A stunning new – heart-felt – piece from Society writer Eric Lastick …

BOB DYLAN’S PAINTED ROAMS & GATHERED COURSE AT HIGHWAY  61

DREAMLIKE SCENES & VISIONS—-TOO THE PAINTED ROAMS OF THE SIXTY ONES…

Digs highway signs…zags and corner stores of old. Exit a heart of a painter—too the road top moods…sullen moon’s riches in which few can really see. Less to own, yet it’s keys rise with the stars on what is left to gather these roams of the highway 61’s…painted the starts, struggles of life—and of love. Broken dreams determine the rolls of step on stones. Motorcycle take me home. Lessons learned to each new crisis. Girl on a picnic, yet this year alone. Office space for lease off a roll down cliff…a business goes the same. And still, no one buying. Nobody care to know. Revenues of broken dreams. Unfixed is the mix and makeup of “Sweet Jane”

A car fixed, frozen on the rail road tie. Endless long distances ahead…as the 61’s abandoned—and almost closed. Wise helper, the old lady crow from the past. This motorcycle highway of where the 61 used to live and prosper, now just of old dreams. Wishes start at every freight car bustle…conductor override and send all the wishes of old. Again, we are on our own. Feel it, the rollings of railing to the heaviest of stones. Jump-in Jack Elliot just bought the new clock…sold his stopwatch…smart watch, left too the curb. The wise guy, the bum…and their outlaw ways got them to where they land; right here at the demolition…ended of ave. Toad on the road disclosedsed of all highway 61’s’. ”Just a museum piece for all fair weather creatures once upon a time.” A motorcycle rider of the road. The joy. The peel, the wonder. Time now to pack for autumn.”Road closed”. Next tour is a milestone run…and big one! Memories and wide stretched, for only ‘mind’s eyed sees. The rest Dylan tells in song.

(BACK IN TIMES OF THE HIGHWAY)

POUR ME ANOTHER LITTLE TASTES OF HEAVEN…killing track-rubber on this road ride…lasting in the inspirited…whale ‘n and taking down the natural’s of the 61’. Smooths with sail-cats mementos…bye and bye. Albert, the iceman, pull over his flatbed heavy. Frozen doors…mile a minute skid. How proper their distances. Coffee little’s…a cafe stay. Mr. Collins have it, a rip roaring guitar in 3 chord blues…ice machines…scenes from the 61’s of hand picking strum line. Mike Bloomfield hammers like ghost goblins royal spirit rolls! Richard Emanuel loves the keys and harmonies. Road miles and corner tap room charms. ”Wish i had a mountain in hand lyrics from those days” say the artist. Those people…their travels. Memories bundle in one. Now a test, as too—– he who ride the highway’s smooths of heaven’s door. Highway 61.

PIT STOP AND FAITH PLACE TO TRAVEL. see you at the hole in the wall.

Bull ride lead me home. Nightingale on holiday. Open bar. Tequila jumbo…slow Gin fizz. Artifacts on wall…all front and centered. Clear cut caviar, never how it seems! Onion dip, free fall sandwiches, with art deco tables. Rap them up and take home. Sway left to center right, good night—-too a drunken stupefied fall! bow to the Captain’s nest…obided troubadours…young and old—-wrestling a poet’s dream; and maybe someday get there. Iron clad notions of the best bottled bread. Wish I’d been back England’s ways away when Sandy Denny opened with million dollar bash! Signs and times, a hundred mimes over. Lend me a call, my favorite dish. Catch and release every starfish who plays bass lines with King fish on call. I gotta say that this layout, maps and blends of a real hoot! Another lime in that Tex Mex blend, old boy…and have another Irish twists and mists—too play off the ambiance like a Irish spring day ”.I’ll be back at 7.” Hold that drink with the other , quite seven. Big tips and generous folks of my kind.

FURTHER ON THE HIGHWAY 61

(DYLAN AND VAN GOGH) TO THE TOUCHES OF EVERY BRUSHSTROKES…

Images weigh of  route 61. Rev and Gogh the landscape, these tumbles…and vested colors of their lore. A take to the highway of best known open minds, Sometimes UN-charters—too often dazzle, yet much to close to the shades of home. But still, the rhymes on perfect verse and time. Heart vessels …& all of the pains of it’s local beats—right to the rhythms to amaze. Banded riches…fears of an old bump—yet never let the eyes of an artist ever really fail. Trial change endeavors be their calls…their answers to it all; stretching…burgeoning where no one knows. Insides and sounds of the mystics. Mercurial end dose cures, if only for a few moments. Brush me… and hit me up with grayness. In greens, a dose of cure without envy. I will wish you both a scene of freedom…as ”the Egg-man” delivered with seamless UN-cracked—right into the ice box, which only the mind’s eye sees. Justifies.

(THAT EVIL HIGHWAY)

IN ALL THE IRONS OF GOD AND WHAT IS KNOWN OF OUR EVIL…a combination of mind and spirit of a two sided wind drive, finding center course, with nothing so obvious as night clawed vultures…terrors and screams past the broken street lamps. Never ending corridors backed up by magic. Halloween samples of angel and devil…there and suddenly gone—right off the front lawn! Cat of creature, the night is long. HEAVEN scent through mischief …and of light insinuating themes; as the church bells ring the love of the hour. New born fawn…opening eyes of truth. Turntables and black limousines. Carousels of the East river drives—right out of the foggy midnight turn. Folly free me past this conundrum…handcuffed and loaded on a large mushroom stay. A bed-knob irony approach of what could and couldn’t . Then a light of your smoke…and hammer wind out the lights. Free ghost take restless…and no supports…as no one sees, yet hears them. Open sesame stable. One needs a warm comfortable chair to ponder in. The black, the white of things to come. A hideaway cot and liquor cabinet…junket places of  deuce roll. Then come the horses…and all owners on quest. An answer of loaded details. Both good and bad.

THE DEMOLITION FINAL RUN AT HIGHWAY 61 (Like a rolling stone)

Rugged are the roads, the hard places of broken bits…cornered gravely off the highway of ragged dwellers. Soup can, dust weather bowl over an open fire. Cigarette holders hides in the sands—-drift and sink away their own smiles. Many highway run. Born to travel. Wares of it’s comes and goes. People and thinking, the fork in the road. What one must take on ”the heavy”. Die there of the unseen smooths ventured. YES, LIFE’S hard roads. Road runner avoids and of all the wily dynamite of a self brought empty soul-search. Crimson moon blend towards a long gone ride. Motorbike drive. Hiccups your blues, as too where ya’ going in this new age angry climate…and this hard road life. Spend bread the gamble without the look about the miles of road. Now middle age creeps like built on food and iron bar weighed crates. Mind, body and spirit.Have too hold…but can you? The road may be long in it’s search for sustainable life.Some peace. The air and airs may tame down through the grass long…the ears bigger. Gravity an ancient long. Earth’s besides itself; although truth and knowledge starts from within. The hard road you have now a resting point. Coasted dreams too reality. Find it at home.

Nowadays Mosa Kiswane can be regularly found sitting on top of the world.

But a decade ago he had lost almost everything, was drinking in despair and loneliness…

Mosa was standing at the bottom of a mountain of problems and anxieties caused by parental alienation.

Today though he is an inspiration to all victims of this family ‘crime’ committed by exes who have become the real deadbeats of the heart.

Mosa, aged 51, said: “I’d reached rock bottom seven years ago. But I climbed back and got to the summit of Kilimanjaro.

“In 2016 I was feeling so low and suffering from depression. I’d been hit by many personal tragedies, it had been a hell of journey. But then I started to believe in myself and I got up again, faced my demons and took control of my life.”

And recently Mosa climbed the Aconcagua Mountain in Argentina.

He describes it  in his own words:

“The climb started in the 10th of January and it was to last until the 25th, the news from other climber was that no one was able to summit since  the 2nd of January due to heavy snow and bad weather.

“Nevertheless I didn’t let that bother me and believed that I would be able to summit somehow.

“As we started to go up and reach higher camps, it became harder and harder with each step to breath, more stories of other team’s failure in the summit push, as we reached high camp 2 or camp Canada as it’s called.

“My friend and expedition leader Mostafa Salameh who introduced me to all this climbing had to be evacuated in the middle of the night due to him suffering a heart attack,

“!I wasn’t aware of the evacuation as I was in my tent and asleep, which was lucky as I would have never left his side and would have gone down with him, he is an old friend of mine and we go a long way.

“Without my best friend and mentor, I decided I will do everything to summit for him as well, 

“On the 23rd of January we pushed for the summit. 

“We woke up at 3am and started the push around 5am, it was one of the hardest things I ever done in my life, we lost 4 members of the team on  the way due to frost bite and other health complications and they had to be taking down to save them, despite all this I kept on pushing and climbing until I reached the summit at 14:30, I was ecstatic and so emotional.

“I managed to raise the banners for NAAP and Diabetes UK.

“Only me and two  others from the team made it.”

Mosa’s extraordinary determination to fight back is something we see all the time – the courage of people battered emotionally by ex-partners and the madness of family courts, the courage of people who climb massive obstacles to get their children back in their lives.

And help others along the way.

Andrew John Teague, founder of D.A.D.s and NAAP, said: “This sends a message to all parents and children who experienced parental alienation, don’t ever give up on yourself or your children.

“I have experienced the horrors of family courts and having strangers telling you if you can see your children or not based on a system that is not fit for purpose.”

Mosa said: “My story is not dissimilar to many other parents who experience parental alienation, it nearly broke me at the beginning and I didn’t know how to handle it, but I refused to bow down and fought the battle with all I got, I learned many lessons along the way and this has shaped the person I am today. This climb was for you all.”

Mosa live in London where he has built a new life as a personal trainer, nutritionist VIP concierge at London Heathrow ensuring people have a smooth ‘journey’ through the airport.

He said: “I used to work for British Airways as a cabin service manager and did that for 16 years. I went round the world.

“Then in late 2015 I separated from my wife. This was a when my problems began … we were together for 15 years and had two boys who were 10 and seven year old. We decided that the marriage wasn’t working and we had to separate.

“Later, I lost contact with my children, not by choice. I wasn’t prepared for it. I started drinking  a lot and the stress caused me to have a mini-stroke.

“I was hospitalised and was unable to work for three months, I managed to find a shabby studio to rent but was unable to see my children which impacted me and nearly drove me to suicide on many occasions.

“I wasn’t able to function properly but I somehow managed to get back to work and had to take voluntary redundancy from BA as I needed the money so I could rent a proper place where I can have my children come and stay over.

“I did that and at the same time started my legal battle to be able to see my children, I self-represented and it was tough, Cafcass offered me supervised visit by my ex at the beginning which I took but it nearly broke me again.

“I was overweight, drinking too much and suicidal.

“But I woke up one day and decided that I need to stop drinking and get healthy. It was tough but I did it and I enrolled into college and gained a personal training diploma. At the same time, I got a part time job at the airport and since then I led a healthy life style and managed to get more contact with my boys.”

Mosa’s climbs include the Aconcagua Mountain in Argentina, Mount Elbrus in Russia which is the highest in Europe, Mount Aconcagua in Argentina, he offered me a place on his team as someone had to cancel at short notice and their place was already paid for, I only had one week to prepare myself but I took this once in a lifetime opportunity and said yes. 

Aconcagua is the highest summit in the world outside the Himalayas at 6961m and is the second highest on the seven summits list after Everest.

Pictures by Leonardo Antonio Avezzno

#parentalalienation #alcohol #drinking #familycourt #children #family #cafcass #suicide

They’re talking about double glazing, politic, artificial intelligence. In fact anything that is NEW

Rodney and Leigh might be outrageous, but they certainly have a laugh and talk horse sense about the world

#Artificialintelligence #AI #immigration #sexism

Click to watch video

Another fabulously cocophonous and enigmatc piece from The Society’s resident writer Eric Lastick

Sandman hides, the summer-set… cobweb arms and midnight skies. Centerfolds drawing out stardust late night travelers, stuck on these lady lags… and the morning daunting crazed ways of our new world restlessness. The sped-fast leaves of love. ”Haight reach a new wave of northern California golden gate’s windy colds, in the dense reveals. Look and reproach the Sandman…as within you, this dusted, dirty tricks of fear…anger too all. The rag roll chronicle…news flash. ”Please hurry!” Fear and emotion. Where the next exit out of this place? Broken mentality and physicality too our neighboring Sandman. Poison is more than a fishful in dirty water. Tobacco row gets the disease…ease of nothing; and stay as a nobody, other than, “you run by night”. The crime is the way you live in the poverty and depravity of all your live long days.

A  SWITCH TO A NEW LIGHT, SO SAYS THE POLITICIAN…CRABBY APPLETON BY NAME…and no more hides to who is rotten too the core!

The vote is in. It is settled of the same sum game. Counter culture of yesteryear’s is a fake calendar to distract us all from Mr. Apple-ton’s real truths. Our consequences. Sandman really tries…he is by know means, ”Tom Terrific” A guiding helper maybe as the little child in us all. But the rains came and washed our eyes clean of the hides in sands…as all the misfits and harsh rotten souls we would have to deal with. And with morning’s light switch, all people maintain the cyborg—an off and on switch of the cell phone tracked—and how and when to deal with this new world’s blasting bleeding ends? Mr. Appleton continues to tow the line. He lies to us. Makes us feel important. Better with no more nightlight. Sickened and grief of no more bed time stories. They are all used up, and gone dry. We lean, predisposed at our bedsides, as the prayers become engulfed too the lifts of the sands high and mighty. Then as you suddenly realize, that it’s all names…and nobodies. Only to wreck in fear. Of not a children’s theme—toss must you will, the likes of Crabby Appleton—clear off his Golden fall’s from the bridge! Feed it then—too the birds, and re-establish of a new mindset. This outlook of fearlessness. Sand sleep the mightiest of sleep.

UPDATE: Xi Jinping has delivered a terrifying message to the West as he tells ‘dear friend’ Vladimir Putin ‘change is coming that hasn’t happened in 100 years… and we are driving it’. Putin says UK risks ‘nuclear collision’ because of its aid to Ukraine.

So, almost 80 million mobile phones in the UK will receive a call from Armageddon next month.

The cacophony of our world will be drowned by the howling of a cyber siren warning us something is finally in the air, something we should be very afraid of.

Our government, with its reputation for lies and indifference, says they want it to be a one-off and they ‘hope’ we never have to hear that sound again.

Thank you government for making us feel a little safer at a time when so many of us fear we are about to take the final ‘four minute’ journey home.

The government makes no mention of nuclear bombs sailing through our blustery cloudy skies and obliterating all our futures, whether you end up dead or alive.

What chance have we got? 80 million mobiles going off all at once …  80 million tiny plastic hand-held sirens filling our car, our streets, our pubs, our shops, supermarkets. Our homes.

How many of us will actually get back to our homes when those millions and millions of tiny sirens go off for real?

Officially, the government is testing a system that will allow them  and emergency services to send an immediate warning to the public if they’re ‘at risk of life-threatening situations’ like flooding or wildfires.

You will not be able to use your phone without acknowledging the message.

The Government’s National Resilience Framework, published in December, the siren is expected to launch across the UK in ‘early 2023’ but as of yet, it is still in its testing phase.

We are testing our chances of survival by getting some spidery authoritarian government robot to phone every one of us at the same time and tell us we could be about to die.

If it is a bomb from Russia with love, what are we supposed to do? Jump under our cars – or into the nearest ditch – and cross your fingers? Or should we all get under our kitchen tables for a few weeks while death outside reduces to a half-life?

Well, don’t shoot the messenger – but what has changed in the last 50 years?

I dare to say one word – NOTHING!

Protect and Survive was a civil defence public information campaign which began in 1974 and continued until 1980..

It was basically a badly produced document focussed on Nuclear War. And, yep, it told you to jump in a ditch or under your table and kiss your wife, your kids, your dog, your cat and your twitching a”rse goodbye.

It was a useless pointless deadly joke.

And in 2023 NOTHING has changed.

Do you know that In the past 10 years, 36 people have died as a result of flooding in England and Wales. And there were 334 fire-related fatalities in Great Britain during 2021/22.

However, if Putin blasts us, the first bomb to hit the UK is expected to wipe out 6 million – and maim another 4 million.

Let’s take a look at Thatcher’s Protect and Survive – what could it do for us way back then, and what can it do for us today?

What have these prime ministers bothered to do to help out in the case of nuclear war?

Callaghan, Blair, Brown, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak… they were our guardians, our protectors.

THE FUTURE ACCORDING TO THATCHER’S ROAD MAP TO DESTRUCTION

34 MILLION OF US WILL DIE IN PUTIN’S MADNESS, SAYS NUCLEAR WAR SCENARIO

Margaret Thatcher was a tyrant, a grocery girl who ate all the plums.

She chose Meringue for hair and adopted a shrillness that could make a blackboard screech.

But one day the Iron Lady took a step too far … she’d already killed industry, Northern cities were wastelands of boarded-up shops, teachers were banned from discussing LGBT. And the poll tax had just happened.

There were riots on our streets.

On the other hand Vladimir Putin is a working-class hero to millions, a boy-dun-good, the richest man in the world some say.

An action man too.

Most of us though see him as a murderous bare-chested horseman of the apocalypse.

Vlad isn’t very well either. Some say he is about to drop dead. Certainly, he does look a bit autocratically bloated.

Stress I guess.

After all, he has been waving rusty old nuclear popguns in the air and threatening mankind.

He has has taken on inhuman proportions.

And in a way has sent us back to a future as the Iron Curtains are twitching again.

Yep, it’s like we are back in the 1980s when Mrs T came up with her final cynical act.

Dear old Maggie rushed to print with the Protect and Survive government pamphlet. Designed to keep us alive in the event of a Russian nuke piercing the very heart of England.

World tensions were rising. In 1980, nuclear war seemed closer than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis 18 years earlier.

Then we read Protect and Survive! Get under the table, it said. Or hide in a ditch!

And, if you hear the air-raid klaxons clanking and wheezing out the four minute warning, then don’t forget to brick up windows. Oh! And remove handles from all toilet cisterns (to stop usable water being flushed accidently).

And as Putin bombs and maims the Ukraine and threatens the world, Protect and Survive, incredibly, is still probably the best we’ve got!

It’s just been rewritten a bit!

Latest government advice says: “Hand sanitizer does not protect against fall out. Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth, if possible.

“Try to maintain a distance of at least six feet between yourself and people who are not part of your household. If possible, wear a mask.”

The Government advice is, in essence, if Putin nukes us then you still have to get under the table, put your head between your knees and kiss your ass goodbye.

Back in the day they published 150,000 copies for a population of 65m people.

Now we have a population of nearly 80m and a myasma of languages and cultures.

In fact there seems to be so little information on how to survive that people like war prepper Yara Ghrewati, aged 39, are going it alone. She has a secret shelter, a car boot packed with essentials, and a bow and arrow to hunt squirrels.

The bushcraft instructor even suggests people should be willing to eat their pets if the worst happens and food supplies are cut. “Any vegetarians are going to have a really tough time,” she said.

It is of course far from certain that Putin would be prepared to be the first leader to use nuclear weapons in wartime since 1945.

U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki created a “precedent” for the use of nuclear weapons., The invasion of Iraq was a big PR mistake too.

Even if Putin did issue the launch order, there is no guarantee it would be carried out. Nor can he be absolutely sure either that the weapons and their delivery systems would work.

But given Putin’s crimes — from Syria to Crimea to Salisbury— surely this lack of public planning over the past 40 years is just jaw-droppingly complacent on the part of Europe’s leaders.

The annexation – and new bombings – brings the use of a nuclear weapon a step closer by giving Putin a potential justification on the grounds that “the territorial integrity of our country is threatened”.

Any nuclear use in Ukraine would be likely to involve non-strategic, or tactical, weapons. But on average they are far more powerful that the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs.

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) estimates Russia has 2,000 tactical weapons for use on land, sea and air.

But Pavel Baev, a military researcher who once worked for the Soviet defence ministry, said that Putin cannot count on these weapons actually working.

“Most of these warheads are very old,” Baev, now a professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, said.

But for the Russian leader, detonation of even a rusty old a tactical nuclear weapon is entirely acceptable.

And so the West needs to do some quick thinking about how it will help us all to survive.

More than 40 years ago, the 30 page pamphlet advised householders to make a fallout room and an inner refuge, like the cupboard under the stairs.

Families would be in there for at least two weeks, so there were tips on what food to stock up on.

People were urged to store three-and-half gallons (16 litres) of water each, keeping it in the bath and basins.

If people were not at home during the nuclear strike, they were advised to “lie flat (in a ditch) and cover the exposed skin of the head and hands”.

Today, the aftermath of a nuclear war will be  firestorms, a nuclear winter, widespread radiation sickness and the loss of much modern technology.

For years, crops from California to China will keep dying. Famine will set in around the globe.

Over the decades he total number of weapons has dropped by about 80 percent from an estimated 70,300 in 1986 to 12,700 in early 2022.

But the Ukraine does not have any – a brave and compassionate nation, it gave them up in 1994.

#putin #truss #biden #zelensky #nukes #nuclearbombs #thatcher #protectandsurvive #russia #ukraine #britain #worldwar #xi

Almost 80 million mobile phones in the UK will receive a call from Armageddon next month.

The cacophony of our world will be drowned by the howling of a cyber siren warning us something is finally in the air, something we should be very afraid of.

Our government, with its reputation for lies and indifference, says they want it to be a one-off and they ‘hope’ we never have to hear that sound again.

Thank you government for making us feel a little safer at a time when so many of us fear we are about to take the final ‘four minute’ journey home.

The government makes no mention of nuclear bombs sailing through our blustery cloudy skies and obliterating all our futures, whether you end up dead or alive.

What chance have we got? 80 million mobiles going off all at once …  80 million tiny plastic hand-held sirens filling our car, our streets, our pubs, our shops, supermarkets. Our homes.

How many of us will actually get back to our homes when those millions and millions of tiny sirens go off for real?

Officially, the government is testing a system that will allow them  and emergency services to send an immediate warning to the public if they’re ‘at risk of life-threatening situations’ like flooding or wildfires.

You will not be able to use your phone without acknowledging the message.

The Government’s National Resilience Framework, published in December, says the siren is expected to launch across the UK in ‘early 2023’ but as of yet, it is still in its testing phase.

We are testing our chances of survival by getting some spidery authoritarian government robot to phone every one of us at the same time and tell us we could be about to die.

If it is a bomb from Russia with love, what are we supposed to do? Jump under our cars – or into the nearest ditch – and cross your fingers? Or should we all get under our kitchen tables for a few weeks while death outside reduces to a half-life?

Well, don’t shoot the messenger – but what has changed in the last 50 years?

I dare to say one word – NOTHING!

Protect and Survive was a civil defence public information campaign which began in 1974 and continued until 1980.

It was basically a badly produced document focussed on Nuclear War. And, yep, it told you to jump in a ditch or under your table and kiss your wife, your kids, your dog, your cat and your twitching a”rse goodbye.

It was a useless pointless deadly joke.

And in 2023 NOTHING has changed.

Do you know that In the past 10 years, 36 people have died as a result of flooding in England and Wales. And there were 334 fire-related fatalities in Great Britain during 2021/22.

However, if Putin blasts us, the first bomb to hit the UK is expected to wipe out 6 million – and maim another 4 million.

Let’s take a look at Thatcher’s Protect and Survive – what could it do for us way back then, and what can it do for us today?

What have these prime ministers bothered to do to help out in the case of nuclear war?

Callaghan, Blair, Brown, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak… they are our guardians, our protectors.

THE FUTURE ACCORDING TO THATCHER’S ROAD MAP TO DESTRUCTION

34 MILLION OF US WILL DIE IN PUTIN’S MADNESS, SAYS NUCLEAR WAR SCENARIO

Margaret Thatcher was a tyrant, a grocery girl who ate all the plums.

She chose Meringue for hair and adopted a shrillness that could make a blackboard screech.

But one day the Iron Lady took a step too far … she’d already killed industry, Northern cities were wastelands of boarded-up shops, teachers were banned from discussing LGBT. And the poll tax had just happened.

There were riots on our streets.

On the other hand Vladimir Putin is a working-class hero to millions, a boy-dun-good, the richest man in the world some say.

An action man too.

Most of us though see him as a murderous bare-chested horseman of the apocalypse.

Vlad isn’t very well either. Some say he is about to drop dead. Certainly, he does look a bit autocratically bloated.

Stress I guess.

After all, he has been waving rusty old nuclear popguns in the air and threatening mankind.

He has has taken on inhuman proportions.

And in a way has sent us back to a future as the Iron Curtains are twitching again.

Yep, it’s like we are back in the 1980s when Mrs T came up with her final cynical act.

Dear old Maggie rushed to print with the Protect and Survive government pamphlet. Designed to keep us alive in the event of a Russian nuke piercing the very heart of England.

World tensions were rising. In 1980, nuclear war seemed closer than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis 18 years earlier.

Then we read Protect and Survive! Get under the table, it said. Or hide in a ditch!

And, if you hear the air-raid klaxons clanking and wheezing out the four minute warning, then don’t forget to brick up windows. Oh! And remove handles from all toilet cisterns (to stop usable water being flushed accidently).

And as Putin bombs and maims the Ukraine and threatens the world, Protect and Survive, incredibly, is still probably the best we’ve got!

It’s just been rewritten a bit!

Latest government advice says: “Hand sanitizer does not protect against fall out. Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth, if possible.

“Try to maintain a distance of at least six feet between yourself and people who are not part of your household. If possible, wear a mask.”

The Government advice is, in essence, if Putin nukes us then you still have to get under the table, put your head between your knees and kiss your ass goodbye.

Back in the day they published 150,000 copies for a population of 65m people.

Now we have a population of nearly 80m and a myasma of languages and cultures.

In fact there seems to be so little information on how to survive that people like war prepper Yara Ghrewati, aged 39, are going it alone. She has a secret shelter, a car boot packed with essentials, and a bow and arrow to hunt squirrels.

The bushcraft instructor even suggests people should be willing to eat their pets if the worst happens and food supplies are cut. “Any vegetarians are going to have a really tough time,” she said.

It is of course far from certain that Putin would be prepared to be the first leader to use nuclear weapons in wartime since 1945.

U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki created a “precedent” for the use of nuclear weapons., The invasion of Iraq was a big PR mistake too.

Even if Putin did issue the launch order, there is no guarantee it would be carried out. Nor can he be absolutely sure either that the weapons and their delivery systems would work.

But given Putin’s crimes — from Syria to Crimea to Salisbury— surely this lack of public planning over the past 40 years is just jaw-droppingly complacent on the part of Europe’s leaders.

The annexation – and new bombings – brings the use of a nuclear weapon a step closer by giving Putin a potential justification on the grounds that “the territorial integrity of our country is threatened”.

Any nuclear use in Ukraine would be likely to involve non-strategic, or tactical, weapons. But on average they are far more powerful that the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs.

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) estimates Russia has 2,000 tactical weapons for use on land, sea and air.

But Pavel Baev, a military researcher who once worked for the Soviet defence ministry, said that Putin cannot count on these weapons actually working.

“Most of these warheads are very old,” Baev, now a professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, said.

But for the Russian leader, detonation of even a rusty old a tactical nuclear weapon is entirely acceptable.

And so the West needs to do some quick thinking about how it will help us all to survive.

More than 40 years ago, the 30 page pamphlet advised householders to make a fallout room and an inner refuge, like the cupboard under the stairs.

Families would be in there for at least two weeks, so there were tips on what food to stock up on.

People were urged to store three-and-half gallons (16 litres) of water each, keeping it in the bath and basins.

If people were not at home during the nuclear strike, they were advised to “lie flat (in a ditch) and cover the exposed skin of the head and hands”.

Today, the aftermath of a nuclear war will be  firestorms, a nuclear winter, widespread radiation sickness and the loss of much modern technology.

For years, crops from California to China will keep dying. Famine will set in around the globe.

Over the decades he total number of weapons has dropped by about 80 percent from an estimated 70,300 in 1986 to 12,700 in early 2022.

But the Ukraine does not have any – a brave and compassionate nation, it gave them up in 1994.

#putin #truss #biden #zelensky #nukes #nuclearbombs #thatcher #protectandsurvive #russia #ukraine #britain #worldwar

Rodney and Leigh ask why Spain has millions of empty properties along the coast? and why is France always shut?

And loads more…click to watch video

#Spain #France

VLAD Putin flew to the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol, in defiance of the international court warrant for his arrest.

He was filmed by Russian TV driving around the smashed city where he is said to have met with residents. It is probably his first visit to Ukraine since the start of the invasion in February last year.

It comes just days after the arrest warrant.

The accusations focus on the unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia since Moscow’s invasion in 2022.

Moscow has denied the allegations and denounced the warrants as “outrageous”.

It is highly unlikely that much will come of the move, as the ICC has no powers to arrest suspects without the co-operation of a country’s government.

Russia is not an ICC member country, meaning the court, located in The Hague, has no authority there.

Before the war began about half a million people lived in the city. But

according to UN estimates, 90% of residential buildings were damaged or destroyed, and 350,000 people were forced to leave.

Ukrainian authorities say more than 20,000 died there.

But Russian-installed authorities in Mariupol say some 300,000 people are now living there.

Oleg Morgun, the Russia-installed “mayor” of Mariupol, says some 70,000 of those currently in the city are construction workers and members of the Russian military.

New buildings have appeared and many buildings damaged during the bombardment have gone.

The Russian military has built a new district comprised of a dozen apartment blocks in the western part of Mariupol. It is called Nevsky, after the River Neva, on which President Vladimir Putin’s home city of St Petersburg stands.

Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that last week’s US drone strikes over the Baltic Sea are a sign of direct American involvement in the conflict with Russia.

The destroying down of a US drone by Russian fighter planes was the first known direct military encounter between the two sides since the war began.

#UKRAINE #PUTIN #VISIT #WARCRIMES #WAR

Cheers to all my friends – and there are many – from Ireland, particularly Pat McManus and his family … he’s a cheeky blinder with a wicked sense of humour and a heart as big as Dublin.

He is Irish and proud!

#stpatrick #pat #patrick #day #irish