Hi James,

Yes, you can send your first $ 100 to the Hamlyn Fistula relief Fund. I'll match it and that will mean one complete operation :)

Cheers,

Joe

Hi again James,

Perhaps you're right, since Putin hasn't invaded Ukraine yet. So maybe I've been too hard on him, and on reflection, on all imperialists.

After all, in Africa or India or Ireland, the answer to the question, "What did the British ever do for us?" can be answered with a string of innovations, in education, health, infrastructure. What might have happened WITHOUT the benefit of British rule is too awful to think about.

I can now see the merits of imperialism - for example, if we look at Ireland today, a 'country' whose denizens all speak English or an inferior version of it, and who mostly watch English TV, barely forty miles across the sea from the rest of the UK, in an economic mess (as it has been for most of the time since its 'liberation'), surely the question must arise -

* wouldn't 'Ireland' be better off back under the English ?

After all, it's never really been a country, just a melange of fighting, feuding, bare-arsed bandit tribes, who believe in rocks and trees as gods, living on potatoes.

We don't hear of the constant attacks by backward Irish, mostly extreme nationalists, against peaceful English people trying to help them out of their morass of ignorance. Those English have no protection from attacks, but if everybody knew the truth, they would all concede that English liberation and re-integration of 'Ireland' back under the Crown is the most logical, positive and peaceful way for the population there.

How's that sound ?

Cheers,

Joe

Still a week to go, James :)

I wonder how the left will explain all this away:

http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/europe/european-far-right-backs-putin-over-crimea

http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-ames-europes-far-right-is-embracing-putin-2014-4?IR=T

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11241676

And since a lot of the European far-right's grievances have to do with Muslim immigration, that might be a slight problem for the left too, how to blindly support all three - Putin, the far-right AND the Islamists.

But after all, they are all anti-US, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi James,

Well, April is over, and the Crimea has been invaded and incorporated into Old Russia. The Luhansk and Donestsk regions seem to have been over-run, the Russian flag is everywhere, the TV stations have been seized and now run Russian programs. Hmmmm, I wonder if you could call that 'invasion' ?

Either way, I'll send off my $ 100.

So where to now ? Will the Tsarists try similar tactics in Mariupol and Odessa, and then 'incorporate' southern Ukraine into the old empire as well ? My suspicion is that they had more trouble in eastern Ukraine than they expected, in that the central government of Ukraine manifestly did not, and perhaps could not, provide them with any pretext to launch a full-scale invasion. Devilishly cunning of them.

But my bet is Putin will still push on, seize southern Ukraine, and perhaps north-east Ukraine as well around Kharkiv, within a month or so.

What do you reckon ?

Cheers,

Jo