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The reasons why is myriad. My belief is he invaded because he needs more slavic Russians to shore up his powerbase, and ensure its slavic Russians who run Russia, not all these other groups he is forced to horse trade with. His destruction of Checehnya showed his attitude to non-slavic Russians; they are untermenschen. I don't think he fears NATO expansion with respect to Russian sovereignty. He knows NATO would not attack, but he's afraid NATO will cause him to lose influence among people he regards as kinfolk; the slavs in Belarus, Ukraine, and in central Asia, such as Kazakhstan, So NATO expansionism, real or imagined, is just an excuse. But the timing is complete dictator miscalculation. Why in February 2022 did he attack Ukraine at that moment, because he thought he could get away with it. He assumed the West was weak, that the response would be weak, that it would be much like when he sent his forces into Georgia. I think he intended originally during April 2021, when the weather was good, allowing a blitzkried attack to decapitate Kiev, and win the war quickly. I think Russia staged a drone attack in the Donbass, creating a casus belli; https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/a-4-year-old-child-died-in-donbas-after-ukrainian-army-drone-attack/ After that, there were a series of provocations from the Russian side, without a reaction from Ukraine. On 10 April, Ukraine called a OSCE meeting to complain about Russian troop buildups. A few days later, there was a relatively minor confrontation between some Ukrainian navy ships escorting civilian ships, no casualties. The next day, Russia closed part of the Black Sea to shipping, on the pretext of upcoming exercises, but effectively, this was a naval blockade of Ukraine. Surprisingly, Shoigu a week later, then started pulling some troops from the border. I don't think this was something to defuse tensions, but because the moment had passed, and the troops needed to be rotated; they had been 2 months in the field, and that part of Russia is bug infected, impacting troop morale. Later on, one of the reasons why the Russian invasion failed, was because troops had been too long in the field and were not 100% operational, with numerous vehicle breakdowns. He thought it would be a swift war; troops had packed ceremonial uniforms for the victory parades, some Russian officers even made restaurant reservations in Kiev. Galtieri miscalculated as well in 1982, in his timing attacking the Falklands. He thought the British would not respond. He and Putin do not understand democracies. Compounding that, Putin has been in considerable isolation over the last few years; he is genuinely fearful of COVID-19.

Ukrainian gunner takes out Russian Shahed drone using a gimpy. One kiddies' cancer ward saved. Technically an air-to-air kill by a helicopter.

Actually, it was his dad who fixed it for him.

No you have extensive airbrushing and really bad fanboi caricatures Compare and contrast images

Project 2025 states on day one it will downsize the EPA. Banning or restricting pesticides needs two steps. 1. Assessing which pesticides to ban, on the basis of harm. The move will require consideration of not just existing pesticides, but also derivastives; will a pesticide manufacturer attempt to evade a ban by tweaking the formula, for instance. The EPA, a creation ironically of Richard Nixon, is under resourced; Trumpf, during his first administration, rolled back more than 100 EPA regulations, designed to protect Americans and the American environment, because the regulations were seen as hurting American industry https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks-list.html During his tenure, he attempted to cut the EPA budget by 30% each time. This resulted in cutting of the scientists and inspectorate, through hiring freezes, early retirements and job elimination. It takes years to built up a technical capability, and so rebuilding the EPA is not something that can be done quickly; the skillset has gone. The EPA already had a tough job recruiting, because its looking for people with the same skillsets as industry. The people who eschew a career industry in favour of a career in the EPA are tremendously motivated in what they do, and what they do is a good thing. The cuts have harmed the EPA's abilties to identify harmful chemicals (though these capabilties were never that great. Consider the EPA's efforts to ban asbestos, which were a complete debacle. The problem was that industry helped write the regulations that the EPA was working to. Which meant when there is a need to ban something, the EPA is obliged the consider the least burdensome approach, rather than simply banning something. This has lead to paralysis in the agency: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1764141/ Until 2007, the EU followed the same approach to classifying chemicals, through a risk based approach, which means EPA officials have to prove a chemical is harmful. This leads to decades of the public being exposed to harm before a chemical is removed. In 2007, the EU switched to a Hazard-based approach; the burden (and the cost) was placed on the manufacturer to prove their product is safe (REACH Directive). The US tried something similar through a Democrat bill, the 2005 KID Safe Chemicals Act. Lobbyists and Republicans killed it. The Toxic Substances Control Act saw reform in 2016, to try and remove the "least burdensome" language. Between 2016 and 2022, the agency only managed to ban one substance, asbestos. Lack of funding has meant that of the top 10 chemicals identified to be looked at, only a handful will be banned. before 2025. So forget about a whole raft of additional pesticides. On the list waiting to be banned: 1-Bromopropane (draft risk assessment just done) Carbon Tetrachloride (draft risk assessment very soon) C.I. Pigment Violet 29 (PV29) Cyclic Aliphatic Bromide Cluster (HBCD) 1,4-Dioxane Methylene Chloride N-Methylpyrrolidone (NMP) Perchloroethylene Trichloroethylene (TCE) I cannot see Trumpf adopting legislation simiar to REACH (which itself is imperfect); to him, it will sound too Communist, industry will claim the costs are burdensome, and either push back or demand Federal compensation for the extra costs of doing business. I've had conversations like this during my career. In Northern Ireland, the water utility is still part of the government. The NI Water Service was very worried about a local well known brewery. During the beer making process, spent Wort, which is high in carbohydrate, is dumped into the sewage system. This extra load of CHO kills the system; makes it rapidly go anaerobic. I had discussions with the brewer, revolving around the company installing their own treatment works, to treat their waste before it enters the municipal system. The push back was this was expensive, and would probably lead the brewery to cancel other projects, maybe job losses, even pulling out of Northern Ireland. This was Northern Ireland, just after the Good Friday Agreement, and after the Republican terrorists had their US revenue stream cut. No one wanted to go back to the bad old days. So the taxpayer sucked up the cost of dealing with industries' waste. 2. In addition to having the technical ability to assess harmful chemicals, to ban their use in agriculture, you need an inspectorate to monitor the farms. Thats expensive. Won't happen if Project 2025 slashes budgets to the bone. One of the outcomes of a risk based assessment is that chemicals are banned for certain uses but not others. A restriction won't necessarily stop production or import. Risk assessment considers the hazard (will the chemical cause cancer in blond haired blue eyed kids) but also liklihood (ie driven by eating contaminated food stuffs). So a ban might be instigated on that sunflower field, because people will eat the oil or seeds. But it might not be implemented to repress weeds in an ornamental garden, because no one is going to eat the flowers (or unlikely to). There is nothing wrong really with the REACH approach, but it does add to the cost of business. Funnily enough, for medical devices, it was the other way around. It was a lot easier to get a medical device put on the market in Europe that the US. Medical devices undergo all sorts of clinical assessment to determine efficacy and safety. The FDA is concerned with both, and frequently turn down applications if they feel the tests is not good enough. For instance, the best way to screen for colorectal cancer is not colonoscopy; that's most useful if there is something to be wrong, which in general, with the exception of Germany (to an extent), Europe follows. So Europe has strong stool testing programmes; blood in your stool is a red flag for possible CRC, triggering a colonoscopy. US doctors would like the same and there are stool screening programmes, but with very poor uptake. Which is why the ACA added free colonoscopies, because a colonoscopy was better than nothing. People don't like the stool test for understandable reasons. Its dirty. So the holy grail is a blood test. Two companies, Exact Sciences and Epigenomics, came up with "new" tests. Exact Sciencesis a US company. Its really a lab service. Their test was still a stool test, which involves exactly the same test for blood as the $10 stool test. But they carry out additional genetic analyses to detect cancer specific markers. It has a similar specificity as the present $10 test, but better sensitivity. The cost is $3000. The FDA granted it approval on the basis that it was at least as good as the existing $10 test. By all accounts, the test has sold very well/ Epigenomics in a German test. They came up with a test kit that could be sold to any hospital lab, utilising something called methylated PCR. Normal hospital lab instruments could be used. The cost per test was going to be about £250 to the lab. I suspect the cost to the payer would be $400-500. The test was very sensitive, but it failed a little on specificity because it could also pick up some lung cancers early on. The FDA rejected it, because of that, despite Epigenomics arguing that a blood test would see more people get screened, resulting in the early identification of more cancers, and better survival rates. The older European system was argued that it meant there was more innovation and European patients were able to access technologies 6 years sooner than in the US. But on the other hand, it might result in bad devices getting on to the market. One of the incongruities of the regulations around blood tests is that Europe only considered the safety of the lab tech. So, in a HIV test, they would consider the risk of exposure to infectious agents, rather than the risk to the patient if they got the wrong result (a disaster either way). Thats all changing, to something more like the FDA, where makers have to demonstrate their devices work. Predictable moans; a French manufacturer of acupuncture needles complained he needed to produce clinical data that acupuncture works. It's sheer fantasy that Trumpf will add to the cost burdens of corporations by requiring them to switch to alternative pesticides, or that he will even fund the EPA properly . If Kennady was persuaded by this, he was hoodwinked. Here's the paradoxl many of Trumpf's supporters are actually in favour of quite leftwing policies, such as governmental interferance in a private life, government interferance in business, restricting free trade. This is an old video, but it makes me laugh about these old anarchists supporting Trumpf in 2020.

Trumpf his so hard, that he has sex with Lions and the Lion is grateful. This is screwed up. I know whack jobs in love with Trumpf like to put together crazy art, but Trumpf likes this.

https://www.natesilver.net/p/we-removed-rfk-jr-from-our-model

Am I supposed to answer that? I am not telepathic. Professor X is a comic book character, and not real. I am content that I recognise Ukraine as a sovereign nation. I am not content that people such as yourself refuse to recognise the independance of Ukraine. I suspect the apologists for Russia are of a mind that Ukraine is not a real country without a real language. I have seen them state that. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18233844 https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2016/02/17/lets-call-ukraine-by-its-proper-name/#260980ce5d8b You said by private message that you appreciated that I did not attack your posts like other forum members, but here you are being sarcastic and attacking, for no reason it seems but to boost your posting count. Why did you feel compelled to post that worthless post? It has no value, and adds nothing to a discussion, except feeding your ego. Its been 33 years. Have some respect for a country's constitution.

Defence= Military expenditure. Japan since WW2 has extremely strict export controls on defence equipment. Everyone knows this.

Yes really. You just quoted the number of certificates, not the number of firearms, and it seems decided not to look properly at the page you copy pasted. Use the quote function to properly format for the forum. Firstly your page is for England Wales, not the UK, so you used the wrong population. You've not realised that there are multiple weapons per certificate. The exact number of weapons is not known, so you have to use the Home Office averages. Now, likely the temporary certificates are just for a single weapon. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/statistics-on-firearm-and-shotgun-certificates-england-and-wales-april-2022-to-march-2023/statistics-on-firearm-and-shotgun-certificates-england-and-wales-april-2022-to-march-2023 Certificate on issue Average weapons per licence (Home Office and Assumption) Total weapons, est, 2022 Firearms 147,140 4.20 617,988 Shotgun 500,894 2.70 1,352,414 Temporary Firearms 3,106 1.00 3,106 Temporary Shotgun 8,062 1.00 8,062 1,981,570 England 2022 Estimate 57,106,000 Wales 2022 Estimate 3,132,000 60,238,000 Guns per 100, England, Wales 3.3 Slightly older numbers from the BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58198857 Which for 2021 give for England and Wales, 617,171 firearms, 1.4m shotguns, and in Scotland 70.839 firearms and 133,037 shotguns. This is inline with my estimate, and considerably more than your ludicrous estimae, which was based on a pretty basic misunderstanding of simple data.

It was a founding member of the UN, to give the USSR more votes in the General Assembly. Roosevelt agreed to this, while reserving the right for 2 more US votes to be added to the GA; essentially something like California and New York would get a vote. Quoting the UN Charter: The 1933 Montevideo Convention defines what a State is: Ukraine and Belarus met all the conditions except (d); they could not conclude agreements with other states. So in 1944, Stalin amended their constitutions to allow them to enter into agreements with foreign governments. Western jurists rejected the Soviet concept of the republics’ sovereignty, because it was clear that the republics had a factual and legal dependence on the central government. So no one recognised Stalin's absurdity. Except the UN. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic has been described as "only a hollow institutional caricature of a sovereign state". It was a political accomodation, in 1945, after a devastating world war, and Stalin was doing his bully boy bit. Stalin commited fraud, because the Montevideo Convention also says "The federal state shall constitute a sole person in the eyes of international law". The USSR was a federation, it doesn't matter if Belarus and Ukraine could conclude international agreements. They failed to qualify for the UN. Stalin's con job did not make Ukraine and independant state in 1944.

You got it wrong. NATO isn't funding Russia.

Belarus sends best wishes A slight change of tune

Based on recent precedent, the International community via the UN. Following the negotiated end of the Yugoslav wars through the Dayton Agreement, the Office of the High Representative was established. The OHR's role was to oversee the civilian implementation of the agreement. The money is coming from the World Bank. the World bank raises funds in a variety of ways, including raising funds on the capital money. The bank has AAA rating so it can get low rates. Financial Intermediary Funds are the vehicle to ensure coordinated global responses to events, like war, and the main funders are the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan. There is $140 billion in Russian Central Bank assets sitting in a Belgian Custodian Bank. There has been recent agreement to release earned interest to Ukraine, with the first tranche being used by Czechia to source artillary ammunition. Its within the purview of the EU whether to use those Russian assets for postwar reconstruction. The G7 are also loaning Ukraine $50 Bn, guaranteed by the US, and funded through interest paid on $260bn of Russian assets in mostly European banks, topped up by sums from France, Canada and Japan, though Japan's contributed is set aside for non-defence purchases only. The irony is that postwar, Russia might need some sort of Marshal Plan bailout, as its economy is basically is ruined. The alternative is that Russia descends into a even more thuggish nation, with an increasingly weakened central government, and unpredictable seperatism, plus even more border disputes with FSU nations. Number 1 concern is Chechenya; what is Ramzan Kadyrov's game? He's not loyal to Russia, and its interesting to see, in the middle of Ukraine's incursion/seizure of the Kursk region, Putin goes to Chechenya, kisses the Quran at the new Prophet Jesus Mosque in Grozny, to drum up Chechen recruitment for the army. Recent prison riots indicates that Russia has basically tapped out the prison population for cannon fodder, and Putin is desperate not to do a full mobilisation in Moscow-St Petersburg, where his core support it. The Chechen military are self funding and self equipped; basically a private army, and to date, they have supplied about 50,000 troops, equipped through the Akhmat-Khadji Kadyrov Foundation. In addition, the Chechens are sending in food supplied into the annexed territories. I suspect Chechen support is conditional, conditional upon Moscow to continue to pour vast sums into a region that is historically backward and not particularly productive. Chechenyalreceives about $4-5 billion a year from Moscow. Kadyrov keeps hinting he is looking for investors into a refinery that woulld make the Republic self sufficient in energy; Putin is scared stiff that Chechenya will try to secede from Russia again.

Ahem, its not "the Ukraine" but Ukraine. "The Ukraine" was a term used to delegitimise Ukraine as a sovereign state, reducing it to nothing more than a region to be carved up by Russia, Poland and Hungary.

But not as limited as Russia's.

https://www.mediaite.com/news/jd-vances-ex-classmate-reveals-shocking-texts-from-trump-vp-pick-on-race-hating-cops-trump/ Now people's opinions change over the years, and I don't really care if people "hate" the police or love the police. A 31 year old man was complaining to a friend that he had a number of negative experiences with the police in "the past few years", so maybe over the previous 3 years or so. Some have suggested these negative experiences were race related; his contacts were because of the police picking on his Indian-American fiance who he had met in 2011. Possibly, but such an experience would remain as negative, rather than suddenly thinking, "yeah the cops had a point stopping us because my wife looked like a muslim terrorist, so you can't take any chances". Or maybe something else. I've only had one experience with the police, which was I suppose negative, in that I was interviewed under caution, but understandable given the circumstances at the time.

So why the obsession with tampons? This thread is about the man presently known as JD Vance (until he gets sick of that name). You switched to discuss an obsession about tampons for boys, concerning another fellow; I'm sure there is a thread for that, so you don't have to hijack threads to talk about tampons. The thread is about "JD Vance", not Walz. Why did he tell the world about his grannie asking him if he wanted to give a <deleted>? I actually think he made it up, about thinking he was a homosexual 8 year old, and that a lot of his life story is embellished, creating a character to engender sympathy, and votes (look his post university career; its very focused on entering politics).

I don't know you, so I cannot be your friend, or enemy. Pleas don't address as such, in an attempt to endear yourself to me. I don't think as a sergeant in the National Guard he had an inside knowledge of CentCom's strategies. He quit during his second enlistment contract. Hamel managed one and then notably, despite beign a fit young man, purposely did not transfer to the Marine Reserve, prefering instead to pursue a career in finance. I can see why you wouldn't support Walz because of that, but why does that translate into a compunction to support the other bloke. In an election you can spoil your ballot and vote for none of them. You are citing Hamel's 6 months photographing birthday cakes and a positive for why you would support him. Seems a bit shallow. Maybe you like his support on using fetal stem cells in drug research. Not sure where he's going to get those stem cells mind, maybe from non-Americans. Are you sure that Hamel/Vance hasn't embellished or lied about his military career? That seems a pretty big deal to you. Hamel/Vance served 4 years, leaving the service as an E-4, or in other parlance, a Corporal. In the marines, you make E-4 after about a year. Of course, not all do, they don't possess the intellect. Hamel clearly has above average intellect; in a Public Affairs role in the USMC, he should have thrived. Instead, his promotion record was mediocre, spending 2.5-3 years at E-4. Is that why he left and pointedly turned his back on his brothers (by not going to the Reserves). No meritous promotion. Walz's last deployment was to Italy during OEF, where his role was as a battlefield replacement; spending time in Italy, maintaining an operational readiness in the expectation he would be called to join what presumably would be an utter disaster (battlefield replacements are backstops to reinforce units that have suffered significant combat losses to the extent of combat ineffectiveness). He wasn't needed. Later, maybe he had an inkling his NG unit would be deployed to Iraq, though given he had a hearing problem (when he originally signed a second enlistment, the army rejected him due to hearing loss, and he appealed to a medical board), I doubt he would have actually been deployed, at that stage, when the expectation was it would be a complete walkover and Mission Accomplished. When Hamel left the Marines in 2007, there was no doubt, the Reserves were being deployed. His first role was as a Rifleman. He knew, with certainty, that if he transferred to the Marine Reserve, he would have been deployed. In 2007, Marine Reservists were being sent to Anbar Province, the most bloody province in Iraq at that time. 60% of US troops deployed to Iraq were Reservists and National Guardsmen. A mate of mine has completed 23 years in the US army reserves. In all that time, he has spend about 4 years not deployed. He didn't mind it, though the last deployment he found brutal, even in a command role. Vance didn't extend his enlistment for the same reason as Walz; ultimately, he didn't want another deployment. Walz left basically because he had a young family, and family comes before everything. Many soldiers have taken the same decision. You say he lied about it. Well maybe about what technical rank he had got to (though I note the Minnesota NG say it was all ok). Point of detail; retired commissioned officers are allowed to "promote" themselves in retirement. A Captain can present himself as Major (rtd) if his wants. Called tradition. Hamel at the time was young and single. Yeah, he didn't want to end up a cripple so chose not to re-enlist or chance it in the reserves. So on that basis, nothing wrong him deciding to cut his links to the USMC, including changing his name, so maybe no one would recognise him. But ultimately, because he didn't transfer to reserves and be sent to Iraq, then that meant someone else had to, someone without the security of a decent set of degrees. Questions arise about why he was not promoted; was this a competance issue, which seems unlikely, or something. On the face of it, he was a mediocre marine. But to both men; its important to recognise both were enlisted men, whereas most other politicians with military service tend to be officers, with less understanding of the "men" (and women). Hamel though needs to do an about face and stop being so anti expanding veteran health benefits. But maybe that also goes back to why he got out of the marines as fast as he could.

Both of them served their country. Both of them also serve their country through the ballot box, so I am not sure why you are disrespecting people who seek elected office, irrespective of their political journey. Of course, when in office, some of them, like those in the military at times, are disputable, but that should diminish their original ambition to serve their country. Lots of people serve their country; in the military, in the police, in the fire services, in government service. Those who juggle a civilian life and a military life often make the greatest sacrifice; modern Western militaries are utterly dependant now on reservists, which allows a surget capacity during war. I suspect Hamel only joined up to take advantage of free college education, courtest of the taxpayer, and made sure he didn't have to do a role that was too risky, nor demanded much time away from home. He got to stay for over 3 years in North Carolina. Nothing wrong with that; everyone eats at the trough when they can. Both completed their enlistments, one went before a medical board to appeal his reenlistment after completing a 20 year enlistment. One managed 6 months out of 4 years in Iraq, taking photos of birthday cakes and handshakes, when their fellow service people were doing 12-18 month tours, sometimes back to back with Afghanistan. One was told about sucking penises by his Grandmother when he was 8 years old during a discussion about whether the 8 year old was a homosexual; a remarkable and brave confession. Does he continue such open sexualisation with his children? And does he determine if his children are homosexual or heterosexual at age 8? One spent working career as an educator, but I do understand people who hate educators because education is where people with elite skills learn their skills, and go on to get PhDs, find cures for cancer, design rocket ships, invent crypto, because these are things people wit elite skills can do. Some people without elite skills hate the "elites". That job as a geography teacher followed working in a factory, assembling tanning beds of all things (Trumpf; take note). One had a little bit of VC fintech experience. And that person, investors couldn't actually recall what he did at Revolution. One got into the SPAC fad. Its not hard work really, going from meeting to meeting watching the coffee intake. https://www.axios.com/2024/07/16/jd-vance-venture-capital-career https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/08/jd-vance-financial-investments https://finance.yahoo.com/news/know-j-d-vance-vc-114105413.html I wouldn't over egg his business skills. VC is also fully embedded in the government trough. His activity with AmplifyBio is interesting; this is a company into cell therapy, manipulations of the genome to address disease. Which is part of what all these anti-Vaxxer fret about. AmplifyBio is primarily a CRO; they undertake contract work for other clients, such as animal testing (mostly beagles and monkey it seems, with the animals euthanised when the contract is over). They work with stem cells; it has a policy of not asking its clients if the cell lines they are working with are embryonic or not. Which seems at odds with Hamel's statements that he is 100% Pro-Life. Basically he invested in a company that profited from what some would call dead babies. Obviously not, if there is money to be made. I have zero issue with this kind of research. Interestingly, this company seeks applicants from the “LGBTQIA+ community” and says it forbids discrimination based on “gender expression” and even “citizenship status.” Also, the company requires COVID-19 vaccination. He's got a bit of a thing about this gene therapy research, because he's also invested in Kriya Therapeutics, which has a pipeline covering diabetes, eye disease and neurodegenerative disease, not based on stem cell transplantation, but using virus vectors to manipulate the genome. For this, they have to conduct experiments with one of the cold viruses, hopefully not affecting virulance.

Vance might be interested in this https://www.trumpytrout.com/?mid=12243062 Pretty mouth

Remind me, who pays the tariff? The exporting country or the importing entity? The importer sucks up the cost, which is what GM is doing with its Chinese built cars its selling in the US, or it passes onto the customer. The government benefits from the extra revenue.

Kari Lake receiving orders. Seems a dull event.

Apparently he hates this photo