RUSSIA WILL BE GONE IN A DECADE

Russia will be gone within a decade according to Peter Zeihan. Stephen Kotkin explains from a historical perspective. Links below.

It runs out of young people to man an army and economy. If true, what will happen then?

What's interesting is, if this happens, into what parts will it break? Who'll take them? Will China move West?

There's the Artic passage to consider: mineral wealth, belt and road.

Maybe the West is planning to march on to Moscow. Even into China from the North. Or maybe the West has not thought that far ahead and is taking life one decade at a time.

We're all running out of time. It's demographics. China and Russia are condemned. It reminds me of the games of boules played on the beach at Nice. All these old men launching their cannon balls, then disputing the results with tape measures.

"Be careful what you wish for", à warning to the West that sums it all up.

Fact is, the intl liberal elite have led us a right  merry dance since 1991, with all their globalisation and immigration and gross inequality of wealth, and it's time to come back to the idea of the nation state, a civilisation, a people.

It's the same blob that took us into Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc, on the basis of human rights and democracy. Trump isn’t there to stop this unwanted attention from making yet another catastrophic cock-up.

The more I think about it, the more stupid this war seems. The enemies of the West are China and Islam. Russia is part of the West.

https://youtu.be/h4Yrn29v5F8

https://youtu.be/D8owY8TBvzI

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A RETURN TO CONSERVATIVE VALUES

6 February 2022

Yes, that wasn't very well expressed, was it. Better to say "turn to", than "return to". It's about organising and directing Boris's undoubted talents, filling in the weaknesses.

Boris' pragmatism, shall we call it, has been very useful, and not just to him. What is needed now for the country to progress - and a possible second term for Boris as a matured leader - is steady, unfailing, value-based policy making. It's about values, instinct and conviction.

Boris needs a long term vision for the kind of society he'd like to see and a steady plan for getting there. This is about Tory values and beliefs:  individual freedom, equal opportunities (though hopefully less HR - Human Resources and, yes, less Human Rights, but a safety net is necessary for capitalism to survive), yes to private property and ownership and all the incentives to innovation productivity and personal wealth creation this brings, leave decision-making as far as possible to the private sector especially SMEs and local actions, low taxes and a secondary role for the state wherever possible. 

More trust, choice and freedom for the individual, less for the state. This is what really marks the difference between the West and totalitarian regimes in Eurasia and Asia. Important in the conflict to come. Boris is not a wilderness politician though.

Now although Johnson is short on principles, the hope is that the massive campaigning skills, enthusiasm and his will to get things done, can be more properly channelled with the sense of deep conviction and long-term purpose these new guys on his team can bring.

So we get the idea - strengthen up the values and integrity, keep the campaigning and leadership.

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MALI PUTIN UKRAINE

4 February 2022

I'd like to see Boris involved with Putin. Not in the Ukraine, but in Mali.

Putin has sent his mercenaries - the Wagner group they're called - into Mali. First, in go the geologists. They suss out the lie of the land. In Mali, its Lithium they are after.

The Mali govt - completely illegitimate band of gangsters after a putsch in April last year - are paying Wagner 9,000,000 Euros a month for protection from the jihadists and other mercenary groups, while they plunder their country. Wagner hands the extraction of the country's mineral wealth to Russian companies .... and Putin creams off of course.

Not only that. There's a proto-European army failing out there for lack of German support. This could be Europe taking responsibility for its own defense! France, Denmark, Estonia and Finland.

This also ties back to Ukraine - Ukraine is the other end of Putin's Mali deal.

Boris is just the man to have the UK involved. And the DT would have a genuine story to report on, test its journalists' real mettle, sell copy and be proud of its content.

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SISYPHEAN SNIFFING MISSIONS

2 February 2022

                 Look at the behaviour of France, Denmark, the Czeck Republic and Estonia.

Look at Russia's Wagner Group in Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad and maybe Niger.

What is France doing there?

What about the collapse of Libya and freely available arms.

Why has Europe, led by France, withdrawn from central West Africa, letting Russia (led by its geologists) in and abandoning the people to the jihadists and mercenaries.

We give Russia free hand there, with the result that millions will be displaced and hundreds of thousands of refugees who'll make their way to eg Tunisia and Lampedusa, Europe, France and the UK.

Yet we clamp down on Russia who has this time a legitimate interest in Ukraine.

These are the stories the DT could report on. Instead, we gate partygate or russian planes on their sisyphean sniffing missions.             

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THE EAR BUDS I BOUGHT CHEAP DONT WORK WITH MY NEW WATCH

31 January 2022

See update 5 Feb.

The Samsung watch is a computer and like all computers, it needs an operating system, OS. It uses a version of Android 2.0 called Google Wear - an Android OS developed specially for wearable devices. 

FYI, an OS is software that sits on the hardware (the ear buds I bought, or the new Samsung watch, or any other device ... Windows is an OS for running PCs). 

You control a device using a software app. Any and all the apps you might use on a device send and receive data to and from the hardware via the OS, so the OS runs the hardware. The OS does the data logistics between the app and your device. 

In August last year 2021, Samsung moved their new watch, the Galaxy Watch 4, from an OS called "Mizen" to an OS called "Google Wear OS". This new OS works on the new watch, but not completely on the old watch - it is not fully "backward compatible".

Now look at the date of the buds on the photo of the box: 2021:01:04.

I'll bet you the buds I bought run on Mizen and not Watch 4. Maybe the ear buds are genuine (Samsung can't spell), but out of date - still running on Mizen. I dont know. So not all the new functionality for wearable devices will work with these buds.

EXPLANATION: An OS has libraries of functions - a function is a software routine with a specific purpose that sits in a library (a folder). It is a bit of software code that is called to do a specific job by the OS, as and when needed. Eg your watch might ring an alarm - so the watch wants to tell the buds to tell the user.

One of these routines is indeed "audible notifications". It's in OS Wear, not in Mizen. Means that if I buy a new Samsung watch, I wont get audible notifications on the buds I just bought (still running Mizen - remember the manufacturer's production date 2021:01:04). 

There will doubtless be other routines in the new library, not found in the old Mizen library.

So this is what happens when someone writes "open-source" software. Means developers the world over can write routines for the software that add new functions for a device. This is called an "ecosystem" - all the softwares that developers write for the new device and its OS.

In this case, Samsung switched from Mizen to Wear 4, and not all the routines that were migrated across will work - they don't all  respond to calls from the new OS - like here for Notifications.

UPDATE 5 FEB

NOPE, it's just a copy. Fine unless you're on the move, when it lags, cuts out. Bass is not great. Difficulty making and receiving calls. But overall, great value at a tenner!

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GIVE THE EU A VOICE IN THE UKRAINE CONFLICT

30 January 2022

Yes, Ukraine is an EU problem. Though the EU is sidelined and ignored. How could this be changed? Give them an army, give them a voice.

The Germans will never go to the front on any intl political issues. Truth be told, they are so ashamed of what they did, they daren't look themselves in the mirror, let alone look at us.

So you'll get nothing off them.

What about the French? They are proud of their imperial past (like the British aren't anymore) and are about to re-elect their very own little modern day Napoleon.

But the French, though they have a diversity of arms, are terribly underequipped. They have supplies for a few days, then they run to the Americans, or simply run away: look at Mali.

So one fateful answer would be for Macron to double his defence budget, with money from Germany, and build a real superpower army. Entirely under French control (but see the Elysee accord).

The beauty of this is that in the coming decade or two, it could be Europe that takes over, the Euro that becomes the world's reserve currency.

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UKRAINE IS A GRAVE MISTAKE

30 January 2022

Of course you can visit and holiday in Kyiv.

You think Russia will invade and start killing its brothers and sisters in the Ukraine? Well that would be a big surprise given its 10 yrs experience in Afghanistan. Surely Putin would use cyber and sanctions? If America is hell-bent on destroying Putin, invite him to invade and see what he gets from the growing nationalism of Ukraine. But continually poking Russia in the eye is madness: Putin will and is responding; the West needs him for containing the rise of China, also for the Iran and Syria questions.

Truth is, US and Russia both have masses of front line troops, Ukraine is loading up too, but it is all theatre and brinkmanship because behind those front lines there is nothing, its a potemkin army with no logistics - no field hospitals, no fuel supply pipelines, no means to take over Ukraine's transport networks. Neither side has planned for war.

We are being conned. Putin wants his security strip of former satellites and NATO and the EU want to run "democracy" up onto his front lawn. 

The real threat is in Asia: Taiwan, the nine-dot line, the rocks disputed between China and Japan. And we need Russia in the alliance.

All that is needed is for NATO to sign bits of paper saying former soviet block countries will never have certain classes of Western arms on their territory. Then America's army NATO can be converted and reformed as PTO the Pacific Treaty Organisation.

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WILL YOU VOTE FOR BORIS?

30 January 2022

The newspapers thrive on tittle tattle, or think they do, but the readers hereare accepting of Boris' faults as he is a strong leader who gets things done and with passion.

The criticism of his essentially gregarious nature overlooks his formidable project management skills, which spring from the same source. He is a dynamic and motivational leader who can reach into the hearts and minds of every last citizen, and turn around even those deeply embedded in the red wall. That's impressive.

However, not all is good with Boris. There is a dark side that focus on this trivia obscures. He has thrown Conservative beliefs and values to the four winds. We are defenceless against this big hand of government, constantly feeding us as if we were babies and at the same time watching us closely and at all times for signs of misbehaviour.

I see this growth of the state as a feature of our complex world and one that is difficult to reverse. It's happening in all modern economies.

But any politician who can convince say how they will reduce the state interference in my life, and my taxes and will restore my freedoms, that politician will get my vote.

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LET IT BE EUROPE

27 January 2022

I'm not a supporter of Macron or the EU.
But what Macron could do is double France's defence budget, using German money of course and be the EU army.
France has got everything needed for an army, but in quantities so small that after a few days it runs out and goes whining to the States.
Then, the EU could kick NATO out of Europe (lost its purpose in 1991), and the States too. It is extraordinary that Ukraine is centred on Russia and the US...where's the EU?
Then some serious attempts could be made to respect Putin, betrayed by the US and the EU, with the ultimate objective of having Russia accede to EU membership - it is a Christian country, situated in Eurasia.
The current world Order, with the dollar as reserve currency since 1945, is undergoing change. Why should this be to China's advantage when Europe has so much more to offer?

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WHAT DOES RUSSIA WANT?

         21 January 2022

Russia already has much of what it wants.

1. It has the undivided attention of the States, as in the old days pre 1991,

2. Russia has recovered the Crimea and safeguarded Russia's warm water naval base,

3. Putin continues to destabilise the Ukraine with skirmishes, part I of an invasion a cyber attack (part II would be special troops, III full invasion - this will never happen), this means Ukraine is prevented from joining NATO as NATO cannot accept applications from countries at war, and

4. he can continue to incite the attachment of the Donbas

- all this for little money, big home support, and he's working towards his long-term plan for security via control of a buffer zone between Russia and Europe/NATO.  

It is a fundamental mistake to think we should go "over there" to the source of any problem, and deal with the "root causes". That's fine for quality problems on the factory floor, but surely we have learnt by now to leave other countries and cultures alone: we should deal with these matters when they arrive in our country, and with surgical precision, not go throwing our weight around in places that are best left to sort themselves out.        

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THE TROUBLE WITH LIBERALISM

16 January 2022

I dont think it's guilt, but it is Liberalism, or a particular form of Liberalism. It is the form that puts Human Rights before Citizenship. That's the trouble. And it comes from the idea that an individual is an individual, wherever he or she may be found. 

If you give individuals everywhere the same set of human rights, then it's consistent to take down national frontiers. And while you're at it, where possible, you can go into other countries and free other peoples from dictatorship and install democracy. Why not.

We now know that all that is rubbish and an excuse for horrendous wars and that it suits international capitalism (which I'd argue isn't capitalismany more, not at all) but not the people, it doesn't suit us.

It is wrong, fundamentally wrong, because we belong to a group - the nation - first and foremost. We must put our nation first and help citizens to survive, prosper, find happiness, and have something that we can be proud of to leave as our legacy.

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