Category Archives: Kaliningrad: Mick Hart’s Diary

Backing Biden Will Not Bring It Back

Joe, Joe, how does your garden grow? With arrogance and bullshit and $$$$$ all in a row (steady on!)

Published: 20 January 2021 ~ Backing Biden Will Not Bring It Back

Today is supposedly a great day for liberals. Joe Biden is about to have his arse officially parked in the White House chair. But against the fanfare of gushing, fulsome headlines yawning on about ‘A New Dawn’, ‘Make America Great Again’ and ‘America is Back’, you can feel the unease exuding.

For most liberals, correction all liberals, Biden is looked upon as the new Obama, which, indeed, he is. To be more precise he is Obama mark II. Apart from colour, the difference between them is negligible, if not invisible. Biden is the same old frontman, there to reinstate, re-enact and recycle all the second-hand directives, programmes and doctrines that Obama left unfinished when he was ousted out of office. He is all that, make no mistake, but he is not the saviour by any means with which the liberal faithful delude themselves.

That neoliberal ship sailed long ago. In America, its passing was marked by the election of Trump; in the UK by Brexit; and in Europe by the fragmentation and ongoing decline of the European Union. Everybody knows this, even the liberals themselves know this. They also know that they have to change course, if only by a healing fraction, but how and in what direction?

They have grown so used to the power of arrogance, so addicted to it, that it has become their master and they its servant. They cannot give it up. They do not know how. They know no other way. It has always driven and steered them, and it drives and steers them now.

This is obvious from the ‘progressive agenda’ that Biden’s bosses working behind the scenes are pushing for him to adopt; the same, if not worse, agenda that brought about the Democrat’s downfall four years previously, and which, if they cannot moderate, will bring them down again.

Backing Biden will not bring it back

Casting Biden as Obama mark II is to raise false hopes and to ignore the inconvenient fact that in the four years that Trump held office the political landscape has changed, and changed irrevocably. Reverse gear is not an option.

But the real problem for liberals is that they simply just don’t get it. This is obvious from the number of articles that keep bubbling to the surface, bursting to know the answer to the enigmatic rise of populism and presuming arrogantly that at some point soon it is simply going to phut away.

This handful of headlines, taken from a random browse of Google UK News, reeks of that delusion.

‘Rising US populism tops risk managers’ fears’

‘Trump goes, but global populism may still grow’

‘After Trump, Is American Democracy Doomed by Populism?’

‘Right-Wing Populism May Be Wounded, But It’s Certainly Not Dead’

‘Sweden’s Identity Crisis and the Rise of the Far Right’

‘What explains support for authoritarian populists in Hungary and Poland?’

The last headline wants to make you both laugh and cry ~ surely liberals cannot be that dense? Can they?

It is not difficult to glean from these headlines that neoliberal globalism is only concerned with power and money (just in case you did not know that). And it is no coincidence that the media outlets that are most concerned with the ‘phenomenon’ that they dub ‘populism’ have a strong economic bias or are specialist financial publications {political bias can be checked using https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/}. During the Brexit debacle, the UK’s liberal mainstream media also weighed heavily in on the economic ramifications, almost to the total exclusion of any societal and cultural concerns. So: civil liberties, forget them; equality, who cares; gender issues, what a laugh; LGBT, BLM, BS (stands for Bullshit). They are the sprats, you are the mackerels.

But take heart, you are still an important mackerel. Even democracies that only exist in name, especially democracies that only exist in name, have parties that need you to vote them in to legitimise democracy and to give them the right to claim that the power that they wield reflects the will of the people ~ at least in theory. Of course, with backing from the right people, the right being the rich and the powerful, that sticky stage could be arguably bypassed and the voting rigged to work in a specific cabal’s interests ~ who said that, Joe?!

The second thing to pick up on from these headlines is the arrogance factor. Such can also be found in article standfirsts or intros. Take these two, for example:

“His [Trump’s] toppling was a setback for global populism, but this political phenomenon may not yet have peaked.”

“The Trump presidency has demonstrated the appeal of populist authoritarianism to many Americans. The way the country responds to the attack on the U.S. Capitol will indicate how long this movement lasts.”

This is the arrogance of which I have already spoken. Liberals from the top to the arse end, just don’t get it that legacy populations have had enough of forced multiculturalism, divide and rule diversity, LGBT this and ‘its’ and ‘others’ that and endless cartloads of pandering PC ‘isms’.

Populism, as they call it, is not a passing phase; it is not a strange ‘phenomenon’; it is not a transient ‘movement’; it was here first; it is the status quo; it is based on the bedrock of history, of respect for and preservation of nation state, sovereignty, heritage and ancestral home, and it is the failure of liberals to accept this, this fundamental truth, that, as sure as Obama never deserved to be given the Nobel Peace Prize, will lead to their demise.

It is this arrogance, or perhaps fear, that makes liberals the western world over act as if time stands still. It is a misconception that has them believe that their finger is on the political pulse when it is actually poised on the self-destruct button.

And yet, somewhere, somehow, in the delusive fog which they have created for everyone else and in which they have lost themselves, they do realise, in a hazy sort of way, that as sure as day follows night and as Biden follows Obama, that if they do not hurry with their impeachment of Trump, the mistakes that Biden will make, which he has to make as Obama’s clone, will surely see history repeat itself.

And yet even if they do succeed in removing the threat of Trump, does that remove the threat? if they can have an Obama mark II what is to stop a Trump mark II? Nothing. Trumpism, as the liberal media have coined it, is not going to go away ~ not anywhere, anyway, soon or ever, and neither is it going to fail, falter or stand still. It is going to grow, both in support and strength, because the soil of arrogance in which it is rooted, that exceptionally fertile soil which Obama & Co provided, is due to receive its biggest consignment of grow-bag bullshit yet. Look, here comes Joe with his wheelbarrow!

Backing Biden will not bring it back

And so today they celebrate the inauguration of old Joe, the Democrat’s Chauncey Gardiner: the red carpet will be laid out, banners will be held aloft, the usual suspects will cheer, the rappers brass band will play and the language of the liberal media will be sweaty with nervous clichés and full of that rich manure to which I have alluded. But even now, before the rank fakery, the razzmatazz and false party atmosphere dies out with the fart of the last champagne cork, from Capitol Hill to Big Ben, Joe looks less and less convincing as the screw that they have chosen to turn on the lid of the populist pressure cooker and more like the final nail in the coffin of the neoliberal globalist dream.

Today is Joe Biden’s inauguration, let him enjoy it.

Tomorrow the world watches and waits for the inevitable mistakes that he will make. Be thankful that he is in office.

More positive remarks about Biden: Is Biden Their Last Straw?

No Lockdown in Kaliningrad Russia

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 310 [18 January 2021]
or Business as Usual

Published: 18 January 2021

There is no lockdown in Kaliningrad, Russia. In fact, I think I am right in saying, and I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, that there is no lockdown across Russia, and it would be deceitful of me if I did not say that when I see what is happening back home that I breathe a sigh of relief that I left the UK when I did.

I am not talking about the numbers, the figures, the statistics the doom and gloom wreaked by the UK media’s representation of how bad the virus is supposed to be, but about the lack of transparency, unambivalent information and, of course, the notorious punitive measures which no one in authority seems able or willing to say are actually making a difference, apart that is from ruining people’s livelihoods and subjecting many it seems to psychological and emotional duress.

No Lockdown in Kaliningrad, Russia

Here, for better or for worse, things continue to be pretty clear cut. We wear our masks, some of us reluctantly and others with zealous intent, where we are told that we are supposed to wear them ~ some of us ~ and we try to avoid large crowds and crowded places ~ some of us ~ and some of us self-isolate.

Bars, restaurants and shops are predominantly open as usual. Hospitality outlets appear to be implementing a table-distance rule, and some establishments close early. Masks are required inside public places, such as in shops, the working environment and on public transport. Also, when I travelled by train last week from Kaliningrad’s main railway station, I was subjected to an electronic temperature check before passing through the security gates.

I am able to report that among our social circle we know about eight people who have had coronavirus, both here and in the UK, or, to rephrase that for accuracy, have had a seasonal respiratory illness that has been classed as coronavirus, and, I am glad to say, whatever it is they have had, they have had it mild.

So far, I know of no one here, in Kaliningrad, Russia, who has had the vaccine and only my mother, in the UK, who is no spring chicken, and a friend of ours around the same age also in the UK, who have had their first jabs.

No Lockdown in Kaliningrad, Russia

The situation here regarding voluntary take-up of the vaccine, and not just the Russian vaccine but any vaccine, is no different than it was when I wrote about it last month: lots of recalcitrants and one or two wait-and-sees. Me? The jury’s out. My wife? No.

So, for the time being, at least, its Carry On Mask Grumbling and keep on taking the homemade vaccine: a combination of quality beers and vodkas. Come to think of it, I must be about due for my follow-up treatment.

No Lockdown in Kaliningrad Russia: Beer & Face Masks — **TIME FOR YOUR VACCINE!**

Is Big Tech censorship a coronavirus clue?

Is the reaction to coronavirus just another symptom of liberal malaise?

Published: 12 January 2021

I hear tell that Joe Biden is destined to become the fraudulently elected President of the United States. I have also been told to believe that the crowd that gate-crashed Capitol Hill were a ‘mob’, whereas, in a bizarre comparison, Black Lives Matter are peaceful, praise-worthy protestors. There are even pictures to prove it, according to The Guardian and, of course, the BBC.

As intelligent readers you will not have failed to recognise the inequality and discrimination at work in these remarks and thus the tittersome irony.

We are told these things. But what do we believe?

‘DC police made far more arrests at the height of Black Lives Matter protests than during the Capitol clash’ ~ CNN Investigates

‘BLM v Washington DC riots: How were the police responses different?’ ~ BBC

So, Capitol Hill was a ‘riot’; BLM was a ‘generally peaceful protest’.

“Yeah, right …”

Ignoring for the moment that the unfortunate incident at Capitol Hill is being distorted in the most cynical way to cast fresh and potentially provocative aspersions on US law and order (Maxwell Smart: ‘Ahh, the old deflection trick, chief!’), we do know unequivocally that Big Tech unilaterally banned President Trump from Facebook and Twitter. This peculiar, but hardly unexpected, turn of events prompted this response from that bastion of free speach, my personal friend, Lord Wollocks:

“We all know that Facebook and Twitter have been ruthlessly implementing a partisan censorship programme in which anybody who rocks the neoliberal boat is given the big heave-ho. Nobody, not even the ‘useful idiots’, really believe that this ideological deplatforming is anything but censorship, even though it hides behind sanctimonious catchalls like ‘banned for inciting racial hatred’, ‘banned for inciting religious hatred’. As the old saying goes, ‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’. And mark my words: Arsebook and Twatter would take that comment down faster than a pair of a trousers on a self-proclaimed man.”

We do know that Black Lives Matter is not banned from social media platforms.

We don’t know what’s happening with coronavirus, or rather the way in which both the British establishment and the ‘sshhh, you suspect who’ State in America is managing it, mismanaging it or even stage managing it? But it is certainly disturbing that the two countries that pride themselves on being the world’s beacons of democracy are pissing on their own wicks, and that fewer and fewer people are inclined to believe that it is an accidental up-wind blowback but rather that what is being done to us is being done deliberately and with malice aforethought.

Certainly, hitherto unprecedented draconian police-state measures enacted in the name of controlling the Covid-19 virus are casting a long, dark shadow over the freedoms and so-called democratic rights of the beleaguered people of these two nations. In the UK, social distancing, muzzle wearing, lockdowns, limitations on the number of people who can mix together, even in their own homes, bring disturbing reports on a daily basis of police who are far too ready to exceed their celebrated policing-by-consent authority, and in some lackaday instances are acting in a brute-force manner not unlike the Stasi (see this video by Nigel Farage Say NO to a Police State).

Is Big Tech censorship a coronavirus clue?

So, we ask ourselves the question, and many people are asking this question? Are these punitive practices all part of a neoliberal globalist plot. Has Trump’s Presidency, Brexit, the imminent disintegration of the EU, all of which are symptoms of an increase in the shift away from liberalism to patriotism, triggered such a shit-fit among the neoliberal political elites that they have been forced to play their hand, to strike when coronavirus is hot! Ahh, the last resort of scoundrels!

Those who subscribe to the theory that the Kalergi Plan is an essential pillar of liberal hegemony, but one which has quite unexpectedly buckled beneath resilient patriotism, may well be of the opinion that as long as Hungry and Poland continue to hold out against intimidation from the Brussels’ mob who want to force them to open the migrant floodgates, dissatisfaction with the Federalist project in Spain, Italy and Denmark and the gathering traction for Frexit, indicates that the game in Europe is almost up. Is this then where the intervention of unbelievable philanthropic billionaires, Big Tech, the media and social control comes in?

**Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi** (image attribution: see end of article)

Now it would be easy for me at this point to force-feed you my opinion, but why resort to mainstream media tactics when opinion on social media, that heaving crust on a hot volcano ready to erupt, offers a far more accurate insight into the mood of the people. I like nothing better than to wassail around on the internet ignoring mainstream media but dipping into it now and then to read the comments of readers. I am also more inclined to go looking for the truth, or the best thing to it, in the journalism provided by independent, alternative media outlets and only resort to Twitter and Facebook in search of those endangered species, the brave few struggling to speak their minds before they are caught in the dragnet of liberal censorship.

For example, here is an interesting comment posted recently on Facebook (Note all quotes from other sources here have been copied verbatim and with no censorship on my part):

‘Over 70 billionaires got together on Trumps inauguration day to determine the future (& to make certain it wouldn’t be trump). They each pay dues of 250 million a year to a Soros organization (he has over 100) They meet annually. They will only get richer & control us more. They are all, every last one of them, in bed with the Democrats. Their goal = power. control, $$$$, and to supplant america with their values, their desires, their economics, their health system, their business methods, banking systems. etc..& put in an overwhelmingly large bureaucratic government that can be transitioned into a global one when they are ready. This sounds like science fiction, or a conspiracy theory, but sadly it is not.’

Read this article, With unilateral censorship of a sitting US president, Big Tech has proven it’s more powerful than any government. Does it lend credence to what has been claimed above?

The following quotes have been taken from the ‘comments’ section of the above article:

‘They [UK/America] allowed socialism and feminism to ruin their society and family values. Now they pay the price.’

‘The big tech is already a branch of the “Shadow Government/Deep state” that has complete control of Congress overall. The big tech social media have been infiltrated by the CIA just like the major corporate news have been for some time now. Read the book “Press-titutes Embedded in the Pay of the CIA”(2019), by Udo Ulfkoette. Stay away from Facebook, Twitter and such. I have never used them. Find other alternatives. We cannot allow freedom to perish. Peace.’

‘Wait till the Democrats pass their ‘hate speech’ laws. Say the wrong thing, you get canceled, lose your job, hell, they may even take your children away from you. That is how insane this is becoming.’

Well, I don’t know about that, but certainly, Big Tech seems to have made one of the biggest blunders of their electronic existence:

‘We will not be SILENCED!’ Trump tweets from official @POTUS account after ban, posts scrubbed within minutes

“We will not be SILENCED! Twitter is not about FREE SPEECH. They are all about promoting a Radical Left platform where some of the most vicious people in the world are allowed to speak freely.” {quote taken from article cited above in which it is attributed to Donald Trump}.

I have the distinct feeling that Trump is not the sort of person to be bullied or censored into submission, and neither are his 75 million US voters. The trouble with ‘push is ‘shove’.

Trump is not for giving in or backing down — *(Image credit: http://clipart-library.com)*

Within this nightmare world of a panic-stricken globalist movement that will stop at nothing to preserve its disintegrating one-world government dream, it is, I admit, most tempting to imagine coronavirus, as imperfect as it is, as an ill-conceived or ad hoc smokescreen, barely functioning for the insidious purpose for which it was invented and inevitably doomed to failure, but nevertheless, for the moment, a powerful force for division, diversion and control, a force that offers a shortcut to the social instability that diversity was meant to procure but which, in spite of the efforts of NGOs and craven complicit governments, has been too long in the making to retain its viability.

The part played by Big Tech in this Orwellian scenario reveals itself in those blocks you get on Facebook when you try to post anything on coronavirus that does not conform to the official narrative and where you are peremptorily redirected to a page that purports to contain the truth. A very fine thing indeed, except that it is their truth ~ or so many of us suspect.

The internet, however, is an unwieldly beast, as its frightened proprietors are beginning to discover, and no matter how these contemporary Citizen Kanes ~ the Mr Zuckerbergs, Sundar Pichais and Jack Dorseys of this world~ attempt to rein it in, it will eventually break away from them, as it is doing now. Truth will always out in the end and when it does comes casualties …

Is Big Tech censorship a coronavirus clue?

Is this a fragment of that truth or not? I found this article which exists in the asteroid belt on the other side of the mainstream media suspicious enough in content for it to raise an eyebrow. It is published in The Daily Expose, a media outlet I must confess with which I am not acquainted, but am somewhat relieved to discover that in spite of its provocative name the temptation has been resisted to choose as its logo a man in a mac.

England – Does official NHS data support the Government’s Dictatorship?

In this video (quick, before they ban it!!), its protagonist, Dr Shiva, who describes himself as a ‘scientist, engineer and educator’ and is summarily dismissed by the mainstream media as ‘a conspiracy theorist’ (he and the other 75% of the West’s population who have been railroaded into this concentrated camp and where the figure is growing exponentially) looks at the bigger picture: the ‘where we are now and what is to be done if we still want to be a free people’.

Suck it and see: Dr.SHIVA LIVE: What Happened In the Past 4 Years. What Is To Be Done, NOW.

The political classes, mainstream media, Big Tech, big business corporations, the mega-rich and, alas, a gaggle of untalented and overpaid celebs who will jump on any bandwagon for a bit of free publicity, universally condemn these ideas as conspiracy theories, but the problem with all of these institutionalised factions is that they are wide on criticism and short on answers.

Take coronavirus, for example. Of all the respiratory diseases known to man (its & others etc) no one can deny that Covid-19 is one of the most, if not the most, eccentric and improbable of viruses. Not only is there no consensus about how and why it effects people differently but there also appears to be scant agreement about the measures required to contain and address it. Thus, until it is proven otherwise, you cannot blame a groundswell of people for believing that fraudulent viruses are as credible as fraudulent elections or even that the two go hand in glove.

In the last analysis, Big Tech and Big Media are owned by the sort of people who tell us what they want us to know and to believe what they want us to believe. Big media no longer reports the news, it creates it according to its own political, economic, ideological bias etc, leaving Big Tech to filter out all opposing variants and sell it on as gospel.

There is a lot of good, quality and more reliable reporting out there in the non-mainstream media, and if you take a moment to look around you will be surprised what you will find. Of course, you may have to put up with being labelled a conspiracy theorist, a member of the Far Right, a Fascist by the likes of The Guardian, The [not so] Independent etc, and you can be sure that those liberal pseudo-moral high-grounders Twatter and Arsebook may block your comments and posts, they might even deplatform you, but if that does happen console yourself with the fact that not only must you be right today but on the right side of history forever. Moreover, such violations of freedom of speech and democracy grant you, the victim, lifetime membership to an exclusive but rapidly growing club that is destined to change the world we live in and change it for the better. So wear your deplatformed badge with courage and also wear it with pride!

Wherever they think they are taking us and wherever we want to go, It is going to be a bumpy ride, the road to the truth usually is, but hang on in there, fight back when you have to and continue to take the knocks. In the end it will all be worth it:

Right, as they say, always prevails.

Image attributions:

Feature image: (Photo credit: Author: CeeMon / pixabay.com; https://www.freeimg.net/photo/1874812/smokeandmirrors-magic-mirror-blackmirror)

Photograph attribution for Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi: [Unknown photographer – ÖNB, Bildarchiv Austria, Inventarnummer Pf 3944:B(2)(https://www.bildarchivaustria.at/Pages/ImageDetail.aspx?p_iBildID=20223510), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69147423]

2020 Memories are made of this

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 292 [31 December 2020]
or Goodbye 2020, if I never see you again will it be too soon?

Published: 31 December 2020 ~ 2020 Memories are made of this

The End is Nigh! Well, you would think so from the aggregated hype bubbling furiously over the past 12 months in the cauldrons of the western media. Never before in recent history has the press had the opportunity to indulge itself in a Groundhog Field Day like the one that has been handed to them by the pandemic (or is that scamdemic?). But enough of the soothsaying and a tad more soothing-saying, if you don’t mind. The end is nigh for 2020: Time to reflect on the past 12 months.

My period of voluntary self-isolation began back in March 2020, and like most people I have evaluated the quality of my life during this epoch as a series of stops, starts and checks. However, on looking back I realise that although the impediment of coronavirus fear and its attendant restrictions have cast a long shadow over our social life, it never succeeded in inflicting a total eclipse. As my wife is fond of saying, “Humans can adapt to anything in time”, and whilst in my books I have committed the cardinal sin by steering clear of bars and other places where people tend to congregate, in retrospect 2020 was far from totally written off. Indeed, in spite of muzzle-wearing and fetishistic hand-sanitising, we did still have a life ~ we met friends, took several trips to the coast, visited art galleries and places of historical interest, entertained at home and, most importantly, used the extra time that we had at our disposal in the most constructive ways.

We certainly managed to get more done around the house and in the garden ~ especially in the garden. This is Olga’s pet project: converting what was a slab of inherited concrete into a proper, functioning outdoor area, where she can enjoy the flowers and trees, and I can enjoy a pint.

Years ago, in the mists of a different time, I worked on a magazine called Successful Gardening, from which I learnt that my greatest contribution to any practical endeavour in this field would be to make myself scarce, which is exactly what I did. So, I have to confess that the lion’s share of the work was done by my wife. Yet, I feel no need for excuse making. Gardening is a sport, and like any other sport, some you participate in; in others you are a spectator.

Where coronavirus is concerned, it is for my family and friends back in the UK that I feel the most sorry. The UK media has not had the opportunity to be this gory and ghastly in its coverage since Jack the Ripper terrorised Whitechapel. Not even brutal acts of terrorism, which are officially swept under the carpet by deflection techniques that focus on holding hands and candle-lit vigils, come close to the penny dreadful coverage that coronavirus receives. It would not be half so bad if 1 + 1 = 2, but nothing about the measures being taken to combat coronavirus in the UK ~ the draconian measures ~ seems to add up, and, as with Brexit, the country appears to be split yet again, and uncannily yet again, as with Brexit, the fault lines are political and a peculiar inversion of the status quo.

In complete contradiction to the overt emphasis placed at any other time on civil liberties and the evils of the so-called surveillance society, 1984 and all that, it is the left that appears to be screaming for lockdown, mask-wearing and any other hard and fast rules. Indeed, they do not seem to be able to get enough of it, and, with the illiberality that is customary with liberals, are spitting tar and feathers at anyone who is impudent enough to advocate liberty above home slavery. The megaphone message is: Do as you are told! Stay in! Don’t go anywhere, or we are all going to die!!.

Admittedly, there are a lot better things to do with your time than dying but is being bolted and barred in your home for what little there is left of your life it? The older we become the more precious life becomes, but so does living your life. It is the Bitch of having been born at all.

The problem, or at least one of the salient problems of getting old ~ and for some inexplicable reason we all tend to do it, get old, I mean ~ is that you reach the stage where you think you can hear each grain of sand dropping into the hour glass, and whilst it is normal on the push-penny arcade machine of life to brace yourself for the moment when inevitably your turn will come, when you will be bumped off down the chute, the media over the past 12 months has not missed a trick in reminding us that the man with the cowl and scythe is busier than he has ever been pushing coins into the slot.

No one can deny that there has been a lot of death about, and sadly we were not spared. Our good friend, Stanislav (Stas) died in November 2020. Immediately, rumours abounded that he had died of coronavirus, the majority of people having become so obsessed with the virus that it has become almost impermissible to die from anything else. Stas did not die from coronavirus. But he did die, and with his passing we lost a very good and much-loved friend.

Without doubt, one of the most perplexing things about getting older is that not only do you have to come to terms with your own mortality, you also have to come to terms with the loss off those who are nearest and dearest. Each loss tears a hole in the fabric of life that can never be repaired.

But enough of this morbidity. Like everything in life, what some people lose on the swings others gain on the merry-go-rounds, and whilst we can conclude that whereas it has been a troubled year for most of us, especially those on the frontline ~ doctors, nurses, paramedics and the rest ~ if you have the good fortune to be a mask producer, the director of a pharmaceutical industry, a media magnate, I do not suppose that Mr Coronavirus seems such a bad fellow after all, and this is without mentioning the increased yields experienced in the funeral industry.

Enough said: In a consummately original and unplagiaristic moment, my valediction for the year 2020 is that it was ‘the best of years, ‘t’was the worst of years’.

Think of 2020 as a painful tooth that needs to be extracted by the dentist: you might miss it, but you will certainly be glad it has gone …

Happy New Year
to One & All

Flowers in Olga Hart's Garden Kaliningrad

2020 Memories are made of this Mick Hart Woodoo Hairdressers Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad 2020 Mick Hart & Olga Hart Vintage Car

2020 Memories are made of this Mick Hart & Olga Hart

Olga Hart celebrates Kant's birthday Konigsberg

Mick Hart with relics Kaliningrad market

2020 memories are made of this

Auto Retro Club Kaliningrad 2021 Calendar

2021 calendar celebrates classic cars of Russia

Published: 15 December 2020

It was during the summer months this year that our friend Sergey Goryunov invited us to take part in a photoshoot which he was organising with a view towards producing a 2021 calendar for the members of Kaliningrad’s Auto Retro Club.

The photo session was scheduled to take place at 6am, which meant that we had to wake up at 4am, and it was just my luck that the night before I had experienced one of my life-long bouts of insomnia. It was not a case of can I drag myself out of bed in time, rather should I be dragging myself into it.

As the photographer was on standby, the vintage car organised and the venue prescribed, the effort had to be made and, in spite of myself, it was good to have the opportunity to get dressed up again in our vintage attire and to take part in this capital retro project.

Hotel Tchaikovsky Kaliningrad is Nothing to Sneeze at

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 272 [11 December 2020]

Published: 11 December 2020 ~ Hotel Tchaikovsky Kaliningrad is Nothing to Sneeze at

Psychological problems resulting not from contracting Covid-19 but from the social prohibitions orchestrated and, in some instances, enforced in the name of spread containment and personal safety appear to have affected some people more than it has others. Indeed, scientists and health professionals alike, not to mention conspiracy theorists, postulate that ‘extreme measures’ such as lockdown and diminished social interaction have had and are having serious adverse effects on the mental-emotional well-being of a large cohort of people who feel that they have better things to do than imprison themselves in their respective homes playing John Wankerson’s Clueless for the rest of their unnatural lives.

Speaking for myself, the restrictions, self-imposed by ‘informed guidelines’ and/or edict, have left me bamboozled (What’s that? You’ve never experience it? You don’t know what you are missing? Vote Labour and find out!), the puzzle being, am I really responding as I perceive I should be to the exigencies of the pandemic or, as time goes by (good song that!), have I allowed my guard to slip?

Yes, I know, here I go again, getting myself into a mucking fuddle about whether my coronavirus precaution corollary justifies me calling myself a bona fide self-isolator. I would like to think that the ambiguity is simply a matter of semantics ~ self-isolator, social-distancer, reluctant mask-wearer, anti-social misanthropist using coronavirus as an excuse to hermiticise myself, whatever ~ but the crux of the question is, are divergencies allowed? Does one have to be an either/or? Either self-isolating or not self-isolating? Or can one be self-isolating some of the time but not others? A sort of part-time self-isolator or one on day release?

For example, given the reported rising tide of coronavirus cases, I am still inclined to err on the side of caution, and, in fact, I continue to do so by resisting all temptation to frequent the bars and licensed premises that I would normally have patronised a couple of times a month was it not for coronavirus. Whilst this inexcusable retreat is as injurious to Kaliningrad’s hospitality trade as the decision to close or restrict the opening hours of pubs has been to the UK’s equivalent, I have worked out, even with the handicap of a Grade 9 CSE in maths, that from a purely economic standpoint my bar-patronising reticence has put a smile on the face of my piggy bank.

However, as I have confessed in previous posts, my self-inflicted isolation falls somewhat short of perfect and, insofar as restricted social contact is concerned, I know of a number of people who are far holier than thy in their fastidious observation of the social distancing rule.

There are occasions when it is not impossible but is still difficult to swerve in the opposite direction to the norms and mores that bind us, where, just as it was in the pre-coronavirus age, we find ourselves obliged to proceed in a manner not entirely in keeping with our own convictions, and, at such times, are compelled, I am afraid to say, to throw caution to the wind.

Thus, it came to pass, a few weeks ago, that a strong gust in the form of a birthday celebration and the traditional expectations that such engenders, whipped my caution away like an unstuck toupée, and I found myself faced for the first time in umpteen Covid months with the arguably risky prospect of dining and drinking out.

Hotel Tchaikovsky Kaliningrad

The occasion was my wife’s mother’s 80^th birthday. We had discussed with her how she wanted to celebrate this milestone in her life, and she had shown great favour in the suggestion of going to a restaurant. The idea was that three other friends of hers, roughly of the same age group, would join us, all of whom at the outset expressed an interest in doing so. However, come closer to the day, as news began to percolate of escalating Covid cases, one by one these friends dropped out.

Admittedly, their example made me think that perhaps it would be best if we followed suit and instead of the restaurant settle upon a quiet celebration at home, but my wife’s mother remained unphased. She still wanted us all ~ what there was left of us ~ to go to the restaurant, and so the restaurant it was.

My wife, Olga, had chosen the Hotel Tchaikovsky as the venue. Hotel dining rooms tend normally to be less populated than restaurants per se, so I could see the logic in this. Of course, going anywhere without first strapping on our muzzles would have been so 2019 don’t you think? And as I had not dined in a restaurant for quite some considerable time, I found myself wondering how exactly one would be able to eat one’s food with a mask slapped about one’s kisser?

As my wife’s mother is in her 80^th year, walking, cycling or running to the restaurant were less obvious options than taking a taxi. I remember the time when travelling by taxi was looked upon as an innocent luxury as well as the best expedient, but in the coronavirus age taxis, as with every other mode of transport requiring third-party involvement, is where the risk-taking starts.

Hotel Tchaikovsky Kaliningrad

The Hotel Tchaikovsky is situated on a Königsberg street, which backs onto the city’s Zoo. It was a cold, wet and inhospitable evening, so my observations of the hotel’s exterior were minimalised by the need to get inside. There, it was light, charming and warm. Not only that, but there was something, whilst not exactly ‘decidedly’, vintage going on. In the hallway leading to the main reception, an impressive array of old suitcases had been stacked, two rows and several high, the uppermost cases garnished with clocks, and there was an upright parlour piano standing in the corridor. Vintage was going on at the same time as something almost antique, and also almost classical, as reflected in the reproduction 19^th century furniture, impressive walnut servery and glass chandelier-style ceiling pendants.

**Something vintage this way comes: the reception room at the Hotel Tchaikovsky in Kaliningrad, Russia**

Even with the threat of coronavirus hanging over us like the proverbial Sword of Damocles, I was still able to take this in, whilst applying disinfectant to my mitts from one of those pump-action dispensers, which had been strategically placed on a small console table prior to the dining-room entrance.

The hotel dining room consisted of two rooms, which was handy Andy, as between each there was a pair of glazed French Window-style doors, which kept things bright and airy whilst enabling the hotel management to comply quite handsomely with coronavirus distancing rules.

The first room had one engaged table, a family gathering, the adult occupants of which glanced apprehensively at us as we strolled in, passing within millimetres of their social distancing space. But they need not have stressed themselves. Two waitresses in regulation mask attire were ushering us courteously but firmly and swiftly into the adjoining room, where there was nobody else but us.

Since every table was unoccupied, it made the task of choosing where to sit virtually impossible. Each and every location was appraised and, by the time we had settled for the seats in the window, I felt as if we had sat everywhere else simultaneously.

The window seats turned out to be the perfect coronavirus cubby hole. They were literally seats, together with a table, placed inside the special dimensions rendered possible by a rectangular bay window, and being given to private corners of this type, I would have chosen to have sat here even if coronavirus was not half the threat that we have been led to believe.

So, we sat down, Olga’s mother done up to the nines, sporting her best jewellery and looking far more relaxed than we could ever be, even though every other table was only almost occupied by us and nobody else. We had no beef and Yorkshire pudding with that; only Olga’s mum seemed disappointed that the rest of Kaliningrad was not in the same room. I do wish that she had not said as we entered the restaurant, “There’s not many people here. It can’t be that popular”. But if you cannot insult the hotel management on your 80^th birthday, when can you?

It was about this time, as we were sat there, in the bay window, with only us and our reflections as company, that I heard the ghostly voice of my long dead auntie Ivy saying, “Hold hard, Michael!” (How I wished she could have used a different expression!), “What about the cutlery and glasses?” And she was right, we had not brought those antiseptic wipes with us for nothing! So, out they jolly well came, and yours truly set to with a vengeance wiping the wipes around the ends of the eating implements and around the rims of the glasses. That should do the trick! ~ none of us believed.

We were alone long enough for me to talk myself into the fallacy that I was still, technically, self-isolating, when a young waiter-me-lad appeared, wearing his mask in a Constructivist fashion. He took our order and scooted off to the kitchen. This was the real test, I thought: kitchen and kitchen staff coronavirus cleanliness.

It is quite frankly amazing how a couple of swift glasses of vino can transform melodrama into maladits (perfection!). By the time the waiter reappeared, bringing with him my vegetarian dish and Olga and Olga’s mum’s meaty options, apprehension had almost completely given way to restaurant rhapsody. The wine was excellent, if not a tad expensive, and we would soon discover that the food at the Hotel Tchaikovsky was crisp, fresh, first class and delicious.

With such culinary conviviality going down, and Olga having ordered three glasses of apricot brandy, which was sympatico, Covid, or rather the morbid dread of Covid, had been well and truly kicked up the arse.

Somewhere, at some time, during the indulgences, auntie Ivy had spoken again, and, in compliance, I had whipped out the wipes and shot them around the brandy glass rims, but no repeat performance was forthcoming as regards dessert spoons and later the shot glasses brimming with vodka.

Hotel Tchaikovsky Kaliningrad is Nothing to Sneeze at

Amidst all of this post-normal abandon and frivolity, a couple had come into the room and were occupying a table to the outside right of ours. They were over a metre away, so niet problem there then, but suddenly, with no warning, quite out of the blue, Olga’s mum developed a sneezing fit!

The first rendition had my head shoot round at a nervous pace. There was a pause, and there it was again, a second sneeze! I shot a glance at our neighbours. It was alright, they had not noticed it or, if they had, they had not reacted. I think they were secretly restraining themselves, preferring a diplomatic reaction to demonstrative rebuff. Then came another sneeze, then another and another, during which the potential recipients of this respiratory outrage had begun to look rather less comfortable.

At first, I had tried to placate their unease in that embarrassed way that we English do, by giving them an insouciant smile, which, by the second eruption, however, had tightened itself into a gritty-toothed grin. Meanwhile, Olga’s mum was holding a tissue to her nose, as if it was a white flag, but the performance was not yet over. There came a sneeze, and another, and within seconds ~ it must have been the wine ~ I was doubling up with a fit of the giggles. I did not know what to do. I would have put on my mask, but it was not big enough to hide behind, and yet I felt certain that in the current climate of fear and dread we would be frog marched out at any moment by several men in protective suits armed with pump-action spray guns and there, in the carpark, disinfected.

The crisis past, however, as crises often do, without further ado or incident, and the young waiter, who had obviously taken cover behind the bulky servery or piano in the corridor, now emerged not with the carafe of vodka that we had ordered earlier but with three of those nice tall glasses which hold a lot of vodka. It had been I who had suggested the carafe since the vodka was all for me, and I thought it would look better, would make me look less of a lush, presented in this fashion. But I ended up with three large glasses in front of me and the most surprised, amused and delighted look on the face of the youthful waiter ~ well, let us rephrase that and say in his eyes, as I could not see his face for one of those blasted muzzles!

I was just getting into my drinking stride when out came one of the senior staff to inform us that the witching hour was nigh. Apparently, coronavirus has got a thing about infecting you after 9pm, so they had to close the restaurant.

With about five minutes left at my disposal, I had to down three big glasses of vodka as if I was a real Russian vodka drinker, instead of a sipperoonee anglichanin.

Apart from the hurried exit, which was no fault of the management as they were just following orders, we all agreed that the service, fare and atmosphere had been top notch. It was a shame about the sneezing and Olga’s mum’s last words as we ambled off the premises, “There wasn’t a lot of people. It can’t be that popular.” Well, if you can’t say that on your 80^th birthday, when can you say it?

The toilets in the Hotel Tchaikovsky, Kaliningrad, are atmospherically located in the basement of the building. The arched red-brick ceiling and walls are exposed in all their original glory, and the loo interior has been sympathetically constructed to preserve and highlight its historic ethos. Note the copper-bowl washbasin, matching distressed-framed mirror and the reflection in it of the no-longer distressed Englishman, who had just downed his first glass of vodka.

For a self-isolating experience with a difference, including good food, good wine, good apricot brandy, good vodka (in tall glasses) in an elegant ambience and with good service, dine out at the Tchaikovsky Hotel, Kaliningrad.

Essential details:❤❤

Hotel Tchaikovsky
43 Tchaikovskogo Street
Kaliningrad, Russia

Tel: +7 (4012) 67-44-43
Email: reception@tchaikovskyhotel.ru
Web: https://ageevgroup.ru/hotels/tchaikovsky/

Умер Калининградский Кенигсбергский Гид Стас

Потеря незаменимого друга

Опубликовано: 3 декабря 2020 г.

С большой грустью сообщаю, что наш дорогой друг Стас (Станислав Коновалов) скончался от послеоперационных осложнений во время лечения в больнице. Мы с женой Ольгой познакомились со Стасом в январе 2019 года. Нас познакомил с ним наш общий друг, художник Виктор Рябинин. Позже Стас рассказывал мне, что Виктор сказал ему: «В Калининград переезжает англичанин. Тебе следует с ним встретиться. Он интересный человек, и я думаю, вы найдете общий язык ». Я не совсем уверен, что заслуживаю быть названным «интересный», но мы нашли общий язык в нашей любви к истории в целом и в частности к истории Кенигсберга- Калининграда и его окрестностей. Важным элементом нашего общего языка было вдохновение, которое мы оба получили от нашего друга и наставника Виктора Рябинина. Вскоре после смерти Виктора Рябинина в июле 2019 года я сказал Стасу, что нашел две картины Виктора среди своих вещей в Англии. Он ответил с присущей ему скромностью, что, хотя у него нет картин Виктора Рябинина с его автографами, ему достаточно того, что у него есть «тайная гордость», заключающаяся в том, что он был «близок к этому великому человеку». «Я был его учеником много лет, – сказал он. Когда я рискнул предположить, что Виктор был его другом, Стас ответил, опять с присущей ему скромностью: «Виктор знал очень многих людей, но он, вероятно, не считал их всех своими друзьями. . Могу сказать, что я был его учеником, что я восхищался им и был счастлив в его обществе… »Затем он сделал паузу, прежде чем сказать:« Но я хотел бы думать, что он считал меня своим другом ». Стас был скромным человеком. Он скромно относился ко всем своим достижениям, даже тогда когда было совершенно очевидно, что у него было столько же, если не больше, прав их превозносить. В знак признания его достижений, я попросил Стаса написать краткий биографический отчет о его работе и жизни, в том числе о его отношениях с Виктором Рябининым, и поместил его очерк, вместе со ссылками на его практику экскурсовода на страницах своего постоянного блога под рубрикой “Виктор Рябинин Кенигсберг”. “Стас Калининград Кенигсберг Путеводитель”https://expatkaliningrad.com/personal-tour-guide-kaliningrad/ Стас очень много работал над своими проектами гида, оттачивая и совершенствуя их, снимая несколько видеороликов на YouTube и всегда спрашивая: «Что ты думаешь об этом аспекте?» “Все в порядке?” «Есть ли в сценарии видеоролика что-нибудь, что, по твоему мнению, требует пояснения?». Как и смерть Виктора Рябинина до него, смерть Стаса лишила Кенигсберг-Калининград еще одного его великого посла. Но нас его смерть лишила гораздо большего. Стас был человеком прямолинейным, открытым, искренним. Он был добрым человеком, всегда готовым помочь, он был сердцем хорошей компании. Вместе, мы делили общий язык прошлого, а я через него – общий, но очень важный язык – человеческий. В общем, Стас был самым ценным арсеналом – он был незаменимым другом, которого мы не могли себе позволить потерять.

Stas Kaliningrad Königsberg Guide has Died

The loss of an indispensable friend

Published: 2 December 2020

It is with great sadness that I report that our dear friend Stas (Stanislav Konovalov) passed away recently from post-operative complications whilst undergoing hospital treatment.

My wife, Olga, and I met Stas in January 2019. We were introduced to him by a mutual friend, Victor Ryabinin the artist. Stas told me later that Victor had said to him, “There is an Englishman moving to Kaliningrad. You should meet him. He is an interesting man, and I think you will find a common language.”

I am not altogether certain that I deserve the appellation ‘interesting’, but we did find a common language in our love of history generally and specifically for Königsberg-Kaliningrad and the surrounding region.

An important element in that common language was the inspiration we both received from our friend and mentor Victor Ryabinin.

A short while after Victor Ryabinin’s death in July 2019, I told Stas that I had found two paintings by Victor among my possessions in England. He replied, with characteristic modesty, that whilst he did not have a signed painting by Victor Ryabinin the artist, it was enough that he had a “secret pride”, which was that he had been “close to this great man”. “I was his student for many years,” he said.

When I ventured to suggest that Victor had also been his friend, he replied, once again with characteristic modesty, “Victor knew a great many people and associated with a great many people, but he probably would not have considered them all to be his friends. I can say that I was his student, that I admired him and enjoyed his company …” He then paused, before saying, “But I would like to think that he thought of me as his friend.”

Stas was a modest man. He was modest about all of his achievements, when it was quite obvious that he had as much right, if not more, to blow his own trumpet with the ‘best’ of them.

In recognition of this, I had Stas write a brief biographical account of his work and life, including his longstanding association with Victor Ryabinin, and included it, along with references to his tour guide practice, in the permanent pages of this blog, under the ‘Victor Ryabinin Königsberg’ heading.

Stas Kaliningrad Königsberg Guide

Stas worked extremely hard on his tour guide projects, honing and perfecting them, making several YouTube videos and always asking, “What did you think of this aspect?” “Was that alright?” “Is there anything in my tour guide script that you think needs clarification?”.

Like Victor Ryabinin before him, Stas’ death has robbed Königsberg -Kaliningrad of yet another great ambassador.

It has robbed us of so much more.

Stas was a straight-talking, open, sincere individual. He was a kind man, always ready to help and good company.

Together, we shared the common language of the past, and I, through him, the common but all-important language of humanity.

In summation, Stas was that most precious of all commodities ~ he was the indispensable friend that we could ill afford to lose.

A sunny afternoon with Stas Konovalov, ‘Stas’, [right of picture] Kaliningrad Königsberg Guide

Stas Kaliningrad Königsberg Tour Guide ~ links to his videos

Why wearing a mask is different from wearing pants

Wearing a mask is like wearing pants. Really?

Published: 24 November 2020 ~ Why wearing a mask is different from wearing pants

Of all things that are mysterious and confusing about coronavirus, the salient example is mask wearing, or rather the contentious issue of mandatory mask wearing.

Enter Bill Gates. Bill would seem to be an ardent mask-wearing supporter, so much so that he has difficulty in comprehending why anyone should object to wearing a mask. Peeping out into our world from behind his very large wallet, nothing could be more natural or normal to Bill than slinging a piece of fabric about one’s nose and mouth. His is so convinced about the normality inherent in this practice that he considers the psychology of anti-maskers ‘weird’ and asks “I mean, what are these, like, nudists?” Then goes on to make a bizarre comparison between wearing masks and wearing pants: “We ask you to wear pants and, you know, no American says — or very few Americans say — that that’s, like, some terrible thing.” {source: www.wionews.com} [29/03/24 Link to this page no longer exists]

You see, Bill, my old mate, the thing is that this comparison is not really a valid one. I don’t know where you wear your pants, but most people wear them around their arse, and have been doing so for years. There are distinct convenience and comfort factors in pants-wearing that do not readily relate to the experience of wearing face masks.

For one, a bandage wrapped around your nose and mouth tends to get in the way of that all-important function of breathing, whereas pants do not, unless, of course, you are wearing them over your head ~ Bill?

Where Bill wears his pants or mask is entirely up to him. Correction, where he wears his pants is entirely up to him; I forgot for a moment that mask wearing is obligatory.

It was not always this way.

Time was once, and recently, although it seems like an age away, when if you were to wear a mask in public you would be guaranteed to excite a certain degree of suspicion. Indeed, before we were forced to do otherwise the only people wearing masks, discounting for the moment those who have a penchant for PVC or leather, were muggers and bank robbers. In the bad old pre-mask days, shops, banks and government offices would not insist that you wear a mask, they would insist that you remove it! How times change ~ and suddenly!

Fauci claimed that “wearing a mask, keeping a distance, avoiding crowds, being outdoors as much as you possibly can – weather permitted – and washing your hands” are the defining ways for one to return to the normal world’. {source: wionews.com ¹} A nice sentence that begs a one-word response. When?

When, Mr Fauci, when?

The mask is the single most potent reminder that normality has gone, and its odiousness is this respect has not been helped any by suggestions that mask wearing may be with us forever. So, for the time being at least (let us be optimistic), the mask is the visual signal, the day-by-day reminder of our altered state of reality ~ the corporate logo of the so-called New Normal.

Some cynics believe that this visual statement, the compliance it represents and the fear it engenders, is an essential weapon in the psychological arsenal of governments and Big Pharma intent on ensuring the maximum uptake of their rushed and suspect vaccine products. Where there’s a will there’s a way, and where there are millions, billions of people, purchasing cart loads of vaccines, not to mention vitamin pills and, lest we forget (how could we?), masks, there is money to be made. Lots.

But let’s not be trite, here. A few months back there were a number of articles written by medical and health specialists postulating that not only are masks useless in the fight against coronavirus but that they can actually contribute to your chances of catching it. The out and out criticism was that wearing a mask for virus prevention was like wearing string underpants to stop a pea. Here we go again, Bill?

The case against mask wearing has since swung to wearing masks correctly, ie moulded around the facial contours, never touched by hand, changed periodically ~ at least every two hours ~ not placed in one’s pocket, not washed and not re-used. An idealistic scenario unlikely to be achieved when the majority of mask wearers do not seem capable of rising to the challenge of the basic principles of how to wear a mask.

How many mask wearers have you clocked wearing their masks correctly? Sitting baggy, possibly like Bill’s pants (who knows?), swinging from the ears, acting as a chin cuff and, the old favourite, mouth gagged, snout out ~ this is how they are worn.

Whenever I see someone wearing their mask like this, as in the last and most popular example, and, of course, I do, because my wife is one such transgressor (she refers to masks as ‘muzzles’), I am reminded of something I saw on Facebook: two drawings, with captions. The first caption read, ‘Wearing your mask like this …’ (there then followed a drawing of someone wearing a mask with their nose sticking out above it) “is as silly as wearing your underpants like this …” (there then followed an image of a pair of Y-fronts pulled halfway up with a willy hung over the waistband). “That’s funny,” I thought, “doesn’t everyone wear their Y-fronts like this?”

Bill?

And yet the risk of catching coronavirus by improper face mask wearing is possibly not so high as the risk that emanates from face mask fiddling. You see, wearing a chunk of cloth over your nose and mouth is devilishly uncomfortable. After a while it can make your face hot and sweaty, and it can also make you itch. OK, so you can suffer the same inconvenience should you be wearing the wrong kind of pants, but there is a subtle difference. In adjusting your mask and scratching your itch, you generally touch your face and possibly, inadvertently, your mouth, nose and eyes, which is precisely what you are told that you must not do if you do not want to catch coronavirus.

But what about the altruistic argument, the one that goes that mask wearing significantly reduces the risk of passing coronavirus onto someone else, especially if you happen to be an asymptomatic spreader? In the first instance, look no further for the answer in Bill’s string underpants and their pea-stopping potential ~ catching coronavirus is a two-way process: what gets in must get out. And this also applies to the mysterious, unproven asymptomatic as much as it does to the snotty-nosed cougher.

So, extrapolating what we know already about masks from the lack of evidence placed before us, what we can say irrefutably is that no one knows. And this is where we are at, at the moment: mask wearing will protect you from catching coronavirus, mask wearing will increase your chances of catching coronavirus; mask wearing is a temporary measure, mask wearing is here forever. And this ambiguity rolls over into other things, such as: the vaccine is coming, but no one knows when; the vaccine is a game changer, but what game and whose? The vaccine will not be the 100% solution that people have been led to believe: it may work for some and not for others; it may not work at all; it may have serious contraindications; it may have built-in lethal implications ~well, let’s don’t go there for the moment. And what about lockdown? For some it is the bib and tucker; for others it is Bill Gate’s underpants. There is a lot of hot air about it, but no hard evidence to support it, so to speak.

In fact, all that we can say with any degree of certainty about coronavirus, from what we have been fed, is that your guess is as good as mine.

What we can say, getting back to masks, is that generally speaking, the general public are not comfortable wearing them. There is a convincing argument that politicians and big neoliberal corporate globalists have no problem with it as they never show their true face anyway, but for the many, as distinct from the few, normal human contact is not traditionally mask to mask, it is traditionally face to face.

So, to summarise, masks are uncomfortable, they make breathing, one of the main functioning processes of the body difficult and speaking problematic, symbolically they are a constant reminder of a deviant reality, and, at worst, they could actually create the environment for catching the very disease which they purport to prevent.

Whatever one’s feeling about masks, the inescapable fact is that ultimately, human visual contact and human communication is a face-to-face transaction, not a mask-to-mask one, since full-time mask wearing is as alien as it is alienating.

But I should not worry about it too much, Bill, the only confusion you seem to be suffering from is a pants and mask one, and whichever it is and wherever you wear them, it does not seem to have affected you any, as you still seem perfectly capable of talking out of yours.

Why wearing a mask is different from wearing pants — **NOW, WHERE DID I PUT THAT MASK?**

(Image attribution: https://freesvg.org/johnny-automatic-head-up-ass)

Source:
1. https://www.wionews.com/world/bill-gates-wonders-whether-anti-maskers-are-nudists-and-why-they-wont-wear-masks-343913

😉Coronavirus Language & the Mask Argument

Life & Death in Mauthausen Concentration Camp

A Russian Survivor of Mauthausen Concentration Camp

Published: 22 November 2020 ~ Life & Death in Mauthausen Concentration Camp

This summer we had the pleasure of meeting a very special lady in Kaliningrad, Zoya Ostin, the widow of a former Russian soldier, Vsevolod Ostin, who, in his youth, was incarcerated in the notorious Mauthausen Nazi concentration camp in Upper Austria. The young Russian soldier survived his ordeal and later wrote a highly detailed account of life and death within the camp, how he beat the odds and lived to tell the tale. My wife, Olga, has been busy translating his book, Rise Above Your Pain, into English.

During the Second World War, Vsevolod Ostin, a young Soviet soldier, had the grave misfortune to be interned in the notorious Mauthausen Nazi concentration camp in Upper Austria.

Whilst most of us in the West are familiar with the names of Auschwitz, Dachau and Belsen, the name Mauthausen may not be immediately recognisable, but Mauthausen was considered to be one of the Nazi’s most severe and brutal camps, so much so that it was known affectionately by the SS as the bone mill or bone grinder.

Life & Death in Mauthausen Concentration Camp

Mauthausen was the principal camp in an extensive complex of satellite camps operating throughout Austria and the southern regions of Germany. The inmates, mostly drawn from the Soviet and Polish intelligentsia, were used as slave labour for numerous German companies, both local and national, with the majority of prisoners working mainly in the nearby granite quarries, providing raw materials for the reconstruction of German towns and cities.

The regime in Mauthausen and the surrounding sub-camps was so relentlessly brutal that the average life expectancy was estimated to be 3 to 6 months at most. Vsevolod Ostin entered the camp in 1942 and miraculously managed to survive until 1945, when the camp was liberated by the United States Army.

Vsevolod Ostin wrote his account of life in Mauthausen in 1961 but not to the acclaim that he had hoped for. Publishing house after publishing house rejected the manuscript. Various reasons were given, but the main stumbling block seemed to be that the Soviet authorities considered it to be too international, too cosmopolitan, at a time when literary and historical accounts of the war had an urgent imperative to condemn Fascism as irredeemably evil.

Surviving Life & Death in Mauthausen

A man such as Ostin who had survived the horrors of Mauthausen was hardly likely to give up that easily, and he did not. But it would be 25 years from completion of the manuscript before he would see his work in print. Rise Above Your Pain was finally published in 1986, a year after perestroika.

By definition, Rise Above Your Pain is not an easy book to work on, neither is it bedtime reading! The subject matter is grim and grisly and in order to do it justice, to translate and edit it in the tone and spirit in which it was written, we have had to rise above our pain with each successive chapter.

This is because Ostin tells it as it was; he pulls no punches. He lays bare the worst excesses of human nature’s darker side, his book serving as a salutary reminder of how war unleashes the worst in us and how, in its consuming climate of hate, violence and death, the dregs of our societies, the malcontents, thugs and sadists, rise from the sediment into positions of power the consummate nature of which they could only dream of in times of peace and stability.

Nevertheless, between the cracks of inhumanity that the book so meticulously documents, reassuring glimpses of a human light shine through, and it is this as much as the depravity it delineates that makes Rise Above Your Pain a compelling lesson from history and a story that needs to be told.

Life & Death in Mauthausen Concentration Camp

Olga and I were approached to translate and edit Vsevolod Ostin’s book Rise Above Your Pain by Olga Tkachenko, Head of the Sobolev Children’s Library in Kaliningrad, on the recommendation of a mutual acquaintance, author and journalist Boris Nisnevich.

The translated and edited text is scheduled for completion in early 2021, with a view towards publishing an English language version later in that year.

Vsevolod Ostin, writes of Life & Death in Mauthausen

Vsevolod Ostin, Life & Death in Mauthausen

Vsevolod Ostin, recounts Life & Death in Mauthausen

Vsevolod Ostin, survivor of Mauthausen concentration camp, author of Rise Above Your Pain

An afternoon in the company of Zoya Ostin, widow of Vsevolod Ostin, survivor of Mauthausen concentration camp, author of Rise Above Your Pain. {Top middle picture, left to right: Olga Tkachenko, Head of the Sobolev Children’s Library, Kaliningrad; Zoya Ostin; and Olga Korosteleva-Hart.}