Published: 3 July 2022 ~ Life in Kaliningrad Russia under threats and sanctions
With Lithuania threatening to blockade Kaliningrad by restricting transit of goods from mainland Russia by train, the Latvian Interior Minister gleefully announcing that this proved that the West was poised to ‘take Kaliningrad away from Russia’1 and the Prime Minister of Poland making so much noise that it is difficult to tell whether it is his sabre rattling, his teeth chattering or something else knocking together, it looked as though once again the storm clouds had begun to gather over the former region of the Teutonic Order.
I cannot say with any semblance of sincerity that, as the shadow slowly dispersed, the Kaliningrad populace breathed a sigh of relief for, quite frankly, and with no flippancy intended but wanting as always to tell it how it is, nobody ~ at least nobody that I am acquainted with ~ seemed to give a fig.
You can put it down to whatever you like: the Russian penchant for c’est la vie, faith in themselves and their country, a growing immunity to the West’s mouth and trousers or perhaps the absence of a corporate media that makes its fortune by pedalling fear. But whatever you ascribe it to, if the residents of Kaliningrad were supposed to feel afraid, it didn’t happen.
Perhaps it was because we were all too busy laughing at Boris Johnson’s jokes, the ones about the situation in Ukraine never occurring had Vladimir Putin been a woman, which, Boris woked, was “the perfect example of toxic masculinity’ (By the way, what is the definition of non-toxic masculinity? Is it where you rove around without your pants on having painted your gonads rainbow colours? Or when go into hiding like President Turdeau whenever you hear a trucker’s horn?) and his suggestion at the G7 Summit that the leaders of the ‘free’ world (free with every packet of neoliberal dictatorship) should take off their clothes to equal the manliness of Vladimir Putin, to which Mr Putin replied, and I think this is something we can all agree on, “I don’t know how they wanted to undress, waist-high or not, but I think it would be a disgusting sight either way.”2 Er, I assume that Boris was joking ~ wasn’t he? ~ and joking on both accounts?
Alack-a-day if he wasn’t, they just might be some of the most stupid things he has ever said. That’s a close call, because occasionally, but very seldomly and most likely accidentally, Boris can say things that make some sense, not much and not often, but it does happen, which is more than can be said for anyone in the Labour party ~ or about any and all of their supporters. But you must admit, Boris, that the things you are blurting out of late do have a rather silly public schoolboy wheeze about them. Were you the President of the United States at least you could plead senility or, failing that, insanity. But beware! Keep on behaving like this and you’ll make yourself the perfect candidate for filling Biden’s boots when Biden’s booted out.
I suppose we should all just take a step backwards and feel thankful that in the pre-bender-gender days of Winston Churchill, the great man himself was endowed with more than his fair share of so-called ‘toxic masculinity’, had he not been, we’d all be speaking German now. Mein Gott!
We don’t. And the storm over Kaliningrad and the storm in a teacup, the G7 Summit, both failed in their endeavours.
Actually, I have been rather parsimonious with the truth, I mean about the storm in Kaliningrad. It did break and when it did, it surprised everyone. After a glorious week of sun, sand and sea weather, Kaliningrad and its region were suddenly plunged into the most frightful and persistent series of electric storms that I have ever experienced.
For three days and nights, the firmament’s guts growled, sheets of livid light flashed across the sky, and lying there in bed listening to it, as we didn’t have much choice, it was easy to imagine that the entire world was forked ~ forked with lightning!
Olga was in a right old tizz. To her it was a celestial sign, a sign that her tarot-card readers and crystal-ball gazers, whose predictions she believes implicitly and to whom she refers collectively as the esoterics, and whom I call snake-oil salesmen, had got it right: change was in the air, tumultuous change. This was the start, the new beginning, the tip of the dawn of a different world. As strange as it may seem, Gin-Ginsky our cat did not appear to have any opinion on it at all, or, if he did, he was saying nothing. He is a very diplomatic cat. He might also be a very crafty cat.
Considering him to be a little less slim than he used to be, Olga recently changed his food to a product branded ‘Food for Fat Cats’. This and the use of the word ‘light’ on the packet obviously implying dietary benefit. Our cat Ginger loves it. He scoffs it twice as fast as his usual food and in ever-increasing quantities. Every now and again he will look up from his bowl between mouth fulls and fix you with his ginger eyes as if to say, “I’ll show you!” Perhaps, the ‘Food for Fat Cats’ tag line is meant to read ‘Food to make cats fatter’? I must remember to warn him, if he ever attends a G7 Summit, not to take his shirt off!
Those of you who in the West, especially those of you who changed your avatars and are now ashamed you did so (but will never admit to it!), are dying to hear, I know, how badly the sanctions are biting here in Kaliningrad. That’s why I mentioned the cat: he’s biting his grub. But I would be Boris Johnson should I say that the price of cat’s grub has not gone up. But what other things have gone up (ooerr Mrs!), or are we all eating cheaper brands of cat food?
I know that an interest in this exists because lately a lot of people have been tuning into my post Panic Buying Shelves Empty. I can only presume that this is down to Brits kerb-crawling the net in search of hopeful signs that western sanctions are starting to bite. In a couple of instances, we, like our cat, are biting into different brand-named foods than those we used to sink our gnashers into, the reason being, I suppose, because the brands that we used to buy belong to manufacturers who have been forced into playing Biden’s spite-your-nose game: Exodus & Lose Your Money. Also, in some food categories, price increases have been noted. Pheew, what a relief. If these concessions did not exist then the whole sanctions escapade would be more embarrassing than it already is for leaders of western countries who are ruining their own economies by having introduced them.
Were we talking about beer? Well, we are now. Some beer brands are absent, although the earlier gaps in shelves have since been filled with different brands from different companies and from different parts of the world. Those that are not the victims of sanctimonies, which is to say those that still remain, do reflect a hike in price, but as prices fluctuate wildly here at the best of times it is simply a matter of shopping around as usual.
So, there you have it. Not from the bought and paid for UK corporate media and their agenda-led moguls but from a sanctioned Englishman living in Kaliningrad, Russia, who is willing to swear on a stack of real-ale casks, honestly, one hand on heart and the other on his beer glass, that life in Kaliningrad under threat and sanctions has changed so little as to be negligibly different to life as it was in the days of pre-sanctioned Kaliningrad.
If I have disappointed your expectations, I’m sorry.
Western Snactions turn McDonald’s in Russia into Vkusno i tochka
Published: 22 June 2022 ~ McDonald’s restaurants in Russia reopen under new name
Whilst the UK media hovers indecisively over what to replace its run of good fortune with, as interest in and editorial enthusiasm wanes for Ukraine ~ in the past two weeks there has been a flitting back and forth from woke stories about schools no longer allowing boys to wear skirts (have I got that wrong?) and hopes that a new strain of coronavirus may see the swift return of lockdowns, masks and vaccinations ~ Russia has been celebrating the replacement of the McDonald’s chain of restaurants with the inauguration of its home-grown version.
🍔McDonald’s, which had been selling burgers in Russia for more than 30 years, switched off its friers and suspended its business shortly after the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine before griddling off into the sunset. For some, the loss of McDonald’s in Russia was palpable.
Speaking entirely for myself, McDonald’s, or rather the fanfare that surrounds McDonald’s, has always been a mystery to me. In my day, old McDonald had a farm, not a burger bar. Or was that McDonald’s father?🍔🍔You probably won’t believe this but until the launch of Russia’s McDonald’s and the publicity it has generated, I had no idea what a powerhouse of Americanism McDonald’s was. To me it was up there, or down there, depending upon your point of view, with Wimpy, KFC, Little Chef, Burger King and the rest, all lumped together under the ‘frie’s’ umbrella, poor colonial-cousin substitutes for good old English chips and the good old English chip shops via which they are purveyed. Give me a portion of proper, thick-cut, chunky English chips any day than those itty-bitty American fries, that was my motto! In fact, it was the word ‘fries’ that actually did it for me in the sense of not doing it for me at all. Nothing in the world of fried foods, especially chips, has ever been the same since my brother rebranded chips and by extension British cafes with the decidedly unflattering nom de guerre ‘fatty fries’. However, as a patriot, resolutely opposed to continental affectations in all walks of English life, especially the realm of grub, words in fancy dress such as the now ubiquitous ‘French fries’ are pure anathema to me.
Another reason for avoiding McDiddles was possibly my conversion at a relatively early age to vegetarianism and a delicate constitution in the guts department. Given these two influential factors you can probably understand how blown-up images of Big Macs and Triple Cheeseburgers with an extra portion of fries on the side and a generous helping of onion rings had me longing for a lettuce leaf and reaching for the Gaviscon.
My apologies to die-hard McDonald’s fans:
*From childhood’s hour I have not been As others were—I have not seen As others saw—I could not bring My passions from a common spring—
*Edgar Allan Poe’s Alone (How much more Alone would he have felt had McDonald’s existed in his time and then like life itself ceased to be?)
With McDonald’s exit stage west, you would have thought that here was the perfect opportunity for Russia to turn off Americanisation and surge ahead with a nationwide chain of resturants selling wholesome, healthy, traditional Russian nosh. Obviously, there is no such thing in Russia as McDonald’s-phobia.
Conversely, a Russian equivalent of McDonald’s working in the West would have been tarred and feathered by now, which rather proves the point that there really is no Russian analogue to the West’s anti-Russian hysteria.
McDonald’s restaurants in Russia reopen under new name
In the absence of a McDonald’s phobia and facetiousness aside, I do understand both the historical and symbolic significance to Russia of the McDonald’s take-over.
When the first McDonald’s restaurant opened in Moscow on 31 January 1990, for some it must have seemed like the ultimate stamp of the American invasion but to others, to a new, western-enthused generation, it must have embodied the hopes if not of a brand-new beginning, then at least of a new Brand-named beginning.
What I did not know was that the first McDonald’s restaurant which opened in Pushkinskaya Square (Bolshaya Bronnaya Street, 29) Moscow in early 1990 lays claim to being the most frequented McDonald’s restaurant in the world. It is said that in its 30 years of existence it catered literally for more than 140 million patrons1.
Whilst the McDonald’s empire is a hegemonic feat of fast-foot globalism, the ability to fill its big Yankee boots in a few short weeks is a success story in its own right. It is little short of amazing that they, a consortium consisting of the Moscow government, federal authorities and the business community1, managed to take on the abandoned McDonald’s empire, rebrand, refit, restructure and rescue it in the time it would take for me to say, could I have a veggie burger please?
The 850 former McDonald’s outlets spanning 62 regions of Russia will open at a pace of 50~80 restaurants a week under the new Russian name of Vkusno i tochka (‘Tasty and that’s it’ or ‘Delicious full stop’), says the new owner, Alexander Govor2. A timely intevention that will not only re-establish the fast-food market in Russia and navigate its new course but also secure employment for thousands of people across the country.
When you take into consideration that the special military operation in Ukraine commenced a few weeks ago, on 24 February 2022, during which period the West has subjected Russia to economic warfare on an unprecedented scale, the transformation of a moribund McDonald’s into the rebranded Vkusno i tochka stands in testimony to the resourcefulness, resilience and ability to endure, which Russia as a nation has adroitely exhibited throughout its challenging history.
In stark contrast, I think it will be a long time if possibly not an eternity before I can procure equivalent success in the UK with Mick Hart’s McBorschkee’s chain of restaurants. Until then, its back to peeling spuds and heating lard for the chip van.
UK Sanctions like pinning a target to your own arse
Published: 4 April 2022 ~ Isolation from Globalists is it such a bad thing?
Congratulations Viktor Orban on your landslide victory in the Hungarian election: Viktor Orban celebrates victory over “Brussels bureaucrats and the Soros empire”1
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“The Western economic blockade and sanctions of an unprecedented scale are clearly having an effect. The question will ultimately be whether Russians are willing to accept their new status as global pariahs and give up the Western comforts some had grown used to.” ~ CNN article, 14 March 2022, “Here’s how we know sanctions are hurting Russia”
My wife’s response on social media: “Russians are willing to accept giving up ‘Western comforts’, which mainly means the loss of McDonald’s, Zara and IKEA. We have plenty of home-grown products💖. As for ‘global pariahs’, we are OK with this definition too. After all, Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky are in our company. 🤣”‘
So there you have it: ‘western comforts’ belong to the corporate-led, consumer lifestyles of material western cultures, which, presumably, cannot survive without them, and the perception of ‘global pariah’ really depends on (a) a limited definition of what constitutes the world, ie the world is the western collective, and (b) whether exclusion from the neoliberal globalist club is something to lament or something to rejoice about.
Quote: “The Western economic blockade and sanctions of an unprecedented scale are clearly having an effect.” Question: On who? and Who says so? Ahh, western media!
“First off, let’s shift this into a UK context, because as we know Britland is the crust on Uncle Sam’s American Pie and everything the yanks say the Brits go along with. So, Brits take note: Brit mentality is not Russian mentality. The entire British hierarchy from the elitist neoliberal classes to the lush-living liberal lefties to the sheep-bleating and avatar-changing minions live in a world that is totally disconnected from Russian thought and feeling. This is one reason, the main reason, why it is so easy for the UK to miscomprehend Russians on the grand and amusing scale that it incessantly does.
But the disconnect between Russian and UK mentality is not the only void; there is another, equally unbeknown to the UK masses, between the style, approach and coverage of Russian media and that of its UK counterpart.
Objective comparison of Russian and UK media coverage of Ukraine immediately reveals that when it comes to news that is straightforward, easy to assess and assimilate, Russian media wins hands down. The UK establishment is frightened of this, which is why at the first sign of trouble in Ukraine they moved to ban Russian media, but not before they had disguised their motive by slapping it with a propaganda notice.
In the UK, views and narratives that do not conform to the official neoliberal one are routinely shouted down. Brexit, the plandemic and now Ukraine, it’s the same old story. It has to be, if not the UK government cries ‘propaganda’, UK media cries ‘propaganda’ and, you’ve guessed it, the UK public cry ‘propaganda’. It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it? So, they don’t.
Where UK media excels is in the spheres of overt-sensationalism and melodrama. This is not to congratulate but to recognise how it works. People of independent thought, what few there are left in the UK, can see through the deception and the disingenuous character of UK media with the minimum of effort, but cloned and colonised minds cannot and sadly for various reasons the great proportion of Brits fall into this latter category.
Take, for example, the recent media handling and presentation of the situation in Ukraine. Huge, concerted effort was disproportionately assigned by UK media to heartstring-pulling tales about the humanitarian tragedy and the subsequent plight of hapless refugees. I am not knocking the reality of the collateral damage of military conflict but the way in which that reality is deliberately and cynically manipulated.
The UK government and its corporate media are maestros when it comes to playing the emotive fiddle. They can tap into the mythicised tolerance of the legacy Briton mindset without breaking sweat. It is not the first time, for example, that Brits have been asked to feel good about themselves by opening their hearts and borders to ‘asylum seekers’, economic migrants and even genuine refugees.
Think back to the troubles that the US-UK alliance exacerbated in Syria. Remember the cruel images of refugee children, some dead some rescued, on the beaches of Europe when their migrant rafts capsized, images later claimed by some commentators to have been stage-managed but cried down frenetically as ‘fake news’ by liberal fact checkers?
No sooner had these images been published than up went the banshee cry for accepting more refugees and adopting refugee children. Do you remember this? Do you also remember changing your avatar, and whilst you were doing this forgetting to remember the role that the US-UK played in creating the Syrian tragedy? Propaganda they cry! But then they always do.
It is different in Russia. Contrary to UK popular belief, popular because when Brits have no answers they simply shout ‘propaganda’ in the same way that they shout ‘racist’, Russians, unlike Brits, do not believe everything they see and read in the media. Schooled in the hard knocks in life, not the university of ‘I’ve got rights’, am molly-coddled and cosseted, Russian minds have fortunately escaped the deleterious process of homogenisation that has soldered UK minds into one inflexible lump.
The parrot-and-sheep UK hybrid simply does not apply in Russia. Changing avatars as a substitute for intelligence and for touchy-feely membership to the mutual appreciation society is not a natural part of the Russian psyche. A comparatively turbulent history has taught Russians how to endure and overcome and, as a consequence, has enabled them to develop a reservoir of personal and collective fortitude on which they can draw for survival whenever the need arises.
Equipped thus, the ‘pariah’ does not feel like a pariah, if anything it feels exclusive. Hence, the ‘pariah of the global world’ (which actually means the globalised world) sees that world from which it has been excluded, to which it is told it does not belong, as the pariah it can do without. Now, isn’t that ironic?
if you learn but one word in Russian, let that word be Pofick!
To help with your understanding of this, if you learn but one word in Russian, let that word be pofick! In English, pofick equates to ‘And what?’ or ‘So what!’; in French c’est la vie; or universally to a simple shrug of the shoulders. ‘Pariah!’ Pofick!; ‘Sanctions!’ Pofick!; US-UK sissy fit! Pofick!
Isolation from Globalists is it such a bad thing?
Gone are the days when all Russians clamoured and craved to run to Europe. Some of the country’s arty-farts and techies have left Russian as a virtue-signalling gesture about Ukraine, but let’s face it they couldn’t just up and go unless they had money and property salted, tucked away and waiting for them in Europe, so the general feeling here is that those who have gone were gone already.
The majority of Russians, thanks to the internet, no longer harbour any illusions as to what it is like to live in the West. Once, like many others, they were keen to experience French culture or German culture or British culture but globalism, with the assistance of George Soros’ third-world taxi service, has reduced such norms to nuances. Now very little culture is left in these countries, and what has managed to survive is suffocating beneath legions of creepers and poison ivy.
So, the odds on Russian society being upended by self-reflection as a pariah state to the West are not ones on which you should stake your existence. Sanctions, attempts to cancel culture and general Russophobia are impotent leverage mechanisms for exchanging tradition and love of historic homeland for deviancy and woke.
Another UK government-media myth, borrowed from the US of A, is that sanctions are ‘crippling’ and ‘strangling’ Russia. They are certainly not designed to make life easier but, to quote my Indian friend, who considers himself a great philosopher: “Every problem has a solution”. And this is what we are seeing.
About sanctions, you could say, and many political pundits, economists and political analysts around the world are saying, that the US and its minions have shot themselves in the collective foot, but I prefer my own analogy, which is that the US and its western collective are using their arse for target practice.
The situation into which they have backed themselves reminds me to a lesser extent of one that occurred in a publishing house in which I was employed. Against the advice of his peers and underlings, one of the directors went ahead and implemented a controversial project which, as anticipated, completely backfired. In short it was a financial disaster. A friend and colleague of mine created a little ditty to commemorate this folly, which every time the misguided director appeared my friend would unkindly sing. It went something like this: “We all tried to tell him it just wouldn’t do. It went off half-cock, it hadn’t been thought through”.
Thus, when the UK’s Liz Truss, Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs of the United Kingdom (Trus her to talk b!**&!*s!) gives it the big one about the impermanence of UK sanctions and proffers the carrot and stick of removing sanctions if Russia will behave itself ~ stop behaving like a naughty boy ~ we between-the-lines readers see a very definite case of ‘Oh dear, we got it all wrong; we didn’t think those sanctions through’. The U-turn is plainly visible; it’s the next bend in the road ahead. But saving face is less easy to see. Quick, shout Propaganda!
For the moment, for the Liz Truss moment, saving face means talking out of your arse. The arse-about-face of it is for Brits that they are to continue fuelling their ego at the expense of rising fuel costs, which are fuelling the cost of living crisis, in the lamentable belief that somehow their little over-populated, socially fragmented and culturally impoverished island holds, by some quaint and curious stretch of imperialistic imagination, the whip hand over Russia, the largest country on planet Earth and also a sovereign superpower.
The attempt to ruin Russia on the part of America and Europe is like two gays trying to conceive a child. The more they try, the more their arses hurt.
A RECENTLY DISCOVERED RUSSIAN ANECDOTE HASH-TAGGED ON SOCIAL MEDIA
I’m sorry fellow Brits, but like everything else with this Ukraine conflict your government is selling you sanctions porkies. But please don’t take my word for it. In spite of liberal revisionism, Google has yet to expunge the date when the British Empire waned.
Isolation from Globalists is it such a bad thing?
It couldn’t be more obvious than Britain is overcrowded that refusing Russian gas and oil and limiting and/or excluding other essential commodities is akin to wearing a Covid mask in order to spite your face (or is that to spite your intelligence?) or playing darts with your trousers in order to spite your arse. It’s like me saying, instead of buying a packet of crisps from Mr & Mrs Patel’s British corner shop, I’ll buy it from outer Mongolia and ship it in by taxi. Yup, it’s economic madness. It won’t affect the elites, of course, but it will and is already driving down the living standards of your over indebted average Brit. Woops, there goes the heating bills, like a nuclear missile straight through the roof! We’d buy some more insulation, but we haven’t the money to do it with!
Meanwhile, Russia, which has got loads and loads of energy resources, and other resources, is picking up the phone and saying, “Hello India, hello China, we’ve got some oil and gas to flog, are you up for it, mate?”
A similar thing is happening at economic warfare’s sharp and masochistic end, viz with banking and credit card sanctions. “Hello, Russia here. We are in the process of ditching the dollar, how are you fixed for replacing it with the Yuan?”
There are many other import/export sectors where sanctions just aren’t working and where by imposing them the West is on a hiding to nothing, as if using its arse for target practice is not painful enough and only self-flagellation will do.
The level of discomfort that “the Western economic blockade and sanctions” is inflicting on ordinary Russians is, according to CNN, “clearly having an effect”, but it is patently not clear what exactly that effect is because CNN is unable, or unwilling, to tell us, at least with any conviction. I can tell you, as I live in Russia, that the more bellicose and sanction obsessed the West becomes, the more galvanised and resilient is the Russian response. It tracks back to my comment at the opening of this post, the difference in Russian and Brit mentality.
I am sure there are numpty head equivalents here to numpty head UKers, who would rather pay £100 for a T-shirt with a silly brand name on it than a better quality T-shirt with no brand name that retails at a tenth of the price, but that particular extortion has not yet taken hold or replicated itself half as successfully in Russia as it has in the West. If such was the case would the greedy companies selling such tat have put virtue signalling above profit and left Russia so quickly with their tails between their legs? No T-shirt no cry ~ Pofick!
Mick Hart to the rescue! Forever the entrepreneur, to compensate for the loss of brand-name apparel, I am busy working on a new line of clothing for fashion-conscious Russians. These items of haute couture, unisex but not for ‘its and others’ as they are not intended for export, will be designed, manufactured and marketed under the ‘Babushka Brand’ name and will cater for all garment and occasion ranges from woolly socks to evening wear. The prototype is already in the pipeline (which is more than can be said for Russian gas to Europe). The wife is busy knitting me my first cravat in wool.
On the credit card front, true Visa and Mastercard have gone, but they continue to function internally until 2028, or so we have been told, and the Chinese card system, UnionPay, is due to replace the western versions. Incidentally, UnionPay provides access to making payments in over 180 countries. I thought I’d mention that just to remind you that the ‘international community’ to whom Liz Trust-her-not and her dodgy colleagues refer is in fact confined to Usual Suspects Inc ~ the US and its acolytes.
The reality is that in spite of Liz All-Trussed-Up-Like-A-Turkey’s offer to Russia that one day it could be ‘business as usual’, now not only do Russia’s political and business classes know where they stand with the West, but so does the rest of the world. If they had any doubts before Ukraine about the loaded mechanisms inherent in globalism by which suppression and subjugation can be brought to bear on sovereign nation states for the benefits of others and primarily for US advantage, even albeit raggedly and short of consummation, now their application and the risks involved could not be more apparent.
Moreover, there is more than an outside chance that having been ostracised once too often, Russia may never want to return to the West’s unchummy playground no matter how many Western sweeties it is paedo-politically offered. Indeed, leading economists and political analysts the world over anticipate that whatever the outcome of Ukraine, but conspicuously because of it, the era of US and western dominance is rattling to an end.
Symbolic of this move in the right direction is the exodus from Russia of such odious companies as McDonald’s, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Kentucky Fried Chicken and British American Tobacco, and not-before-time banned Facebook and its incestuous sister Instagram, all of which means for Russians that they will be physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and ultimately morally healthier.
And so, we say to these companies, and others of their ilk regarding sanctions and disappearing tricks: “We all tried to tell them it just wouldn’t do. It went off half-cock, it hadn’t been thought through”.
Thus, although in the short-term difficulties are to be overcome, in the long-term for Russia and the multipolar new world order into which we are emerging, it is difficult to imagine a more win-win situation.
Isolation from Globalists is it such a bad thing?
A long time ago, when I was labouring under the delusion that the US and UK double act was, like the words from that well-known hymn (well known if you’ve managed to save something from your culture and past), “All things bright and beautiful”, my friend, a retired scientist, corrected me. Said he, with some impatience: “You don’t understand, Mick, Russia has all those resources and all we’ve got [in the UK] is too many people”
His exact words were, “Too many bloody stupid people!” But I’ll leave you to be the judge of that.
DISCLAIMER: I may have mentioned ‘arse’ once, but I think I got away with it …
“It’s all bollocks!” Brits shout. But they don’t know whose …
Published: 9 March 2022 ~ Sanctions Backfire as Brits do Bollocks on Social Media
Frustration and impotence of western leaders attempting to punish Russia for its military operation in Ukraine has boiled over into social media. Brits, in particular, appear to have taken a direct hit from WMS (Weapons of Mass Stupidity), either that or perhaps they are simply reacting badly to something in their vaccines. Meanwhile, enlightened, tolerant, liberal EU states, weary from months of doubling down on authoritarian Covid measures, turn to Russia instead in a concerted attempt to cancel its culture.But not everything is bad news, at least Russia has gone and banned Facebook.
I must say that I could not have picked a more historic time to be in Russia since perestroika.
Only a couple of weeks ago, I was writing from the perspective of a ‘Self-isolating Englishman in Kaliningrad’, now I find myself in the peculiar position of being an Englishman in Kaliningrad sanctioned by the West.
Following Russia’s special military operation to ‘demilitarise and de-Nazify’ Ukraine, protect the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) from alleged increasing aggression and Russia itself from the threat of nuclear weapons, my wife, Olga, asked if she could copy something I had written in my diary pertaining to these events and post it to Facebook (that’s Arsebook to me). At first, I thought not, for I knew that by doing so we would unleash a barrage of banalities and insults from the UK’s armchair Arsebook experts, those who presume they know everything but in fact know bugger all.
However, the Imp of the Perverse got the better of me, it came to pass and before you could say Russophobia my prediction had come true.
The comments incited by my Facebook post ranged from off-topic, anti-Russian hysteria to amusing expletive-laden tirades or, where the commenter was seriously lost for words as well as articulation, good old-fashioned personal abuse. One astute fellow, who must surely have a master’s degree in political analytics, put: “Thank you for writing so much, but it’ all bollocks.” 😁 Well, I say!
You’ve got to value a response of this kind, if only for its effortless nature and the potential universality of its application. I have read and heard the same summation used in a variety of analytical contexts, such as in the critical acclaim of the works of Johannes Brahms (‘It’s all bollocks!’); the paintings of John Constable (‘It’s all bollocks!’); the poetry of John Keats (‘It’s all bollocks!’) and the essays of Kant (‘It’s all bollocks!’).
Thus, should you be told that your Arsebook post is ‘all bollocks’, not to be confused with ‘It’s the dog’s bollocks’, which has entirely different and inverse implications, not only will you have the satisfaction of knowing that you share the honour with some of the world’s most accomplished people but also that your opponent, who has nothing constructive to say, has put his mind, such as it is, to bed and wrapped it up in a big white flag. Ahh, the incomparable joy of Arsebook one-upmanship, or should that be ‘up yours’!
Sanctions Backfire as Brits do Bollocks on Social Media
To be honest, writing anything above three short sentences on Arsebook is counter-productive if not resoundingly futile. The platform is full of people with lots to say about nothing, usually in impoverished English, which races away from their keyboards before their brains are properly engaged.
For example, no sooner had I posted my take of the situation in Ukraine on Arsebook than some opponents to my views decided to jump into their time machines. Returning to the 21st century a split second later, they then proceeded to make half-baked connections between past events in Soviet history and the current situation in Ukraine which, by time and circumstance, had no bearing whatsoever on the current state of affairs and made me wonder if, in their desperation to make such connections, they had not wilfully set out to short circuit the world of reason.
But at least comments of this nature require some imaginative flair, which is more than can be said for run-of-the-mill insults.
Facebook personal insults can be fun. However, whenever I am confronted by them, I have to put myself on a short leash (It’s just something I do at the weekends.) or risk even the faintest trace of diplomacy evaporating in an irresistible eagerness to lock horns.
The upside of personal abuse on Arsebook is that given time it eventually reveals that certain unpleasant something about the Arsebook ‘friend’ that you always suspected but could not quite put your finger on. Now you can use your boot! Goodbye Arsebook ‘friend’!
In my previous post I wrote about unfriending people on Facebook as a last resort. To that I should have added, except in circumstances where the level and frequency of stupidity becomes a burden on one’s time and intelligence, at which point san fairy ann is essential. As an adjunct, particularly joyful is when someone who you have longed to unfriend announces that they are unfriending you. Thank you, Lord! Thank you! Come to think of it, I wonder why I never opened a Facebook account myself, just to ‘make friends’ to unfriend.
For the present, and possibly for a long time to come, Arsebook issues and its petty little world have been put on the back burner or even taken off the boil. In response to the sweeping, and in most cases backfiring sanctions, imposed on Russia by the West for its special operation in Ukraine to ‘de-Nazify and demilitarise’, Russia has given Arsebook the big heave ho. Isn’t it amazing that what you always knew you could live without you can? This applies to most things liberal.
According to the West, the sanctions that it is feverishly unloading on Russia will mean that we who live here will have to do without a lot of things. Most Russians of a certain age are no strangers to hardship, and even I, brought up in that materialistic nirvana the UK, started life with one stern tap, no hot water and an outside bog, so although it may be hard it may also be nostalgic.
On a day-to-day basis watching the sanctions as they are announced is a lot more entertaining than watching BBC news, even though the lack of credibility shares some common ground. Joe and Bojo throwing a tantrum as they take back their lollipops because no one wants to suck on them in exchange for vassal status has a certain pathos, don’t you think? Especially when you factor in the value-added knowledge that those who make the sanctions are effectively sanctioning themselves. Such is the way of the global world created by the globalists.
However, you’ve got to hand it to the double act, the rabbits that Joe and Bojo are pulling out of the sanctions hat is a wonderful way of distracting from their recent and ongoing failures.
As for the sanctions themselves, most of those rabbits are old hat, which is possibly why for the Russians the act contains few surprises.
Those sanctions that fall into the economic warfare category, ie sanctions relating to the banking and finance industry and threats about cutting one’s SWIFT off are only to be expected as is anything to do with Big ‘Gates’ Tech, as these are the standard stockpiled weapons of the neoliberal globalists. (However, let this be a salutary reminder to any country out there who is thinking of joining their club: he who sups with the globalist should indeed have a very long spoon!)
But this is typical grist to the mill. The more interesting sanctions are those, which after years of implanting Russophobia into the composted minds of the West, have grown in psychological stature to a point where they can be used to suffocate and to cancel culture. Or so the attentive gardeners would like to kid themselves.
I am talking here about those sanctions that are aimed at cultural organisations and at talented individuals, which, in recent days, have seen Russian sportsmen ostracised, top-draw Russian musicians sacked and even Russian cats barred from international competitions for not choosing their place of birth more carefully.
In New York scheduled performances by a famous Russian opera singer were cancelled because she refused to withdraw her support for Russian President Vladimir Putin. A simple case of extortion.
In Italy, the celebrated 19th century Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky narrowly missed being removed from the University of Milano-Bicocca’s syllabus, and would most certainly have been had not the Italians taken to social media and called on the head of the university (I believe his name is Dick) to back off and go and grow a pair! “It’s all bollocks!” I hear the Brits shout. No, it’s called cancel culture.
If Russians seem surprised by this behaviour, it is not surprising because they live in Russia and not in the West. The English, what is left of us, are no strangers to cancel culture; it is what globalist governments do. They socially engineer societies in such a way that the indigenous culture (in the UK white culture) is systematically trashed in preference for third-world imports. Take note! If they can do it to their own people, then they will certainly do it to you, especially if your cultural values run counter to their freak show and its carnival stalls of woke.
Ironically, sanctions in a globalised world are unreliable tools of oppression. Their effectiveness depends ultimately on their ability to penalise without incurring penalty. Unfortunately and ironically for the globalists, a good many of the sanctions that they are implementing will have, and already are having, a boomerang effect. The obvious one, refusing Russian gas, is already translating into higher energy prices in Europe and especially in the UK at a time when the income of the average Brit is squeezed right down to the peel.
There are many examples of backfiring sanctions, which I am sure will come to light in the measure and fullness of time. For now, however, my personal favourite is the projected world shortage of fertiliser.
“It’s all a load of bollocks,” bellow the brainwashed Brits!
“You won’t be saying that,” I say, “when all you are left with is bullshit!”
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