The Multi-Warhead Swap Shop

Are we at war with Russia? We may be about to find out in the worst way.

But so far technically no, we have not declared war.

What does it take?

We’ve only supplied Ukraine with intelligence, money and weapons including the Storm Shadow cruise missile whose blueprints we are about to hand Zelensky so he can make his own. injected our special forces troops into the country and told Z yet again that we are with him all the way.

Our PM, the latest incarnation of Cool Britannia, celebrated Ukraine’s independence day by strumming his support for the fight against Russia’s neo-Nazism.

Burnham is dead to irony. Eight days ago Zelensky personally participated in the reburial ceremony for Yehven Konovalets (who founded the nationalist OUN) and glorified him as a national hero.

Konovalets is feted by the Azov movement a racist and ultranationalist group whose name indicated the intention to drive out Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population from the Donbas, an area stretching from the Dnipro river to the shores of the Sea of Azov. Another “from the river to the sea” project you may say, but without the fashionable Jew-killer pro-Palestinian keffiyeh to sport round one’s neck.

But the Azov Brigade was merged into the National Guard of Ukraine in 2014 and so according to the BBC at the time Russia’s accusation that the Kiev regime is a “fascist junta” was “demonstrably false” and Ukraine could not be anti-semitic because Zelensky, then the speaker of its Parliament, is a Jew.

Unfortunately the Azov lot since returned to prominence and according to Wikipedia has “drawn controversy over its early and allegedly continuing association with far-right groups and neo-Nazi ideology, its use of controversial symbols linked to Nazism, and early allegations that members of the unit participated in human rights violations.”

Thanks to Britain’s intensifying its provocation support for Ukraine Russia has recently recalled its ambassador to the UK amid threats to retaliate by striking at our drone factories.

It can’t happen here, sang Frank Zappa.

Don’t you believe it. It took the Russians eight years from 2014 to decide to invade Ukraine, rightly or wrongly. Now they appear to be carefully deliberating their response to us, and the chief of the CIA flew to Moscow yesterday. Let’s hope his diplomacy succeeds where the blundering of our own clueless amateurs has been failing.

Financial meltdown - are the doomsayers right?

There’s a bubble and it’s going to burst, say the experts.

Which bubble, though?

The Daily Mail’s Andew Neil focuses on the US’ national debt which has passed $40 trillion - 124 per cent of GDP, before noting “Every major economy is in hock to the bond markets. France’s national debt is 116 per cent of its GDP, Italy’s 137 per cent, and Japan tops them all with 204 per cent.”

The Mail’s Alex Brummer has breakfasted with a hedge fund manager who says that the crisis will be triggered by a collapse on the stock market whose gains have been supercharged by speculation in Artificial Intelligence. Brummer harks back to the dotcom mania at the turn of the Millennium and his advice is… “Take heed of that hedge funder’s warning - and plan accordingly.” That’s not very helpful but at least he got a croissant and a coffee out of the meeting.

More practical is the Mail’s Jeff Prestridge who suggests staying in the market but the right parts of it - e.g. bonds, income funds, precious metals - and trimming exposure to the big AI stocks.

Other assessments are available…

For example there is Promethean Action who think the growth in US government debt is tolerable provided the economy can grow faster. This conservative, pro-Trump team sees an ongoing battle between globalists and the American economic nationalism pioneered by Alexander Hamilton. Promethean sees the British as the long-term villains, promoting wars and manipulating finance to replace by influence the power they had with the British Empire.

Another analysis is offered by Professor Steve Keen, one of perhaps only twenty professional economists (out of 20,000) who predicted the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-9. He says that the cause of recessions and depressions is not government debt but personal debt. Household debt reached an all-time high of 155.8% of disposable income in 2008. Individuals cannot conjure up more income to manage their obligations but governments can. So under Modern Monetary Theory the State could invent more credit and inject it into the economy to maintain demand and then suck it back out again to prevent inflation. There are those who say this approach is dangerous and one dreads to think what our socialist government would do given unlimited power to print money.

All this may be irrelevant if we further damage our country with war. Arguably Britain’s ruin began with our Government’s decision in 1914 to declare war on Germany. Now we are making weapons for Ukraine to use on Russia including its civilian population and our new PM has reaffirmed his support for Zelensky. Russia perceives us as directly involved in the conflict and has just recently withdrawn its ambassador to the UK.

Maintaining the value of investments (for those lucky enough to have them) may soon be the least of our worries, thanks to the clueless ideologists in Westminster.

Cambridge should have stood by Jason Arday

“We know. So what? We love him, he’s ours and we’re keeping him.”

That should have been the response when Arday’s qualifications and work came under fire. For unless the University establishment that took him on are extremely sloppy and unperceptive they would have known what they had.

You do not raise someone so far above his capacity and then open your hands and let him crash to the floor as they did. They may claim that recruitment is strictly on merit but politics plays a part, according to Dr Edward Skidelsky (“It’s time to stop the rot,” March 2024; “Cambridge urges recruiters to favour minority candidates,” June 2025.)

It also works negatively. In 2017 Nigel Biggar an Oxford professor of ethics was hounded out of his post because of a book he was about to publish based on six years of research, arguing that Britain’s imperial history needs to be reviewed in a balanced way rather than be wholly condemned. In November of that year he wrote an article in the Times entitled “Don’t feel guilty about our colonial history” (£). A week later he put online a description of his Ethics and Empire project.

A few days later Cambridge Professor (of postcolonial studies, within the Faculty of English) Priyamvada Gopal tweeted “OMG, this is serious shit … We need to SHUT THIS DOWN” and after Biggar’s Twitter history had been quarried for allegedly “misogynistic” and “homophobic tweets” he was eventually forced to resign.

One would have thought that academic questions should be considered on their own merits but “venganza” rules when somebody steps out of line; already Nathan Cofnas the researcher who exposed Professor Arday has been suspended by Ghent University and expects to be fired.

What is missing is “glasnost”, openness and transparency. Cambridge should not have blown hot and cold, protecting then abandoning Arday. They should have brazened it out, like the rotten and incompetent Marxist national government under which we now suffer. “We are the masters at the moment, and not only at the moment, but for a very long time to come” as Hartley Shawcross told Parliament in 1946, so (in effect) what are you going to do about it?

As long as the label on the tin says what is inside there is no reason to complain. If you went to Sussex University in the 60s or 70s you would expect left-wing attitudes and activism and future employers would know what its graduates would be like. In 1975 a team from Manchester University (including David Aaronovitch) came onto “University Challenge” with the intention of attacking Oxbridge privilege and “destroying his [Bamber Gascoigne’s] baby” by answering all questions with “Karl Marx, Trotsky, Che Guevara” etc.

Now would have been the perfect time for Cambridge’s education faculty to say “we are the masters, suck it up, this is a post-truth world.” Instead they lost their nerve and flung their pet off the back of the troika.

The shame is theirs.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Bruce Springsteen (2), by JD

This is the second post for Bruce Springsteen. The previous post featured music which was “a blend(?) of New Orleans style jazz with folk music playing very old melodies which form the bulk of what can be loosely decribed as ‘Americana.”

https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2022/07/friday-music-bruce-springsteen-and.html

This time we feature his more familiar style of rock’n’roll(sometimes with and sometimes without the E Street Band)

His concerts certainly provide value for money, they usually last three hours or more!

“Tougher Than The Rest” (MULTI-CAM) - Bruce Springsteen LA 3/19/2016

Bruce Springsteen - Human Touch (Official HD Video)

Bruce Springsteen - Dancing In the Dark (from Born In The U.S.A. Live: London 2013)

Bruce Springsteen - You Never Can Tell (Leipzig 7/7/13)

“Hungry Heart” (MULTI-CAM) - Bruce Springsteen LA 3/19/2016

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - Glory Days (London Calling: Live In Hyde Park, 2009) believe it or not this was the final number after a three hour show!

Don’t know where he gets the energy from. Must be because music makes you young!

Video of the Day - we're getting more stupid

This is a well-researched piece about our declining attention span and intelligence. The writers connect it with the development of information technology, from printing and the telegraph to the smartphone in nearly everybody’s hand today.

The vid is worth watching even if only for the many striking and beautiful images that accompany (but rarely illustrate) the argument - are they there to test our concentration?

Alternatively Professor Edward Dutton aka The Jolly Heretic puts it down to the fact that we live in easier times so our survival is not challenged as it used to be and the “Flynn effect” (average IQ increasing over time) has gone into reverse. He talks about it in this interview. Dutton has also said elsewhere that cleverer people (except for right-wingers) breed fewer children than those who are lower in IQ.

Slugfest

It’s not the garden they raid, it’s the kitchen.

I’ve learned to clear away the cat’s plate at night so I don’t find it gossamered with slugslobber in the morning. Sometimes with Silbo Sluggins the quiet burglar still in the dish.

There’s a technique for getting rid of them humanely, I call it the slug-flick. (“Where do you go to my slugly?”) Fold a paper kitchen towel in four, pick up the slug without (ugh) touching it, roll it left and right so it curls up and stops trying to stick to the paper, then with a flick of the wrist it’s off down the garden (“I believe I can fly”) sometimes with a splat as it hits a wall but it never kills them.

They keep coming back, they know the way; does one of them act as a scout on the Chisholm Trail to our back door? Caught four the other night, different sizes, from grand master to apprentice.

Hooooooonk!!

"That mobile alert" 

"Yes, Prime Minister?" 

"Call me Andy, mate. Could one be sent selectively, like, to marginal constituencies to boost turnout in an election?" 

"Languages, emojis and flags as appropriate?" 

"Remind me what pay grade you're on at the moment, mate."