History, geopolitics, social issues. Peels apples with scalpels. Quiet civil conversations. Mostly somewhere in the moderate middle. Aspie. Mute button user.
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Some of you may wonder about the name of this profile - Chamberlain's Ghost. Just briefly, when this war started in early 2022, I strongly expressed the view that Ukraine should seek a settlement with Russia as soon as possible. This was long before we all learned about the abortive Istanbul negotiations. For this I was pilloried by friend, family, acquaintance and stranger alike. I was labelled 'Putin's shill', 'Munich appeaser', 'Neville Chamberlain' and and many other things besides. But I was right then and I am still right now. The only solution to this war for Ukraine was and still is a negotiated peace. The only difference now from then is that now the terms will be worse, many people have died and a great deal of destruction has been done. This was, in the greater sense of matters, an avoidable war. People did not need to die and a country did not need to be wrecked. But in substance ideology preceded pragmatism.
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I'm not surprised. Same will happen in many other European countries.
More than 45,000 students across Germany joined protests against plans for compulsory military service, with demonstrations held in over 100 cities.
The protests began after the Defense Ministry started calling 18-year-old men for medical screenings under a new military service law.
While the system remains voluntary, students argue the government is moving toward a gradual return of conscription.
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"Peace would not solve Europe’s problems. It would expose them. It would force European governments to explain the costs of the previous strategy, define relations with Russia, confront industrial competition with China, rethink dependence upon the United States and determine whether the continent has the political cohesion required to act as an autonomous strategic power.
Every international order eventually reaches a point at which institutions created to solve yesterday’s problems become obstacles to solving tomorrow’s ones. The question facing Europe is therefore no longer simply how to prevail in Ukraine. It is whether Europe can adapt to the Eurasian order emerging from the war before that order is imposed upon it.
There is a historical echo here that might be worth mentioning briefly as an analytical parallel. Major European strategic settlements have often followed moments when an existing order ceased to fit the underlying distribution of power: the Congress of Vienna after the Napoleonic Wars, the post-1945 settlement, and the post-Cold War order after 1991. Europe is now entering another such transition."
- Ambrus Bela, Substack
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"Yemen was a chessboard, and almost none of the players ever cared about the board itself."
This 🔽 is a very good primer on the history of Yemen - and the endless political incoherence that continues to cause such instability and hardship there.
rebellio.substack.com/p/yeme…
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A constant array of headlines: Ukraine and Western officials flooding the zone with public offers: energy ceasefire; grain corridor; unconditional halt; trilateral talks in UAE; leader-level meetings; theatrics in the UN; a stream of stupidity from Sikorski; the U.S. shuttling Witkoff and Kushner. Russia only deflects or remains silent. The whole story of where matters stand in a nutshell.
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Sept 25 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan will hold an urgent, high-level meeting under a joint defence pact to discuss ways to support the kingdom amid attacks by Yemen's Houthis, while Saudi's top religious authority told troops to be ready to lay down their lives to fight their Iran-aligned enemy.
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Interesting piece. US macroeconomics are not too bad but people are very upset about the Iran war and it may cost the Republicans dearly at the midterms.
"And what we see in the polls from the first weeks of September is very clear: a big blue surge on top of what looked already like a big blue wave. Polling averages now put Democrats further ahead this cycle than in the major wave election in 2018. To me, the evidence suggests that Senate seats in Kansas, Iowa, South Carolina and Florida are in play."
The Mistake That May Finally Get the Republican Base to Ditch Trump nytimes.com/2026/09/23/opini…
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In my view, this 🔽is primarily a diplomatic play. I have pointed out in the past that the assessment by the US Department of Agriculture is that there is enough grain in the absence of the Ukrainian grain to feed the world and keep prices stable. If at any point you want to understand what is really going on, please do look at the reports of the US Department of Agriculture. They do a really good job in this area. Their assessments are updated frequently – month by month.
Grain from Ukraine feeds people all over the world.
But Russia is blocking exports through the Black Sea and is deliberately causing global food insecurity.
The EU is calling for attacks to stop and grain to flow again.
Food must never be used as a weapon of war.
My remarks at our UN side event on the Black Sea ↓
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Bloomberg is behind the curve. Loading has already started.
From my Bloomberg News colleagues:
Saudi Arabia is running tests on a crucial oil pipeline with a view to restarting it this week, a person familiar with the matter said. The kingdom also expects to resume oil loadings from the Red Sea port of Yanbu this week.
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Short-sighted take. Saudi troops were never the main ground force fighting across Yemen, and there was never some massive Saudi mobilization to fight Yemen’s war on behalf of the Yemenis.
>>> For the most part, the people actually manning the front lines and points of contact were Yemeni government forces and other Yemeni fighters, not Saudi troops. Saudi involvement on the ground was mainly focused on border security and certain special or limited operations. The broader Saudi role was airpower, logistics, intelligence, training, equipment, and other military support.
That's an important distinction. Saudi Arabia didn't send a huge expeditionary army into Yemen to fight and occupy the country. The bulk of the ground fighting was done by Yemenis, while Saudi Arabia provided capabilities and support to its Yemeni partners.
Even academic research on the intervention describes the Saudi approach as a form of "remote warfare" precisely because it relied heavily on airpower and local forces rather than a large-scale Saudi ground deployment.
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🔽▶️"Economists warned the 'walls are closing in' on Andy Burnham today as figures showed Government borrowing surging ahead of forecasts. The public sector borrowed £18.3billion last month, up around a fifth on August 2025, as rising tax revenues failed to keep pace with Labour's spending. That was around £3billion more than expected, and £3.5billion more than the Treasury's OBR watchdog predicted."
I'm sorry but Andy Burnham is just another total bullshit merchant promising everything to everyone who is not willing to make the very, very hard decisions that Britain requires to be fixed and to persuade the nation to support him on that tough journey. Britain really needs a "toil, tears and sweat" moment and this guy is not the one to make it happen. It's just going to get worse.
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IRGC spokesman Brigadier General Hossein Mohebbi: a new weapon used against a U.S. aircraft carrier “was tested successfully,” that details would not be disclosed, and that “should a new aggression against Iran happen… we will bring other sophisticated weapons to the battlefield.”
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🔽 I think PT's almost certainly onto something here.
I am coming around to the view that Tehran is taking Arab money to quietly permit transits.
Emirati oil exports this month are running at 3.6 mbd, higher than the 2025 average of 3.4 mbd. Total exports are close to 6.5 mbd.
It is hard to believe that this is happening in defiance of Tehran, although one cannot rule out that hypothesis either. Additional circumstantial evidence comes from the noises coming out of the UAE.
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Another ammo depot blows up in Syria, as the country continues to destabilise. The only thing that seemingly holds Syria together now is its president — a former head of Al-Qaeda. If (or when) Syria unravels, it could trigger a turf war between Israel and Turkey. This is what all those years of proxy war against Syria produced. Behind the righteous indignation and moral slogans calling for regime-changing Assad, there was always a predictable disaster.
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[koff] I'm not sure if I am missing something, but hasn't United Russia's percentage gone up and that of the Communists down (based on the exit polls)?
The win of Putin's party United Russia is unsurprising, of course, though quite low numbers. But look at how much the Communist Party has gained - these are the folks who are nostalgic about the restoration the Soviet Union, among many other crazy things.
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"full scale hybrid warfare". (❓) I feel a bit like I'm back in a Kamala Harris word salad, trying to work out what it actually means.
Europeans should stop moaning about the new reality on the old continent. Yes, we are in a full-scale hybrid warfare officially launched on Feb 24, 2022, and now in its most intensive phase. But Putin will only cave in when facing our collective strength & resolve, not weakness.
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