Peter Hitchens And Pepe Escobar Weigh In.

First is ever classy Peter Hitchens weighing in in a series of interviews on the state of the British society. He is not optimistic, especially when discussing the "education". I agree on many points with him and the tragedy with school education (including private ones) which unfolds in the combined West is already having a major geopolitical effect. 

Then, Pepe writes a superb piece on Germany and NS2 which symptomatically is titled Frozen Deutschland. As Pepe notes:

Translation: gas from Nord Stream 2 will be absent during the coming winter in Europe and the pipeline, at best, might start running only by mid-2022. And that certainly ties in with the politicking angle, as the German regulators are de facto waiting for the new German ruling coalition to emerge, including the neoliberal Greens who are viscerally anti-Nord Stream and anti-Russia. The European energy executive did not mince his words on a quite possible scenario: “If Germany does not obtain their oil and natural gas by land now they cannot fashion a fall back position, as there is not sufficient LNG capacity or oil for that matter to supply the EU this winter. They are going to freeze. Much of their economy will be forced to shut down. Unemployment will soar. It would take four years to build up LNG capacity for natural gas but who will build it for them?” Germany has zero margin of maneuver to dictate conditions to Gazprom and Russia. The gas that Gazprom won’t sell to northern Europe will be sold to eastern and southern Europe via Turk Stream, and most of all to Asian clients, which do not engage in blackmail and pay much better than the Europeans.

Russia IS already redirecting a lot of her resources to Asia and, in general, countries like Germany will be supplied on the "what's left" or "leftovers" bases. I wrote about it a year or so ago, during the oil crisis--those who are interested they may find it. It all, actually, ties extremely well with what Peter Hitchens says, because the products of this "education", which was in a downward spiral since 1990s, are beginning to reach important posts in EU nations and in the US. As Pepe duly notes:

It will be up to the “resolve of Poland and Lithuania” to “counter the Kremlin threat”. The ideal framework in this case should be the Lublin Triangle – which unites Poland and Lithuania with Ukraine. These are the lineaments of the new Iron Curtain, erected by the Atlanticists, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, to “isolate” Russia. Predictably, German Atlanticists are a crucial part of the package. Of course, to be successful, these actors should “also seek greater U.S. and UK engagement”, with every movement complementing “the role of NATO as the ultimate guarantor of peace in the region”. So behold, EU mortals: a “perfect storm of Russian aggression during the coming winter months” is all but inevitable. Watch it on your screens while you properly freeze.

It goes without saying that most of modern Atlanticists on both shores of the Atlantic are extremely incompetent and something tells me that Russia at this point is really indifferent to new Iron Curtain and, in fact, as I am on record constantly, this new Iron Curtain could be a blessing in disguise to Russia who seeks to preserve her culture, traditions and sanity.

Reiteration Of The Point...

 I first made few years ago. Namely almost five ago. 

However, the immigration from Western Europe to Russia is a separate matter. How large is this flow of West European immigrants is difficult to assess as of now. Bar some very high profile people such as Steven Seagal or Ornella Muti getting their Russian citizenship, it is very difficult to even separate, such as in German case, if these are "native" Germans immigrating to Russia or Russian Germans who merely return, after their Germany's odyssey, back to their Russian motherland. Here is another example of Germans getting to settle in Russia.

Evidently Russian Germans begin to manifest their practical desires to move to Russia in thousands now.  Even despite the fact that some of them have small children and German children subsidies are higher than Russian ones (I admit, I don't know how Maternity Capital applies here). Many are Christians. Here is Klaus who consults German organizations and families who move to Russia. This is the original German language video. 

Here is his video with Russian dubbing.
 

I was surprised that many natives from Bavaria, Cologne area or Hamburg are also leaving for Russia. As I said many times, Germans, especially Germans from former GDR, not to mention Soviet (Russian) Germans are absolutely not alien to Russians. For all heavy history between two peoples, Germans also have been a significant part of modern (since 17th century) Russia's history. It is a given. Very many Germans still reside in Russia, especially Altai region and they are admired and viewed as.... well, Russians with German roots. Real patriots. One such story about German farmers in Altai (in Russian). I knew that numbers were significant but now that they are in thousands, one has to take a serious note. So, the trend is pronounced, including for Germans who return to Crimea. In an astonishing and deeply ironic turn of events, many Germans say that they go to Russia for liberty. Who would have thought. 

Yet, as Peter Hitchens, the one I respect, unlike his late verbose and highly opinionated brother, states and I agree with him:

We are throwing away our liberty. We are willingly and, in some cases, cheerfully throwing it away because we have ceased to value it. In fact, we are increasingly comfortable with being told what to do rather than deciding what to do for ourselves.” This is anathema to him. Liberty is “the most precious jewel we have in this country”, it is not just “an abstract concept because it decides how you live”.

I am afraid for the UK it is a done deal. US? We'll see. You can watch full interview by Hitchens here. And Hitchens makes a succinct point here:

However, Hitchens argues, the encroachment of the state and the destruction of liberty was to some extent stalled by the Cold War. If the argument of the Western powers was that the Soviet Union was a totalitarian state, it was untenable to impose state control over Western societies.  

I agree with him here completely. It was the issue of a contrast, granted significantly blown out of proportion, which was a restraining factor in otherwise creeping assault on liberty, and we all observe the fruits of this restraining factor disappearing today. Those are bitter, if not poisonous, fruits. 

Thank You, Peter Hitchens.

Unlike his late brother Christopher, an open and unrestrained neocon and demagogue who passed for an intellectual among Western academe, Peter was always deep. I mean it without this 1960-s pop-culture connotation. I recall Peter's honest and enlightened position on the events of 2014 and Crimea. Now, we hear it from a person who has the right to speak on the issue of conservatism. I was on this issue from the get go and spoke ad nauseam that there is no conservative party in the US. Here is a recent one by me on the issue:

The United States doesn't have a true conservative party. All this BS about Burke, let alone mediocrity such as Buckley is as related to conservatism as I am related to Chinese.

Fact is, America's (and in general Anglo) intelligentsia today is a pathetic... well, you know what, a lot of it is in my books, especially in the last one. And here is Hitchens. 

“I do not think there have been any conservative parties in the Anglosphere states for some time, if ever there were such things,” he replied. “The defence of private wealth from taxation was never much of a basis for conservatism, and the Reagan-Thatcher era was one of liberalism, not conservatism. The remnants of conservatism were posturing at home on issues such as abortion and criminal justice (about which ‘conservative’ parties have actually done nothing for decades) and starting foolish wars abroad.”

Thank you, thank you, Peter. Read my lips: conservative party and ideology is a euphemism for national consciousness. US political parties were in the business of destroying a fledgling American nationhood for decades. The only thing these people know is how to reelect themselves and engage in the never-ending bickering on how to bypass real economic and cultural interests of the majority of Americans, while preserving the status quo which cannot be preserved by definition. Period. Well that, plus institutionalizing perversion, cowardice and hypocrisy. In fact, I doubt that current crop of utterly corrupt American thinkers, or, rather, what passes for them, can even grasp what conservatism is. Yes, it is that bad. One can go and attend twenty different churches and carry Bible with him in the pocket all the time and smash own forehead at the altar--that doesn't make one a conservative. Conservatism is a an obverse side of prudent nationalism. American "nationalism" is skin deep and is primarily expressed in declaring football (American variety) important, in cartoonish militarism and invocations of America's greatness. Enough to listen to the cringe-worthy psychobabble by Dinesh D'souza, passing for history, and "conservatives" such as Laura Inghram, to get the gist of American "conservatism" pretty accurately. That's it--there is nothing more there. 

The only America's claim to the possible core national value--constitutionalism, and law and order--are being destroyed this very minute and there is nothing more left there. There is no nation anymore. Or, being more precise, there is no proto-nation which America was becoming in 19th century. The US today is a one-party political system, which serves American oligarchy which is highly uncultured and uneducated and is incapable to produce a statesman. To be sure, mediocrities it produces aplenty. This is not a gene pool which can produce a conservative, national that is, idea. Some sparks of intellect and passion, such as Candace Owens or Tucker on his good night, are simply not enough. Punditry is not a substitution for substantive approach to nationhood which is not survivable--in fact, it is disintegrating at an alarming speed--in the present economic and political paradigm. Trumpism gave a glimpse at some ideas but the person who articulated them turned out to be the fraud and a coward and those were not his ideas anyway. 

So, here we are--what is an American conservative today? Is he (she) a Republican? GOP is not a conservative party, not even close, it is a party of old wealth and homicidal economic policies, which constantly BSes deplorables while laughing at them or condescendingly patting them on the back when allowing them to clean restrooms at their country clubs. I could be on this topic for a long time but I don't see reason. I stated my position not for once: no conservative party in the US--US has no future. As the events of the last couple of days have shown, GOP is a party of treason and cowardice, but then again, they have good rivals in the matters of destroying the country in democrats. So, what a lovely choice we have between the two shallow ends of the America's political and faux-intellectual cesspool. But thank you, Peter Hitchens, for stating obvious--modern Anglo-conservatism is a joke and we better get used to living with this fact.

Bravo, Peter Hitchens!

Peter Hitchens, to paraphrase Correlli Barnett, speaks in broadsides in his wonderful piece in The Spectator. 

Chilcot will change nothing. We should inquire into our own eagerness to back needless wars 

The national puzzle is this: why did so many mainstream, reasonable, informed and sensible non-Trotskyist people readily accept the most transparent twaddle as fact?

What we really need is not Chilcot, but an inquiry into how we, the British educated classes (perhaps above all in my trade of journalism), are so easily talked into wars.

I don't think there is a puzzle here, though. We are witnessing today an emerging dictatorship of mediocrity and incompetence, wrapped in the ideological banners, known as media (see my post about Razib Khan below). We have brain surgeons writing about operations and not of the brain kind, more along the lines of naval and air force ones, we have people with no knowledge operating with information not knowing the difference between the two. There is also no time for reflection between media cycles. We have lawyers assessing intelligence information, we have economists writing about submarines' combat informational control systems. Housewives and househusbands with degrees in literature and gardening are judging force structure of enemys' navies. We finally got it--we leave in Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame paradigm when anyone, without risking anything, without any consequences has a lot to say and they do say it. Everyone is "journalist" today, hey, yours truly included, but at least I do not write reviews on New York theater scene and do not pretend to know everything about quantum mechanics. I also hate war. And then comes this ever important  issue, about which I write for years now--in general,  Anglo-Saxon elites, yes, even British ones, ARE NOT conditioned by the realities of the Continental Warfare. Yes, Britain fought its namesake air battle in WWII and she had London and Coventry, among many, bombed into oblivion, but that was it. No invasions for centuries, no artillery, tanks and urban combat blowing cities to smithereens, no rapes, no pillages, no slaves. There is NO framework in which to grasp the realities and then, of course...there are Precision Guided Munitions which make them all feel good. This is the key to this puzzle.

But I salute Peter Hitchens for his moral courage, for his integrity and hope that his salvo will hit the target. As Leo Tolstoy said in War And Peace:

I want only to say that it is always the simplest ideas which lead to the greatest consequences. My idea, in its entirety, is that if vile people unite and constitute a force, then decent people are obliged to do likewise; just that.(c)