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).
The airport escape route is about to close soon, yet more people are fleeing the Taliban. Nobody knows where they will go, through Tajikistan, through Uzbekistan, through Turkmenistan, through Pakistan, through Iran, anywhere. But Angela Merkel knows already where the most needy are. While the media shows the heart wrenching images from the airport. She offers money. To whom? To Non-governmental organizations, of course. Her buddy Ursula von der Leyen adds some more and, whoops, the bill runs up to 800 million € ($940 million).
Long and heavy rainfalls have flooded Germany over the weekend. The most affected areas are the states Rhineland-Palatinate and North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW). 170 deaths have been confirmed, but many people are still missing. Naturally the politicization of the events is slow because even the most reckless players have an incentive not to appear too reckless and unconcerned about the plight of the people on the ground. But slowly media articles dribble down suggesting that this flood is a manifestation of the omnipresent man-made climate change. The New York Times offers additional humidity in warmer air as a reasoning. German magazine Focus expects ‘permanent rain and droughts’ to come. Both. Not much effort goes into sorting the logic out and to educate the public. In fact the New York Times mentioned explanation was crammed into a single sentence. Their readers are supposed to do all the education on their own.
[Sources in the descriptin box.]
Today, a number of planes have been delayed by the activist group “Extinction Rebellion.” They climbed onto the property, chained themselves up, used glue, unfolded a banner and gave stupid speeches. I show you the footage of two of their sermons and give my two cents.
Coincidentally Rebecca Hargreaves and German Blogger luisman raised a similar question today. Do we retreat? Should we retreat? Should we hold the ground and fight? How should we fight? And what would you sacrifice? All of these questions deserve a book on their own.
Luisman begins his article by giving a number of historical examples of when a new group moved in areas mostly peacefully, demanded better treatment and at the height of their power turned against the previously prevailing group. The description does not fit all examples but it represents the gist of it. At least this is what I see as the gist of it. Luisman gathered from the examples that the old group was too “liberal” and allowed its subversion. I see that again and again and I have my doubts whether we get any further when we just vaguely speak about “too much freedom”. When it comes to the West, I think of the groups that gave great freedoms to their opponents and were punished for it, and I see the religious groups, the patriots and the libertarians. But their fault was not too much liberalism (here: pro-freedom), it was a lack of focus.
I take the churches as an example: All energy went into anti-gay fights and abortion control. Meanwhile no outrage, no protest, nothing could be rallied against all these people who claim Christians had burnt more witches than women available. There are folks who speak of millions of midwives. So the moral- and back-breaking smear machine had all the freedoms to go wild and lie unopposed. The churches as well as the other non-left groups failed to demand some level of honesty and organize rallies to do something about it.
I see the core of our Western civilisation in the repeated readjustments of priorities. From the ten commandments over the Magna Carta to the US constitution, the hallmarks of history were a reduction of the underwood of rules and ideas to the minimal consensus that we were willing to defend as a civilisation. It has become increasingly difficult to formulate such a consensus and particularly the left – but also some on the right – are too dumb to even understand the importance of agreeing on a minimal framework that everybody reads/knows, everybody understands, and everybody defends. Currently five German states demand that the constitution should be bloated to include LGBT love cuddle whatever. A constitution that is too crammed and therefore remains unread by the wider population is utterly worthless. It controls nobody.
Luisman writes that the new group causes the old groups to flee. Especially European cities have less and less indigenous population. The UK has the first Capital with a non-native majority. Other cities follow that model (e.g. Frankfurt/Main in Germany, famous for the big airport and the stock exchange). People either move to the countryside or to a place with less immigration, or at least less Muslim immigration. Rebecca Hargreaves is also moving out of Seattle to the countryside. I don’t disclose personal information about myself, but a part of a cowardly retreat is inevitable. I would say that it is not only reasonable for one’s own well-being, but it makes sense strategically. My obvious retreat is that I write under a pseudonym. My views expressed here, plus the ones I espouse in my daily affairs offline, amass to a level of “offense” that would result in a punishment strong enough to effectively silence me. So what good would be in more boldness?
Today it was announced that Siegmar Faust is no longer allowed to work as a guide in the stasi-prison-turned-memorial Hohenschönhausen. During the socialist dictatorship in East Germany he was locked up multiple times, at one instance for more than 400 days in an isolated cell, for exercising his freedom of speech which was guaranteed in the constitution of the regime. The mysterious article on ZEIT online says he has AfD-like views, but does not get specific. They also bemoan that he gave an interview to newspaper Berliner Zeitung in which he asked for clemency for red army faction terrorists Horst Mahler. The socialist is in prison for Holocaust denial. Faust has explicitely stated that he has no sympathies for Mr Mahler (and neither do I), but merely defending free speech is taken as evidence that one sympathises with the thought criminal at hand. By the way, Mahler is so indefensible that he shares the fate of all indefensible left-wing things: If it’s broken, then it’s yours (right-wing extremist).
German blogger Heimdallwarda recently asked if I consider leaving for Israel. The question haunts us all. More than half of French Jews plan to go. It will be very crowded and every home is “threatening the peace”. On the other hand many Jews stayed too long in Nazi Germany when there were options to flee. The situation is not nearly as bleak today. We should not only remember our history as victims that could have escaped, but should also take pride in our role as resistance warriors.
For me it is all a mix. My escape is into the pseudonym, the whispers. I choose to fight, and I choose the means of that fight both on a moral and a strategic basis, which I believe are tightly linked. Recently brilliant German blogger zweifelsfrau changed her fighting strategy from online activities to low-key offline strategies. And I assume that there is not just one way. Some use the internet to get information out, some march on the streets (usually ignored, sometimes derided by the media), some discuss their views with family, friends and even colleagues. Everybody has a different risk to take and everybody can absorb a different level of risk (children, financial/social standing etc.). This is not risk-free. Keep this in mind as you evaluate how far you can go.
Goldstein 