First, let me express my unbridled optimism: Yes, there will be history books in the future. I hope.
What will they say about our present time? Nothing encouraging, I fear.
They’ll note the date October 17, 2024, as the date when Ukraine basically presented a nuclear ultimatum: If the country is not welcome into NATO, at some point in the future it may very well rearm itself with nuclear weapons. Which, arguably, it has every right to do, since 30 years ago Ukraine gave up what was then the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for supposedly robust security guarantees by, among other states, the Russian Federation.
In unrelated news, several days ago there was a minor earthquake registered in the Dnipro region of Ukraine. Which, incidentally, supposedly coincides with some old Soviet weapons testing grounds. Or not. Ukrainians say the epicenter was several kilometers below the surface and the world is not alarmed. Still…
One of Midjourney’s suggestions for the cover of a future history book
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is gaining. If I had to bet my money, I’d bet on him winning in November. The consequences will likely be catastrophic, both for democracy within the American Republic and for NATO and the broader Western democratic alliance.
In my country of birth, Hungary, Orban continues to reign supreme. And he’s no longer the outlier in Europe: increasingly, nationalists and authoritarians are gaining elsewhere on the continent.
Elsewhere, China continues its saber-rattling at Taiwan, North Korea now sends soldiers to help Russia, the Middle Eastern conflict widens, there’s even a spat between Canada and India over an Indian assassionation of a Sikh nationalist on Canadian soil not long ago.
In short, let me not mince words about this: The world is fucked up badly, and it’s becoming more and more fucked up each and every passing day.
Meh. I am 61, and I have no children to worry about. So maybe I’ll just lean back and watch the show? It’s about to get really exciting.
But yes, I still hope that there will be future history books.
Wow :) re-visiting your blog brings more and more curious news. I can’t at once find the sources of this story with earthquake in Dnipro, but, of course, who knows. Some russian officials time after time start to bleat something about “dirty nuclear bomb” supposedly prepared by Ukraine but even very loyal citizen here need to be completely crazy to believe everything spoken by officials.
But taking in account the other issues you mention (China on Taiwan, EU shifting to dissolution and some reckless Israelis having fancy to blow up the whole region) – I feel somewhat easier – it looks Ukrainian conflict at least is fading out of the first pages and may go stale – at least saving some thousands lives there.
> Meanwhile, Donald Trump is gaining. If I had to bet my money,
Oh, is he? I’m not watching them that carefully, perhaps due to a kind of internal disgust I feel to situation that such a great nation is facing in such an awful elections. If you have fancy, I’m ready to bet on Ms Harris. Not that I particularly like her, but given Trump’s chaotic personality I doubt he may enjoy as good impression as it was 8 years ago. Well, still I think I like her more than Trump for sure. Though my sympathies and predictions are on average poor.
> I still hope that there will be future history books.
I feel sure. They regretfully don’t have potential to make the world good and happy. But at the same time they all are too shaky and indecisive to break it. Most probably they’ll simply make things slightly worse. As usual.
https://unn.ua/en/news/an-earthquake-was-recorded-in-the-dnipro-region-what-is-known
https://abcnews.go.com/538/trump-gained-538s-forecast-election-toss/story?id=114907042
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-18-2024
Viktor, thanks for the links!
I browsed a bit over ukrainian web-sites and found to my surprise the region is considered not completely seismically stable. Here is brief explanation on the page of supposedly Dnipro city news https://gorod.dp.ua/news/166685 though google translate is needed.
As about of US elections – as usually it seems they simply keep close. Here I see reuters article that Ms Harris is leading with 3% though I remember that with complicated US election process it may be deceiving.
About koreans in Ukraine – I heard of this, but I’m curious to hear some eyewitness report of their participation. Not that I don’t believe but handling these foreign troops sounds too problematic. Meanwhile even if we half the officially reported rate of recruiting in Russia, the number still makes it difficult to understand the reason behind such a move. (though the actual move of troops to training sites is pretty possible – but quite possible this happened routinely before. they always have some business with N.Korea which is generally out of public sight)
Well, yes, I suspect the earthquake was just an earthquake but it’s still uncanny timing. US elections… let me not go there. Concerning Koreans, it’s all over the news, including diplomatic protests by South Korea. Anyhow, here’s one that’s pretty close to an eyewitness report: https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/19/asia/north-korea-ukraine-russia-troops-uniform-intl/index.html — not in Ukraine, no, just in the far east of Russia, but still.