I’m Watching The World Cup Draw With A Sick Bucket
Here’s the bucket, which is an ideal accompaniment to when Trump appears on television.
Note.
- I have seen a number of American presidents and Trump isn’t even worth rating.
- As Putin and Mohammed bin Salman’s friend and apologist he certainly doesn’t deserve any form of Peace Prize.
- And who was the strumpet in the lizard costume?
- I thought Robbie Williams had more sense than to provide entertainment.
- Who’s this black guy in a red hat?
- Rio Ferdinand seems to be doing a good job.
But then everybody has a realistic price.
I actually suspect, I won’t watch much of the World Cup, as I can find better things too do. I certainly won’t watch any matches, where Trump is present.
How Jewish is Volodymyr Zelensky?
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the Jewish Chronicle.
This is the sub-heading.
The Ukrainian President is hailed as one of the few Jewish world leaders not from Israel, but how Jewish is he
The article is a must read, as it gives a valuable insight into what drives Zelensky.
These two paragraphs describe his upbringing.
Zelensky grew up in the Russian-speaking city of Kryvyi Rih, in the eastern part of Ukraine. Like most Soviet Jews, his parents were highly educated but limited in where their careers could go. His father was a professor of mathematics and his mother studied engineering.
Zelensky said he grew up in an “ordinary Soviet Jewish family,” which was to say, not very religious, since “religion didn’t exist in the Soviet state as such.”
We could certainly do, with more world leaders, who understood science and had less religion.
It also publishes a story of four brothers that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
“Three of them, their parents and their families became victims of the Holocaust. All of them were shot by German occupiers who invaded Ukraine,” he said. “The fourth brother survived. … Two years after the war, he had a son, and in 31 years, he had a grandson. In 40 more years, that grandson became president, and he is standing before you today, Mr. Prime Minister.”
Zelensky has come one hell of a journey and it has been very much a Jewish journey.
In addition to all the pogroms, persecutions and the Holocaust, he would probably know all the various medical problems and diseases, that members of the Jewish faith seem to have suffered, in Eastern Europe.
Today, The Times published an article which is entitled Zelensky: Putin Will Die Soon And The Ukraine War Will End.
IThe article has this sub-heading.
The Ukrainian leader says after Nato summit that the Russian president is near death and fears losing his grip on his people.
I would believe, that the Ukrainian leader is talking from a position, where he is sure of his facts, because of his Jewish heritage and what he knows of Putin’s heritage, which is partly Jewish, and his life and medical history.
Consider.
- As a coeliac, who lost his son indirectly to coeliac disease, I believe that it is a dangerous disease to have, if it is undiagnosed and you are not on a gluten-free diet.
- From some of the stories, I’ve read about Putin, I wonder, if he could be an undiagnosed coeliac. As I spent fifty years of my life that way, I know what it’s like.
- According to the NHS, coeliac disease is much more common in women and backing this up, is the fact that I’ve only ever met two male adult coeliacs.
- Is coeliac disease in Russia, very much a girly disease, that action men, like Vlad the Butcher can’t get?
- If Vlad is an undiagnosed coeliac, there could be something nasty, like a stroke or cancer lurking in his genes.
Given his upbringing, Zelensky is probably giving us, a scientific analysis of the facts about his adversary.
Appeasement 2.0
The low point of Russia’s war in Ukraine is that Trummkopf, has repeated Chamberlain’s mistake at Munich and presented Putin with Appeasement 2.0.
I wasn’t around in the days of Munich and Chamberlain, but my father was well-informed, as he was in Geneva doing something possibly at the League of Nations and heard a lot of the truth about what was going on in Czechoslovakia and Ukraine at first hand. He believed there was little to choose between Hitler and Stalin on the scale of evil.
In the 1970s, I worked with an Jewish Austrian engineer, who was called Samuels, at the GLC, who had escaped from Austria just before WW2 and then spent the war in the Royal Engineers in bomb disposal. After the war, he was an observer at Nuremberg.
He was one of the most amazing people, I’ve ever met and he taught me a lot about project management.
Aggregation In Artemis
One of the features of Artemis was aggregation, which enabled the project manager to total up the resources they’d need for a project.
I might have programmed the original aggregation for Mr. Samuels, but I can certainly remember discussing it with him. He needed it to check that particular sub-contractors weren’t overstreching themselves.
I lost contact with Mr. Samuels, when his wife died and he moved to CERN in Geneva. But he’s one of several people, who helped frame the design of Artemis.
Soviet War Crimes
This Wikipedia entry is entitled Soviet War Crimes.
This is the first paragraph.
From 1917 to 1991, a multitude of war crimes and crimes against humanity were carried out by the Soviet Union or any of its Soviet republics, including the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and its armed forces. They include acts which were committed by the Red Army (later called the Soviet Army) as well as acts which were committed by the country’s secret police, NKVD, including its Internal Troops. In many cases, these acts were committed upon the direct orders of Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin in pursuance of the early Soviet policy of Red Terror as a means to justify executions and political repression. In other instances they were committed without orders by Soviet troops against prisoners of war or civilians of countries that had been in armed conflict with the USSR, or they were committed during partisan warfare.
As a teenager, my father used to tell me stories of atrocities by the Soviet Union and told me, he believed Stalin was on a level with Hitler.
One of the worst atrocities was the Katyn massacre in 1940, which is described in this Wikipedia entry and starts with this paragraph.
The Katyn massacre was a series of mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish military and police officers, border guards, and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by the Soviet Union, specifically the NKVD (the Soviet secret police), at Joseph Stalin’s order in April and May 1940. Though the killings also occurred in the Kalinin and Kharkiv NKVD prisons and elsewhere, the massacre is named after the Katyn forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered by Nazi German forces in 1943.
I haven’t found out, what my father was doing in 1940, but I am fairly sure he knew of the Katyn and other massacres, as he occasionally commented.
Note.
- The involvement of the NKVD.
- The Katyn massacre is a sub-plot in the film Enigma, which has this Wikipedia entry.
I took this picture of a memorial to Katyn in the centre of Birmingham.
I believe that we ignore the lessons of Soviet behaviour at Katyn, at our peril.
In Vladimir Putin’s Wikipedia entry, there is this paragraph about his parents.
Putin’s mother was a factory worker, and his father was a conscript in the Soviet Navy, serving in the submarine fleet in the early 1930s. During the early stage of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, his father served in the destruction battalion of the NKVD. Later, he was transferred to the regular army and was severely wounded in 1942. Putin’s maternal grandmother was killed by the German occupiers of Tver region in 1941, and his maternal uncles disappeared on the Eastern Front during World War II.
It appears that Putin Senior left the NKVD destruction battalion before 1942. Does that mean he could have been at Katyn?
I do suspect, that Putin Senior told some interesting stories to his son, about the correct ways to deal with your opponents and wage a war.
Conclusion
We are treading a very similar path over eighty years later.
Putin Apologises Over Plane Crash, Without Saying Russia At Fault
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the BBC.
This is the sub-heading.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has apologised to the president of neighbouring Azerbaijan over the downing of a commercial airliner in Russian airspace, in which 38 people were killed – but stopped short of saying Russia was responsible.
These three paragraphs give more details on the crash.
In his first comments on the Christmas Day crash, Putin said the “tragic incident” had occurred when Russian air defence systems were repelling Ukrainian drones.
Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelensky said Russia must “stop spreading disinformation” about the strike.
The plane is believed to have come under fire from Russian air defence as it tried to land in the Russian region of Chechnya – forcing it to divert across the Caspian Sea.
Who do you think you are kidding Mr. Putin?
UK And Germany To Upgrade Some Sea Kings For Ukraine
Yesterday, the UK government issued a press release, which is entitled Landmark UK-Germany Defence Agreement To Strengthen Our Security And Prosperity.
This is the sub-heading.
A landmark defence agreement will be signed by Defence Secretary John Healey MP and German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius in London today in a major moment for NATO, and European security and prosperity. It is the first-of-its-kind agreement between the UK and Germany on defence.
This introductory paragraph, lays down the tone and objectives of the agreement.
The signing of the Trinity House Agreement marks a fundamental shift in the UK’s relations with Germany and for European security. This agreement between Europe’s two biggest defence spenders will strengthen national security and economic growth in the face of growing Russian aggression and increasing threats.
It is a wide-ranging document, but in this post, I will concentrate on one topic; Sea King helicopters, which are talked about in this paragraph.
New Ukraine support – new joint work to enable German Sea King helicopters to be armed with modern missile systems as well as work on capability coalitions.
As Ukraine is a mainly landlocked company, I do think it must be a compliment to the Sea Kings’ capabilities that the Ukrainians find the naval helicopters useful.
These three paragraphs from the Wikipedia entry for the Westland Sea King, document the history of operations of the Sea King in the Ukrainian Naval Aviation.
In November 2022, in response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine the United Kingdom announced they were donating three former Royal Navy Sea Kings to Ukraine. In January 2023, the first Sea King was videoed being used by the Ukrainian Naval Aviation.
In April 2023, the BBC did an interview with one of the co-pilots of a UK donated Sea King to Ukraine. These helicopters served in the Falklands War so they are at least some 40 years old. The co-pilot has said that the Sea King is used for rescuing pilots who have ejected, delivering soldiers, and conducting reconnaissance, among other tasks. One engineer also told the BBC: “They are old…but they have gone through modernisation, and we need them very much. I believe this is just the start of our work together.” The BBC also reports that a third Sea King is being prepared to be sent to Ukraine in the “coming weeks”. The third Sea King HU.5 was delivered to Ukraine in May 2023.
In January 2024, Germany agreed to send 6 further Sea Kings to Ukraine.
I feel the Ukrainians, with their initiative, will find the elderly Sea Kings very useful.
Klaipėda – Kyiv Rail Freight Plan
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Railway Gazette.
These two paragraphs give more details.
Lithuania’s national train operator LTG Group and Ukrainian Railways have signed a memorandum of understanding to develop an intermodal freight service from the Baltic port of Klaipėda to Kyiv via Poland.
Test runs are planned for this year, ahead of regular services.
I have some thoughts.
The Route
This Google Map shows the route.
Note.
- Russia is in the North-East corner of the map, with Moscow clearly marked.
- Lithuania is in the North-West corner of the map.
- Klaipėda is on the Lithuanian coast.
- South-West of Lithuania is the Kaliningrad enclave, which is part of Russia.
- South of the Kaliningrad enclave is Poland, where Gdansk, Warsaw and Krakow are clearly marked.
- Belarus is in the middle of the map, with Minsk clearly marked.
- Ukraine is South of Russia and Belarus and East of Poland.
- Dnipro, Kharkiv, Kyiv and Lyiv in Ukraine are clearly marked.
It looks to me, that a possible route would be along the Eastern Polish Border avoiding both Belarus and the Kaliningrad enclave.
The Gauges
This Google Map shows the gauges between Klaipėda and Kyiv.
Note.
- Black tracks are Standard gauge of 1435 mm.
- Red tracks are Russian gauge of 1520 mm.
- Klaipėda is on the Lithuanian coast in the North-West corner of the map.
- Kviv is in the South-East corner of the map.
It looks to me, that although Lithuania and Ukraine are Russian gauge, the routes through Poland could be standard gauge.
So there may be a need for some rolling stock, that can run on both Russian and Polish gauges.
This article on Railway Gazette is entitled Ukrainian Railways Produces Cross-Border Grain Wagon.
These two paragraphs describe the wagons.
National railway Ukrzaliznytsia has used mostly domestic components to produce a grain hopper wagon which can operate on both the former USSR’s 1 520 mm broad gauge and the 1 435 mm standard gauge of neighbouring EU countries.
The Type 19-8005-U wagon has a capacity of 70 tonnes and 104 m3, with five loading and six unloading hatches. It is designed for operation at up to 120 km/h.
The wagon certainly looks professional in the pictures.
I don’t think that dual-gauge wagons for containers will be a serious engineering problem for the Ukrainians.
Rail Baltica
The Wikipedia entry for Rail Baltica has this introduction.
Rail Baltica is an under-construction rail infrastructure project that is intended to integrate the Baltic states in the European rail network. Its purpose is to provide passenger and freight service between participating countries and improve rail connections between Central and Northern Europe, specifically the area southeast of the Baltic Sea.
Note.
- As it is an EU-funded project, it is being built as standard gauge.
- It is being built with operating speeds of 145 mph for passengers and 75 mph for freight trains.
- There will be comprehensive connections to airports, freight terminals and major conurbations.
This page on the Rail Baltica web site has an interactive map of Rail Baltica.
It is thought that Putin is not pleased about Rail Baltica, as his extensive fleet of rail transporters for tanks and other military vehicles, are now built for the wrong gauge to invade the Baltic States.
Putin And Dual-Gauge Tracks And Wagons
As they could be used to bring war-related imports to Kyiv, I suspect Vlad the Genocider is against them.
How Will Ukraine Protect The Trains?
Consider.
- Being West of Kyiv will help.
- I suspect the UK have a few ideas for camouflage.
- Will a few brave Ukrainians ride the trains, with a sophisticated train protection missile?
- Drones probably won’t be as effective as ground attack aircraft at attacking trains.
I do suspect though that the Ukrainians have a plan.
Conclusion
This is going to be an interesting development.
What Will Israel Do Next? Military Options In Gaza Explained
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article in The Times.
Like many, I worry about what is going on in Israel and Gaza.
This is a paragraph from the article.
So the more likely scenario is a full-frontal invasion of Gaza, similar to what happened in Lebanon in 1982, when Ariel Sharon, the defence minister at the time, earned worldwide notoriety for the brutality of his tactics but appreciation at home for extirpating the Palestine Liberation Organisation from Israel’s northern neighbour. Yasser Arafat and his men were simply put on boats.
It is probably a solution, that would appeal to many Israelis and expulsion is certainly a policy that has been applied to Jews themselves in the past.
In 1290, Edward I issued the Edict of Expulsion, which is outlined in the first paragraph of its Wikipedia entry.
The Edict of Expulsion was a royal decree issued by Edward I of England on 18 July 1290 expelling all Jews from the Kingdom of England. Edward told the sheriffs of all counties he wanted all Jews expelled by no later than All Saints’ Day (1 November) that year. The expulsion edict remained in force for the rest of the Middle Ages. The edict was not an isolated incident, but the culmination of over 200 years of increasing antisemitism in England. The edict was eventually overturned more than 365 years later, during the Protectorate when Oliver Cromwell permitted the resettlement of the Jews in England in 1656.
I am not in any way religious, but my great-great-great-grandfather; Robert, was a Jewish tailor from Konigsberg in East Prussia, which is now Kaliningrad in Russia.
He left Konigsberg, as the law said, that if you were Jewish, male and eighteen, you had to leave. So he embarked on a ship and ended up in London around 1800.
I have one indirect memory of Robert. My father told me, how his grandfather had met him in his later years and he was a small man, who only spoke German and no English. My father’s grandfather was born in 1853 and died at some date after 1911. So as my father was born in 1904, this tale is possible.
And surely, the Nazis’ policies were the ultimate expulsion.
I worry if the Israelis were to repeat the Palestine Liberation Organisation solution for Hamas.
Would some join the queues of migrants trying to get to the UK?
Conclusion
I can see Israel’s actions having repercussions for the UK.
Here We Go Again!
Years ago, I had a very interesting insight into the problems of Israel and the Palestinians.
My next door neighbour; Charles was a retired senior officer in the Royal Engineers, who was in the King David Hotel, when it was blown up by the Irgun.
The hotel was used by the British to administer the Palestinian Mandate. The story of the King David Hotel Bombing has this Wikipedia entry, which is well worth a read.
Charles and his wife had also lived in Palestine before the Second World War and described it as a much more peaceful place, where the only way to tell if anybody was Jew or Arab was from their surname. He felt that they got on well, until it was all stirred up by the right-wing Zionists.
One of my big regrets in life, is that I didn’t interview my neighbour more deeply, as he had fascinating tales to tell.
A Trip To Kyiv Road
This article on the BBC is entitled Ukraine War: Road Outside Russian Embassy Renamed ‘Kyiv Road’.
This is the sub-heading.
Under a picture of a guy holding the new Kyiv Road sign, there are these three paragraphs.
The new address will cover a stretch of Bayswater Road that is only a short distance from the Russian embassy.
It comes after protest group Led by Donkeys turned the same street blue and yellow on Thursday.
The Kyiv Road sign will be installed on Friday afternoon by Westminster City Council.
I just had to go and take a few pictures before the Russians, some vandals or some political sympathisers cover it in paint.
Note.
- The road had been painted blue and yellow by pro-Ukraine protestors a couple of days ago.
- There were two groups of protestors; Ukrainians and Russians opposed to Putin.
- The Ukrainian protestors have Ukrainian flags.
- The anti-Putin protestors have white-blue-white flags, which are the Russian flag, with the red replaced by white.
It was all very light-hearted and the main job of the Police was to gently urge protestors out of the way of traffic.
The Anonymous Widower 