villakram

4 hours ago, bickster said:

Why is Crimea strategically important?

Serious question because strategically it isn't important, it's important for resources, it has oil and gas offshore but strategically Russia has other Black Sea ports with Naval Bases. Losing Crimea doesn't lose them access to anything

It's only strategically important if you want to attack Ukraine

Warm water port with access to the Black Sea, Med, Suez. They have easy eastern access via their northern ports.  The Black Sea is easily controlled by NATO member Turkey should it decide to do so. The empire would like nothing better than removing it from Russian control.

Perhaps looking/reading beyond the perspective afforded from your little portion of that Island might help your very narrow perspective.

Crimea is strategically important. It will not return to whatever Ukraine eventually ends up being. 

22 hours ago, BleedClaretAndBlue said:

 

Manufactured where...

4 hours ago, Demitri_C said:

Yeah. Its the first time we have seen publicly what xi can be like. Came across abit if a arsehole in that. Trudeau was being very respecful i think and xi just completely dismissed him.

Canada got involved in arresting an important Chinese national a few years back. Memory is important even though  "we choose" to ignore it.

5 hours ago, bickster said:

Murdoch told Trump he's not backing him

Fox (Hannity excepted) is about to be labelled a left wing pinko peddler of fake news

Murdoch didn't row in behind Trump until very very late in the day in 2016.

I wonder who was more stimulated.... Nancy or Mitch.... or all the media orgs that are going to have a 2 fupping year field day with this again.

Whatever about the creature trying to unseat him (Scott, FL), it would be a good day for America to see Mitch get the boot. The Dems are idiots for not moving Nancy aside to try and build for the future while they have the presidency... oh, there goes me thinking all democratic and such, silly boy.

Galicia must return to the motherland!

Anyone know if cities first dibs clause carried over to the new contract. I'd be amazed if they didn't take a serious look given he has proven himself in prem.

Imho, he'd be mad to move mid season, especially to Juve or Barca given their financial/football state. Milan are a little dodgy too given their ownership group.

4 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

Slightly unlucky slip there, but that one will go in the Mings Mistake Boring Twitter Banter collection

Well he had to make up for Maguire's pathetic position and treacle running for the Watkins goal. Got to keep Gareth looking good... for the King's sake.

40 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

Not a great night for your boys. Do you think they will try and dump Trump now or double down? 

My boys... hardly, but ok.

It's more likely that this is some form of return to political politics is local normality.

The Obama and Trump midterms were outliers only matched by Newt in 1994.

Comments on this should be good.

Ohio, Florida and Texas all firmly R now. 

The Georgia run-off is going to be an expensive shitshow.

18 hours ago, bickster said:

I very much doubt Ukrainians themselves will allow that at this stage

You believe that the Ukrainians are in charge Capt. Manwaring.

1 hour ago, bickster said:

Ukraine will be in NATO, it's the only real way to prevent this happening all over again.

There are ways to resolve this issue that don't require that. Too many absolutes in the air right now for that unfortunately.

4 hours ago, blandy said:

What, (or how) do you perceive the Russian position to be?

From my perspective the Russian perspective is completely different now to what it was before they invaded. Before they invaded it was a case of "Invade, quickly depose the Ukraine government and replace it with Russian stooges, the West won't do anything, Ukraine is weak and can't fight us. We'll overwhelm them"

But now, it's "We failed to do what we set out to do, we are losing an enormous amount of soldiers and equipment, we haven't achieved even a reduced set of objectives around the East of Ukraine and are getting pushed back. Meanwhile we're also losing the reputation we had around our hardware and professionalism and are being embarrassed in terms of loses of Flagships, Bridges and there's a lot of discontent amongst both hardliners and the younger part of Russian society. What the hell can we do to get out of this intact?"

I also think that neither side can win, they can only both lose. Russia has already lost so much and Ukraine likewise.

Until Putin goes, I guess it'll just churn on with more death and destruction. But if he's replaced by a hardliner, then there's still the same problems.

Minsk II is the outline. 

Ukraine never in NATO is the redline. 

13 minutes ago, sidcow said:

I think if I was Ukraine I would let them have Crimea if they left back to their pre March borders.  The proviso would have to be that the agreement is nullified if Russia invades again.

It gives Putin an off ramp as he can claim he's now "legally" got Crimea.  He would probably claim back home that was his intention over the whole thing.

By now Crimea will be totally Russian anyway, they will have cleansed the Ukraine out of it over the last 8 years.

Then The West needs to help re-build Ukraine and continue to keep it's military up to date to make it much more difficult for Russia to ever try again whilst continuing to hammer Russia with sanctions and refusing to buy their oil and gas.  That will hopefully ensure Russia is unable to ever re-build or modernise it's own Military.

Will all those young people ever go back to Russia, or in big numbers?   They've lost huge numbers of youth to the war directly and saddled themselves with a huge brain drain as people have left.

The future really doesn't look very rosy for them.

Meanwhile The West needs to put A LOT of research and development into anti nuclear missile technology.  It is surely possible to develop systems that can take out ICBM's.  we need to get to the stage where a rogue state with nuclear options can't hold the world to ransom. 

I think The West thought this issue had gone away but this will be a massive wake up call to what one nation with the technology can do.

These proposals present a fundamental absence of understanding of the Russian position.

Also, modern delivery systems have at least 3 ways that render all the first strike fantasists quiver. (i) Orbital deployment (ii) Multi-warhead systems (iii) High mach delivery systems. This ignores more basic things such as submarine based coastal launches or terrain hugging delivery. Anti-missile systems only have a hope when the protection area is small and a direct impact is required by the attacking missile. Nuclear weapons are most effective when detonated in the air and their large impact radius means they can be aimed into a large area. The physics of this problem is well known. Magic bullets don't exist.

1 hour ago, TheAuthority said:

The general football supporting public (at least the ones with a brain) have been waiting for someone, anyone to do something. UEFA, the FA, the players. No-one is going to do anything beyond small tokenism. They are all on the gravy train. The players know which side their bread is buttered and aren't going to rock the boat.

The only people who have any real power are the fans. There should have been a concerted worldwide effort by fans to just boycott the whole thing. Not go to Qatar or even watch the TV. Unfortunately we have all had to deal with a pandemic, rising costs of living etc.

It's a farce and blatantly due to corruption. But nothing dramatic is going to happen and certainly nothing will change.

Ya, but Santa is on the USMNT side...  

8 hours ago, nick76 said:

I don’t think they’ll be slaughtered, they’ll lose the house as usual probably a swing of 40 seats but I think they might keep the Senate based on everything I’ve seen.

We likely won't know until Jan given GA is likely to go to a run off... unless there is a true wave type election. This is unlikely with some 40m votes already cast, significantly damping the momentum of any last minute surges.

MI will be an interesting bellwether, with Whitmer somehow in a close race. I say this, as although she is self branded as a prog stalwart, she has on the whole governed from a fairly centrist position.  Her national profile etc., may be her undoing.

This election is all about inflation. The Dems will get slaughtered because its midterms and inflation. If you are in charge, the big pile of steaming shit is yours. Same as it ever was. 

That was lovely. 

It would be nice if someone could leave something in on Martinez... though being smoked by Bailey was nice! Casemiro is a twunt too.

4 hours ago, sidcow said:

Japan has MASSIVE problems ahead of it as few young people of tax paying age have to pay for social care of a massive ageing population.   It's going to be a good illustration of where the rest of The Western world is going to be soon.  

Maybe... but, they've already been in a zero growth state for over ~25yrs and it's been dropping for the past 10. Their economy has rumbled along and general society too. It is a question of interest, how much their relative lack of diversity has helped with the end to endless growth. Of course, as an export economy, the rest of the world opening up has helped massively, so when global population levels off in 50 yrs... say add another 50 for an economic levelling of sorts and then we'll see. Perhaps that should be 75 or 25 rather than 50, tis happening regardless.

We are continuously told about how the old people will be such a massive problem, but societies will find a way to muddle through. Public pensions etc. have only been a reliable thing for ~50yrs.

7 hours ago, StefanAVFC said:

Only fake news when it suits it seems

I missed you too.

46 minutes ago, HKP90 said:

The world is in an awful state. It simply would not survive another Trump Presidency.

That's a tad too deep down the hyperbole hole.

The world now is not all that much worse than most of the last couple hundred years... at least.

1 hour ago, DCJonah said:

Surprised the Biden speech yesterday hasn't got more attention in the news. 

We've got the president of the United States telling people that democracy is under threat. 

I hope the American people listen. I worry too many don't care because it means their side won. 

Double digit inflation tends focus minds a little more than political grandstanding, and this on a day that the WH had to delete a propaganda style tweet claiming credit for the massive increases in social security payments to the elderly... until CNN etc slammed this given such inflation match rises are required by law.

He would have been much better off attending the WS game with his wife last night, though may have had an issue staying awake for the ~3hr game. I think many dem candidates up for election next week would have preferred that too.

Meanwhile... the (democratic) occupation of Syria continues.

Population decline is only a problem for those wedded to the current growth uber alles paradigm. Japan is the exemplar of how population decline is not the end of the world.

Our 17 month lad just tried and mastered down the stairs by himself as of yesterday... yay, no more taxi service. Well maybe a month or 2 of quasi-independent going down, but crazy watching him decide I can now do this.

It's completely wild the discrete new things he can do on a weekly basis. Still partial to waking up a random night hours though.