"The war [in Ukraine] has (just/now) gone to a (whole) new level" - "the Russians are getting sick of losing". As one German woman on the street in Deutschland said the other evening: "I have a bad feeling" (about her Government's sending of high-powered German 'Leopard tanks', at the behest/request of the American Administration/European Parliament/Union, to the frontlines in Ukraine); "I'm afraid how Putin will react."
Exactly/precisely. Couldn't have put it better myself.
Meanwhile (according to BBC Radio) tensions in the ever-fraught Middle East are once again - surprise, surprise - rising/"excalating". (That latter adjective being employed, oddly and ironically enough, by United States Secretary of State Anthony 'double take', blind leading the blind, he of blinkered thinking Blinken, who has the sheer gall to be warning of this very thing whilst undertaking a fly-in visit there over coming days, whilst 'back in the USA' he and the Biden Administration are doing their level best to escalate tensions with Russia to the point that if WW111 eventually eventuates, well who'd'a guessed.)
Postscript: Where are you Angela (Merkel), when you and your nation so desperately need you...you *ought to have left the helm in Deutschland earlier, in time to make a ***successful run for the leadership in the United Nations, that ****oh so useless and ineffectual body of platitude purveyors...
*As is admittedly common for me - and doubtless somewhat annoying and frustrating for my readership - a whole mass of contradictions-in-terms, for obviously were Merkel to have remained at Germany's helm she'd never have even been able to make a run for United Nations Secretary-General. And of course she didn't do so, ultimately both losing her position (by her own volition) as German Chancellor as well as the opportunity to seek that leadership role in the UN. And admittedly only a few **select politicians throughout the world have ever managed to perform such Lazarus-like feats and come back out of the wild blue yonder to regain political power when their nations most desperately needed them.
**Wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill obviously being one of these to readily spring to mind.
***For at the time of the last leadership contest thereabouts, one which incidentally featured former UN #3 Helen Clark, one-time, long-serving New Zealand prime minister, it was well 'bandied about' that the only area (as in major world region) that hadn't had a U N Secretary-General up to that point had been the old 'Eastern Bloc', and that therefore if a credible leadership contender had emerged from such a place they'd have been hands-on favourites to succeed the then retiring UN Secretary.
And guess where Ms Merkel herself haled from? Yes, the old Eastern Germany, very much a part of that selfsame 'bloc' only 33-or so odd years ago...
****Of course one could also legitimately ask why anyone, let alone someone of such political gravitas as Merkel, would be even remotely interested in heading up such a body of incompetents, to which I can only suggest that while she may well not (have) be(en), she could hardly do worse than the present (not to mention previous) incumbent/s of said office.
Moreover - and infinitely more than Germany itself - 'what the world (so desperately) needs now' is such a tried and true individual who has proven so adept at foreign affairs over such a long spell, one who indeed showed herself well capable of helping resolve global standoffs and crises; for who can really deny that we have come to a time when our world stands upon the very precipice and threshold of calamitous ruin?
Meanwhile back in your homeland you've been succeeded by someone whom, as (?Lieutenant?) Burkholder might have responded to Colonel Klink (in that *****great 'ole situation comedy of the 70s, Hogans Heroes), has seemingly embraced Burkholder's own lifetime motto:"I know *******noth-ink!"
*****Accepting the validity of Jewish critiques of the show claiming it tended, no doubt, to ******downplay the seriousness of what was then transpiring in the Third Reich; but childhood memories nevertheless always remain dear and cherished, and hard to replace no matter how reasonable/logical the argument may well be...
******Much as Yours Truly roundly criticized the film Jojo Rabbit for doing a little while ago.
*******I.e. nothing. (********Says it all, doesn't it.)
********As in knows nothing much about those things (in the political sphere) that really matter, that well behove a leader of such a major Western nation - with such a well-known, much-fraught history - to know.
