MicroB

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A bit behind. The Civil War kicked off in 2014. Ultra-nationalists on both sides, starting with Putin. Anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Russia can be traced to 1848, when the Ukrainian language was banned. But Peter the Great kicked it off 100 years earlier. I think you are heavily whitewashing generations of prejudice from the Russian state.

That, and ego. He is easily prone to flattery; that's how he did business in daddy's firm. There was no expectaton to win in 2016. Trump's first cabinet actually was reasonable, if you were looking for technocrat appointees. The ego came out with the announcements coming from Sean Spicer, who we all feel sorry for. There was sneaking admiration for the Mooch. But he was manipulated by others far cleverer than him, eg soon-t0-be jailbird and grifter Steve Bannon. A malleable candidate; easy to persuade him to go for it if you tell him you look great, sir, with a tear in your eye. Kevin McCarthy has a lot to answer for, following his 2022 reconcialition with Trump.

During 2017, a Ukrainian soldier died every 3 days due to Russian attacks. In the 2 checkpoints they were allowed to monitor, the OSCE reported about 30,000 armed men, about 3 divisions worth, entered the Donbas from Russia. Officially, there were 6000 Russian troops in the Donbass; Russia allowed serving soldiers to take a holiday, to "volunteer" to help Donbass separatists. Russia prohibits mercenary activity, but defines a mercenary as being a combatant in conflicts contrary to Russian interests. By 2018, Russia had completed the Kerch bridge, essential to support expanded combat operations. Combat continued throughout the year. In November, Russian forces officially took part through the capture of 3 Ukrainian Navy vessels 2019 was a bit quieter, but it was SFA to do with your Leader. It was more to do with Russia trying to rig the Ukrainian election to get their guy in, which they singularly failed to do Combat resumed throughout 2020. So I think its a bit insulting to fallen Ukrainian soldiers that there was no war between 2017 and 2021. Your leader did SFA about it, except grudgingly release a few AT munitions.

Though you are using Social Media, ie at least one discussion forum, maybe more. This is Social Media.

Well, its true that Trump is chaotic. But he is also very impressionable, which in part explains why he is chaotic. For instance, he might be dead set against military aid to Ukraine, and he might have rational reasons for that. But then Putin goes and says something mean about him, and Trump is ordering 1000 F35s..... Trump entered office in 2017 as an Afghanistan sceptic. In his first speech as Commander in Chief, he ordered an increase in troop numbers. He said America was no longer concerned about nation building only "killing terrorists". Presumably some Generals sat down with him, and gave him some home truths, that caused an about face. 3 years later, he's going to the Taliban and offering then 5000 terrorists if they will leave American soldiers alone. He's at pains to highlight during these meetings, the Taliban kept calling him "Your Excellency". Margaret Thatcher was famous for a lot of speeches and policies. She was laser sharp in her policy objectives, unwavering. Some might say that made her predictable. Maybe thats what charmed Gorbachov. I can imagine Lavrov, who is somehow still around, yearning for some predictability. https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/110711 Russia isn't really all that interested who wins elections in the West. They are more interested in sewing crisis and loss of confidence in Western political systems, in order to sew division among allies, slow Western decision making, make Western-style systems appear less attractive, which in turn creates power vacuums that Moscow can exploit. The USSR offfered a competing ideology, which promised easy wins for the poor, and so was superficially attractive to developing, but resource rich, nations. In 2024, Moscow has no ideology, but like many former empires, believes it should still have a role on the world stage. Britain went through this. Though with Britain, loss of empire result in 60 years of navel gazing and inward facing despair. We still cling to ideals tha the British Empire must have done some good, but we are acknowledging the great cost that came at to others. The Russian Leader, on the other hand, called the collapse of the Soviet Union A spectacular lack of insight, but to understood given his role in the KGB. Straight away, he played Russia the Victim. Rather than speculating that the presence of Russian minorities in the newly independant states might be a fantastic opportunity for dynamic mercantilism, in the same way the the British diaspora conducted themselves, he immediately identified them as victims, under threat, though a largely imagined threat. He he thought they were under threat, then it must because he secretly knew how Russia treated minorities, treating them as subhuman. Even Russia's relationship with Ukraine; the Russians call them "Little Russians", not out of some fraternal love, but because the Ukrainians are something less than a full blown Russian. When Putin "endorses" Harris, he is trolling the US. He also has no idea what motivates people in a free and fair election, because the concept is alien to him. He's used to Russian people expressing their love for him, through really quite superficial reasons. He thinks Americans make their choice at the ballet box based on a person's laugh, a haircut, size of hands Maybe he thinks if he picks Harris, that will scare people to vote Trump, which is a nonsense (I hope). He literally doesn't understand electioneering. He doesn't understand, for instance, understand how Vance can lambast Walz (and vice versa), but following a recent car accident, wishes Walz well. Putin likely looks at that as weakness (so probably does Trump, but thats because of Trump's character traits, not because of the broad society in which he was brought up)

The irony is that Fred Trump became very wealthy through huge Federal Loans in WW2 and over charging the government to build accomodation for war workers. I guarantee that Musk will not save the US taxpayer a single dollar. Interestingly, Musk ended up in America for the same reason as Trump's grandfather. Trump's grandfather evaded military service by going to America. Musk was facing call up into the South African Defence Forces to go and fight communists in Angola. He didn't want to fight communists in Angola just like Trump the Younger didn't want to fight communists in Vietnam. If he wants to improve America, he could run for Public Office, where I am sure he would be happy to have his own immigration record scrutinized (ie. its technically illegal to change from a H1B visa to a EB5 visa. W hen someone on a student visa drops out of school, then the visa is no longer in force, and you must leave the US. Thats why its so critical for foreign students, if they want to change school, they really need to get their ducks lined up. Even J1 to green card is frowned upon (this is for postdoctoral researchers in universities trying to get a job in the commercial sector). J1, like H1, is a non-immigrant visa. If you are highly qualified, and much in need, with a PhD, it might be possible for your employer to petition the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, and get your visa without having to leave the country, and apply from outside (which is the proper way). Elon shutting down his brother from talking about when they were illegal immigrants. The Gray Area was fixed thanks to friends with money. Throw money at a problem, problem goes away, especially if that is someone else's money. I rather have an unelected bureaucrat than a party stooge. The Soviet Union was run by Party Loyalists. China is run by party loyalists. You want America to be like the Soviet Union, be like the Peoples Republic of China. You have misinterpeted Project 25. Its not about you having the chance to elect Brenda at the DMV. Its not about you casting 50,000 votes a year to elect the 50,000 "unelected bureaucrats" that Schedule F would result in, to be replaced by President-approved appointments. Essentially, Project 25 is about creating a Soviet Union of America, where party loyalty, not competance, is the main way to progress in public service. This was how Nazi Germany was run, with crooks and thieves promoted because they had a party badge proving loyalty to the "elected" boss. It resulted in thievery of state assets on a gargantuan scale. It resulted in military incompetance, because no one wanted to tell the Austrian Corporal he hadn't a scooby doo.

Same bloke who wanted to build a submarine to rescue a Thai school football team? And then calling one of you lot (foreigners living in Thailand) a "Paedo" when someone suggested he might be mistaken. Hopefully Apartheid Boy isn't actually in charge of things like that.

Aka War Dogs. Good movie about FedBiz.

You forgot Tang.

No, what you read was a junior minister in one of the minority parties suggesting it. What you didn't read was the German Chancellor being opposed to the suggestion, citing, among other things, the legality of the scheme. So it is probably illegal for Germany to do that. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/rwanda-plan-germany-ambassador-tories-migrants-channel-asylum-seeker-b1180459.html https://inews.co.uk/news/world/uproar-germany-copy-failed-rwanda-refugee-scheme-3265392 They are looking at third country schemes but have ruled out the British and Italian models.

Estonia has offered to take prisoners. But its not going to be huge numbers. Estonia has about 1800 prisoners, one third of them foreign, and a prison capacity of just over 3000. These are mostly foreigners convicted in overseas courts. https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/estonia Remarkably, Estonia has been reducing its prison population. Tartu Prison is apparently almost entirely empty. And its not some Soviet era gulag. It was built in 2000, by a Swedish firm. Very Scandi. It can house 900 prisoners.

People will always dream of a better life somewhere else in the world. Which is why this forum exists, and why there is so much discussion about the ins and outs of the Thai immigration system, including on occasion, discussion on how to game the process, tax evasion, bordering criminality. The case of Maurice (Mo) Robinson illustrated the complex nature of the criminal gangs involved. Mo Robinson was the trucker found in Essex with a container full of dead Vietnamese in October 2019. After crossing from Belgium, Robinson was supposed to proceed to a truck stop, and meet men in various cars to take away his load of people. Gangs in Vietnam arranged for these people to travel to Europe, and had obtained for many, actual visas. Some got study visas in Poland. Others worked as fruit pickers in Hungary. They were instructed to proceed to a farm outside of Paris. Some had told worried relatives back home, that they were using a "VIP Package", which wouldn't involve going in the back of a lorry, and they could pay the £10,000-20,000 fee upon arrival in the UK. The men convicted in the UK were from Romania, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It involved men who were well known in the Loyalist community and men known from the Republican side. It involved British truck companies who register their trucks in Bulgaria to avoid UK MOT and insurance requirements. So far, while there are Vietnamese gangs, in Vietnam and in the UK, related to this particular car, none have been convicted yet, though I see reports of various Vietnamese involved in other cases being sentenced. The focus should really be on breaking the gangs, involving multi-national police investigations. Very complex.

You can add another 10,000 if you add in those who are automatically Irish by parentage, and instigate laws stripping criminals of dual citizenship. The Chief Inspector of Borders was critical of the previous government over removal of foreign offenders. Who was Home Secretary during the inspection period? Suella Braverman. In fact, the inspection covered the second period of her time in office, after she got her job back after being sacked for sending Restricted and above documents using a personal email address (anyone else would not have gotten their jobs, and usually placed on a 12 month investigation, looking at all aspects of their lives and their families' lives. I know of one poor chap at a defence company who took his laptop home to work on a project over a weekend. His laptop was stolen while he slept. He lost his job, house,and was continually threatened during the investigation, with 30 years. Plus all his familiy, extended and immediate, and neighbours were investigated into their beliefs and political affiliations). She spent her time cobbling up a scheme to remove 200 our of 70,000 refugee claimants to an African country. So the UK has existing processes and legislation to remove offenders, but the previous government did not think it was a high priority, evidenced by the resources allocated.

Yeah, I was only counting adults. Your number includes children of these immigrants. All the more reason to instigate ID cards and government checkpoints, don't you think? Bitte papiere. Or, you regularise them, and offer an amnest, changing them from illegal migrants into taxpayers.

England/Wales population that are foreign born: 16.8% Source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/articles/thechangingpictureoflongterminternationalmigrationenglandandwales/census2021 UK prison population that is foreign born: 11.9% https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66784f50a7a18c1aa1a00efe/Prison-population-31-Mar-2024.ods Ergo, a Foreigner in the UK is less likely to be a criminal than a Briton Given current statistics, even if you removed 16.8% of the UK population, because they were born outside of the UK, the prisons would still fill up.

For those arriving by boat, the vast majority are picked up to enter the system. But the numbers of illegal immigrants (people in the UK who should not be here) is much much larger. Its estimated to be 300-600,000, mosrly working in the black economy, completely unknown to the State. Home Office research indicates most of them are visa overstayers, which will include people who have made a simple (innocent) error in their dates. 11,000 are picked up, alive or dead, as stowaways in trucks. Many more are not detected, The Mo Robinson case showed the role of gangs, often with links to organised crime and Irish Nationalist/Loyalist terrorism, the numbers. These people are not going on the dole, drawing benefits. They are going to work in slave sweat shops, probably mostly drugs production. Identifying them would be easily achieved through issuance of compulsory national ID, coupled with intrusive inspection, such as raids in workplaces, check points in railway stations, bus stops, and vehicular inspections of the sort Northern Ireland had. That might pick up 500,000 people quite quickly (compared to the current 100,000 in prison). But where to house them? Bexhill on Sea

It stopped in 1868, following decades of public process. One of my hobbies is geneology. Often the research can lead you down false warren holes, but you learn a lot. I thought one of my ancestors had been transported. When looking at this person, I discovered a lot about the whole process. It might take years to be actually transported. You were taken to some prison ship, maybe at Portsmouth. And there you remained until the ship was filled. For this particular person, that meant 3 years aboard what I can imagine to be a stinking place. I was shocked, but I suppose it was obvious.

Many were also sent to North America to work the tobacco plantations.

No one seems to have read the report. Its one of a number of options being explored. It doesn't mean this is what is going to be done. Prisons could be built, but they take a long time to build. Assuming you will get the private sector to build them, rather than a mythical workforce of State Brickies, there is a long lead time isn: 1. Identifying sites; locals will need to be consulted, environmental risk assessments, security risk assessments. 2. Identify funding; the Home Office will need to fund the construction and manning of prisons, but do they do this within their existing budget, which means other programmes will have to be cut, or are they going to get an increase from the Treasury. Different rules apply to whether its a Capital project (building a prison) versus paying for a service. 3. Issuing calls for tender. There is a UK Procurement Act 2023 that repeals 350 EU Directive related requirements. Drawing up the requirements takes time. When we say a large prison, how large? What category of prisoners? How many screws? Scrutinizing submissions takes time, unless you want another COVID19 contracting debacle, with people like James Dyson or Richard Branson suddenly getting into the Justice Game. Takes years, from issuing the tenders, design/surveys, construction, acceptance, likely 5-10 years 4. Manning the Prisons. There is a shortage of Prison Officers going back at least 10 years. This is curious, as there should be the biggest pool of potential recruits for many a year. Traditionally, the police, fire service, prison service can rely on a pool of ex-services people, and in recent years, there should have been a pretty big pool of very experienced people available.. Even so, you don't take a guy off the street, stick him/her in a uniform, and send them into a prison riot. 4 out of 5 prisons have insufficience riot-trained officers. As for emptying prisons of foreigners, there are two approaches; 1. Secure the agreement of the receiving country; what they do with them, we don't care. Well we might if those convicts are people who are considered a threat to the UK 2. Don't secure an agreement. Just give them a one way ticket. Receiving countries might start to refuse flights from the UK, because we keep shoving thieves and murderers on the Ryan Air flights. A knock on of this is any foreigner wanting to go home for free just has to knock a grannie down in the street, thereby increasing the crime rate, because for foreigners, there is now no downside in committing crime. Realistically, the government needs to look at renting temporary accomodation, ie the oil industry crew barges that have previously been used for prison accomodation. These are readily available. eg the Safe Esperia was a floating accommodation barge for the offshore oil and gas industry. There was a whole fleet of them. Bibby Line brought it, renamed it Bibby Resolution. It was then chartered to the MOD to serve as floating troop accomodation in the Falklands. In 1988, it, and a sister ship, were sold to the New York Department of Corrections, as a temporary prison ship. It was closed in 1992, then sold off in 1994. In 1997, the Resolution was now HMP Weare in the UK, a temporary prison ship. It ran until 2006; turned out it was really expensive to run as a prison. Currently its in Nigeria, where it was towed to originally to serve as probably pretty grim oil industry crew accomodation. If you include people with one or both parents born in Ireland or Northern Ireland, then over 10% of the population is likely dual national, and thus cannot be rendered stateless by removal of British citizenship. This likely reflects in the prison population, ie about 10,000 people. If removal of foreign criminals is considered as a viable option, then this could also be considered. Its pretty dystopian though.

https://accountable.us/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Project-2025-Anti-LGBTQ-Policies-One-Pager.pdf https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf Now those are positions you might wholeheartedly support. But they are radical positions, making you a radical. Literally, the definition of a radical is a person who advocates thorough or complete political or social change, or a member of a political party or section of a party pursuing such aims. All of those policies that you are referring to will result in great social change, which you think are for the better, but are, by definition, radical For instance, supporting those invoking the 1st Amendment as a means to discriminate against some customer, is a pretty radical view. Because the US follows Common Law, using the 1st Amendment as a means to justify some business owners to refuse to serve some customers, because of, essentially lifestyle, might justify someone refusing to serve black people "because they like black music", or women "because women should in the home" etc, or men with asian wives/girlfriends "because I don't believe in mixing of the races". Its an unwinding of the social contract that has been well established for 30-40 years, and hence a radical change.

Its worse than that; After all that, what kind of father then buys his kid a rifle 6 months after that son was investigated for issuing death threats. I suspect is the sort of father who probably thumbs a nose at authority, and feeds his kid BS about a school shooting that occurred when his sone was 2. In May 2023, when confronted with the allegations against his sone, Gray responded That is not a normal reaction. He referred in the same interview to taking the then 13 year old to shoot his first deer. There are photos emerging of the boy, AR-15 in hand, posing by the deer carcass, with his face smeared with blood. Yes, I some of the hunting fraternity consider this a time honoured tradition. But this is is the context of a dead beat dad and and a son who went of the rampage. I'm of a mind that the father should be facing a capital charge. I suspect the father more than made a mistake in not spotting signs. I suspect it will come out that he radicalised his son.

Probably a good idea not to try and hijack a thread again with your own prejudices then.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/05/02/hundreds-of-russian-troops-gathered-out-in-the-open-they-didnt-know-the-ukrainians-had-aimed-four-atacms-rockets-at-them/ I think the major difference is the Ukraine will take an honest look at intelligence failures and OpSec. In Russia, there is blame and people tossed out of windows, whether or not it was their fault. You have to remember, the whole of Ukraine is within range of Russian cruelty and barbarism.

If you look at China's money/investment, its more akin to a loan shark, eg Sri Lanka, Tanzania. Loan sharks often portray themselves as a salt of the earth pillar of the community, providing a necessary service, but its always with dark strongs attached,