Will's Good Idea for the Week of 2/6/22

This afternoon we're  gonna start boxing up our books, stacked randomly on the utility room floor after last summer's flood and subsequent basement purge. During the boxening we'll find our Russian/USSR books, enabling us to improve The Final Storm's SAS scene. We have 24 banker's boxes ready to go. It's a start.

Up in the land of the moose, our boy Pierre Poilievre, MP for Carleton, has announced he's running for leadership of the Cannuck Conservatives. Here's Poilievre nuking Justin and bouncing the rubble. Conservative Politics down here and up there isn't about policy anymore but the ability to retaliate, the willingness to say, 'No, your boss wears blackface! You're the racist!'

Our man on the ground up there thinks events are moving beyond Justin's ability to control or even influence them. One Canadian commentator we read, wish we could remember who, said that both sides are playing a game of chicken that neither can lose. Justin called the Freedom Truckers every kind of 'phobe' he could name. Now he can't move them, but he can't let them stay either. 

Exit question: will Justin turn Parliament Hill into Tiananmen Square? This blog is reminded of a wonderful scene in Cast a Giant shadow, where a British army officer threatens to open fire on hundreds of Jewish refugees that have just landed in Palestine. 'I guess now is when we find out if we're the bloody Nazi's or not,' says a young subaltern.

This blog admits to feeling some powerful ju-ju for our old Putin's War novel. We like the idea of a massive American task force (three carrier battle groups, a marine division, the 82nd Airborne on alert) showing up in the Western Pacific....and and!...A British led Commonwealth task force moving into the South China Sea. Lots of Aussies...Wonder what their target would be. Is a Russian/Chinese war unrealistic given the Putin-Xi Axis of Eurasia? Perhaps. Then again, Hitler did betray Stalin. 

Lots of great ideas, not enough time or energy.

To recap where we stand:

The Great Nuclear War of 1975: formatting, needs final read through.

The Great Salvation of 1976: needs print reading preparatory to going to the editor. 

World War 1990: The Weser: final draft almost done. One more month of work, this includes print reading.

World War 1990: The Final Storm: tonnes of work to do.

The decks will be cleared for the summer sneak in and a fresh project in the autumn.