MicroB

I think it cuts both ways, if such a ridiculous notion actually exists. Its a curous phrase, used by people who were avid readers of an agony aunt to get on in life. But Springsteen might have not been so pissed off if Donald Trump didn't basically try and steal his music in 2016, and co-opt his song. Born in the USA, to accuse Ted Cruz of not being a real American. Trump liked his songs enough in 2016 to feature them in his campaign rallies, but didn't annay up. In January 2016 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3393950/Who-hell-knows-Trump-continues-passive-aggressive-birther-slam-Ted-Cruz-gets-Nevada-audience-weigh-senator-s-citizenship.html By September 2016, Springsteen obviously had enough of this freeloader. I think you have to be as thick as two short planks not to understand where Springsteen has always been on the political spectrum, and that he has always been a very political singer (America's Billy Bragg, but more subtle). You have to be spectacularly out of touch to think "Born in the USA" is a patriotic song. They all loved him when he stuck it to the commies. As for Springsteen's aged appearance; at 76, he's in much better shape than a 76 year old Donald Trump. Springsteen and Trump at age 76. Both very wealthy men.

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-leader-post-police-hold-technocrat-h/101818960/ Canadian people like Joshua Haldeman and Howard Scott got themselves arrested in WW2 for distributing maps like this, vaguely treasonous. Haldeman eventually emigrated to South Africa as he thought Apartheid was a great idea........

Jon Voight? James Woods? Kevin Sorbo?

AF1 has an armoured fuselage, protected engines, hardened electronics. Its supposed to survive WW3. Plus refueling bit I wager the Qatari aircraft, P4-HBJ, will go somewhere hot and dry, like Arizona, and will be parked up for the next 4 years at a cost of $3m to the taxpayer. Typically, a decommissioned 747 is worth £25-50m. It will cost $60-100m to put it back in the air. https://seekingalpha.com/article/4025037-lets-pick-up-a-boeing-from-storage If it has any flying future, it will be as a freighter. The $400m price tag is ludicrous. The aircraft being given away/written off is 13 years old. Near brand new 747 likely to never fly again: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10751311/Saudi-royals-Boeing-747-jet-looks-set-SCRAPPED-flying-just-42-hours.html

Indeed. The utter scumbag.

Every President serves their country.

Yeah, you Russian F*****s were arming Hitler in his Blitzkrieg. You were so stupid you armed Jerry to attack you. Unless you people rise up and string up Putin, you will forever be a pariah nation. You lot did this. Thomas Mann, an anti-Nazi German, observed in 1945 that there were no Good or Bad Germans, just Germans, with a collective responsibility for what was done in their name. There is blood on your hands. And now we know you have to pay for it, which might be worse than the Incel we thought you were.

Just the sort of inappropriate Russian propaganda attempt to make light of a war where Russia rapes women, kidnaps children and kills fathers. In the sketch, the Black Knight is the beligerant, signifying that you believe that Russia's war of conquest and genocide, is not only legitimate but a noble pursuit. What kind of mentality possesses you after reading a harrowing account how Russian troops gouged out the eyes of a young female Ukrainian journalist. All the more sick considering you must know of Sir Micheal Palin's personal relationship to Ukraine. It's lazy and betrays an immature mind. Not only that, you are aware of the amputations that result in modern warfare, so you are also mocking double and quadruple amputees. Isee you are parrotting (!) a meme appearing on a number of Pro-Russian Bot X-accounts, so not even original. Its most interesting that Russian propagandists also use Monty Python to mock the dead. At least they get paid for it. You do it for free. Your mates trying to re-enact a classic sketch, how not to be seen. https://x.com/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1837186842245898740 (do not click if of a nervous or Russophile disposition)

No love lost between either man. https://www.nj.com/entertainment/music/2016/09/bruce_springsteen_donald_trump_moron.html https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bruce-springsteen-calls-donald-trump-a-moron-192439/ It's rather old news. Wonder when Kid Rock will have a whinge. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/15/kid-rock-restaurant-ice-raids

Without the successful British and French evacuation at Dunkirk, with the Germans held back by a French rearguard who knew what was coming, there would have been no War to win. Without the Battle of Britain being won by the British, there would have been no War to win. Without an El Alamein win, Without British materiel to a retreating USSR, there would have been no Eastern Front, Germany would have been in control of the entire Middle East, and the pro-Nazi uprising in Iraq would have succeeded. Without US materiel, there would have been no Soviet fight back. Without emigre German and Austrian scientiss, British scientists and American scientists, there would have been no Atomic Bomb. Without the work of two Australian chemical engineers, there would have been no penicillin for D-Day, and casualties would have been much higher. What if the landings in Sicily were a disaster; we have much to thank Paddy Mayne and his boys. What if Heisenberg had managed Neils Bohr to help? The calculations on critical mass might have been different, and there might have been a German A-Bomb. Without US intervention, would WW2 have resulted in a Nazi victory? Debatable because American intervention meant other events didn't happen, that could have happened. The Nazi political system was a rotten system, so its possible it would have collapsed in on itself. US non-involvement might have included supplying Britain. We know what happened, but there is no such certainty what might have happened. The War was driven by moments of luck, or mistake, of genius, all individual acts. What if Eisenhower hadn't been Allied Commander? Arguably, he had the qualities, evidenced by his later performance as President, to manage the various personalities on the Allied side.

The ICC exists where sovereign powers cannot or will not prosecute.

I remember the Al-Yamamah arms deal. In the end, BAE plea bargained and was fined $400 million. I know how corruption does in that world. I have the Wedgewood and Edinburgh Crystal as proof of corrupt practices impacting the British military. BAE's ban was lifted in 2020, and the then 45th President fired the then Inspector General, Steve Linock, after he declared an emergency to lift a ban on arms sales to the Kingdom, despite Congressional objections. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-official-tried-bully-fired-watchdog-looking-saudi-arms-sales Always the danger is that the Saudi government is quite unstable, as the King ages. Iran had acquired the latest kit just before the Shah was booted out, while away getting medical treatment.

Apparently Musk wasn't Sieg Heiling it was just a joke. And this just means A-Ok in more innocent times

Thing is they are not trying to do that. In the past, in traditional politics, politicians, of both shades, would generally hold themselves to a particular standard. What would be considered a relatively minor infraction of the moral code would be followed by a groveling letter of apology and resignation, in the hope of a semblance of a political career could survive. Political corruption, hence the popularity of "Mr Smith Goes to Washington". Did Bill Clinton normalise unpresidential behaviour? Probably. 40 years ago a political candidate boasting of assaulting women in an unguarded moment would have seen his chances cooked; there is no doubt the current President said those words, and they are n ot taken out of contjext. Anybody remember the furore over Reagan jokingly announcing the bombing was to start (of the Soviet Union). They are trying to impose their own values on the US, like all previous politicians. There are no cabinet members with a background that could even remotely connect to the common man (Reagan could, because at one time he would have been a jobbing actor living on mustard sandwiches). Few have had a career in public service, especially local government (even Governors would have seen the letters landing on theirdesks from worried and angry constituents). An example of alien values is George Santos.. He rose to relative prominance despite a lifestyle that many would find offensive, or at least, completely alien. The President himself is a demonstrable adulterer; he has, to my knowledge, never expressed regret over these dalliances to his ex-wives, nor his children. Again, its a lifestyle many people would not really approve of. Many politicians of this ilk have professed to take a country back to traditional values, while being utter hypocrites, or spinning a complete fantasy of a history. John Major; "back to basics", while he was banging Edwina Currie. In extremis, I present a few slightly edited quotes (so you concentrate on the words, and not who said them) What you are describing is a Reactionary, not a Counter Revolutionary. Bannon and others do have a clear vision of America, and its not the same as the America of the past. Some of the President's social media postings come from himself, such a an AI image, or inane postings about Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen. But he also has a team who make postings, such as this: Its likely technically correct; someone has gone though various 150 year old speeches. Though bits of it was. Americans are rightly proud of the words of Emily Lazurus, added to the Statue of Liberty in 1903: For many people, this poem captures the generosity of the American spirit. Between 1870 and 1900, 12 million immigrants, mostly from Europe, landed in America, 70% in New York. In 1850, one in ten Americans were born outside of the US. By 1870, that rose to 15%. Interestingly, the rise 1850 to 1870 is similar to the rise 1990 to 2020. And lets not forget, immigrants form the backbone of the Union Army in the Civil War; 25% of the US Army was foreign born. The key principle of Birthright Citizenship was established in 1898, when Wong Kim Ark went to the Supreme Court over the matter. The Courty found in his favour, affirming the principle of jus solis.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/74/wr/mm7414a1.htm https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/13-03-2025-european-region-reports-highest-number-of-measles-cases-in-more-than-25-years---unicef--who-europe In both cases, declining vaccination rates are the reason. People in Texas aren't getting measles because of brown people in Kazakhstan.

To be fair, I was down there, angling to get a better photo. My Thai wife told me not to do it. But I did, and fell in. She gave me the silent treatment driving home. Its a biological fact that as we age, we become more risk averse due to changes in brain vascularisation. Its not an old versus young type of change, but an evolutionary trait. The young alpha male is supposed to take risks, otherwise he will never be leader of the pack. He might get killed along the way, but if he doesn't, then he has great genes. As the alpha male ages, with his brood, he avoids fights to avoid getting killed, because that ends the bloodline. I have a box of crap, out of focus photos, showing life before social media.

Correct; this has always been the challenge of a flu rapid test. They exist, but there is no big market for them, because for most doctors, they are pointless. Any diagnostic test has use if it produces an actionable outcome, ie does the test tell the doctor anything different from what they would have done anyhow. A patient comes in with the sniffles. The doctor takes a tests. Its not flu; instruction to the patient, go home and take Lemsip. Its flu; go home and take Lemsip. Anti-virals have a really narrow window of efficacy, and are a waste of time for the majority of cases The procalcitonin or PCT test, has been a rip rawing success. The PCT test is a rapid test that can differentiate between a bacterial or a viral infection. Before, the doctor was pressured into writing a script for antibiotics. Now he has a test to tell the patient that they don't have a bacterial infection, and antibiotics would be pointless, The best use case for a rapid test is cardiac marker testing. You have a "heart attack". Properly done, the paramedic will be doing a series of quick blood tests, so by the time you arrive at ER, there is already a plan how to treat you, because time is of the essence. During the Pandemic, at least for part of it, there was a case for mass rapid testing, because there was still a great deal of uncertaintyl. Now, that case has considerably weakened; for most people a positive diagnosis of COVID would lead to the same outcome as the common cold, flu etc. You take yourself to bed. Just before COVID, there was a lot of work going on to identify the biomarkers found in people who really suffer with the flu. For most people , flu is a minor illness but for some, it really is a killer. You can draw general inferences about age, obesity, general health, but there are significant exceptions. eg the 100 year old lung cancer patient, for whom COVID-19 was nothing, through to the young person is apparent great physical health who succumbs. Biomarker tests have great potential to actually identify those at most risk. All those morbidities might be related to the same biomarkers.

Correct. The market for COVID-19 rapid tests is pretty much non-existant now.

This is like those Americans who say Californians aren't real Americans.

Androcide is a classic form of genocide. It eliminates a threat and the next genration. ISIS killed the men, but kept Yazidi women alve. In Yugoslavia, it was men and boys that were killed off. In Rwanda, men were specifically targeted and women were to be raped. During the Armenian genocide, it was males that were systematically killed. Gengis Khan kicked it all off when he ordered the killing of all Tatars "taller than a linchpin". Putin as an ultranationalist and Slavic supremicist. He frequently quotesm Ilyin and Dugin. His ideology has been described as "Ruscism". Like other isms it starts off with a fantasy view of the past; Putin's heroes are Peter the Great and Nicholas I, and frequently refers to the Kievan Rus, as if that has any relevance in the 21st Century. Its imagined glories by a single race, the "Rus", with a healthy dose of self pity (the Slavs were Slaves). My point was obvious. What motivates Putin, and why he won't stop this war. History is a series of interconnected events, but ultimately, we are seeing the final death throes of the Russian Empire, as it seeks to eat itself from the inside, in pursuance of racial purity (another reason to attack Ukraine; more servile Slavs). Russia is destroying itself, because of a lack of national self-confidence, because ultimately, the Russian Federation is not a real country, consisting of united peoples. Putin sees his core support as being among the Slavs. Non-Slavic peoples are of no consequence to him; these people only exist to serve the slavs. At the same time, by not invoking mass mobilisation, he avoids the emergence of opposition to the war. He is aware that the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan was not because of Mujahadeen success on the battlefield, or American arms supplies. It was because of the Mothers' Committees; a ground swell of popular resentment against losses (also proving the myth of Soviet indefatigability). He won't stop because of mounting losses; the losses are inconsequential, and help his other problems (getting rid of non-slavs). He is confident that there is enough meat among what he sees as inferior races, to fend off any serious oppostion. However, he has built a kleptocratic state, where your success is measured by how much you can steal. And Putin is the biggest thief. The Russian War Industry has supercharged this theft. These Russian arms companies aren't like Western Arms companies, in that they have no shareholders, and they are run by essentially psychopaths. Life is good for these men. I'm confident that a break up of the Russian empire, and the emergence of a confident Muscovy Republic, which has a rich literary history, will allow it to take its place alongside other European countries, getting rid of this twisted self-identity as a "Eurasian" country. They might stop acting like Berkshure Hunts.

Russian Hearts and Minds. Russia erects Stalin monument in occupied Melitopol to mark Victory Day, the Georgian bloke who starved millions of Ukrainians to death.

I sense not a full commitment from everyone

Someone knows their history "Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks" The letter from the Sultan The reply of the Zaporozhians:

Will hit 1 million maimed and dead by 8th June.

The Kremlin has fallen.