Reports this morning from Melitopol, the “city of honey”, indicate that the Russian Army is fleeing in a disorganised fashion towards Crimea.  It is not immediately clear why.  Information coming out of Ukraine has been so centred on the Ukrainian offensive in the Kherson area and, latterly, the surprise attack in Kharkiv, which has freed an area of 3100 square kilometres right up to the Russian border, it is not apparent what offensive actions have been in train elsewhere, if any.  It all seems too good to be true.  Melitopol was not even mentioned on the official Ukrainian command roster for the events of yesterday.

By peacetime population Melitopol is only about the size of York or Gloucester (for Americans, Charleston, South Carolina).  But it is a long way south and is known as the gateway to the Crimea.  Ukrainian control of the Crimean route into the south would seal the fate of the Russian Army pocket - some 20,000 men - across the Dnipro and finish all possibilities for the Russian offensive west of Mariupol.  One would expect that the naval facility at Sevastopol, home to Russian’s Black Sea Fleet, would also come within Harpoon range and thus would no longer be tenable.

However, so far The Odessa Journal reports only this:

This was announced by the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, in his Telegram.

“The invaders fled from Melitopol towards the temporarily occupied Crimea. Columns of military equipment have already been fixed at the checkpoint in Chongar. This was expected – the rapid Ukrainian offensive leaves them no chance,” Fedorov stressed.

As the mayor said, to “take out the stolen goods from the Zaporizhzhia region, the military of the “second army of the world” is already breaking into garages and stealing civilian cars.”

“Car owners should secure their transport in advance. It may happen that the evacuators will be evacuated on it,” Fedorov emphasized.

Earlier it became known that the Russian occupiers were leaving in a hurry from the village of Novonikolovka, located 50 kilometers from Melitopol, against the backdrop of successful counter-offensives of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in several directions.

I am a racially and ethnically aware Englishman.  I am not, therefore, anti-monarchical, because monarchy is genuinely inherent to the culture of power among the English, and the Scots and Welsh, and the Scots-Irish too.  Those of us - the vast majority - who are conscious of the fact are not generally the shifty and lightweight beings who might disrespect it in order to parade their, of course, terribly different and daring, not to mention radical republican values.  Therefore one can grant the dead monarch and the new monarch a certain historical import and even respect.  France is foundationally revolutionary.  Britain is foundationally monarchical.  To some subtle but substantive degree, these things are in the way that every Frenchman and every Briton comports himself in the world.

But beyond that affirmational fact, the French do enjoy a certain advantage.  They have rid themselves of an ancient appendix and need make no exception to the rule of their own government.  So the question inevitably arises: why do we cleave to a constitutional monarchy which has long ago relinquished the possibility of command, and which, today, cannot even pass a public opinion on the exercise of power in this land?  Why, indeed, have a monarch who is not even of the people’s blood, and for whom even the notion of representation of the people is shooed away by that of representation of the emotionally stiff and cold, formal machinery of state?  It’s a very British conundrum.  Obviously, those of our kind who are given to novelty ... those who are estranged in the modern ... cannot be persuaded of the virtue of continuity.  Those who are given to the Judaic prescription of equal-ness cannot be persuaded of hierarchy by heredity.  But in the minds of the rest of the British, who are the vast majority, there is some good in carrying forward the old investment of identity and fealty that adhered to the kings and queens of the ancient British past.  Certainly, our age does not have the same, direct tribal or semi-tribal connection.  But then on to the person of the monarch we project our yearning for that connection, which is a yearning for who we English, we Scots, we Welsh, we Scots-Irish are in our own-most being.  It might be obscured by the dust-storm of the modern, but we have a sense of it.  We just need something to point out the way.

Good monarchs and bad in that respect come and go.  A faithful and good one, on balance, has now departed, and quite likely a bad one - an earnest man, a sincere man, but confused and apprehensive - has already, and without a moments’ pause, taken up the royal burden.  We natives of this land are not his subjects.  Constitutionally, we are his sovereign and have been so since 1649, a fact which modern parliamentarians too rarely concede.  But, regardless of his undoubted weaknesses, we will extend our sovereign’s consent to him, and offer our fealty in return for his modelling of the truth and continuity of our nation, our blood and kind.  The French may fairly consider that absurd and anachronistic.  But we might then consider their civicism jejune and artificial, and we might even suspect that in some quiet and reflective corner of their national psyche a little envy abides.

There will be national mourning, and then, at some point over the next months, there will be formal majesty and circumstance as the new King is crowned.  The king of climate alarmism, some will say ... even the king of Davos.  But perhaps he will realise that he is no longer free to champion that cause.  There is, of course, no chance at all that he will ever cease to champion the foreignisation of his people’s home.

I didn’t even know that the old Cold War CIA front Radio Free Europe was still active until I came across an interview at its site with a Washington analyst named George Barros.  He said everything that I have been picking up elsewhere about the new generation warfare that Ukraine is developing to frustrate, starve of materiel, and drive out the Russian invader in the south of the country.  The interview is beneath the fold.

READ MORE...

A Yanasa TV video setting out the prospects for extremely serious global food shortages from 2023.  The moral: grow what you can, if you can.

Hat-tip to Wandervogel, commenter at The Current Thing.

There is a lot of noise in our corner of the political world about the protests by Dutch farmers against government restrictions on the land-use of nitrous oxide.  Farmers Weekly explains:

Thousands of farmers in the Netherlands have taken part in protests against Dutch government plans to slash greenhouse gas emissions.

The protestors blocked motorways with columns of slow-moving tractors as farmers descended on the Dutch parliament buildings in The Hague.

Amsterdam and other cities were also brought to a standstill as farmers torched straw bales, spread slurry across streets and let off fireworks, according to the Associated Press. In some cities, dozens of farmers were arrested after violent clashes with police.

Sporadic violence also broke out between police and farmers at the largest rally last week, which drew an estimated 40,000 protesters to the town of Stroe.

The protests coincided with a parliamentary vote on a proposed £22bn programme to halve agricultural emissions of nitrous oxide and ammonia by 2030.

In some areas, close to nature reserves, the policy is tougher still, with 70-95% reductions targeted.

... despite the protests, the Dutch coalition government, led by prime minister Mark Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, approved the proposals.

Following the vote, the Netherlands House of Representatives released a statement which said: “The honest message is that not all farmers will continue in business. Those who do will have to farm differently.”

The protests have been going on since 22nd June.  The farmers have regularly blocked roads and picketed outside distribution centres and supermarkets.  They moved their focus today to Groningen Airport Eelde, located in the north-east of the country.

Mark Rutte’s government is accused of interpreting EU regulations on farming nitrogen use far more strictly and ideologically than any other national government in the union.  Anti-globalists, of course, see the hand of the WEF in the whole affair.  A pithy comment by a poster at ZH with the handle Kramerica Industries explains:

It’s all part of the WEF plan:
- they can’t force you to eat bugs and weeds (making you weak and docile) while you have access to meat, dairy and normal food (thus farms got to go)
- they can’t make you rent their electric golf carts if you have access to ICE vehicles and cheap (traditional) energy
- they can’t make you live in rented pods and never exit the megacities (leaving the planet to them), while you have access to private property, ICE vehicles and again, CHEAP ENERGY
So now you see how they arranged their chess pieces.

Apropos the natural evolution issues raised in the piece I posted two days ago on the main page, the DT reports:

Britons are evolving to be poorer and less well-educated
Natural selection favours people with lower earnings and levels of attainment, because smart rich people have fewer children, study claims

Britons are evolving to be less well-educated and poorer because smart rich people are having fewer children, a new study has suggested.

Researchers have found that natural selection is favouring people with lower earnings and poorer education, with the next generation likely to be one or two percentage points lower in educational attainment than today.

Evolution also appears to be favouring people with a high risk of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), major depressive disorders and coronary artery disease, as well as younger parents and people with more sexual partners.

Prof David Hugh-Jones, lead researcher from University of East Anglia’s School of Economics, said: “Darwin’s theory of evolution stated that all species develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual’s ability to compete, survive and reproduce.

“We wanted to find out more about which characteristics are selected for and against in contemporary humans, living in the UK.”

...

The team looked at data from more than 300,000 people in the UK, taken from the UK Biobank - a long-term project investigating the contributions of genetic predisposition and environmental exposure to the development of disease.

What Do Hugh-Jones’s team finds, not to put too fine a point on it, is that welfaring the feckless and poor to breed increases the size of the underclass relative to the rest of society, which reduces national IQ and leads eventually to Idiocracy (as per the 2006 film of that name).

The study appears not to mention race and immigration - no doubt, he wouldn’t get funding if it did!  That aside, one wonders that scientists find it necessary to confirm the obvious.  But, then, there are rigid political positions ... the blank slate, in particular, but also racial sameness and the unpopularity among the liberal classes of social conservatism and judgmentalism ... which require to be regularly falsified.  Not that the holders of these religious beliefs will make the slightest adjustment because of their negative consequences, of course.

The German Chancellor at the delayed Davos shindig, as reported by the DT:

Olaf Scholz has warned that the era of globalisation that powered the German economic miracle is “coming to an inevitable end” after Vladimir Putin’s “thunderbolt”.

The German Chancellor admitted that Europe’s largest economy faces a “very special challenge” as the industrial powerhouse is hit by soaring energy prices.

Mr Scholz launched a defence of globalisation at the World Economic Forum in Davos but admitted that its era is drawing to a close as inflation rises.

He said: “We are experiencing a watershed; history is at a turning point.”

Germany’s huge manufacturing base has benefited from an interconnected world and cheap energy from Russia. However, the war in Ukraine and trade chaos caused by Covid has forced governments and businesses to rethink supply chains and energy security.

Mr Scholz, the only G7 leader to speak at Davos this year, said that Europe had been struck by a “thunderbolt” from the war in Ukraine and a new “multipolar world” is emerging.

He said: “The special phase of globalisation we have experienced in North America and Europe during the last 30 years, with reliable growth, a high level of added value and low inflation is coming to an inevitable end.

“One reason for this is that the low cost producers of the global south are gradually becoming thriving economies with their own demand, which aspire to the same level of prosperity as we have.

He admitted that globalisation had created losers and said it needs to become more “intelligent”.

This is, actually, big news, not because of the scramble to replace Russian gas and oil or because of the other scramble to keep to the international climate dictates.  No, globalisation is the key condition in which Western globalism in its present technocratic form can function.  A contraction to it implies a contraction to Western globalism.  How that will play out is far too early to say.  But such a vast correction cannot be accommodated by the current Davos model.

The DT reports as breaking news:

Elon Musk has made a $43bn takeover offer for Twitter at $54.30 a share in cash.

The offer is a 54pc premium to its closing price on January 28 before he started buying shares.

The move comes after the Telsa founder was revealed to be Twitter’s biggest shareholder with a 9.2pc holding earlier this month.

Shares in Twitter rose 12pc in pre-market trading to $51.30.

Musk is widely understood to be a free speech advocate.  It seems that we are going to find out how free.