MicroB

Is this befoe or after they file for bankruptcy? Will probably go the way of that other asbestos case, Federal-Moghul.

Well he is predictable. Its a line that earns him money I suppose, suplementing his pension. https://www.voanews.com/a/fact-check-how-russia-uses-retired-us-colonel-s-ukraine-misinformation-for-domestic-propaganda-/6972765.html MICE - money, ideology, compromise, ego. https://www.newsweek.com/what-putin-wing-ex-colonel-douglas-macgregor-has-said-about-ukraine-war-1689802 Conspiracy Nuts like what he says because they are instinctively contrarians. But they are all hypocrites; often very strong (justifiably) on criticizing China, give free passes to Russia, and unjustifiably attack European nations.

But its moot. The major weapons Ukraine did "possess" (they never actually had operational control), the SS-24s, were designed to hit the United States, not Moscow. If Ukraine had refused to give them up, they would have undoubtedly come into conflict with the United States, and become internationally isolated. Maintenance of the launchers and warheads themselves would have required a horrendoust expense; 10% of the US defence budget, $50 bn, is just on maintaining the nuclear weapon forces. The servicing facilties were located in Russia. The inherited weapons were old, and "lifed", with the first ones expiring in 1993, and the last in 2002. A well balanced piece by Volodymyr Horbulin, the Head of the Council for Foreign and Security Policy, a Ukrainian NGO, and a literal rocket scientist, explaining why keeping the nuclear weapons was never a realistic option: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/qviyu2-qb44k/92.pdf

The fottage is horrendous, particularly the screams from the burning trolley bus. I saw no uniforms among the dead. Some sick individuals on this forum trying to blame Ukraine for this. Some retribution; the Iskander-M unit in Kursk behind this atrocity, the 448th Missile Brigade, or at least their permanent deployment point, got hit. https://news.sky.com/story/ukrainian-forces-strike-russian-brigade-behind-deadly-missile-attack-on-sumy-13349549

https://www.opindia.com/2024/08/ex-bangladesh-pm-sheikh-hasina-accuses-us-of-removing-her-from-power-for-st-martins-island/ Terrible source though. Allegedly the US wants a Bangladeshi island to build a base. If it was a Biden op, doesn't that make MAGA supporters and their foreign fellow travellers, who opposed everything what Biden and the Deep State did or may have done, become natural allies of an embattled Labour MP.

That's not the main bottleneck. The US has one major rare earths mine, Mountain Pass. Until quite recently, they had to send the mined ore to China for processingzero refining capacity, because the US had . But te efforts to domesticate refining rare earths have only focused on the light rare earths, and little attention paid to the heavy rare earth metals, such as terbium and dysprosium. These rare earths are not actually rare. A more efficient way to extract them is through bioleaching, which has the capabilities to spool up production more quickly that resorting to mining that essentially hasn't haved for thousands of years. Use of bacteria to extract metals from mine waste, recycled components would make production of tje metals as simple as making beer. Well it would, except most of the DARPA scientists working on it were sacked. The response to China is not to be like China. But to innovate; innovate to create the technologies to produce and refine rare earths pretty much anywhere, not just where a particular mine was located. We are surrounded by literal mountains of scrap electronics. China uses small kids to strip this material. The US has the means to do that differently. China builds vast factories, requiring vast logistical chains to supply one factory. The West, thanks to 200 years of Industrial Treasure, doesn't have to build anything. Our cities are full of under used industrial buildings, all of which can accomodate microfactory production, providing local manufacture of products people want. Additive manufacture combined with AI makes that possible. https://www.industryweek.com/technology-and-iiot/emerging-technologies/article/21161158/microfactories-not-gigafactories-will-build-it-back-better https://www.electropages.com/blog/2024/03/could-microfactories-be-the-future-of-electronics https://www.rewo.io/de/microfactories-the-latest-trend-in-manufacturing/#:~:text=One of the most well known examples is the electric vehicle manufacturer Arrival. It really is life imitating art (or the art forecasting these trends). The backdrop for the scene was a downtown Lexus factory. The producers had done their homework; the barrels of sovents, tubs of aluminium, indicate additive manufacture (3D printing), and largely automated (our economies have transitioned to largely full employment service economies. We don't have an available workforce to work the factories, any more than we have people to pick the cotton.

And badly for the rest of us 4 minutes later.

If that did happen, then how I-Phones were supplied would change. People would no longer buy an i-phone. Instead, one would be supplied as part of a service agreement, to be returned at the end of the agreement (recycled). Likely Apple would get into the business of providing a cell phone service, looking to acquire one of the providers. The cost of calls and data would increase.

Interesting to compare this man with the "presenter" of th British version, Alan Sugar. No love lost between the two men, and Sugar has been quite critical of the tariffs (he built his main business on import-export). He also got into poitiics, in a very different way.

Bloody idiot Of course Owens made up a completely different trope. You made that one up in some bizarre attempt at humour, betraying perhaps insecurities.

Exactly. Lazy incompetance. If immigrants all used MTG's email as a contact, she'll soon change her tune when her inbox fills up.

A department gone rogue for many years it seems https://immigrationimpact.com/2021/07/30/ice-deport-us-citizens/ https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/us-citizen-wrongfully-deported-mexico-settles-his-case-against-federal-government https://www.tpr.org/news/2024-05-30/man-who-claims-hes-a-u-s-citizen-repeatedly-has-been-deported-to-mexico-its-complicated https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/u-s-citizen-mistakenly-put-deportation-proceedings-finally-returns-america-n1130001 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49092606 Its not just the US; there is the debacle surrounding Windrush deportations, which nearly everytime, is shown up to be due to departmental incompetance. A very good friend of mine, from Malaysia, is a surgeon in the UK NHS. He married an English nurse. They have kids, a house, a dog etc. Malaysia doesn't permit dual citizenship. He was applying for Indefinite Leave to Remain, which essentially should have been a mere administrative procedure. During that process, for 2 years, the applicant is in purdha; they are not allowed to leave the UK, except for exceptional reasons. He was invited to be best man at a wedding in KL. So he wrote a letter to the Home Office, seeking permission, expecting it will be "no problem, go", or "no, you cannot go". He got the third option; 10 days to settle his affairs and leave the country (deportation). WT actual F. He was On Call at the hospital he worked at; a respected urologist. Lots of very grateful patients. He had to spend £5k+ with lawyers getting this rescinded. Missed the wedding. Across the Western World, under whatever administration, immigration departments fail to achieve any of their targets. I suspect Immigration is so politicised, it attracts incompetant applicants, who are merely target driven, and basically lazy, going for low hanging fruit, excusing mistakes on "the computer". They hide behond bland departmental statements about not commenting on individual cases, with the officials mostly faceless. I guarantee the people being deported now in the US are to ones mostl likely not to resist; they are compliant. Just like all those Middle Aged Thai wives who self deported from the UK, an absolute winner for the Home Office Humphreys, because no one was even needed to accompany them to the airport. Stricter and stricter requirements merely expands their reach. They might say the 47th President isn't a proper US citizen, because his mum forgot to fill in a form. Or that Musk also needs to go. Or that Senator Cruz or Secretary of State Rubio need to go home to Cuba.

There are elements of provocation. China is daring the US to seize the canal by force. It knows the US can do this easily, but the cost is shipping away at the US's soft power; its ability to influence its Western Allies. This is inline with China recent embargo on the entire world (not just US) for rare earths. Its designed to provoke the US to take a huge gamble and seize Greenland. It is a huge gamble, because it would be a move catastrophic for US relations with anyone. And its a huge gamble because the geologists might be wrong. Greenland isn't a rare earths exporter at all.. What might be less of a gamble, but rather more costly (in blood) would be US intervention in the DRC; that might be less impactful on US-Europe relations, and might even be sput quite positively (the people in the Congo are living miserable short lives). But the US will be intervening in an actual war (between DRC, Rwanda and numerous non-state actors) which makes Iraq look like a proverbial walk in the park, with warfare certainly much more stoneage and savage. With the global embargo, China is banking on US support for Taiwan to whither, because it feels the US is no longer supporting Taiwan on a point of principle (UN Charter, Right of Self Determination etc) but based on transactional value (what can China do for us, supply us with chips). Forget about Ukraine ever being an exporter of rare earths in either President's lifetime. The entire southern area of Ukraine is likely to go down in history as the most heavily mined region on Earth. We just need a heavily battle damaged Zaporizhzhya NPP to be fired up (Europe;s biggest, and probably least safe nuclear power plant) to add generational irradiation into the mix. Now obviously, the Chinese are hoping their actions will cause the Americans to come and talk. But history tells us politicians, through hubris, can horrbily miscalculate. The current US President, who is barely a politican, and who possesses zero political instinct (his instincts are based on New York property transactions. Prior to 2016, he had zero experience of public service) made the first huge miscalculation, causing an enormous mess. The Chinese might compound that, ironically for similar reasons.

One hopes there isn't an unintended (or maybe intended) consequence, similar to when the US put an oil embargo on Japan, in 1940 (a former ally).

You miss the point or deliberately try and change the subject. The point, which you patently fail to cmprehend, or refuse to acknowledge because you are in reality a Russian stooge, is the Russpria, a superpower you continuously express faith in and admiration of, is resorting to B&Q (Home Depot, if you really are an American, but I suspect you are not) to uparmour. I don't think nthat you are so stupid that you cannot comprehend, so I revert to the alternative, that you are a Champion for Russia and Putin an apologist for barabarism and fascism, in the same way that during the Cold War, Communists in the West went out of their way to defend the ills of the Soviet Union, and before them, the likes of Mosley, Joyce, Lindbergh and others defended the indefensible. You are part of a long line of apologists. Of course, for a while, the US military was reduced to scouring scrap piles to up armour Humvees in Iraq, until a brave NCO in Kuwait stood up and took Rumsfeld to task over this. Back in the days when members of the US military were not simply sacked for not following the political ideology.

Not just American companies. 64% of Taiwanese exports are now tariff free, 44% of Malaysian, 30% Vietnam, 30% Thailand, 10-12% of Indian/Mexican.Korean imports now exempt.. The exemption to some of Mexico's exports is significant, because the rest of Mexican exports are hit with extra tariffs allegedly because of fentanyl. Which is now shown to be a sham reason. The whole week has been a nonsense. Billions of wealth gone. Jobs lot. And no doubt it will come out that some people have died as a result of these presidential elections. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2019/08/30/amid-trump-tariffs-farm-bankruptcies-and-suicides-rise/

If there is a game, its pick'em up sticks, or the card versio, Round them up Cowboy.

"350" comes up a lot. £350 million per week was the number the NHS would get following Brexit. Of course it didn't. 350ppm CO2 is apparently the atmosheric threshold, above which life on earth changes fundementally. 350.org is a climate change pressure group. 350 is an "Angel Number" among the God Botherers/Holy Joes. Obviously Lizard People code.

DEI used in the US is specifically illegal in Great Britain. In GB, positive action is legal, affirmative action, the US standard, is illegal. In Northern Ireland, affirmative action is legal; it was necessary in order, for instance, to increase the Catholic composition of the PSNI (formally RUC). But even Affirmative Action in NI is different from the US. Positive Action is legal in the UK. Positive Discrimination is illegal.

Because its free to read, and isn't full of appalling popup ads like the Sun/Mirror/Express/Mail. For the Telegraph, there is an incredibly simple hack in modifying the URL to read articles for free which I ain't sharing.

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Christ, if they picked up a British soldier, at any point in history, you would hear a stunning range of accents and patois, and varying commands of English. Wellington called them the Scum of the Earth, and was proud of them, in response to a French officer pointing out the educational differences between British and French troops. As is true in many wars, mercenaries are attracted by on the one hand, wanting to fight the good fight (George Orwell in Spain) and those just in for the money ("Colonel" Callan in Angola). The latter often attracts individuals from the more deprived parts of society, with or without military experience. I'm sure the PLA, like all other armies, includes recruits who were otherwise ne'er do wells. Not all join for King/President/Flag/Country. So it make sense that a couple of Chinese nationals rocking up in Ukraine are a few bottles short of a 6-pack. I would say the same for some of the Brits going there; if I was being generous, some seem to be looking for adventure after a mediocre life. There are exceptions of course.

He missed an obvious opportunity. EO for the US to adopt the Imperial Gallon, resulting in 25% more water at shower time, and better miles per gallon. Also helps Elon's sums about getting to Mars.

Also some people have convenient back stories.