Base32

You are thinking very small, and wrongly if you think emulating the West African Squadron, which consumed 2% of GDP (about the current defence budget once pensions are stripped out) is anything to do with a frigate or two sailing up and down the Channel. In his speech, Tom proposed that British troops are deployed to confront Russian and Belarusan paramilitaries forcing people over the border on the orders of their government.. The West Africa Squadron was deployed for 60 years; thats how long it took to destroy the slave trade. The Squadron had some of the highest casualty rates in the Navy at the time. It means deploying British troops to the major sources of the refugees, which are Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, and accepting the cost of that,

I think a few of the posters don't realise that he wasn't pushing for the Royal Navy to start machine gunning rubber dinghies in the Channel, or squaddies to start patrolling fortified beaches in khaki. I agree with what he's saying, but for different reasons for others who, if this policy was presented differently, would call it "Neocon" (Bush's policy post 911 was guided by what happens to America if you ignore a corner of the world, hence Nation Building was a major feature, but done on the cheap). Its about the role of the armed forces overseas, either through coercive active intervention without cooperation of the sovereign powers (invasion etc), or using the armed forces as an arm of overseas development, eg deploying Royal Engineers to lead construction projects, reinvigorating the Loan Service system (which my father was part of). Loan Service was basically the MOD sending out technical officers, to serve in overseas militaries, ie taking overseas rank, allegiance and uniform. This could be in all sorts of projects involving engineering. Its nothing new. When the British Army intervened in Sierra Leone, it was to bring that country under governance again, preventing a wave of refugees. When the military intervened in the Libyan civil war, if that policy was in place, we will still be there. We have done this before. The NATO mission in Afghanistan was stabilisation; support the government there to build a functioning state that people don't want to flee from. Lack of support at home from politicians on the Right and Left meant it failed. It can work, if you make a commitment like the British Empire. So colonial officers who spend their entire lives "embedded", knowing the locals, knowing the characters, reporting back to London, occasionally getting butchered by a mob. In the 21st Century, it would mean expanding the role of the 13 Signal Regiment, from beyond conducting "traditional" CyberWarfare, to a new mission profile, intercepting the monies of the Snakehead gangs, even if that leads back to governments. Elsewhere, the Navy will need different kinds of surface craft, eg more landing ships. Longer overseas deployments will need at sea resupply. The army will need to refocus on the trades. The RAMC has been stripped back to reservists in the NHS (all the military hospitals have gone). This is basically Rory Stewart stuff, and Rory Stewart, being a sensible chap, is probably someone most contributing on the thread actively opposed. I didn't. I wanted him as leader. But the policy meant more army officers working in the FCO or with the FCO (which is where the Overseas Development Budget sits). Its the policy Cameron wanted, but you lot shouted him down because of Brexit. You lot moan about the pledge of $ of gdp on aid. Aid is all about supporting the UK. Fundamentally, people aren't fleeing to the UK because suddenly its become a nicer place to live. To my shame, its now a nastier place to live. My Thai wife watches the news, and thinks English people hate Thais and foreigners. People flee, because where they live has become a hell hole, because of what we did or what we didn't do, what that their governments did or didn't do, what Mother Nature did or didn't do. How do you fix all that. Well, we could go it alone, like Hornblower. Or, go in with the help of others. Maybe the UN. There is a very real problem of how you intervene if refugees are caused by the actions of a degenerate government, eg Serbian government action against Kosovans. Are you lot happy for squaddies to hit the beaches fighting in some far off land if it means less bearded 15 year olds rocking up on a Dover beach? Rory Stewart warned over a decade ago how crap we had become at intervention; Intervention is not bad, but it has to be implemented correctly, and its not just for Christmas. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v33/n07/rory-stewart/here-we-go-again

How to lose the Irish vote https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/18/us/politics/vance-immigration-gangs-of-new-york.html Plus Trump's Brothel owning Grandpa was part of that wave of violent German immigrants. The film Hamel refers to, was largely a work of fiction, inspired by events. But the plotline shows it is American nativists who lead on the violence. Very true; how much have Conservatives complained about the welfare families with a bazillion kids. And now "conservatives" think they should be subsidised. So expect a massive expansion of the welfare state to support the choices of Americans to spawn.

What triggered the Arab "Spring". A young fruit seller setting himself on fire in Tunisia. He did this during a tumultuous few weeks when it was revealed how the Tunisian President was robbing the country blind. This became known with the mass dumping on the Internet by Wikileaks. Addressing the Cambridge Union, Julian Assange took the credit. When he saw his actions were spurring street action because people were no longer afraid of the US military backing the regimes (which showed his complete lack of knowledge of the entire region), it spurred him to pump more and more. He dismissed the effects of social media, and said it was all him. He said pretty much the same thing https://www.frontlineclub.com/a_qa_with_julian_assange_part_i_on_the_arab_spring_phone_hacking_and_wikileaks_ethics/ At best, irresponsible journalism. Egypt and Tunisia had a veneer of legitimacy; there was a rule of law and order that restricted what the Presidents could do (ie flee). But in Libya and Syria, there was no such restraint; the regimes were unrestrained in putting down rebellions by initially young, hopeful protestors hoping for a better life. Gaddafi had his infamous zenga zenga challenge, how his was going to clear the protestors, lethally, street by street. In Syria, Assad remembered how his father leveled and entire city in the early 80s to quell a rebellion. In 2011, the world was still reeling from a global economic meltdown, and the poor were hurting the most. Assange took a touch paper to a barrel of petrol, and hid behind journalistic freedom. And the paradox is that generally those admonishing the British, the French, the Americans were Assange's biggest supporters. The unamed rebal with the medals became a legend, sporting a 39-45 campaign medal, Africa Star and the Al-Sanusi Army Liberation Medal (awarded to those who fought against the Axis in WW2; basically this guy went to war with his Grandad's medals). That was a one sided rebellion until the Britis/French and Americans helped out.

Joining the CPTPP increases UK GDP by 0.08% (Chatham House estimate). The UK already has FTAs with 9 of the 11 members. Joining CPTPP doesn't really have much in the way of strategic value, and in no way should the value of the block be compared to the EU with a similar population size. Adding Korea or Thailand to the CPTPP doesn't change the economics much. The US is unlikely to join. The big question is whether China or Taiwan join; it won't be both. Beverages, tobacco, and motor vehicles sectors will win, semi-processed foods will lose. While the UK is assuring us that membership will not see a fall in animal welfare and employment rights, that is certainly a threat. This has more of a strategic benefit, and is the sort of thing that helps Rees-Moggs assertion that the benefits of Brexit will become clear in 2070. Joining is not an end in itself. Right now, the UK can be very influential in the grouping as the second biggest economy after Japan. How that works if China joins is anyone's guess.

Its a fairly standard approach to health and safety that only the Anglo-Saxon world finds peculiar. In Continental systems, its is usual for Prosecutors to lead an investigation. In the UK, the Police or HSE would investigate, and present to the CPS. The CPS will then decide if it is in the public interest to prosecute, and generally only proceed if they think they can secure a verdict (which is why most people in court are found guilty). Police criminal investigations are a bit different from HSE. The police will determine ifa crime occurred. The HSE will take the view that an accident will always have fault; someone is liable, to differing degrees. And often their investigations will have no defence because of statutory requirements. HSE investigations can also be supranational, beyond the UK borders. The defence is usually mitigation. If the UK had a continental system, we wouldn't have had Grenfill still standing as a blacked ruin all these years later. Liable parties would have been placed on notice much earlier on. Instead the early reaction was about the colour of the local council, because people were filling in gaps themselves, in the absence of direction from the authorities. The Italian system means that if he went to work for Ferrari, Adrian Newey will likely never step foot in Italy. Different legal systems can puzzle people. In the UK, we went up in arms when the US extradited and threw in prison Natwest executives during an investigation. A Taiwanese friend was genuinely surprised that Nick Leeson wasn't executed by Singapore. The motoring world was aghast that Carlos Ghosh was held in solitary in Japan while awaiting trial, and had to escape to Lebanon. The English are surprised about trial without jury until its pointed out to them abotu Diplock courts in Northern Ireland. And then in Thailand how suspects (innocent until proven guilty) are paraded by the police and made to re-enact their supposed crimes. I think in the case of the Bayesian, there is information emerging that casts doubt on the immediate Anglo-Saxon thinking, that there was a terrible storm, and accident. A UK investigation would probably arrive at the same conclusion, but first would be engaged in determining if an offence had occured, rather than if an offence had not. The HSE is more akin to the latter.

In WW2, it was mostly the Ukrainians and Belarusans who did the dying for the Russians. Russian tanks were built from US steel. Russian trucks wre mostly Fords and Chevrolets. Britain started supplymtanks to Russia in June 1941, weeks after the Russian invasion. By December, 25% of Russian medium and heavy tanks were British supplied, 40% of the heavy tanks defending Moscow, when it nearly fell, were British. 30% if the Sviet Aurforce was British and American. Without the British, there would have been no Soviet army entering Berlin, and Stalin would have been hanging from a lamp post. The US supplied over 4000 Shermans, representing nearly 20% of Lend Lease, to the USSR. In today;s money, the US supplied $180bn in goods to the USSR, essential to keep it fighting and to keep it from starving. Remember, for much of the war, the Russians could not access their main source of food, Ukraine. They lost 40% of their arable land. And in fact, it was the Ukrainian and Belarussians who did most of the dying for the Russians. For the first 2 years of the war, the USSR was on the German side. This is what Kruschev said about Lend lease: Marshal Zhukov said I had a relative at the Charge of the Light Brigade, one Captain Nolan. Historians know him. You bizarrely claim the British never got over the Crimean War (trust me, we did), but you omit to mention the more relevant point that the poison dwarf, Vladimir Putin, has never gotten over the sweet gig he had in eliminating opposition to the DDR government.

I used think it was the Generals who would put a stop to this; that they had their own comfortable fiefdoms which is now being chewed up on the front, and increasingly replaced by sustandard DPRK kit. I think the Russian infrastructure will give up. Their aviation industry, dependant on Boeings and Airbuses, must being taking a hit. Just before the war, Siemens was supposed to embarking on a major upgrade to the rail network signalling, They weren't doing that for the hell of it, but because it was needed to be done. That's all stopped now, and engineering resource is being deployed to armament factories on double shifts. I read that the rail system is incredibly important to Russia as a country; without that link between Moscow and the Far East, it ceases to be a country, and the Far East increasingly looks elsewhere. Also, apparently conscripts are not on the front line, officially, only those on "contracts". They are being paid increasingly large bonuses to sign a contract (and some are being tricked). The pool of volunteers from prison is drying up; they had a major riot the other day, so I'm not sure the Russians would be keen to give that mob an AK and 30 rounds. So they will need to switch to Conscripts. What did it for the USSR were Mother's Committees; women pressing the government about their kids getting killed and maimed in Afghanistan. That might come to bare more. Will they still be fighting in 2026. Possibly, but much different from now. Western armies are entirely dependant on PMCs to go to war; mainly to keep sophisticated kit serviceable, but also to maintain new equipment that is being deployed faster than the military's own logistics could keep up. We called this Urgent Operational Requirements, with more and more kit undergoing field testing on the front line. Ukraine, with offshore Western maintenance, has half a shot of keeping their externally supplied kit going, and we are seeing the power of the market result in Western munitions manufacturers actually investing and constructing new production facilties in Ukraine. That means brand new state of the art tooling, better and better quality ammunition. In Russia, they are opening up long mothballed and derelict facilities manned by old boys who worked there 30 years ago, using a mixture of old Soviet era tooling, with more recent Western equipment which can brick at any time for want of a software update that will never happen. And you are scared connecting it externally anyhow, incase outside forces can damage your tooling, in the same way Iranian German made centrifuges were hacked and destroyed. It smacks of a regressing military, but they have still got plenty to fight with, but higher losses.

One interesting aspect I follow is Russian Healthcare. Russian healthcare is nowhere like what it was during Soviet times. Russian hospitals are full of modern equipment, and there is good access to drugs. But 90% of medical devices are imported, mostly from Germany and the US . 80% of drugs are imported. Sanctions do not include humanitarian devices. But healthcare has now gotten much more expensive, as the price of imports has dramatically increased (most medtech is moved by air. During COVID, the air indistry was more or less saved by the need for air transport of PPE, drugs etc, plus a weakened ruble has pushed up prices). The Russian healthcare budget has increased, but not by enough to cover cost increases. Russian patients will experience shortages, delays, and Russian doctors really don't like to have to use substandard alternatives. The Russian government identified about 3000 types of medical equipment, such as ultrasound, with no domestic capabilities, and put out a call to encourage more domestic innovation. It failed, and as a result, Russia is increasingly purchasing cheap devices from China and India. Chinese and Indian medical devices can be fine, the ones exported to the West that is. But there is much substandard kit being made in China and India that ordinarily never makes it out. Now they are going to Russia to substitute for the devices previously supply by Medtronic, Abbott, Siemens, Sysmex, JnJ and others. To make it worse, hospitals are now being "instructed" to provide staff to support front line troops, leading to staffing shortages. Russia right now seems superficially ok; the shops are open, they have Russian cococola and Russian smartpones, and Russian Youtube. But it will corrode, and Russians won't go back to the days of breadlines, decrepit public facilties etc.

Interviews on fringe radio are not pitches to the Westminster Party. I would wait until the Party Conference before deciding who you want to vote for, However, you need to be a member of 3 months standing before you get a vote. Not enough time now if you haven't paid your £2 PW dues.

I think Truss is ruled out: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/aug/27/liz-truss-considered-cutting-nhs-cancer-care-to-pay-for-tax-cuts-claims-new-book Life imitating art it seems

As the (hackneyed) article stated, there is quite a long history in the deployment of BW (eg the deliberate infection of pack animals during WW1). One example not cited was the deployment of Francisella tularensis against Germany Panzer units by the USSR around about 1942. Rabbit fever won't kill a lot of people, but it makes you sick. and records showed that it did impact operational effectiveness of tank crews, for a short while. Ken Alibek (anglicised name) was an Uzbek in the Soviet military in the 1980-90s. He's written a few accounts of the Soviet BW programme. What was interesting was how scientists were recruited. In the USSR, most life scientists were usually qualified medical doctors first, as was Alibek. Yersinia pestis (plague) is endemic in central asia. The Russians became genuinely very knowledgeable about this bug. Alibek was recruited as he was promised his research would be about developing new therapies to combat the Plague. What he actually did was study antibiotic resistance in Y. pestis. And as part of that, they developed antibiotic resistant strains. The Russians became so adept at handling this bug, that they developed attenuated strains (harmless), which became their lab rat bug. In the West the lab rat bug is Escherichia coli ("E coli"). Most strains are harmless, and virulant strains, in a lab setting, are fine to work with. The first bacterium to have its genome decoded was E. coli. Much of modern medicine and gene therapy is based on knowledge gleaned from studying E. coli. When the Soviet Union collapsed, he found himself serving in the new Russian Army, and was basically told because he was ethnically Uzbek, he would not be promoted. He became aware there was work going on that broke a few treaties, and so defected and spilled the beans. He later on set up his own Biotech company in the US. Its a lot harder than people suppose to "weaponise" biological material. You generally need the resources of a state. Its not like the movies. Aum Shinryko tried it, and failed, and yet they had access to vast resources, through setting up front tech companies, and infiltrating the Japanese scientific community. They tried spraying botulinum toxin by driving a van around Kyoto Palace. No one died, no one even got sick. 5mg of botulinum, in principle, is enough to wipe out Watford. Botulinum toxin is also known as Botox. People has botox parties handling what is a potential biological weapon. Botulinum temporarily paralyses muscles. If you ingest it, it makes you very sick. Surgeons routinely use it during certain open chest surgeries. Its used in urology to control bladder spasms among paraplegics. Its used to temporsrily reduce the appearance of wrinkles. All that Botox swimming around, but nothing in the way of terrorist attacks using it. During my career, I am aware of many incidents, most open source, or individuals attempting terroristic attacks using biological material. In nearly every case, mass casualties never occured; the one that worked was the cult in Oregon who wanted to rig a local election, by getting voters sick, so their voters could swing it. The head of the Iraqi BW programme was a female scientists, who had trained at the University of East Anglia, studying plant disease. I was at Strathclyde University, and we had Iraqis in the Microbiology department, studying the food spoilage by fungi, and how these fungo produced mycotoxins, a super lethal class of toxin. When GW1 kicked off, they were rounded up in the middle of the night. Iraq threw a lot of resources at BW, a lot of knowledgeable people but still failed to produced effective deployed weapons. Amerithrax was when weaponised Anthrax was put in the mail. Probably thousands of people exposed, but only 2 died, and one of them was in their 90s. The Biological Weapons Convention permits signatories to produce limited amounts for defensive purposes; to study how to detect, how to protect. Hence weaponised Anthrax in the US existed. Weaponised spores have a coating to extend life (spores, when they come into contact with water, will germinate, and will only cause a mild disease; subcutaneous Anthrax infection is a thing among farmers, and is easily treated). Long distance detection involves some imaging techniques such as Lidar, as well as other technologies that can be built into drones. BW detection as a field, is quite young. When the Coalition deployed for GW1, there was no biological defence in use. Solutions had to be quickly cobbled together. The Americans had a pickup that a a prototype system developed in the 70s, that was pulled out of storage, and was driven around the desert. The Brits got RAMC lab techs in Bahrain, and purchased some commercial ATP detectors; ATP is a feature of life. Detect ATP, and you detect life. The theory was that a released BW cloud could be detected by measuring a sudden spike in ATP from the back of a Land Rover. The RAF base had daily bio attack alarms, until they figured out that low tide exposed seaweed beds, and release of plant particles...... But the USSR, China et al had bio weapons. Why didn't we have anything to detect or defend against them? Because WW3 was going to fought on the plains of West Germany. Available technologies would have been based on detecing biological aerosol; nothing was really available to instantly detect the nature of that aerosol. But Europe has a high background of biological material called pollen. The British Army's mantra was "Survive to Fight"; the assemption was that WW3 would be fought in DS3 or DS4 for the entrity (noddy suits), basically in a chemical rain. There would be no point in trying to detect anything., When Iraq invaded Kuwait, that changed. We knew he had an active BW programme. We knew Saddam had used nerve agent in combat (Halabja). But probably he didn't have enough of the stuff to go full Tonto; it was still a special munition to be used on special occasion. So there was more of a need to do point testing; that crashed SCUD, did it have mustard? And being desert, there is a very low biological background. Following GW1, NATO developed more of a capability, and some of that mid-90s kit is on display at the IWM in London. Some of the work in recent years is pretty cool, and will likely influence medical diagnostics. There has been running for a few years a literal Tricorder competition from the US government; can someone in Indistry develop a universal medical diagnostic scanner like in Star Trek. And some start ups are getting close. The DHS funded a project to detect unknown biological threats (detect things you don't know are a threat), which sounds an impossibility, but it got people thinking about the nature of virulance, signatures of manipulation (typically restriction enzyme sites as evidence of manipulation not seen in nature, or maybe specific antibiotic resistance markers). The winner of that round I think proposed an array of 200,000 markers associated with disease. The major biological threat is not from a lab down the road. Its from nature. Every Pandemic is associated with a change in human behaviour. Flu crossed from birds to pigs to man about the same time as someone figured out pig stys. The Black Death is associated with trade and the emergence of the city. Spanish Flu, as a pandemic, occurred because the end of a World War followed by huge movements of people as everyone went home. Polio pandemics emerged because of better sewage systems for the middle class resulted in less innate immunity to the Polio virus (Polio disportionatly affected middle class kids. Poor kids were exposed at a young age to more <deleted>, and built up an immunity). Mao flu at the end of the 50s I suspect is related to the end of the Chinese Civil War, and the strife that followed that, with the Red Terror etc. Hong Kong Flue of 68; British Intelligence picked up reports of that first in Canton, so I think related to The Great Leap forward, which saw biblical movements of people in China into cities etc. The HIV pandemic (its easily forgotten, this is still a Pandemic) because of changing human behaviours. In the late 90s, Europe saw a massive increase in tick borne disease, which was at first blamed on global warming (the ticks moving North), but was actually the result of the fall of Communism leading to the opening up of vast areas to the public for hunting, trekking, leisure activities, and resulting more tick bites...... Covid-19 because of globalisation (corporations forcing Chinese smallholders into previously unfarmed areas, coming into contact with more unknown threats, coupled to Wuhan, through the car and textile industries, becoming internationally connected (the disease went straight from Wuhan to Italy and the US West Coast). The next emerging infectious disease (EID) might well come from melting glaciers, so a pandemic emerging because of human behaviour. I know the EU and the US are investing heavily into biosecurity; not just manmade threats, but these EIDs. What detection technologies are there out their, what therapies are available, how secure is the medical supply chain to disruption. Syndromic surveillance might be the simplest answer. Syndromic surveillance is just the reporting of disease clusters through tracking symptoms. The Brits tried this in GW1; giving MOs special sat phones to report non-specific symptoms among squaddies exposed to Camelpox etc, and then some team of scientists at DSTL would be engaged in cluster analysis. Didn't work as the MOs didn;t fully understand the phones. A few years later, the French got the system working by detecting anthrax cases among troops in French Guyane, but the determination made in Paris. Promed is a website that using crowd sourcing of news reports around the world, plus a panel of doctors to give some interpretation, and thats pretty good at picking up clusters of something-going-on, and it might have been one of the sites that was picking up COVD-19 in 2019.

No

You are confusing product with company. I already explained to you about the acquisition by Yahoo, but you patently failed to understand that.

How can you hear all the candidates doing their pitch? Their "pitch" isn't due until the Party conference on 29th September, with a final ballot on the 10th October. No Pitches have made, only announcements of candidacies. At worst, you are making things up, at best, your are a non-native English speaker who doesn't understand English nuance, and is mistaking media interviews with pitches first to Westminister colleagues, in private meeting rooms, and finally pitches to the Party membership at Conference (and only 2 of them will do such a pitch).

Town & Country is Left Wing? The story appeared in the 2012 Christmas edition. They love the Trumps in politics. The income of the average T&C reader is well over $330,000. Its hardly the Morning Star. Not so hot on QAnon though. Are you saying you expect the right wing press would suppress stories of what was described as "extreme environmentalism". I thought the Right enjoy roasting the environmental movements. Or are you very selective in what stories should be suppressed and which ones are not? Make up your mind. Its a bit lazy to accuse every publication of being Left Wing or Right Wing just because you don't like the story, and haven't bothered to see where the story came frokm. Smacks of a lazy mind looking for Likes or Clicks. I don't think the story means anything. RFK is an irrelevance. His supporters will vote for Trump, Harris, Stein, West, Oliver, or Write In or None of the Above. I suspect a lot of them will not vote for either candidate. Stories like this will not make them vote for the Republican or Democrat Party. Its just another unusual story about an unusual man who is part of an all-but-irrelevant political dynasty. Maybe there should be coverage of who other descendants of US Presidents are endorsing, as if that matters (eg Clooney, Hanks). Still this clears the way for JFK Jr to emerge from his hideout, and announce his candidacy, to reveal some simple truths; Trumpf is a cousin to the Kennedys, that Trumpf is the secret love child of George Patton, and that his late older brother was Benito Mussolini. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/23/us/qanon-trump-kennedy-protzman-cult-invs/index.html https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2024/03/06/trump-patton-son-fact-check/72854894007/

Can you point out the bit in that piece where Biden requested the Ukrainian President to surrender? I suspect your mother tongue is not English, and you have an incomplete understanding of the word "surrender". In this context you are stating that Biden requested Zelensky to surrender. That would require Zelensky to sit down with representatives of the Russian government and negotiate terms. Typically this is done when a wartime leader is escorted into captured territory, and at a venue at the victor's choosing. Surrender does not occur via Zoom or Teams. In WW2, when Germany attacked, it was generally not the governments surrendering, but representatives of the government negotiating a laying down of arms. The Governments in Exile is proof that surrender is not an end in itself. Neither of us has a full transcript of the conversation between President Biden and President Zelensky. Many sources cite the Ukrainian Emabassy in London, with a tweet posted on 26th February, but the quote itself comes from an alleged US Intelligence source who was quoted on the 25th February AP circulated a story on the 25th February. AP cited a source who had direct knowledge of the conversation or who had listened to the transcript, describing Zelensky as "upbeat". The Washington Post did some digging, with Administration sources denying such a call occurred. Their investigations indicated that the call occurred, but it did not include Biden. Zelensky's English is good, but not that good The use of American English colloquialisms ("I need a ride") suggests someone has paraphrased a conversation between Zelensky (or an aide) and (likely) secret squirrel State Department/CIA official. But even taking the the quote as verbatum The offer was just to evacuate Kyiv, not Ukraine. Much of Ukraine at that stage was relatively peaceful and quite safe. There is no evidence that Biden instructed this. There might have even been a SOP created to make the same offer, to whatever Ukrainian President there was, based on processes developed from the Minsk Agreements. This was not a Saigon or Kabul moment. No surrender. Zelensky felt it was important to lead from the front, rather than relocate to somewhere live Lviv. In extremis, it might have been an offer to lead a Ukrainian government in exile. The US assessment was that Russia did not have sufficient forces to occupy and pacify a country of 40 million people, but might have had enough to occupy Kyiv, Donbass, Luhansk, Crimea-Odessa and possibly Kharkiv. The expectation would have been a puppet government would be appointed, followed by attempts at international recognition. Your statement that "Be that as it may, Biden wanted to fly Zelinsky out and surrender" is mostly untrue, and I suspect you know its untrue.

I believe you have stated that because your main source of information is the tabloid newspapers https://nypost.com/2024/04/27/us-news/family-feud-divides-kennedys-as-rfk-jr-siblings-endorse-biden/ Note how the article is written.

Its been Summer Break. There is no Parliamentary Business. Outside of Parliament, the Leader of the Opposition has no role. I think if the election had been left to the autumn, the outcome would have been much the same, maybe even worse from a Conservative point of view (I am a paid up Conservative Party Member). The general expectation is that by November, the period of disinflation will have fallen, and inflation will be kicking back in, due to a number of factors, structural and non-structural. He needed a decent turnout, which is more likely on a lovely July summers day, than a grey and miserable November. For MPs not in government, being on the government or opposition benches doesn't make a lot of difference. They get paid the same, they will still sit on and chair various parliamentary committees, thereby directly influencing government policy. July 24 PMQ before the break His role outside of Parliament is as a Constituency MP. In the British system, the PM is the First Among Equals. All are Members of Parliament, with responsibilities to their constituents. My own seat switched from Tory to Labour. I had many conversations with the previous incumbant about how NHS X can enhance the COVID response, which lead to discussion with the Health Minister. Currently, I am having an excellent discussion with the current MP about VAT on school fees. I don't think she agrees with me, but I am hoping I am painting cases for her, to allow her to take pause and raise questions.

You lot were saying the same in 1997, when slaphead William Hague became party leader following Blair's win. The ultimate posh boy, old Etonian and Pig head fancier, David Cameron, returned them to power. Cameron entered Parliament after Blair's win, in 2000, following the Witney By-Election If Farage takes over, then the Conservative and Unionist Party might well be finished. There will be wilderness years of course, as the party reclaims its soul, which is not the bizarre Trotskyite-Faragist Party called Reform (don't forget, Lee Anderson's was Scargill's man one, and admired Tony Benn. A leopard never changes its spots). The next Tory PM might not even be an MP right now. There will be by-elections; MPs die, cross the floor, resign (my money is on one of the Reform MPs forcing a by-election, mainly because they lack experience and don't have a party machine to help them in constituency duties. Lee Anderson is most likely to put foot in mouth, based on prior form. James Murdock looks spectacularly inexperienced. Richard Tice could cite the impossible demands of both Parliament and business life). A Tory win in a Reform seat isn't going to produce a touchy feely type of MP. Instead look at one of the older Tories in a safe seat, coughing his/her last.

Line no longer exists. It was acquired by Yahoo in 2023. I know Yahoo Japan content is blocked in Europe, so I don't see an issue. Facebook moderates content, even if imperfectly. Russia regards Durov as a Russian citizen, and embassy officials have made contact with him. While Russians can renunciate citizenship, this does not appear to have been done. Of course, the arrest might be a ruse. https://turan.az/en/politics/putin-refused-to-meet-with-pavel-durov-in-baku-78p p3760 Durov traveled to Baku from Kazakhstan at the same time Putin met with the Azeri leader. Putin was supposedly there to discuss with the Azeris the conflict with Armenia, and what Russia could do to help (irony) Did Durov meet with Russian government officials traveling with Putin? Durov flew from Baku all the way to Paris, flying distance 3,840kms, not to Dubai, flying distance 1,759kms flying distance. He doesn't live in France. Why did he fly to France, in his own plane, knowing there was an Arrest Warrant for him? Its said there was a Mistake. Some say a stop over, maybe for St Kitts-Nevis. He apparently knew he was persona non grata. There was no Interpol notice, just an entry on Fichier des Personnes Recherchées, so he could have flown instead to Switzerland or the UK, if it was a matter of refueling/crew change. He could have probably flown in and out of any other EU country with no issue, and indeed, Telegram have said he was a frequent visitor to Europe. Instead, he was arrested as he disembarked. Of course, if one wanted to be safe from the Russian authorities, a French cell might not seem such a bad place. Dubai is full of Russians.

Globalist is a code word for these people. Freedom of Expression in the UK is a negative right. What that means is the government cannot take action for someone expressing a point of view. Negative rights oblige inaction. Positive right oblige action/ So Freedom of Expression in the UK means I don't have to listen to you, I don't have to publish your opinion. I don't have to agree with you If it was a positive right, I have to listen to you, I have to publish your opinions. The US Freedom of Speech is alsobased on the negative theory of the Free Speech Clause.

Russian Telegram users are freaking out as Telegram has been used to call in air strikes and arty. https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/25/telegram-app-founder-pavel-durov-to-appear-in-court-after-arrest-in-paris https://decripto.org/en/arrest-of-pavel-durov-charges-of-terrorism-fraud-and-child-pornography-he-did-not-cooperate-with-the-authorities-he-risks-20-years-in-prison/

Thats a very old photo from 2013, when he was 67. He has less hair now. You notice it from the back But given you have dug up an old photo for the benefit of othe,rs, useful prompt for a montage 1984, aged 38 1994, aged 48 Trumpf in 2004 aged 58 In 2014, aged 68 2024, aged 78 Without makeup With makeup, at an Iowa rally (confirmed as a raw photo, so I assume it was an indoor venue with strong lighting)

I think he's referring to the arousing final image. At the Border, Trumpf didn't apply his make upwell, and ended up with a bleached anus look