Week 37 2023
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Week 37 2023
11/9-17/9. Ukraine advances. putin committs war crimes in Ukraine, Orbán hates the truth, and more.
First of all, apologies for the many spelling errors. I have problems when I write my posts. There is a delay between my fingers hitting the keyboard and the letters appearing on the screen which makes me confused. The problem doesn’t seem to depend on the web browser. Anyway.
Elon tries to prevent Ukraine from attacking Sevastopol
Source: Markus Jonsson mastodon.world/@auonsson
In Sweden
Gripen to Ukraine?, cheap treatment of Ukrainians in Sweden, Stasi in Eslöv, inflation, and angry Hungarians.
We’re again talking about sending Gripen to Ukraine. Our government has asked the Swedish Armed Forces to look into the eventuality of sending some of our fighter jets to Ukraine. If I’m not mistaken, Ukrainian pilots have already been flying or training to fly the Gripen as a step in a process to sell Gripen to Ukraine in the future. The future may be sooner than you think and involve donating instead of selling.
We are still treating Ukrainian refugees in a shameful way. Half a year ago I wrote this letter to the editor in a Swedish newspaper:
Conditions have not improved since I wrote the above as this op-ed by Lisa Pelling shows:
The conditions are designed to be barely bearable during a waiting period of a few weeks or months, and the Ukrainians will have to live with them for three years. Asylum seekers are offered a place in accommodation, and those who do not receive food at the accommodation receive a kind of pocket money, daily allowance. It is SEK 71 a day for a single adult. The daily allowance has not been increased since 1994 and is well below the subsistence allowance level. And whoever has their own money must first use it up. Do you have a car left in Donetsk? Then you have to sell it and buy food with the money before you can get daily allowance from the Swedish Migration Agency.
The 1970’s Eastern Germany has returned to Eslöv. The administration, Stasi, has demanded that parents with children in the kindergartens shall produce certified documents showing their working hours. The demand has spurred an absurd debate. Lots of people side with Stasi. According to that side, parents have no business shopping or going to the hairdresser instead of picking up their children immediately after work. The people on the parents’ side, emphasise how stressed parents are and if the parents are paying anyway, it shouldn’t matter if the parents don’t rush to pick up their children after work.
I am one of the few that feel disgusted that the local government demands full knowledge of what people do during the day. The debate should of course be focusd on individual freedom and privacy, not on whether parents take advantage of the subsidised kindergarten services.
I am one of the few liberals left in this country. There is a political party that goes by the name of Liberalerna. That party finally ceased to be liberal when they entered the government and decided to cooperate with Sverigedemokraterna. This cooperation includes forcing people working in the public sector to become informers. They have to inform immigration authorities about people that are in Sweden without residence permits. Refugees are not welcome.
The inflation rate seems to be declining. Here are August inflation rates. The top row shows the total level, monthly change, and annual change for the total consumer price index (KPI) respectively. The second row shows the level and rates for the consumer price index adjusted for the effect of the central bank’s interest rate changes (KFPI), and the third row shows the level and rates for the consumer price index adjusted for changes in both the interest rate and energy prices (KPIF-XE).
Source: Statistics Sweden
We also received a letter from the autocratic regime led by the most corrupt prime minister in the most corrupt country in the EU, Hungary. The regime complained about a programme in a Swedish media channel stating the facts about the Orbán regime. He has been deconstructing democracy since he was elected in 2010. Here’s the letter from the foreign minister threatening that us with Hungary blocking our membership in NATO if we continue to speak the truth about Hungary.
The idiot writing that it is undemocratic to criticize his government, is another evidence of his autocratic government which has taken control of the media and clamped down on the civil society in order to silence criticism. The UR does produce educational programmes that can be used in schools. Its programmes are not used in all schools and are in now way mandatory parts of curriculums. The threat to block our accession to NATO was even more explicit in this tweet by the regime’s spokesman.
The autocratic development in Hungary is extensively documented by several researcher institutions and organisations. From Varieties of Democracy’s annual report 2020 from which I fetched Table 1. In 2019, the conditions for Freedom and fairness of elections, the civil society, the media, and freedom of academic and cultural expression had deteriorated so much that Hungary could not longer be considered to be a liberal democracy.
Source: Varieties of Democracy
And Freedom House agrees:
Since taking power in the 2010 elections, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Alliance of Young Democrats–Hungarian Civic Union (Fidesz) party pushed through constitutional and legal changes that have allowed it to consolidate control over the country’s independent institutions.
In Ukraine
Despite the kremlin’s indiscriminate and ruthless shellings of civilian infrastructure, tens of thousands of Jews gather in Uman to celebrate Rosh Hashanah and pray at Rabbi Nachman’s grave. They come every autumn.
President Zelensky held a meeting with the Ukrainain chief rabbi, Moshe Azman, dozens of rabbis from all over Ukraine, and Jewish soldiers.
In the EU
A trade war with China may be on the horizon. It seems that the Commission is going to impose tariffs on Chinese Electric Cars. Car makers in especially France, supported by Macron, have asked for this for a long time. The protectionist lobby has gained strength lately for several reasons. China’s efforts to increse its influence in different countries not only through investments but also by making it mandatory by law for Chinese firms to supply the Communist Party with sensitive information, has led authorities in several countries to ban Chinese firms from several markets. One exemple is Sweden where Huawei was not allowed to build 5G infrastrucure. More arguments for the EU protectionists were handed provided by Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act which includes a number of protectionist measures and incentives that make it attractive for European producers to establish production in the USA. But the strongest impetus was of course provided by the little person in the kremlin. His genocidal war against Ukraine made export controls make the headlines.
All of this have already begun to have impacts on who we trade with and where we invest. Firms are adjusting their supply chains due to their own and their governments’ security concerns. What next then? Friend-shoring, near-shoring, and re-shoring are some concepts all meaning less trade that are discussed. Is this de-globalisation the end of globalisation? I sincerely hope not. In any way, the gains of globalisation in the future will be smaller than in the past. The effects can be mitigated by larger free trade areas. The obvious one is between the EU and the USA but countries in other continents should also be included. I fear however, that the current protectionist wind is too strong to allow that.
The kremlin’s war crimes
No war has been so thoroughly documented and reported as this war. We are all aware of the russian troops’ atrocities. Mass murder, gang rapes, torture, mass deportations of Ukrainian children.
That means that those that demand negotiations where Ukraine should cede territory for peace, are saidists. They are perverts.
Every orch soldier on Ukrainian soil is a war crime.
The scale of muscovy’s war crimes has reached so enormous proprtions that the the International Criminal Court decided to open an office in Kyiv.
We read a lot about the war crimes in newspapers, on the web sites of the UN, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other organisations. But we seldom get to know the experience first-hand from Ukrainians who have been subject to the atrocities. There is however a web site that provides Ukrainians a space to share their experiences of the war crimes. It is Svidok.org.
Svidok is your personal war journal. Where you can safely and securely store your experiences of living through the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and collect evidence of all the atrocities and war crimes that were committed by the Russians.
Svidok has been built by the proud citizens and friends of Ukraine, in partnership with the AI for Good Foundation, to ensure the truth of this war is accurately documented.
The British PM, Risak, revealed in the Parliment that muscovy targeted a civilian Liberian cargo ship with multiple cruise missiles as it rested in the Ukrainian port of Odesa. Had it not been for the Ukrainian air defences, the ship would have been destroyed. According to the British Foreign Office, muscovy has destroyed 280,000 tonnes of grain since it pulled out of the UN deal. Officials, from the Foreign Office also said Russian attacks had damaged 26 port infrastructure facilities in Odesa, Chornomorsk and Reni since July.
In muscovy, aka russia
Dont mention that the war began in 1939, Kim III, Dzerzhinsky is back on the piedestal, Armenia turns to the USA for security, an Austrian prostitute moves to muscovy, sanctions bring down planes from the air and make farming difficult
It is a crime to talk about or even briefly mention that the WWII began as a direct consequence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between Hitler and Stalin. I’m writing this 17 September, the day in 1939 when the Red Army attacked Poland in the back. Many telegrams were sent between Berlin and the German embassy in moscow during the days before, during and after this day. They can be found on the Yale’s web page. In the telegram below, the German ambassador in moscow informs his foreign minister that he was summoned to Stalin at 2 o´clock in the morning. Stalin told the Nazi ambassador that the Red Army would attack Poland and wanted German aircraft to stay out of its way as Stalin would begin to bomb Lviv.
Source: Yale Law School
putin and King Kim III of Not so democratic People’s Monarchy of North Korea met to discuss weapons to muscovy and food to the monarchy. The monarchy’s subjects will be fed after providing evidence of bowing their heads 24 times a day before a picture of King Kim III.
The Kim III - putin Summit
Source: Oleksiy Kustovsky (Kusto),
Converging towards North Korea 2.0
putin asking King Kim III for ammunition shows how desperate he is. One of the least developed countries cannot supply a continous flow of weapons to an ongoing war of that scale. As a result of the meeting, putin will probably seel nuclear technology to Kim III in exchange for artillery ammunition.
The fact that muscovy has voted in the UN in favour of sanctions preventing North Korea from getting such technology will probably not bother putin. He’s violated a large number of treaties, and agreements already.
muscovy shows more and more similarities with North Korea according to three analysts that Svenska Dagbladet talked to. The countries have in common that they are both led by autocratic leaders ruling with iron fists, oppress and control their citizens, extensively use propaganda, prevent their citiziens from traveling abroad, and are obsessed with nuclear weapons. In my opinion, putin is not in control of muscovites to the extent that Kim III is and muscovites can still travel abroad even if it’s becoming more difficult.
Just to prove that he is a dictator, the little bunker czar ordered a statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police, to be erected in Moscow outside the headquarters of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). One of these days, someone might spill it to putin that Dzerzhinsky holds the Polish record of killing muscovites.
The overwhelming power of the President resulting from the extremely long term in office combined with the lack of any checks and balances such as a strong parliament, an independent judiciary, free media and a vibrant civil society has turned the Russian Federation into a de facto dictatorship,
PACE knows their business. Here is Varieties of Democracies’s assessment of how the situations for the institutions mentioned above have developed since the little person became “president”.
Source: Varieties of Democracy. Note: The indicators are explained on Vdem’s website. While the indicators for Civil society and censorship range from 0 to 4, the other two range from 0 to 1. 0 is of course what you would expect in a dictatorship like muscovy.
It was never safe to be in a militarly alliance with muscovy/soviet
The regime is losing face in Armenia. Armenia who relied on troops from muscovy to protect Nagorno-Karabach from Azerbaijan, is also a member of the muscovy-led security organisation Collective Security Trust Organisation together with Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kirgisistan, and Tajikistan. However, since the kremlin’s word is worth less than rat shit, the Armenian PM now looks to the USA for protection.
Calling on the big protector — Russia in Armenia’s case — each time conflict flared was simply unsustainable, he argued.
“The model by which we have problems with our neighbors and we have to invite others to protect us — it doesn’t matter who these others are — is a very vulnerable model.”
To increse its security, Armenia therefore holds military drills with the USA instead.
Being part of a military alliance with muscovy is useless as people in Eastern Germany found out in 1953, Hungarians in 1956, and Czechs in 1968. The Warzaw Pact is, to my knowledge, the only pact that attacked itself.
If it’s any consolation for the little person in the kremlin, he is getting a new citizen. GlasnostGone reports that the former Austrian foreign minister Karin Kneissl, who in 2018 danced with Putin at her wedding, will move to St Petersburg to work at an academic centre. Academic my arse. Or hers.
Kneissl dancing with putin in Wienna, in front of MH17, in Syria and next to Nemtsov’s body in moscow.
Source: GlasnostGone
The little person is also trying to show his muscovites that Air defence doing what is should. Let’s see if that works.
Source: British Ministry of Defence
Sanctions are crippling muscovy
While on the subject of flying objects, one of muscovy’s airplanes ceased to be one and turned into a crashing object. An Airbus passenger plane, stolen from Irelan I think, suddenly felt a craving for the earth and landed on a field in the Novosobirsk region. The field was not harvested. Possibly due to lack of harvesting machines or parts thereof. Anyway, sanctions are working.
Sanctions are creating more problems in muscovy. Since muscovy is a failed state, it has a lack of, believe it or not, fuel. muscoy’s agricultural minister is warning about an agricultural disaster. There isn’t enough fuel to harvest and sow winter crops. The minister talked about a halt in exports of petroleum products. This will of course never happen because the little bunker czar needs the revenues from oil exports to finance his genocidal war. The agricultural minister also carefully added he did not suggest this as an initiative, but only thought out loud. It remains to be seen if that prevents him from falling out of an open window from the 10th floor, drinking polluted tea or wearing chemically intoxicated underpants.
The price of fuel is increasing to levels forcing ordinary muscovites leave their cars at home. Easier said than done if you leave in muscovy cities where there are something akin to public transportation but mor most muscovites, public transportaton is a joke.
In the war
What air defence doing 1?
It is always burning in occupied Crimea. Last Tuesday night, Ukraina hit a shipyard in Sevastopol where muscovy keeps its Black Sea Fleet ships. At least a submarine and a landing ship have been damaged. But more importantly, the shipyard itself is damaged and it won’t be possible to use it for some time now. muscovy instead attacked grain facilities in Ukrainian ports, an emergency service in Kharkiv and other civilian targets. In other words, normal orc business.
For some mysterious reason, Starlink ceased to function some 30 minutes after the attack on occupied Sevastopol began.
Elon is a vatnik.
I first read about the coincidence of Starlink and Sevastopol on Lars Wilderäng’s blog.
What air defence doing 2?
In Yevpatoria, on the west coast of occupied Crimea, Ukraine smashed two muscovite air defence systems. They got smashed with missiles, the kind of threats that the air defence systems are supposed find and destroy. This is just another example of how inferieror muscovy’s weapons are. It is time for NATO to stop fucking about and let muscovy find out.
Ukraine regained the contol of an oil rig in the Black Sea in the beginning of the week. It is believed that the raid was done to prepare the later attack on the shipyard in Sevastopol as GlasnostGone reports. The UAF took down some muscovite radar installations on the rig. Ukrainians are a clever bunch.
Do you remember the 100 Leopard tanks owned by Switzerland but stored in nothern Italy that could not be sent to Ukraine because of Swiss laws? They may be made indirectly available for Ukraine to use if a deal between Germany, Greece, and Switzerland is made. Keep your fingers crossed.
Shoigu may fall out of a window soon. When asked by a reporter if muscovy would win the war, he shrug his arms.
The reckless and uselss orcs might have hit Romanian territory with one of its drones. At least parts of orc drones have been found on the Romanian side of the Danube. The Romanian Foreign Ministry has consequently ordered the orc ambassador to be spanked, although only verbally so. The inherent carelessnes of muscovy was also demonstrated last year as one of the orc idiots in a fighter jet tried to shoot down a RAF aircraft. Twice. The first missile missed, the other malfunctioned and fell into the Black Sea. Why did the idiot try to shoot? Because the order he received from the ground was ambigous: “You have the target”. He interpreted this as an order to fire.
This shows how utterly stupid and careless the orcs are. Orders to fire must be precise and impossible to misinterpret. Like in NATO.
But the UAF is doing great without NATO. When they liberated Andriivka, they totally eliminated muscovy’s 72nd brigade. Totally. An orc brigade normally consists of 2,000 - 3,000 orcs. The 72nd had already been decimated a bit but anyway lost the major part in Andriivka when they were outsmarted by the UAF.
The little person in the bunker has ordered his troops to save cruise missiles for the winter. When the winter comes, he will order his orcs to hit Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
Source: British Ministry of Defence
On the disinformation war front.
My reply to a vatnik in the newspaper Folkbladet was published 4 September which I didn’t notice until 12 September. Anyway, if you subscribe to my posts, you have recieved it. If not, you can find it on my blog
here.
This old Swedish woman is nuts. It is the infamous Agneta Norberg who openly declared her support for muscovy’s genocidal war against Ukraine. She believes everything is negative for the USA. Everything.
I wrote about her and the trouble she caused for her own organisation Women for Peace in my post “Week 34”.
In Sports.
In football, Sweden lost by 1 - 3 against Austria last Tuesday. Our team actually played well during the first half. The forwards and the midfield moved the ball around fast and found each other easily to the Austrian defenders dismay. However, we lacked the final edge in our attacks. The Austrian goalie wasn’t seriously tested. And then it fall fell apart. After a few minutes in the second half, I turned the TV off.
The hockey season has begun. The first round out of 52 was played last Thursday. My team, AIK, who are in the second division this year too, will have to wait until 22 September to play their first game. This year, AIK have five Canadians who hopefully will bring some good fortune to my team. Or maybe not, AIK have lost most of their friendly games. Believe it or nor, but for the second year in a row, Stockholm won’t have a team in the first division. I remember days when not only AIK and Djurgården played in the first divison but also Hammarby.
Not very far from where I write this, the European Table Tennis Championship in ongoing, So far we’re doing good. The men’s team has made it to the final where they will meet Germany on Sunday night.
The rugby world cup is ongoing. This tournament is too large. What is the point of having New Zealand smash Namibia by 71 - 3, or Ireland Romania by 82 - 8? Twenty teams are just too many. It should be organised in a first division, second division and so on as in football, hockey, and other sports leagues.
Week 37 2023
What fiction are you reading?