorists.”

Rebecca Rigby, from West Yorkshire, whose husband Lee was murdered near a barracks in May 2013, said: “Lee’s death was used by some to drive hatred against Muslims in general. That’s not what Lee would have wanted and it’s not what our family wants.

“If we are serious about tackling terrorism the most important thing we can do is differentiate between the vast majority of Muslims who are our peaceful neighbours, and the small number of extremists.”

But what if you've got that ratio wrong, Rebecca? What then? 

The cashless plus digital-less society

In other words … grand theft from depositors on a massive scale. On that Sainsbury’s cash crash again:

“Disgraceful by sainsburys today. My Mum arrived in local branch and was told they can only accept cash due to tech problems.” Yes, I heard similar through the morning. I suggested she try Morrisons. I usually took cash equivalent with me in case card didn’t work.”

… come other reports from up and down the country:

“I went to get cash yesterday machine broken .Post office closed .Went in coop and ask cash back could only give me £10. Machine been broken for a week .Hairdresser only takes cash. Long story short - I managed to transfer payment. What a pain.”

Another replied:

“You can do ‘chip and pin’. Just so slow.”

(Cough) Think it’s a bit more than just a temporary inconvenience … think it may have been a trial run.

Ian J on the western strategic mess north-east of the Balkans

Ian J is one of our main chaps at N.O. and he’s put together a nice take on the impasse facing the west:

From an article by 'Simplicius the thinker' on the efforts of some NATO 'leaders' to 'take over' in the Ukraine: (sorry - have no bona fides for Simplicius)

"NATO cannot let Russia capture Odessa for a multitude of reasons.

1. NATO was building important naval bases there in order to fully neutralize Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in the future. It would allow Russia to totally landlock Ukraine, thus ruining NATO’s last remaining puppet-state’s chances of being a military thorn in Russia’s side

2. The above alone would allow Russia to dominate global wheat markets as Ukraine would have little ways to export its grain

3. It would allow Russia to create an unbroken land corridor to Pridnestrovie (Transnistria) which would catalyze into an even greater ‘domino-effect’ collapse of NATO destabilization plans, allowing Russia to totally solve the PMR issue and create a fortress in the region
In short, it’s absolutely apocalyptic for NATO to lose Odessa.

But here’s the problem: all of NATO combined without the U.S. Army cannot defeat Russia. Yes, even bogged down in Ukraine—Russia has now raised an entirely new army group of over 500k men which is enough to take out all of NATO by itself, barring U.S. presence.

However: the U.S. absolutely could not and would not commit its land forces to such a European war effort. Why? Because it would mean totally trapping the entire already-depleted and shrinking U.S. military in this one theater, allowing China to grab Taiwan at its leisure without threat of the U.S. military aiding in any overtly significant way.

Two significant things to remember: only a few NATO states are barking, many others have openly declared no troop involvement, Italy and Germany amongst them. In fact, it’s now coming to light that Germany’s internal claim for not supplying Taurus missiles is because it would require them to place ground troops in Ukraine to administer the missiles, which is a big red line for them.

And the other big thing no one has brought up:

NATO’s infamous Article 5 specifies that mutual defense doctrine is only triggered if NATO troops are attacked on NATO territory.

Can you guess what that means for French troops being hit in Odessa?

That means Macron is walking a very fine line—if he can’t get a coalition to back him in this new drive, he’ll be an emperor with no clothes as French troops would be left alone to face potential Russian strikes, to which they would have no answer whatsoever, and would be wiped out.

Have just read todays article by Larry Johnson criticising the views of a UK 'Elite' propagandist - seems to say it all:

"The lunacy reflected in this piece helps explain why the Brits are so lost as they struggle to come to grips with the fact that Putin is kicking their pompous asses."

Maybe Reconsider Your Hiring Practices?

A Belmarsh prison officer who derailed a murder trial by investing a false confession after a killer showered her with money and gifts has been jailed for four years and eight months today.

Gosh, maybe employing female foreigners with glamour shots all over their social media isn't such a good idea after all? 

Bujko, who has a masters degree in criminology, made the false claim at the behest of Campbell’s co-defendant Mohammed Moshaer Ali, 31, bribing her with ‘money, gifts and promises’, the Old Bailey heard.

You never see male prison officers falling for this, I've noticed. 

She claimed she overheard a conversation in the southeast London jail’s healthcare unit between Campbell and another inmate, suggesting he and Antonio Afflick-McLeod, 32, planned to rob Ali of drugs on the day of the killing. An examination of CCTV footage of the unit revealed that Campbell was not there when she claimed to have witnessed the exchange.

It's frightening to think not only are they corrupt, they are stupid too! 

She is likely to be deported back to Poland at the end of her sentence.

Good! I bet they don't take her into their prison service.