Carl Bildt On The Unclear Motivations of Russia

Carl Bildt is a Swedish diplomat and conservative politician. In a conversation with Russian dissident Vladimir Milov he addresses the fact that the motivations stated by Russia make no sense. Ukraine’s constitution even forbade a NATO membership. This was only changed after Russia annexed Crimea, occupied government buildings in the East of the country through proxy “separatist” forces and armed years of attempts at an insurrection.

The full conversation

creative commons pic used and the inspiration for the Hydra image

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Konstantin Kisin on the War in Ukraine

I summed up, re-organised and illustrated some of the points Konstantin made in his conversation with Triggernometry partner Francis Foster. You find the full conversation here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNnq8gMAE-8

Please, share my content! I try to upload fairly regularly. Sometimes, though, I invest time in improvements which is bad for the social media algorithms. This time I made a pause to set myself up to make these illustrations that I premiere today with this video.

I re-purposed a creative license image to speed up the process (I didn’t want to think up a street scenery):
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Street_in_Cartagena,_Colombia.jpg

Éric Zemmour’s Candidacy Speech (Dubbed)

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.

Is The Kabul Mess The End of A War Or The Start of Another Migration Wave?

The Biden administration and its NATO allies have scrambled out of Afghanistan in the most chaotic and irresponsible way: Weapons fell into the hands of the enemy and, in an attempt to not embarrass the now exiled government, the level of security was misrepresented leaving thousands trapped. During the preparation of the withdrawal no time was spent to identify those who could have moved to other places, non-Western countries, and in the rare cases of highly skilled and highly freedom-oriented individuals, to Western countries. Now, thousands of unknown passengers are transported to Western nations and nobody can identify who is deserving and who merely seeks their financial luck.

Was the war a mistake? After the initial revenge for 9/11 it seems to have grown into one. NGOs and many a military officer saw an opportunity to elevate their status and income. They did not honestly report the (lack of) progress to the citizens at home while more and more money sank into the swamp. Afghanistan was not ready to run its own affairs and won’t be anytime soon. It is a place where small advances can be encouraged, but large civilisational jumps can’t be imposed. The same holds true for immigrant populations. It is not enlightened to expect more of people than they can achieve. The individual can be advanced if he is open to it. Masses of people or entire countries will have to take their time.

The EU’s View On How China Rides The Wake of The Covid-19 Crisis With Their Smart City Gadgets

The European Union Institute for Security Studies is the independent, autonomous, totally separate advisory agency chaired by the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (i.e. the de facto Foreign Minister of the EU). It is the place that prepares the EU deities with their briefs on foreign policy. In the wake of the Covid-19 crisis Senior Analyst Alice Ekman wondered what China is actually up to. And she found the next hot thing, smart cities, which is whatever blinks and is remote from a barnyard.

If Europe does not act ambitiously, our cities could fall behind, become uncompetitive and antiquated, just as they were before Europe came up with Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter…*cough*. Meanwhile China’s is selling its ‘smart city’ technologies to developing countries and China being China bakes in authoritarianism tools and workshops along the way. Alice wonders if local authorities will resist to put Western citizens into shackles once the East Asian salesmen knock on their doors? And more questions arise for the rest of us. Will the Chinese sell smart building cranes to Tehran that smartly integrate gallows? Is the stuff even that terribly integrated at all?

The brief:
https://www.iss.europa.eu/content/towards-urban-decoupling-china%E2%80%99s-smart-city-ambitions-time-covid-19#_introduction