Some thoughts about blogs and blogging

Yesterday, I met up with my fellow-bloggers from While not null (over from Australia, whose splendid initiative it was to meet) and Politics, Economy, Society to chat about the future of blogs and blogging in the current age.

Blogging has gone through several changes since we got started many years ago. In the early years, just about everyone had a blog, but within two years (on average, according to Google), 90% of those blogs had fizzled out. The next phase was the monetisation of blogs, search-engine optimisation. This led to square kilometres of slop being (manually at this stage) produced with the commercial aim of driving online traffic to advertisers.

At the same time, other forms of social media began to expand, elbowing attention away from a form requiring more attention to read and indeed to produce. Blogging began to ebb. 

Twitter was originally categorised as a 'microblog'; Facebook moved in that direction when it added status updates. Indeed, I see my own blogging output fell sharply as I signed up for those two. It fell (from 250-300 posts a year to around 170-200 posts a year), but has stayed consistently at that level since around 2014. Since then, I've remained on Facebook but have quit Twitter after Musk deformed it.

My posts today tend to be longer and more considered than in the early days, but over the nearly 20 years since I started, there's a consistent thread running through the blog.

My blog aims to show over time the passage of time. That's the purpose of the 'This time x years ago' feature at the bottom of each post. Searchable memory of ordinary things – how they looked before they changed; the ever-shifting  texture of reality. What the railway used to look like, when the snow arrived, what local shops existed, what people drove, how the landscape changed, how a road looked like before all those new houses came. What seems mundane now won't in 2046.

I can now see just how far Poland has progressed since I started blogging, less than three years after joining the EU. Today, I can identify the tipping point at which Poland ceased being a post-communist hardship posting and became a normal country. It was the day I travelled from Warsaw to Kraków in a day and everything worked out fine – November 2014 ('Poland – it works!')

My blog is an authentic voice, increasingly rare on an internet in which so much prose has been professionalised, optimised, monetised or, now, AI-smoothed. My photography is there to prevent the blog becoming merely a diary of opinions. Over the years, thousands of photographs build up a visual record of Warsaw and southern Mazowsze which would be difficult to reconstruct retrospectively.

My old question about 'am I a generalist or specialist' is being settled; over the years a pattern is emerging; the topics I like to write about, those I tend to steer clear of (politics being one). 

In an age of AI-generated content, where writing style is becoming samey ("Not this. Not this. Not this. But this. And this is quietly important"), authenticity is all important. Today, synthetic, auto-generated text has led to the collapse of commercially driven blogs. This has cleared the ground for blogging to re-emerge purely on aesthetic, essayistic and archival terms. And this is where this blog fits.

Having been freed from the expectation of being mass-market commerce, I hope that the blog has established its place as a distinct literary and visual format and will survive into the future in the way that radio and cinema survived TV and TV has survived the internet.

Today I noticed that next year, Easter falls on 28 March. This means my Lenten cycle of blog posts will be finished before 1 April, being the 20th anniversary of this blog. The event will be marked with a very special post and a revamp with some new features.

This time last year:
Last evening in shirt sleeves?

This time two years ago:
Anomalous landscapes amid local forest

This time six years ago:

W(h)ither the DK50?

This time seven years ago:
A change in the weather

This time eight years ago:
Zamek Topacz classic car museum

This time 11 years ago:
Curry comes to Jeziorki
[It didn't stay long. Decor matters!]

This time 13 years ago:
Why we should all try to use less gas

This time 13 years ago:
Polish supermarket chain advertises on London buses

This time 18 years ago:
Well-shot pheasants

We Are Not Alone: ontological shocks are due

Those of you following the UAP disclosure process as it unfolds will be aware that there are currently several (three? four?) whistleblowers ready to testify under oath to the US Congress in open (and closed) hearings about recovered non-human craft. This is now serious shit - not crazy tales told by the mentally unstable. On US news media, from Politico to The Hill, from News Nation to CNBC, the buzz is right there - presenters no longer snigger and chuckle as they utter the word 'alien'.

Craft? How many? Twelve? Fifteen? It's clear from the rumours around Washington that the UAP issue is being taken seriously by American legislators and the US media. Four separate pieces of legislation have been passed since 2020 ensuring protection for whistleblowers coming forward to Congress with details of unacknowledged special-access programmes concerning reverse engineered off-world technology. Both the National Defense Appropriation Act for 2024, and Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 are mandating those who know about such programmes to come forward within 60 days.

From the latter:

(d) Notification And Reporting.—Any person currently or formerly under contract with the Federal Government that has in their possession material or information provided by or derived from the Federal Government relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena that formerly or currently is protected by any form of special access or restricted access shall—

(1) not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, notify the Director of such possession; and

(2) not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, make available to the Director for assessment, analysis, and inspection—

(A) all such material and information; and

(B) a comprehensive list of all non-earth origin or exotic unidentified anomalous phenomena material.

Wow. This is not tin-foil-hat-wearing crank conspiracy - this is the text of US legislation currently before Congress. 

Humanity is much closer than ever before to an admission that non-human intelligence is real, and that Homo sapiens is not the only technologically advanced species on this planet.

Are we ready for it? Will we be able to cope with the ontological shock?

Alien craft? Alien bodies? Alien abductions? Just imagine that this is real. Roll it around in your mind. What are you feeling?

Science won't be prepared for it. Possession by governments of alien craft - alien technology - perhaps even alien biology - would mean our scientists having to dismantle their current understanding of how the physical world functions, from subatomic particles to far-flung galaxies; the nature of time; spatial dimensions; and the history of our planet, our Cosmos and our species. Faster-than-light travel? Intergalactic travel? Time travel? Inter-dimensional travel? Anti-gravity technology?

The social implications of this are huge. In our post-truth world, we won't know what or whom to believe. Until one consistent narrative is formed, presented and generally accepted, all forms of lunacy can be taken as honest coinage. It may be that the narratives differ from country to country. From communist China to religious India, from credulous Russia to down-to-earth Australia. How long before we are all following the same story?

There's so much to ask.

How many forms of non-human intelligence share our planet with us? 

Where are they? Why do we only very rarely see any traces of them?

Are they benign, malevolent or neutral? What are their long-term plans?

What technology of theirs does mankind possess - and what have we managed to reverse-engineer?  What science do they know that we don't? How does that knowledge impact the current state of cosmology? How does this affect our human status hierarchy? How will it affect mental health?

Is there a metaphysical realm - consciousness (the soul) - life after death? The implications of learning 100% that there is would be a huge boost to religions, but they would have to radically alter their theologies to adapt. But - I would argue - it is easier to alter a theology than it would be to abandon hardcore materialism and adopt a metaphysical worldview that can encompass, for example, non-local consciousness or telepathy.

"Sit down and listen. Everything you've been taught is wrong. Here's the new paradigm. We are not alone. Several non-human species are also on this planet; this has been known for many decades, but humanity had been judged unprepared for the news. Who are they? Their biology is different. That's all I can say at this time. Their understanding of physics is way beyond ours.  What do they want from us? What is our ultimate fate as a species? We don't know." [Or we do know, but can't tell you. Those who believed us when we said there are no such things as flying saucers, so you'll believe this too.]

Local craft brewery, Browar Perun from Budzyszyn (6km away) has brewed an American Pale Ale for the occasion - First Contact.

This time last year:

Consciousness, Space and Time

This time last year:
Midsummer photo catch-up

This time three years ago:
Stormy high summer

This time four years ago:

The opening of the Raffles/Europejski hotel, Warsaw

This time seven years ago:
The ballad of Heniek and Ziutek

This time eight years ago:
Yorkshire's yellow bicycles

This time 13 years ago:
Horse-drawn in the Tatras

This time 14 years ago:
Rain, wind and fire

This time 15 years ago:
The Road beckons

Mutineers' march on Moscow - a turning point

Saturday saw me glued to Twitter. At times like this, following hundreds of accounts that track the Russo-Ukrainian war in detail, is by far and away the best method of staying up to date in a fast-changing situation. On Friday night, when much of Russia is incapacitated to one degree or another by alcohol, Prigozhin's mercenaries struck north towards Rostov-on-Don, leaving their prepared positions. On Saturday morning, they were in the city, the key logistics and command centre for the Russian invasion force. The military HQ was surrounded. By Saturday evening it was all over - Prigozhin had folded; a deal had been brokered by Lukashenka. The Wagner mercenaries who want to continue fighting Ukraine can do so under regular Russian army command; those that don't can seek sanctuary in Belarus.

The day's unfolding events were amazing to witness online; history in the making has never been so present. Knowing too that it was one bunch of evil murderers against another bunch of evil murderers, shooting down Russian high-value aviation assets, made the whole thing more interesting. Each Russian soldier less, mercenary or regular, was one less to hold back the Ukrainian counteroffensive. 

Prigozhin's stated aim was the removal of Russia's defence minister Shoigu and head of the armed forces, Gerasimov. His gripe was not, he suggested, with Putin, but with the corrupt incompetents that had led to Russia's battlefield humiliations. The build-up to the Wagner mutiny was ongoing for some weeks, with Prigozhin videoing his rants targeted at Shoigu and Gerasimov, who he claimed were depriving Wagner troops of ammunition on purpose. Some commentators have suggested that Prigozhin was actually getting the ammunition, but stockpiling it for a coup attempt.

Another interesting take was that Ukrainian intelligence had penetrated Prigozhin's inner circle, persuading him that Moscow was ripe for the taking, and that while Wagner were on their way, the rug was pulled out from under Prigozhin's feet, the supporters he was assured were waiting for him were fictional, and he was forced to parlay. And in doing so, by negotiating with Prigozhin, Putin was shown to the world to be weak. No longer a force to be reckoned with.

A historical parallel; a riposte to all those sceptics across the West who say the Ukrainian counteroffensive isn't delivering results... The D-Day landings happened on 6 June 1944; the Ukrainian counteroffensive is said to have begun on 5 June 2023, so we have a similar starting date. The Allied armies faced fierce German resistance, in and around Caen and Falaise. The breakthrough and the north-eastward dash that culminated in the liberation of Paris, didn't ultimately happen until 21 August 1944. By then, the Allies lost nearly 50,000 soldiers killed, lost over 4,100 tanks and over 4,000 aircraft. Despite having a numerical superiority over the Germans of nearly 3:1. 

But then the Waffen-SS hadn't left its defensive positions in Normandy to march on Berlin in protest at its treatment by the German High Command. Nor had the Waffen-SS been ordered by Hitler to disband and transfer all its tanks and heavy equipment to the Wehrmacht. 

As with the Allies in 1944, Good is on the side of Ukraine; the Russians are the evil party. Good will triumph.

This time four years ago:
Lifelong brand ambassador
[as if to prove the point, I'm wearing the same pair of shoes right now!]

This time six years ago:
How much for locally grown strawberries?

This time seven years ago:
Zamość - the beautiful, must-visit town of Poland's east

This time eight years ago:
Voting closes in citizens' participatory budget 

This time nine years ago:
Beginning of the end of PO [Civic Platform]

This time ten years ago:
Where's the beef? Fillet steak in Warsaw

This time 11 years ago:
W-wa Zachodnia spruced up for the football, W-wa Stadion reopened

This time 13 years ago:
Literature and biology

This time 15 years ago:
Old Nysa van spotted in Grabów

This time 16 years ago:
The oats in the neighbouring field rise high

A date for the history books

The road to UAP disclosure is long (I've said that it will take humanity 300 years to fully acclimatise to the fact that non-human intelligences are on our planet, and we're only some 80 years into the journey). Getting to grips with the notion that Homo sapiens isn't the most technologically advanced species upon our Planet Earth will not be easy, especially for the scientific community.

Yesterday's revelation by David Charles Grusch marked a massive milestone. In the clip below, he is being interviewed by Ross Coulthart for NewsNation, which broke the story on the same day as the Leslie Kean/Ralph Blumenthal piece for the Debrief. [Update October 2023: This is not the original clip, which has since been taken down, but a report about the interview aired later.]

Grusch's decision to step forward and blow the whistle is the direct consequence of the amendment to the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act 2022, which protects would-be UAP whistleblowers from reprisals. This stems from pressure from American citizens on their congressional representatives, leading to pressure from Congress on the machinery of power. From the 2017 disclosure of the US Navy aerial footage of the so-called 'Tic Tac' UFO in the New York Times, to  journey towards UAP disclosure has accelerated in recent years. It's been a long time coming, but the atmosphere around Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena today is quite different today than it was back in the 1990s or 1960s. With credible people like Lue Elizondo, Christopher Mellon, Garry Nolan on board and speaking out - and slightly more sceptical but open-minded scientists like Avi Loeb, Robin Hanson or Eric Weinstein - this is no longer a fringe topic attracting loopy conspiracy theorists. The 'pseudoscience' tag cannot be applied to any of the above names.

So... imagine yourself in a hangar on a US Air Force base (reputedly Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio, or Area 51 in Nevada), in the presence of an object which, on your close inspection, has evidently not been made by human beings. But has it come from another solar system? Another galaxy? Another time? Another dimension? Serious commentators refuse to speculate. So no one's talking about 'extraterrestrials' - the term is 'non-human intelligences'.

It is clear from analysis of sightings of anomalous phenomena over the years that whilst the vast majority (95%? 98%?) can be explained away, there remain those which cannot be dismissed as Venus low in the sky, a distant lighthouse, a Bart Simpson balloon or swamp gas - those which are more than mere missightings or fabrications. UFO sightings work like the Drake Equation; you start with a huge number of reports, and boil down from them just a tiny number of cases that stubbornly defy explanation. Over time, a consistent picture builds up from eye witness accounts, corroborated sometimes by sensor data (civilian or military radars, cameras etc). 

What we have here is a US intelligence-community insider corroborating rumours that have been circulating since WW2.

Those who've followed the UFO story (as I have since childhood, when my father borrowed a few flying saucer books for me from Ealing Public Libraries in the 1960s), will be familiar with everything David Grusch says. For those new to UFO lore, this is all incredible, dismissible.

For those who have followed the story - consider this analogy. You are a member of the jury. You have been on this case, on and off, for 30+ years. You've sat through countless witness testimonies, some clearly crackpots, others telling very credible stories. You've been asked to consider vast amounts of evidence, mostly in writing, some on video. The basic story is falling into place. Some crazy hypotheses are being re-examined; some rejected out of hand; others are slowly becoming accepted by fellow jury members. There's still no smoking gun, but the foreman of the jury asks you to consider the balance of evidence - and on that basis - what do you say?

Applying Occam's Razor, what else could it be? A disinfo/PsyOps project aimed primarily at China, to let the Chinese Communist Party wonder about how much alien tech the US and its private-sector defence contractors could have reverse-engineered since the alleged UFO crashes at Trinity (1945) and Roswell (1947)? A message to Putin and friends not to f*ck around?

I suspect it will be easier for spiritually inclined people to readjust to a new paradigm in which we are not alone in the universe. I have felt this for decades, so it's not the great ontological shock it will be to scientists whose neat Standard Model will start to unravel at the seams. Science is set to have some of its fundamental beliefs shaken to the core.

This time two years ago:
WinterCity/SummerCountry

This time three years ago:
Homage to Americana

This time four years ago:
This land is my land

This time eight years ago:

The day, seized.

This time 11 years ago:
Classic British cars for British week

This time 12 years ago:
Cara al Sol - a short story

This time 13 years ago:
Pumping out the floodwater

This time 14 years ago:
To Góra Kalwaria and beyond

This time 15 years ago:
Developments in Warsaw's exurbs

Disclosure day tomorrow?

The United States National Defense Authorization Act, passed late last year, stipulates that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence presents a report to Congress no later than October 31, 2022, about what the ODNI has learned about unidentified aerial phenomena. Previously known as unidentified flying objects, these terms (UAP and UFO) were created by the military to obfuscate the popularly used phrase 'flying saucer' in common use around the world.

So - tomorrow's the day. What will we learn? There are many scenarios. One is that the day will come and go without any announcement. [If there is one, it will appear on this site.] After all, the New York Times ran a story on Friday that 'many military UFO reports' are just aerial trash, foreign reconnaissance drones, or misidentifications of prosaic phenomena. Fair enough. Many - but all? We'd be worried if an unfriendly foreign power had drones that could fly at hypersonic speeds without visible means of propulsion, silently, without leaving vapour trails, do 90-degree turns imposing G-forces that would break apart any known earthly craft, and move effortlessly from space through air and into water. And cloak themselves effectively.

The New York Times story is not the ODNI's report that ufologists are waiting for. This seems to be a planted piece (it's not behind a paywall) that has a deeper purpose - the timing is not accidental. We shall see tomorrow if there will be some new disclosure coming from the US Government - though I doubt that there will be much. It's likely that there will be a few more revelations, maybe a video or two, some photos of craft of unknown origin, some hints of 'other worldly provenance' but nothing more.

The process of 'acclimation' - being accustomed, adapted or hardened to some new environment - will take decades longer. Current conditions - Russia's war in Ukraine, accelerating climate change, economic and political turmoil around the world - might make a bolder step toward disclosure a useful psy-ops play on the part of the US Government...

And so another scenario - a big announcement. Yes, there are craft, we have no idea where they come from, who pilots them, why they are here or what they want. But they have been reported by US military since the 1940s, and recorded on film, on radar and on multiple digital sensor platforms. The bigger one would be the above, plus "and we have in our possession crashed craft that we have unsuccessfully being trying to reverse engineer." The long-standing stories about the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico, would be acknowledged as true.

Being told from no less an authority than the US Government that mankind is not the only sentient and technological species of life form on this planet has the potential to freak people out. Are they friendly? Do they abduct humans? If so, why? Is there one species of alien on our planet or several? The 'who they are, why they are here, what they want - and how they got here' questions will not go away. Science, in particular will be keen to learn about anti-gravitic propulsion, zero-point energy, superluminal interstellar travel or indeed interdimensional travel. Religions will be keen to learn how their theology fits into a new understanding of the cosmos necessary to accommodate non-human technological sentience.

But hang on a second. Step back and apply Occam's Razor.

Individual cases of UFO sightings can be debunked, one by one, with rational explanations that sound way more plausible than the idea of craft piloted by intelligent beings from other worlds. But taken en mass, as a body of phenomena that has occurred worldwide over the past 80 years, phenomena displaying a large degree of commonality as to the characteristics of the craft - and in some cases their occupants - is impossible to dismiss lightly. When you hear hundreds of testimonies of eye witnesses speaking plausibly about what they have experienced, you begin to see the UFO issue differently. What do make of this, for example? Warminster, Wiltshire, 1965...

Are we reaching a tipping point in human history in which a new paradigm will open to us? We shall find out tomorrow. Personally - I don't think we'll get there tomorrow. Maybe a few new bits of information, but no bombshell. More tomorrow.

UPDATE 31 OCTOBER.

Here's the news; the Daily Mail runs this exclusive. A classified report was delivered to Congress. Rumours are that a redacted version will appear later this week.

This time last year:
Coping with time change (go to bed an hour earlier!)

This time two years ago:
A sustainable food system for rural Poland

This time three years ago:
Sifting through a life

This time five years ago:
Throwing It All Away

This time six| years ago:
Hammer of Darkness falls on us again

This time seven years ago:
The working week with the clocks gone back

This time nine years:
Slowly on the mend after calf injury

This time ten years ago:
Thorunium the Gothick

This time 11 years ago:
Łódź Widzew or Widź Łódzew 

This time 13 years ago:
A touch of frost in the garden

The Monarchy - my arguments for

Watching the funeral of Queen Elizabeth, and commenting on it for five Polish media channels, I found myself having to contrast the role of a hereditary head of state vs. an elected one. I must say - I prefer the former - though with an important caveat - lineage. The late Queen, and now King Charles III, have both spent much or all (in the case of the King) of their childhood and youth preparing for the role of monarch; Britain's Royal Family has a solid and generally reputable track history.

Having a head of state that is above party politics is such a blessing, which I can see so clearly in Poland where the current head of state is so deeply connected to the ruling party. I have written before about the desirability of a 'no-party state', in which there are no political parties, only technocrats elected to ensure citizens' protection (from crime, from foreign aggression, from disease, from setbacks in life through social security, from unscrupulous entrepreneurs) and that citizens have the wherewithal to flourish (education and infrastructure). 

The Queen's dedication to her duty, a lifetime of service, is at odds with the often venal motives that drive mere politicians (power -> money-> more power -> more money -> ad inf.). I see little that's noble in party politics right now in either Poland or Britain. In both cases, it is based upon poorly-educated voters who have become the power base for a cynical and manipulative self-interest group in the age of social media.

In her life, the Queen has tended to unite rather than to divide; in death the more so. There is no serious republican movement in Britain (Ireland has a different issue for obvious historical reasons); there are no politicians in parliament today calling for the monarchy to be abolished - although Liz Truss once did so in a previous iteration (the one before she became the Tory Remainer that she also once was. Hardly 'a lady not for turning'). Would the British really want a presidential head of state? I doubt if there's more than 15% of Britons in favour of that.

Yes, the Royal Family can be accused of living a life of luxury (and for those not directly in line for the throne, that life can also be quite louche). Though the Queen lived in splendour, that splendour was an inescapable part of the show, part of the magic. A cycling monarchy, like those low-profile north-west European royals, would not stand out enough from the common citizen; sadly, that reflects the status hierarchy of the human condition.

Once upon a time, royal families acquired that status through brutality, often as the victors of local and regional battles determining who owned and ran what. England went through two civil wars before emerging with a Royal Family that would evolve into what it is today. The fact that there's no controversy about a Windsor's right to rule (rather than some other pretender to the throne of different lineage) suggests that the continuity and tradition inherent in the system is working. The Queen is dead, long live the King. We all know that. No waiting for a puff of white smoke over Buckingham Palace, no re-counting ballot papers over and over until the right result comes in. 

I would caution Britons who look forward to the abolition of monarchy; the alternative can be much, much worse (see America 2016-2020).

This time last year:
Seaside, Sopot

This time last two years ago:
Repeatable moments of joy

This time three years ago:
Spectacularly glorious day, Ealing

This time six years ago:
Evolution, the future and us

This time eight years ago:
Relief as Scots vote to remain in UK

This time nine years ago:
The S2 opens all the way to Puławska

This time ten years ago:
Thundering ghost from out of the mist

This time 11 years ago:
Push-pull for Mazowsze

This time 12 years ago:
Okęcie runway repairs are complete

This time 14 years ago:
I know that painting from somewhere...

Personal reflections upon the death of Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth was not meant to die like a mere mortal - she should have kept on going till at least 101, like her mother. And without the cigarettes and gin, 101 was a modest target. So her passing was unexpected and deeply saddening. 

On Tuesday she had accepted Johnson's resignation and asked Liz Truss to form a government. Unusually, this happened in Balmoral rather than London (which somehow required both new and former premier to fly to Scotland each in their own jet), but photos showing a smiling queen (albeit holding a walking stick) reassured the nation. On Thursday lunchtime, Twitter started buzzing with rumours that the Queen was in a serious condition; At this stage, however, I was still hoping that the Queen would recover after a few days, and would return to full health. But when images of her children and grandchildren arriving at Balmoral started appearing, I could tell that all was not well.  I started receiving media requests, these conversations ending with me and the producer both saying "let's hope we don't have to speak again any time soon." 

Sadly we did; at 19:00 (6pm in the UK) the BBC announced her passing. My phone began ringing nonstop. I've done three TV and one radio interview today, more lined up for the following days.

********

I have no experience of a world without Queen Elizabeth II. You'd have to be in your mid-70s to be able to say you do. Her profile was on the coins I'd take to school to pay for my school lunches - the profile of a young woman; on other coins in my hand would be profiles of her father, her bearded grandfather, her bearded great grandfather or even her great-great grandmother. Postage stamps bore only her likeness, commemorative stamps being few and far between (I recall the 1965 Battle of Britain 25th anniversary set; most stamps, however, would just feature the Queen's profile on different colour backgrounds. There was a large portrait of her, in her regal finery, above the stage in our primary-school assembly hall.

She was the personification of the British state that was undergoing dynamic change. We, the young Elizabethans, growing up in the 1960s, were moving swiftly away from the drab greyness and emotional tightness of post-war austerity. Our future would be one driven by the 'white heat of the technological revolution', by supersonic jets, hovercraft, colour television and gigantic computers. 

Once a year at primary school, we'd march around the playground carrying flags; this used to be called Empire Day, but then became renamed Commonwealth Day. Because I had an aunt living in Canada, I was chosen to carry the Canadian flag - this was bright red with Union Jack in the corner, then one year it changed to a red-white-red one with a red maple leaf. Somehow I felt less connected with it. Things were changing fast. As a child, I visited the Commonwealth Institute in Kensington, an impressively modern architectural structure. I went to see it with my parents one Sunday. Exhibits from every corner of the globe. Baskets woven in Africa or Asia. I must have been young; after the visit with my parents, I remarked to my mother "byłem pod wrażeniem" ("I was impressed") - she replied that she was impressed that I had used the phrase "byłem pod wrażeniem".

My mother, born on this day (8 September) less than 17 months after Princess Elizabeth,  was a staunch royalist. Having been through the whole Soviet experience in WW2, monarchic Britain was an oasis of civilisation, of order, of politeness and decency. The polar opposite from the arbitrary terror and brutal stupidity from which she had escaped, that had claimed the life of her father and had now engulfed the land where she was born. Somehow she ascribed all this, plus free NHS services and letters from civil servants signed 'your obedient servant' to the Queen - nasza królowa.

I have never met the Queen; I did meet Prince Phillip (who visited my workplace). I'd forgotten his quip - which an old colleague reminded me of after his death; on being introduced, I told him that I edited the CBI's fortnightly magazine, and he asked how often it came out. And once, I caught sight of King Charles III as a young man at the Tate Gallery, passing through with his escort.

The Queen is dead, long live the King. I feel Charles's reign will be turbulent. Constitutional issues will come to a head; calls for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to adopt a written constitution will become louder. And an end to first-past-the-post voting? And an end to the unelected House of Lords? How many states of which Charles is now head will become republics? Queen Elizabeth II of England was Elizabeth I of Scotland; on her death, Charles became Charles III of both kingdoms - but will his son become William V of England and William IV of Scotland? Will the unravelling of the United Kingdom begin with Northern Ireland?

It has long been held that the passing of Queen Elizabeth II will be the end of an era. Victorian constitutionalist Walter Bagehot's observation that the government of Britain was the magic of royalty and the machinery of Westminster and Whitehall, and that "daylight should not be let in on the magic" was perfectly put. The television age, sadly, did just that - and the magic faded after It's a Royal Knockout. Royalty is not about entertainment, but about timeless values.

Queen Elizabeth II stayed the course; however, she did not waver, dedicating her life to the crown in the old-fashioned way, even though her children's generation had tried to move with the times, into an era of celebrity rather than of authority. 

Am I an monarchist? A royalist, in opposition to republics with their elected heads of state? I have no ideology in this regard; I'm a pragmatist. All I'll say is that the monarchy, represented by Queen Elizabeth II worked. The Queen as head of state was infinitely preferable to a President Blair or a President Johnson - but then there have been dreadful monarchs in Britain's history too. With her passing, I would still rather commit to a constitutional monarchy as a preferable model for governance of the UK rather than swapping it for a republic.

And so I mourn the passing of the Queen; I deeply respected her in a way that I am unlikely to come to respect a head of state ever again. 

So far, 2022 has been a bad year; had my father, with his superstitious dislike of the number 22, would have been looking forward to 2023. 

This time three years ago
Best sandwich ever

This time four years ago:
Pictures of Warsaw

This time seven years ago:
Scotland's independence referendum looms

This time ten years ago:
Summer comes crashing to a halt

This time 11 years ago:
The atmosphere of impending autumn - Mono no aware

This time 12 years ago:
Time to recycle.

This time 15 years ago:
Coal train running

Traitors and useful idiots

The sight of apartment blocks, schools, hospitals and administrative buildings being hit by Russian rockets, bombs and shells has revealed to the world the truth about Putin. It is a truth that those living in his immediate neighbourhood have known for a long time. He is the manifestation of evil in human form; a Hitler, a Stalin, a Pol Pot. An inhuman madman for whom massive loss of innocent life has no meaning. Protests around the world, but particularly across Europe, show that Russia has lost any residual soft power it might have enjoyed. And yet, and yet...

Unrestrained by the intellectual straightjacket of Marxism-Leninism, Putin's propaganda war aimed at the West this past decade has been infinitely more successful than the USSR's. Back then, the useful idiots were exclusively the far left. I remember at the time of Martial Law in Poland, an organisation in the UK called the Spartacist League was actually protesting against the Solidarity trade union movement, on the basis that "an imperfect workers' state is better than no workers' state". Nutters. The British Communists were partially funded through the bulk purchase by the Soviet Union of the Morning Star, the newspaper aligned with the Communist Party of Britain. The paper, then and now is so ideologically turgid that its readership is insignificant. 

The Morning Star website today leads not with the slaughter of innocent Ukrainian civilians but with global climate change. All the British far left can do is numbly repeat the mantra "NATO and the EU should not have been encroaching on Russia".  And funnily enough, this is also the mantra of the British far right. 

The far left are the useful idiots - so hidebound in their anti-imperialist ideology that they fail to see Putin as the arch-imperialist. This is because Putin says he is against NATO, as are they - because they see NATO through an ideological prism, and not as a bulwark protecting Central and Eastern Europe from the return of the Russian imperial boot. Putin doesn't need to pay them to parrot his propaganda - they just do so.

Now look at this semi-literate tweet from George Galloway. Paid Kremlin assets or useful idiot? He names names. Nigel Farage, Christopher Hitchens, Tucker Carlson and Rod Liddle - which of these have taken Putin's shilling, and which simply believe the Kremlin's narrative?

Venal politicians, easily bought by smooth-talking Russians in the West are as culpable as hidebound ideologists. Britain's shabby response to sanctioning Russian oligarch and their assets in the UK suggests fear and shame regarding the ease with which their donations filled party coffers. And their resulting hesitancy to take a firmer stance on Putin's malevolence.

The links between Russia and the Brexit campaign were clear to see to all those who wanted to see, and all those who understood Russia. Putin needed to fragment the West, splinter its institutions. Those who bought into the lie that the EU was 'antidemocratic' need to ask themselves how democratic it is to have one man with a nuclear trigger holding our planet to ransom. Many who voted for Brexit were swayed by arguments coming from Putin's troll farms, polluting Britain's social media, or from figures directly financed by Moscow [when this is all over, I hope the Kremlin's archives will be opened so we can see proof of which figures].

Putin's courting of the West's far right and far left (the latter being cheaper to buy) had been successful for the past 22 years. But now that he has revealed his true nature in a way that's impossible to cover up with lies about 'Ukrainian fascists', 'genocide in Donbas', 'NATO provoked the bear' or 'Eastern Europeans have no right to self-determination', he has cut off that support. It will be interesting to see how the presidential campaigns of Marine Le Pen or Viktor Orban go.

When this is all over, the bought-up politicians and the useful idiots will be called to account. When this is all over, the far left and far right will not have an easy time. And that will be good for us all. In the meantime, let us pray in a focused, metaphysical way, to the Good God for a swift end to the spilling of innocent blood in Ukraine.

Lent starts tomorrow, I shall be blogging about the spiritual and metaphysical; for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, follow me on Twitter (Michael Dembinski@policies4poland).

This time last year:
Chance and luck - can you will the outcome?

This time two years ago:
Define your Deity

This time four years ago:
The Mysteries of Quantum Physics

This time fiver years ago:
Lent starts tomorrow

This time six years ago:
Coincidence and survival

This time nine years ago
The Book of Revelations

This time ten years ago:
Strong late-winter sunshine

This time 11 years ago:
Best pics from February 2011

This time 12 years ago:
Kensington

This time 14 years ago:
End of the line

War

 "What was it like, the atmosphere of those last few days in August 1939, before German tanks and bombers poured into Poland?" I would ask my father. 

"We were resigned to it - wars happen. War broke out in August 1914, then the Bolsheviks invaded in 1920," he replied. Indeed, looking at European history, wars, invasions, uprisings, revolutions, civil wars would punctuate short periods of peace with monotonous regularity.

I was born in the penumbra of war, 13 years after my father and his Home Army comrades were put on trains bound for PoW camps in Germany at the end of the Warsaw Uprising. My mother's experiences as a child deported to a labour camp in northern Russia had an effect on my upbringing. Polish scouts in London, led by men who had fought at Tobruk and Monte Cassino, was paramilitary in nature; we'd drill Polish army drill, sing Polish army songs, and learn fieldcraft.

The Cold War threat of nuclear annihilation was ever-present; I was too young to sense the fear engendered by the Cuban Missile Crisis. Czechoslovakia - the crushing of the Prague Spring - was sad, but at least there was no risk of spill-over. The Protect and Survive era of the mid-1980s, was chilling - there were a few close calls, though we didn't know it at the time. 

The dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 heralded what many believed was the End of History - the Evil Empire had crumbled, free-market democracy had triumphed.

The arc of history was tracking upward. Life was getting better. Technology was bringing us new gadgets, opening new horizons and creating a new way of digital living. Had Europe managed to rid itself of the curse of war for good? Serbia, Bosnia - Srebrenica, the bombing of Belgrade - briefly brought back the ghosts of past horrors. But by the middle of the first decade of the new century, with Poland and nine other former Soviet Bloc members inside NATO and the EU, all looked well, even while Putin consolidated his rule over the Russian Federation.

Then we passed a tipping point - and another - and another - and another. Georgia, Litvinenko, Crimea, Syria, Skripal... Obama said 'reset'. The Germans wanted Nordstream 2. And many venal Western politicians were bought by the Kremlin. What have we learnt? Apparently nothing. 

I had been expecting the Russian attack to start at 04:00 on 22 February (22, my father's unlucky number). It didn't happen. The world breathed a sigh of relief - and then 48 hours later it kicked off. 

Today, the world knows what any country once under the Russian heel knows - giving way to Putin only provokes him to further aggression. "You may not think you are at war with Russia - but Russia is at war with you." Until now, Putin has never overtly crossed the West's red lines. He merely pushed the red line ever further and further and further; the West imposed sanctions here and there - but nothing that would halt Putin in his obsessive quest to reconquer lands he sees as lost to Russia as the USSR collapsed.

This time, the world is seeing a European city in flames, Europeans fleeing tanks and bombs - something not seen on this scale since the last weeks of World War 2. The sight of columns of women and children walking towards the Polish border remind me of how my father, his mother and two brothers walked east from Warsaw as German bombs rained down on the Polish capital, panzers approaching from the north and west. My father was 16 then; he died in 2019; few people alive today remember at first hand the horrors of WW2.

Russian oligarch's money has corrupted the British establishment. Parliamentarians, lawyers, accountants, PR firms, estate agents, thought that they could 'civilise' the nouveau-riche Russians, co-opting them as they once had co-opted oil-rich sheikhs and American tycoons. But Putin's oligarchs have strings attached. You are not permitted to be an oligarch in Britain unless you kick back to Putin, and do his bidding. This includes buying up venal British politicians. Don't do as you're told and you wind up as one of the 14 or so Russians who have died in London under mysterious circumstances.

Putin is the quintessential evil KGB villain, brought up in the dark arts of maskirovka, playing by the playbook he grew up with. The playbook of the NKVD - the Holodor, the Great Terror, the Gulag, Katyń. Surrounded by a coterie of yes-men and women, no one dares tell him how futile is his quest to rebuild the USSR. Economically, it has no chance of success. Robbing the country so brazenly is possible only if the people are repressed by brutality. There is no escape - entrepreneurs are shaken down, and so their ranks are thinned out; the same people who would have the resourcefulness to start small businesses in the West just take the view that the risk is too great. Better be an official and live by shaking down citizens - traffic cops, hospital administrators, health & safety inspectors, granters of planning permissions, tax inspectors, university admissions officer. Run this way, the Russian economy could never lift off and hold its own in the modern world.

Failing to turn Russia into a genuinely modern economy, all Putin can do is to wreck the socio-economic systems of other countries. Had Russia made the right policy and political choices, it could have been a powerhouse, driven by foreign investment and innovation. As it is, ordinary Russian look longingly across at former Soviet republics in the EU - the freedom, the quality of life, sanctity of private property based on the rule of law, prospects for the future. This is a threat to Putin; repression can only go so far. 

Trump's election and Brexit were both supported massively by Russia - using all forms of 'active measures'; financially, through their 'useful idiots', and by an online onslaught using social media, the West's soft underbelly. As bombs rain down on Kyiv, the main proponents of Brexit are today acting as the Kremlin's apologists  in the UK - 'the West's fault for poking the bear' (N. Farage). [As an aside, can you imagine an organisation called Conservative Friends of Germany active in Westminster in the late 1930s?]

This time last year:
Yes, there is such a thing as Original Sin

This time three years ago:
London's Smithfield Market

This time four years ago:
Mid-winter in late February

This time five years ago:
Ten years of digital photography

This time six years ago:
Between atheism and creationism

This time seven years ago:
A peek into the Afterlife

This time eight years ago:
The new dupes of Moscow

This time nine years ago:
Late-winter commuting, Jeziorki

This time ten years ago:
My Nikon D80 five years on

This time 11 years ago:
My Nikon D80 four years on

This time 12 years ago:
Nikon D80 two years on

This time 13 years ago:
Nikon D80 one year on

A tipping point in history - but who's tipping it?

Wuhan. Who'd heard of it this time last year, other than Chinese people and Westerners who'd been there?

Now here we all are, mindful of a disease that's killed two million people around the world.

China. Where it came from. Bats? The Wuhan Institute of Virology? Who knows. Maybe we'll never know. But we do know that China has had in total fewer cases of Covid-19 than have Oman, Panama or Romania. Half as many case as Czechia. The most populous country on earth, where the disease came from, has had just half as many confirmed cases of Covid-19 as little Czechia.

Yes, we remember those early scenes in Wuhan; people banged up inside their tiny flats for a fortnight while police in gas masks roamed the streets truncheoning folk for straying outside. Two weeks later, the local epidemic was over. Today, China's economy is back in action, revving at full throttle. Making masks for the rest of us. Masks and everything else from smartphones to toy cars. Only a repressive, high-tech regime that takes no shit from anti-maskers marching against lockdown, could achieve this.

I'm not suggesting for one moment that the Chinese Communist Party engineered a virus to enfeeble the rest of the world - but bloody hell - it sure looks like it!

OK - so they didn't engineer it, but maybe a bat-soup enthusiast failed to cook his live bat long enough to kill off all the viruses, and so they escaped from their host into another species. The Chinese authorities knew about it but kept the news quiet... until they'd learned enough about what the virus does to people. Then, by accident or design, they let the virus take off, leave the country - and through state repression and smart use of IT, they shut it down at home.

Democracy is different to totalitarianism even in crisis conditions. Maskless protesters decrying lockdown, promulgating conspiracy theories online, enjoying the frisson of a pub drink after 10pm, ignoring the rules that are ignored by those who set them - democracy trips over its own bootlaces.

Meanwhile, the disease continues to rage on around the world. Into a second, potentially deadlier wave. And who knows - Covid-19 may mutate (Covid-22, -28, -35 etc). How 'long Covid' looks long-term is something we'll learn about in the future. But China will cope. "A new strain! Back into your flats comrades for another 14 days while the West takes another battering!"

Payback time for the Century of Humiliation. Payback time for the Opium Wars. 

In China, there were 14 new cases notified yesterday. Around 2,000 times fewer than in the US, 1,500 times fewer than in the UK, 1,000 times fewer than in Poland. Yesterday. And as I'm checking the numbers on Worldometers.com, I'm followed by an ad for a Chinese-made electric bicycle. Chinese factories are now working flat out; the Chinese economy has fully recovered from the Q1 hit and is now ready to sell to the world.

Tell you what - I'm not buying. 

I don't want anything that's Chinese-made, while a repressive communist regime with an authoritarian hierarch is in charge. 

This is not just about Covid-19.

It's about the Uighurs; modern-day Gulags, forced sterilisation, slave labour, indoctrination in Xi Jinping Thought. 

It's about Hong Kong; people culturally part of the Western world being forced to knuckle down to communist dictatorship.

It's about Taiwan; a successful island economy that's continually under threat of military invasion from the mainland.

It's about Tibet - a nation invaded by communist China in 1950 and subject to a similarly brutal occupation that Poland endured during the Partitions.

And remember Li Wenliang, the Wuhan doctor who first noticed a SARS-like respiratory illness among his patients and alerted the world - to face repression from the Chinese state, then to die of Covid-19.

A final thought: after the SARS outbreak in 2002-04, what's the likelihood that the Chinese Communist Party wargamed scenarios for a similar, future epidemic/pandemic? And what conclusions might they have reached?

This time last year:
Poznań by night
[from a time when business travel was a regular thing]

This time three years ago:
West of Warsaw's central axis

This time seven years ago:
Plac Unii shopping centre opens

This time nine years ago:
Visceral and Permanent, Part II 

This time ten years ago:
Autumn colours, locally

This time 11 years ago:
Edinburgh

Cameron, Paris, ISIS, PiS and Brexit

Hasn't Europe changed since Friday's mass murders in Paris. Fault lines in the UK, in Poland - across the EU - have been redrawn. Complexities intertwine, opinions shift and reshape.

How many Europeans now favour Schengen? How many now favour greater state powers to intercept our e-mails and mobile phone calls? How many suddenly have qualms about letting large numbers of migrants from the Middle East into their countries?

And what does this all mean for the future of Europe, Britain's place in the EU, and Poland's new government? Five events stand out as significant.

1) The Kalashnikovs used in Friday's murders are said to have come from the Balkans. Criminal gangs there are making money selling automatic rifles and rocket grenades to Islamist murderers. Once inside the Schengen area, the weapons passed freely all the way to Paris via Brussels. Schengen's border with the Balkans runs through Slovenia and Hungary. Now, both countries have put up anti-migrant fences along their southern borders to cries of outrage from the well-meaning European left. But how many of them now feel a bit more secure now that a well-worn gun-smuggling route has been cut? The happy notion of open borders between Schengen members is beginning to look like becoming an anachronism.

2) One of the murderers, it is suggested, had entered the EU as a refugee from Syria, passing through Greece in September. How many more 'sleeper' ISIS terrorists have slipped into the EU posing as migrants? Alright, the vast majority of those refugees are fleeing the same murderous thuggery as Paris experienced last week. But if even 1% of those hundreds of thousands seeking asylum in the EU are ISIS sleepers, or simply have the potential to be radicalised, then yes - many more people today are thinking it's better to be safe than sorry than thought this last week.

3) Solidarity with the people of France - Wembley Stadium - scores of thousands of Englishmen singing the Marseillaise and shouting 'Vive la France!' is moving. How many of them were hitherto Little Englanders with a less-than-secret liking for Nigel Farage? The evacuation of central Hanover this evening shows that the threat hangs over the whole of Europe. So - shared insecurity and feelings of solidarity are bringing Europe closer together emotionally, while at the same time the same fears are closing European countries off from one another physically.

4) Russia draws world attention away from its crimes in Eastern Ukraine, as Putin talks about cooperating with France to punish the perpetrators of last month's terrorist bombing of a Russian passenger jet killing 221 civilians over Sinai. Russia's early intervention in Syria was mainly directed at anti-Assad rebels rather than ISIS. The attack on Metrojet Flight 9268 is another factor changing things. Putin changing his spots? Don't be taken in, West. Today, Ukraine reported 25 ceasefire violations in the Donbass.

5) Poland's new government. Amateurs, Dude. It will take PiS a while to settle in. The new ministers' top fonctionnaires will - I hope - give them some lessons in how not to put their feet into their mouths, especially in the international arena. (That's where the undersecretaries of state and department heads are not being summarily sacked.) PiS is Eurosceptic, though not daft enough to want to try to pull Poland out of the EU. As such, PiS has much in common with David Cameron. There can be some interesting talks ahead between the UK and Polish governments on issues that will affect Cameron's EU negotiations. PiS might want to fight unto the death for Poles' rights to in-work benefits in the UK, but then Cameron should remind them that President Duda campaigned on a platform of 'no sale of Polish fields and forests to foreigners'. 

The arguments and battle-lines are changing as swiftly as clouds scudding across a storm-blown sky. The outcome of the UK's Brexit referendum is totally in the air - it could go either way.

One thing the new Polish government needs to be VERY MUCH AWARE OF as it deals with Cameron: Poland NEEDS the UK in the EU. It needs a strong EU as a backstop against the Kremlin's neo-imperial ambitions. Poland needs the UK in NATO. It needs the UK as a strong ally. Winding up the Brits to the point of provoking a Brexit over the threat to remove access to tax credits for Poles working in the UK makes no sense. Poland was partitioned by Russia for 123 years, then occupied by the USSR for a further 45 years after five years of Nazi occupation. Membership of a strong, united EU is Poland's best guarantee that the Kremlin will not try to push Russia's borders westwards. Poland's PiS government must do all it can to ally with Cameron and make the necessary adjustments to the EU to keep the UK in. And keeping the UK in is more likely to keep Scotland in the UK.

This time two years ago:

Work restarts on Jeziorki Ponds redevelopment

This time three years ago:
Foggy days and Warsaw's airports
This time five years ago:
Local elections - the lure of ultra-localism

Keep watching Ukraine...

As predicted, the situation is Ukraine is unfolding dynamically, with protests in towns and cities across the country, even in the Russified east. (To make it easier for Brits to understand Ukraine, I liken it to Wales rotated anti-clockwise through 90 degrees. North Wales is like western Ukraine, where people are more nationalist in outlook and speak the national language. South Wales is like eastern Ukraine, where the coal mines and steel mills were planted there in the 19th Century by the big neighbour to the east. Eastern Ukraine is as Russified as South Wales is Anglicised. A difference is that the capital of Wales is in the southern heartland, while Ukraine's capital lies midway from east to west.)

The Ukrainian people are realising that their dreams of rapid economic and civilisational development are being dashed by a kleptocratic ruler and his immediate coterie; the hard times they've had over the past two decades are going to continue indefinitely unless events change course. It is the difference between driving a battered old Lada on a bumpy dirt track and a new Peugeot 208 along a new expressway.

Poland has taken the course of modernity and its GDP has soared since economic transformation; Ukraine is mired in corruption (ranking 144th out of 175 countries surveyed by Transparency International in its 2013 global Corruption Perception Index). With the exception of a rent-seeking class of tax inspectors and senior government officials, plus oligarchs close to the Yanukovich clan, the average Ukrainian cannot see a future for themselves and their children in their own country.

When I was in Lviv in 2005, I asked our Ukrainian guide about a black Audi Q7 SUV with blackened rear - and front windows and indeed windscreen, on which was an official-looking pass (p'yerepustka). "Government, business or mafia?" "All three," he replied.

For Ukrainians, the European Union is a wonderful dream - and bad as things are in Portugal or Greece (or even Bulgaria) - the prospect of one day in the distant future joining it is a vision of hope.

What should the West do now to help? For one, to block travel to the European Economic Area and North America to Yanukovich and his cronies. And freeze their foreign bank accounts. That would hit them where it hurts.

Interestingly, watching events unfold across Ukraine, the most-thorough English-language coverage comes from Russia Today (RT.com). I was surprised at the change in tone since Friday night's clashes at Kiev's Independence Square. Today, I see an intriguingly nuanced view in which the militia violence is being condemned and the people responsible for storming government buildings described as 'provocateurs' rather than as 'pro-EU hooligans'. Does this suggest that the Kremlin is ready to throw Yanukovich to the wolves?

This time three years ago:
Jeziorki, dawn, winter

This time six years ago:
Koyaanisqatsi lokomotywa
(little play on words there!)