Notes from year three of the Pandemic
There is no such thing as ‘live with it’ but there is life during it.
I have not been writing so much this last week.
There is a lot to write about; the anti something-or-other cretins blocking roads in perfectly peaceable Canada, the globalist dipshits trying again to get world war launched in Ukraine, even the weather.
For now I am busy watching the Winter Olympics. There is even something to write about regarding that. The problem or course is getting anyone to read what I write.
This itself is something to write about. I am somewhat annoyed that my brilliant prose is being so under appreciated by the ignorant masses. My stuff is qualitatively better than bloggers who are getting hundreds of thousands of readers. I actually have a point to most of what I write. I am based in reality.
I subscribe to a few other writers who are worth reading. Or some podcasters, now. Some of them have developed a pretty good audience, some not.
I think it helps to be young and full of energy, with some ‘technical savvies’. If you can develop a word of mouth following, you can get around the ‘algorithms’. Maybe I am not really that good, but I am amazed there are not a lot more people saying the same things I am. Maybe we just cannot find each other.
Maybe. But if I can keep getting about one or three dozen people reading my stuff, I will keep putting it out. I have nothing better to do. I am an aging, disabled, cranky social outcast and useless eater.
Writing is the only thing I have found that I am pretty good at. That and thinking. Some friends of mine have moaned in despair that it is not a good thing to think all the time. But like me, they continue to think.
What is here today to think about and write about, as I take a momentary break from the Beijing Olympics? I find it hard to get too excited about “The Truckers”. First of all, they have little to do with real truckers, most of whom hate their guts. They are the usual kinds of misfits and rent-a-thugs who staff ‘colour revolution’ type operations all over the world. They, or rather the operators and funders behind them, are getting more frustrated and desperate.
The Trudeau government has not been stupid enough to either suppress them or talk with them until they have fully discredited themselves. Now it seems they have been moved off the ambassador bridge. The bridge is still closed as of this writing. The Honkies are still active elsewhere.
It has been clear for awhile that this action has little or nothing to do with public health mandates. Governments in Canada are starting to do pretty much what the Great Barrington conspiracy are commanding. This is of course greatly detrimental to the Canadian public.
It is a way of putting pressure on the Trudeau government for something. It is very likely that a lot of negotiation is going on out of sight. Prince Justin is likely spending a lot of time on the phone with mysterious people who boast of being able to control the ‘trucker’ blockades.
These entities seem to be annoyed with something the Canadian government is doing, probably in relation to trade. While the Government is not giving in, it is getting pressure from another direction. Various interests are finding that bridge closure inconvenient and want it opened.
While this situation heads toward its conclusion, another one with much greater consequences is also coming to a head. Headlines are starting to scream that a Russian invasion of Ukraine is imminent in the next week. However, outside the Atlanticist media bubble, there is no evidence of this.
The Russians seem uninterested in invading Ukraine and the Ukrainian government seems uninterested in getting invaded. They seem to prefer that the US and the EU hold off on trying to organize this invasion. It is hard to know what these entities know and what they have planned for next week.
Whatever it is, it will likely not be good news for the long suffering people of the Donbass. For those totally ignorant of recent history in that part of the world, or much worse, full of ‘information’ from mainstream sources, I will make a brief explanation.
Back in 2014 there was a coup d’etat in Ukraine organized by western intelligence. It put a cryto-nazi group into power which has been the source of most of the recent trouble.
The southeastern region of Ukraine is inhabited by ethnic Russians. They have long been persecuted by the Galician speaking majority of North and East Ukraine. The Ukronazi regime was the last straw for the Russian speakers in the Donbass area, once a booming industrial belt.
The people of the two Donbass provinces revolted. It was an incredible story. I followed it very closely, back when twitter and other internet platforms were still pretty useful for that. Someday soon I must see if I can find the stuff I wrote at the time and rewrite it for the present situation.
There was no Russian invasion into the Donbass. In fact the Putin government was rather annoyed with the Donbass revolt, which interfered with its own strategies for dealing wth the Ukraine situation. It eventually cut off the flow of money, material, and volunteers into Donbass from other areas of Russia.
Many people who were there on the ground in the Summer of 2014, or even participating in the fighting, believe that if the Donbass militia had been given whatever it needed, it could have cleared the Ukraine army and the neonazi militias out of Southeast Ukraine. Since then, the Putin regime has brought the Donbass republics under its tight control but it will not allow them to be destroyed.
However, the Donbass and its story is suppressed. Even Russian English language television, until lately pretty good on most things, has always blanked out Donbass. It has become a cliche to say that the Donbassians are stuck in a frozen conflict; isolated from the world, surrounded by hostile forces.
The story of Donbass is not black and white, good versus evil. In the later stages of the fight, right wing extremists hijacked gained control of much of the Donbass militia. Afterward, corrupt operators gained partial control of the Donbass government and many of the quality leaders who emerged in the conflict were assassinated.
Sometime soon I should go into this in depth, but I think I should wait until what ever is going to happen next week happens. Whatever happens will happen to the people over there. I am over here.
Meanwhile, in another ‘over there’, the winter olympics are happening. There are some things worth commenting on when it is all done.
There is something peculiar going on again about a Russian athlete and the doping cops. I think most countries will try to get away with whatever they can to give their athletes an edge. Yet it seems The Lords of the Rings like finding ways to annoy the Russians.
It is really sad when a fifteen year old girl gets dragged through this kind of shit. So the whole figure skating competition is now held up over this. I wish they would just let the kid skate.
The next thing to be annoyed about is the recurrence of this idea that women’s ice hockey should be cancelled because two teams predominate in international competition. Guess which teams I am talking about.
I think one ex player on the Canadian team said it best when invited to the CBC studio as a ‘commentator. The reason the US and Canada teams are the best is because their countries support them, and because girls are supported to be athletic and to play. Do not pull the best teams down, let the countries with lousy women’s teams start supporting their female players, down to the neighbourhood level.
There is some ridiculous talk that the Canadian hockey chicks should have refrained from shmangling the Swedish gals 11-0 because it might hurt their feelings or make Sweden look bad. One wonders if this kind of thinking is what has lead to some bizarre coaching and refereeing in recent years. It is known that this kind of thing goes on in the National Hockey League.
I have my own controversial view about managing international competitions. Let’s get rid of male players. Women are much more fun to watch. I do not think this needs much explaining.
At least, lets throttle coverage of men’s events and give women more air. Right now the opposite is in effect in most commercial sports. There is a great effort to suppress women’s leagues.
The motives for this are not economical. Women play for a lot less money, thus leaving more profits for owners. I also suspect they do not talk back as much.
I also suspect that, since most of pro sports being owned by males with a particular type of mentality, they find the idea of female sports threatening. It seems this problem pervades all forms of commercial athletics, even weird things like bullfighting. Someone is always looking for ways to get rid of competition from women.
It has been noted that in Soviet times, when the Soviet ice hockey team was at a higher level than everyone else, rarely defeated, nobody talked about abolishing Ice hockey for men.
This phenomenon does not carry through to most of the more non traditional sports. Women can slide along with the men. We even have this innovation of mixed teams. I do not think there is a mixed anything in the Summer olympics.
However, I have noticed that when women team with men, they are usually the brains of the outfit. This was especially noticeable in mixed doubles curling and the Canadian team.
But the problem with all these multisport events is that there is just too much to see. I have to record everything and fast forward through a lot of it.
I have not blogged about the weather yet. This is the coldest winter I have seen since I came to Toronto. It is said to be the coldest in 75 years. What is this about global warming?
I still try to get outside every day. That is easier since I got a supply of the Draeger type masks which go around the back of your head, not around your ears. This finally solved the problem of my glasses fogging up. Raccoon Recommended.
So I must get back to Beijing. I think there is still some snowboarding yet to come. I predict he Russian women’s ice hockey team will get the bronze if the dopers do not find a way to get them. The USA women will take silver. Canadian hockey chicks will be back up where they belong.
If the Atlanticist maniacs are going to nuke the planet over the Donbass, they should at least wait until after the closing ceremony.
https://twitter.com/PatTweetsNow/status/1492876308908429315
https://twitter.com/MeetJess/status/1492674479092289536
https://twitter.com/matthewswaite/status/1492576780493934592
there is progressive MD, and i lost his links. sigh. he was coming up a lot, and i thought i followed him, now i cannot find.