Vladimir Milov served under Vladimir Putin as his Deputy Energy Minister. Since then they had a little fall out. US General H. R. McMaster interviewed him for his show ‘Battlegrounds’ (organized by the Hoover Institute). In the interview Mister Milov shares with us some insights into Putin’s rise, the inner workings of the administration in Russia and the attitude of the public. The full recording is long and you find it here.
This video summarises and adds illustrations to the audio. Unfortunately, the microphone and/or sound setting of the original document are not great and I do not know how to improve on that. If somebody can clean it up and make it available to me, I will re-upload it with the polished sound. But in any event it is easily comprehensible still. On some segments (notably at the beginning) the voice modulation sounds strange. This is because my cuts “corrected” grammar flaws or pre-empted an interruption of the interviewer that make listening to it rather more difficult. They do not misrepresent Vladimir Milov’s views (and everybody can check the original to prove me right).
Helen Dale’s first novel ‘The Hand That Signed The Paper’ won critical acclaim and a variety of prestigious prizes like the Miles Franklin Award. Yet, what followed her heightened visibility in the public eye was not a privileged pathway to more success, but a decades-long cancel-culture witchhunt. In her book she described the pressures on and the weaknesses of Ukrainians during WWII. Stalin committed a genocide against them only a few years earlier. The Nazis, at the time, looked like an opportunity to break free from Russian control. It is this historical dilemma Vladimir Putin weaponizes against Ukraine today. In those dark years a disproportionate number of Holocaust enablers emerged from this brutalised country. Cultures change. Ukrainians have made huge strides in the past. One very visible, and thus often repeated, example is that they voted for a president who is the descendent of survivors of both major genocides the country had seen, the Holocaust and the Holodomor.
Éric Zemmour runs for president of France. I have dubbed Éric Zemmour’s candidacy speech with my own translation and added the melody again to recreate the sentiment of his original delivery.
I don’t hold any rights on his speech and less so on its visual part, but I can safely assume Monsieur Zemmour’s consent to my use of it since it is the defining nature of a political campaign to see its material widely spread.
The Schmidt theatre in Hamburg dismisses one of its stars for a joke. It is just the latest cancel culture absurdity and I will run you though the joke and provide its cultural context. Some waiters did not like to hear it and complained to the owners of the place.
Comedy used to be equally irreverant to all groups and Mr Ray does not wish to apologize. He insists on his right to express himself and pledges to continue the production of art worth its name. Despite these dire corona times, which are difficult for many industries and as such also for stand-up artists, he is now searching for a new opportunity
The punk band “Egotronic” made a music video against “Nazis”. Their Nazi characters resemble suspiciously conservative columnist Matthias Matussek and the guests of his last birthday party. They made some mistakes, though. Mario Müller, a member of the Generation Identity, was e.g. replaced with a Martin Sellner name-alike. Still, to the satisfaction of their viewers, you can watch a tramp shooting them while the band sings, “when you defend yourself, the outcry is loud”. Indeed the video illustrates very well what the left understands as “defence” or “resistance”. Pffff…people who think defence were a reaction to offence are reactionary, anyway.
From time to time I do some TV reviews (previous ones here). Today: satire show “extra3” which is aired by public broadcaster NDR.
Presenter Christian Edel begins with “Poorly qualified people have no chance on the job market. Wrong. At Verfassungsschutz they make it right to the top.” He shows the now infamous, controversial Chemnitz video and mimics the mother calling her child back with “Rabbit-cutie, you stay here.” He adds, “And he does it. It is the evidence that right-wing guys still listen to their Fuhrer/leader.”
Around 3:50 he mimics a phone conversation in which Maaßen talks to interior minister Horst Seehofer. The joke is somehow that he did not say to him why he has doubts. Seehofer-side: “Come on, the beginning letter.”
At 5:00 people test Maaßen’s glasses. They say that they see only black and white, and conspiracies everywhere, but not a Hitler salute. The woman says that she questions everything, grabs her hair and wonders whether she were even a German. It is probably a dogwhistle to antisemites.* The loyalty of Jews to their nations has always been questioned.
7:40 “Did Hans-Georg Maaßen try to help Horst Seehofer with his public doubts on the video; in his fight against Angela Merkel? Is it a conspiracy?” The background shows a picture of Maaßen and Seehofer with the words “The Bigot Conspiracy.” Edel continues with “Seehofer has only one goal: tormenting Merkel. I think that has come to be his only purpose in life. Horst Seehofer torments and provokes Merkel whenever he can.”
Seehofer is quoted with, “If I were not a minster, but a private citizen, I might have joined the march [in Chemnitz]”
9:40 A news show is mimicked. The “look and feel” resembles that of the 1930s. They use such a weird movie cut that I don’t even understand what he is saying with these rrrrrrrrrr sounds that were ubiquitous in the 1930s (probably to make up for the low quality of sound recordings by over-emphasizing consonants). Alice Weidel is called “blonde, German AfD girl” using the Southern German/Austrian word for girl (Hitler was Austrian).
At 11:00 Green party politician Katrin Goering-Eckhardt says that “What Mr Maaßen is doing, is usually known from right-wing radicals.” Somehow Seehofer’s laughing is also supposed to be funny.
11:40 Edel asks, “How can Merkel stand him [Seehofer]? I can tell you how. She does not hear him anymore.” She is shown with earmuffs. Dumb people laugh.
12:15 He complains about the internet as such because there were “alternative facts.” Even in America few people know that the trained attorney Kellyanne Conway used the legal term “alternative facts” absolutely correctly the way it was used for many decades. As an example for the dangerous, false information he gives out the supposedly influential theory that Merkel was the daughter of Adolf Hitler. He expands it to make clear that it is really, really a silly theory. He ends with the claim that there really are people who believe that, the extended version with Merkel being bred in vitro from Hitler’s semen after he had a plane crash … .
14:05 A man builds a shelf. He used the manual from the internet, from Breitboard. And, of course, it’s skewed, but the readers of Breitboard still believe that it is straight. Right-wing idiots. Because the father only believes alternative facts from the evil internet, all his reparations at home result in catastrophes. The oven only heats to 30 degree, but he claims that this is healthy as a study from the Texan Trump Institute showed. Then he removes the breaks from his daughters bike because 10,000 people “liked” a report that says that “breaks are fake news.” Then the daughter asks her father to sign off that he had seen her “felt B” on a school test because she realizes that felt facts are not that bad. The wife has a recipe from website “truly-true-cooking-tips.de” and it includes his socks. He eats her meal.
16:00 Something about a diet that is neither funny nor interesting. It just explains it.
18:20 A factual video is shown that could also run on your local news channel. It talks about a village that wanted fewer trucks passing their narrow highstreet and got plastic traffic bollards instead. No intention to make it humorous.
23:00 Edel complains that there were no protests about the banking rescue acts after the financial crash 2007.
23:40 A news ticker begins with not very relevant news items. There is not even an attempt at comedy.
26:00 He sings “Sorry seems to be the hardest word.” It is a miracle, a sign of G-d: German leftists cannot SING!** He goes:
“What must happen that you understand. Your game is over. Your time is gone. Do you protect extremists from the constitution? It was meant to be the other way around. You’d do a favor to yourself and to us all, trust in you is gone anyway, no eyesight/understanding, and then we had misunderstood you, yeah sure, quitting seems to be, quitting seems to be the hardest word. It takes one forever to build an airport. The next builds havoc at the G20 summit, the third only makes himself [here comes a portmanteau of the name Horst Seehofer and moron] because politics isn’t his thing. Wowi [the mayor responsible for the airport delay] left late, but he left. Hans-Georg [Maaßen], Olaf [Scholz, finance minister, ???], Horst [Seehofer] stayed. Now, [Social Democrat] Wowi feels like a little fool because since Wowi nobody was like Wowi. You would do yourself and us all a huge favor, trust in you is already gone. You don’t want to know it, but your bottom line is shit. And this is even rounded up. Quitting seems to be, quitting seems to be, the hardest word.”
These people constantly complain about being bullied by others. The lack of self-awareness is palpable. I should add that I like comedy so much that I absolutely enjoy comedians who are usually considered cringy by conservatives. I find Joy Behar funny and I even get that Kathy Griffin makes up for a lot of weak writing with her delivery style. When I say that something is much worse than Michelle Wolf, it means something.
* I have read since that Maaßen is practicing Catholicism. My money is still on a Jewish background.
**I know, I’m being quite rich here with my very limited singing skills.
Goldstein 