What in the world is going on

 

So what’s going on in the rest of the world? If anyone thought that Sweden and Finland joining NATO was a done deal, think again. The two most anti-democratic, Putin-friendly leaders in the bloc—Turkey’s Recep Erdogan and Hungary’s Viktor Orban—remain adamantly opposed, obviously using their refusal for blackmail purposes. Erdogan charges that Sweden harbors “terrorists” sympathetic with Kurdish separatists, and is angered that NATO has placed sanctions on Turkey for purchasing Russian-made military hardware. The EU, meanwhile, has withheld economic aid to Hungary because it continues its downward spiral into dictatorship. Back in 2018, Vox noted that in Orban’s Hungary there exists what could be called

“soft fascism”: a political system that aims to stamp out dissent and seize control of every major aspect of a country’s political and social life, without needing to resort to “hard” measures like banning elections and building up a police state.

Currently Orban—who like most populist authoritarians uses fear of “change” from immigration to rally support for his regime—is calling for the end of all sanctions against Russia, particularly in light of the fact that his “friend” Putin has decided to cut gas exports through the southern pipelines; he knows that Erdogan and Orban are the most likely proxies to undermine the EU’s program of sanctions and continuing support of Ukraine’s war effort.

Meanwhile, CNBC reports that Europe’s plans to replace two-thirds of lost Russian oil and gas this winter are “wildly optimistic.” Russia claims that it has stopped all exports through the Nord Stream1 and the southern pipelines due to “repair problems,” but there accusations of deliberate sabotage on the northern line; as mentioned, Putin is likely playing a “friendly” game of  blackmail with the two most waffling participants in the sanction packages.  The EU hopes the U.S. will aid in the supply of liquefied natural gas, but it will come at an even steeper price because of the need to refine natural gas in that form.

So we learned that once Russia’s “volunteer” army was mostly used-up and moving backward, and since Putin’s and his stooges initial threats of nuclear retaliation were not taken seriously, he announced a “partial mobilization” of 300,000 souls. These were supposed to be men with previous military experience, but it appears that anti-war protestors and men with no military experience and outside the normal eligibility range are being rounded-up to serve, which has caused angst even among Putin's supporters.

Thousands of Russians have fled the country, but what is of particular interest is that Putin had tried to tamp-down the possibility of anger against his regime close to “home” by forcing into service ethnic minorities from Siberia and the rather sparsely inhabited eastern regions of Russia, drawing much consternation amongst a population that understands even less why the country is at war with Ukraine. Radio Free Europe reported “Last weekend, a protest was held by women in another region in Russia's Far East, Yakutia, over what locals feel is a 'disproportionate' recruitment of ethnic minorities to the war in Ukraine, calling it 'a genocide" against them.'” The image below shows some women who were detained during this protest; they clearly are not your typical “Russians,” and there is reason to believe that they believe their men are just going to be numbers adding to the body bag count:

 

Meanwhile, the Russians are back to hammering Ukrainian civilian targets with weapons that are apparently designed for the purpose when they are not used for their intended “purpose”—in this case anti-aircraft missiles, which obviously indicates that the Russian military is scraping the bottle of the barrel for offensive weaponry. After what is being regarded as a sham referendum in still occupied territory, Putin is set to announce the annexation of four new “provinces”…

 

…although previously at least the Donbas (Donetsk) region was supposed to be an “autonomous” entity, but its absorption into Russia should make it clear that the annexation of all of Ukraine was always Putin’s intention, and can be the only logical explanation why he invaded Ukraine at all.

In the meantime, at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, both China and India made it known that they were becoming frustrated with the continuing war in Ukraine, realizing that their support of Russia economically will not prevent in the coming months economic hardship that helps no one, as well as food supply conditions that are only going to get worse as Russia continues to destroy grain reserves or blocks exports from Ukraine. Despite receiving “cheap” energy from Russia, most of China and India’s energy exports come from other oil-producing nations, and prices from those sources are the same as it is from the rest of the world.

On our side of the globe, it still appears that in Brazil's first round of elections next week, that former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will not only win a plurality of votes, but possible a majority to win the presidential election outright over Jair Bolsonaro. It is interesting to note that the popular Lula was expected to defeat Bolsonaro in 2018 before he was hit with trumped-up charges of corruption that forced him out of the race; the charges were eventually thrown out, and he was allowed to run again. The far-right Bolsonaro is still talking like he is taking a page out of the Trump handbook for defeat-denying and rousing the troops for a January 6-type takeover. The major concern is that the ex-military Bolsonaro has many friends in the military establishment, and whether the military will respect the election results if called upon to quell a Bolsonaro-engineered uprising.

Back to Europe, Italy has elected a new leader whose political party has roots in Mussolini’s fascist movement. Hillary Clinton came under fire recently when she made an ignorant fool of herself by claiming that the probable elevation of a woman, Giorgia Meloni, as prime minister represented a “break with the past” and “that is certainly a good thing.” Meloni’s neo-fascist party took control the government in the past election, and although she attempted to “soften” her rhetoric in the weeks prior to election day, one thing she did not refrain from was anti-immigrant agitation, which as we have seen is the way to “unite” people against a “common enemy” that isn’t each other. What comes next is not entirely certain, since while Meloni clearly has white nationalist and culture war beliefs, she apparently is a firm supporter of the idea of Italy as a “Western” country, opposed to Russia’s “eastern” leanings.

Meanwhile, in the UK things have not improved much on the political scene since Liz Truss replaced Boris Johnson as prime minister. In fact, it seems that the common feeling is that while Johnson looked "mental," Truss is "mental," and there are a few videos of her being exactly that. As a teenage left-wing activist, Truss denounced the monarchy and called for its abolition. In 1996 she switched to the conservative party; this must have discombobulated her thought processes, because "Liz Truss being mental again" isn't even a "joke" term anymore (in British slang it means "crazy"), but one of real concern. 

Here Jonathan Pie opines about the sad state of the UK these days after 12 years of conservative rule, and should serve as a warning to voters in this country who think "life" will be "better" backing Republicans who back energy companies that are making record profits off their misery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5aWtcx02ZI&list=PL8BDB0961C1CEF286  

A few days ago Pie offered this update on the situation, with the Tory government knowing they probably won't survive the next election so they are pulling out all the stops giving as many handouts to the rich as they can while working class people wonder how they are going to survive this winter after the conservatives basically gutted social programs and the national health system:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-V5FVludFk

"Trickle down economics" didn't work under Reagan, and it won't work now wherever it is tried. All it does is increase inequality, and as is happening in the UK today facing inflation and rising energy costs, it is utterly senseless to pass tax cuts for the rich and thus reducing the budget when ordinary people need some form of security now.

 And then there is Iran, its economy still under pressure from U.S. sanctions, which became the scene of protests after a woman who was arrested by the “morality police” for wearing her hijab “incorrectly,” and was apparently beaten to death while in police custody. This sparked protests in a country in need of a reason to protest the conditions being overseen by the fundamentalist regime. Protests including included the burning of hijabs…

 

…but police crackdowns have tamped down such displays of late.

Perhaps some people think that none of this is any our concern, but it should be a reminder that people in other countries—even in countries “like ours”—have their own problems, and probably consider our problems in the same light as we do their own.