where's gort when you need him?

'everyone is quoting gramsci on the interregnum, but that assumes that something new will be or could be born.
I doubt it...
in the worst-case scenario, elon musk will simply lead a billionaire migration off planet.'
- mike davis thanatos triumphant, NLR sidecar. 7th march 2022. 

horsemouth thinks we are not at the point of off-worlding the billionaires just yet - some workers will have to be sent ahead to make things comfortable. (it's the same problem as coleridge and southey's plans for pantisocracy on the susquehanna). 

horsemouth's friend suggested adjusting the billionaires to better suit their new life in space (james blish's pantropy). 

... and thus horsemouth realises we will not be saving the race. we will be saving a few exceptional sovereign individuals. an immortal richard branson (with a more efficient tentacular locomotion system) for example. 

xeno-transplant succes! 'voila! the rich are no longer human'. 

it is then that horsemouth remembers that his friend is not an SF novelist (as he fondly imagines) but an imagineer for elon musk's rapid protoplasming industries. 

shit horsemouth forgot the most obvious SF pun 'a billionaire spree'.

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another friend (recently seen arguing with yet another friend, that's not a good look friends) found something else in the mike davis piece. 

'we are living through the nightmare edition of ‘great men make history’... there are few safety switches between today’s maximum leaders and armageddon. ..  it should make us pay homage at the hero graves of aleksandr ilyich ulyanov, alexander berkman and the incomparable sholem schwarzbard.'  

now horsemouth knows enough to know that ulyanov is lenin. 

except he's not. aleksandr was lenin's elder brother (the one who attempted the assassination of tsar alexander III), berkman attempted the assassination of businessman henry clay frick during the homestead strike, and sholem schwarzbard actually succeeded in the assassination of the ukrainian national leader symon petliura in 1926.

sadly no-one is going to get close enough to assassinate putin. the workers are going to be sent to fight and die again. the ordinary people are going to have to flee or die. 'wisdom's alternative to war' will remain untried yet again. 

in a way it is a feeble article (and mike davis is usually good) because there is no smart plan that will get us out of the current murderous impasse and stop the bombs from falling. 

the sanctions on russia are harsh and will seriously harm the russian economy (which is currently about the size of italy's for more than double the population) and thus the russian people. but seeing as they do not apply to the oil and gas europe needs they are basically pointless in the short term. iran has been beaten harder with sanctions (and it still hasn't fallen over). 

in the next few years de-carbonisation in the west and an increased emphasis on energy security will harm russia even more. 

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'what. we don't have enough love in our hearts for two wars?' - mcnulty, the wire. 

here comes the refugee crisis. let's see how much love in our hearts the british actually possess.