Best Of

I really don't understand why the UK, the EU and Ukraine don't put forward a plan for peace in Ukraine.

It's time to stop being the ones who react, and start setting the agenda. You aren't going to get any support from the US, so it's time to disrupt the OODA loop.

Ukrainian attacks in Russia are one part of this, but instead of negotiating from a Russian plan, which is also a classic example of anchoring, it's time to start over:

1. Regime change in Moscow. Free and fair elections.
2. Putin and other senior Russian generals facing war crimes trials in the Hague
3. Departure of Russian troops from all part of occupied Ukraine, including Crimea
4. Limitations on the size of the Russian military and their ability to deplot within 200 miles of the Ukrainian border
5. Reparations paid out of energy export revenues for the rebuildinf of Ukraine

It's unclear to me why we have never publicised our maximalist demands.

One other embarrassing thing about the 28 point plan is that Witkoff is promising the unfreezing of assets. Those assets being held in Europe not the US. Doesn't he realise this. Things feel bleak. BUT. Europe has the frozen assests. It is where the pipeline gas goes. It can continue providing support to Ukraine without the US. Leverage is there.

We kinda have publicised our maximalist demands. We've supported United Nations General Assembly Resolution ES-11/7, which says, among other things, "demand that the Russian Federation immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders, and its demand for an immediate cessation of the hostilities by the Russian Federation against Ukraine, in particular of any attacks against civilians and civilian objects". (The US voted against, along with Russia, Belarus, Israel, Hungary, Eritrea, Mali, North Korea and some others.)

It's depressing that Israel and the US now count among the usual suspects.

"Returning to London after a year in the countryside, the signs of societal collapse are everywhere - even at 7am
By Amanda Williams"

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15311313/london-societal-collapse-amanda-williams.html

Lol. What a load of crap.

For those of us without a Daily Mail account, and who feel that our lives are the richer for not having one, what did it say?

As someone who has lived in London for most of my life, and the same corner of it for the last 25 years, I don't recognise a lot of the descriptions I read, and certainly feel that much of London is far better than during most of my life, except for a general decline in the public realm over the past decade or so that I see everywhere else I visit too.

It's a kind of modern Gin Lane account of walking through Kensington in the early hours of the morning, being scared of brown people, a random negative comment about the tube, seeing a prostitute buying some drugs, some obligatory hating on Sadiq Khan and contrasting it with the bucolic joy of the English countryside. She thinks American tourists must hate it here (weird how they keep coming) and takes a shot at the weather (also probably Khan's fault). A classic of the genre, basically.

And all those tall buildings. Scary.

Did the packs of rabid urban foxes, and Hitchcockian bird flu-infested parakeets and ornamental geese, get a look in?

Lol, I imagine so.

The 'London is terrible' meme has been around for as long as can remember. Three drivers, I'd say:

1. Backdoor envy. It means 'wish I could live there'.
2. Parochial xenophobia. It means 'multicultural equals shithole'.
3. Ageing. It means 'I'm too old for all that'.

Number 2 is what I think is behind it when it's coming from the Populist Right.

There will be others.

As an example a fear from those living comfortable, even affluent, lives outside London who wouldn't be able to do so if they lived in London.

London's unaffordable housing, inequalities, congestion being among the factors of this.

These people might think of London as "a nice place for a visit but I wouldn't want to live there" and so distrust government ideas suggesting the rest of the country becomes more like London.

I sense that's (literally) you talking. So I'll accept the point. Rude not to.

Me as well. I detest living in cities and living in London would be a living nightmare for me. Love visiting but don't want to lay my head down anywhere insde the M25 more than 1 night in a row.

The idea of 'the rest of the country becoming more like London' would be hell on earth for me.

Fpt

Ukraine has really had a shitty time of it. One of the most dumped-on nations in history.

Decimated by deliberate famine under Stalin, one of the biggest sources of war dead in WW2, under the Soviet yoke for decades culminating in bearing the brunt of the Chernobyl tragedy, run like a Mafia state post independence by a series of the most corrupt governments anywhere in the post Soviet sphere, then ground down by Russian aggression for a decade, subject to a bloody and ruinous invasion, and now sold down the river for money by the USA.

So what’s your beloved EU doing to support it ?

More than Trump.

Still not enough but at least they are not selling them down the river like the US are at the moment.

On a day that a British politician was rightfully imprisoned for taking bribes from Russia it is a shame to think that Trump will never receive a similar sentence for the same crime but on a much larger scale.

More than Trump doesn’t mean it’s adequate

This deal, it it’s as described, is diabolical and the European nations need to step up over this, peace at all costs is simply surrender

You’re usually a rational poster. What proof do you have Trump is a Russian asset ?

Siding with Putin?

Who’s asking you, Mummy’s boy ?

Not you, Trump-Admiring Zealot! I was referring to Trump himself!

"What proof do you have Trump is a Russian asset?"

I wasn’t asking you. I was asking Richard. Has mummy called you for dinner yet ? Saddo. Go back to your basement.

What further proof do we have of Trump being a Russian asset than Trump siding virtually 100% with Putin ever since his second term started?

That Trump is an asset to Russia is surely beyond doubt.

The only question is whether he's on the Kremlin payroll, or doing it as a hobby.

Fpt

Ukraine has really had a shitty time of it. One of the most dumped-on nations in history.

Decimated by deliberate famine under Stalin, one of the biggest sources of war dead in WW2, under the Soviet yoke for decades culminating in bearing the brunt of the Chernobyl tragedy, run like a Mafia state post independence by a series of the most corrupt governments anywhere in the post Soviet sphere, then ground down by Russian aggression for a decade, subject to a bloody and ruinous invasion, and now sold down the river for money by the USA.

Big and slow handclap for all those [moderated] who said Trump would be better for Ukraine than Harris.

Harris was a dreadful candidate.

She was but I'll still take her over Tump, she would never have sold out Ukraine like this.

What really makes me so angry/upset about this plan is that we pretty much all on here are into history, we studied and we read and what we are seeing is, in our lifetimes, one of those situations which you look on with disgust or embarrassment when studying the behaviour of past great powers.

It is watching as a great power who claims to be on the side of good selling out a seeker nation for its own financial reasons.

This awful thing that is so so clearly “not right” and totally immoral is happening now and what’s worse is if, like me, you were someone who believed that the Us, whilst flawed, was fundamentally on the side of freedom and defending those with similar values against dictators and despots and evil regimes.

If it happens then it will be an indelible stain on the US.

Fpt

Ukraine has really had a shitty time of it. One of the most dumped-on nations in history.

Decimated by deliberate famine under Stalin, one of the biggest sources of war dead in WW2, under the Soviet yoke for decades culminating in bearing the brunt of the Chernobyl tragedy, run like a Mafia state post independence by a series of the most corrupt governments anywhere in the post Soviet sphere, then ground down by Russian aggression for a decade, subject to a bloody and ruinous invasion, and now sold down the river for money by the USA.

So what’s your beloved EU doing to support it ?

More than Trump.

Still not enough but at least they are not selling them down the river like the US are at the moment.

On a day that a British politician was rightfully imprisoned for taking bribes from Russia it is a shame to think that Trump will never receive a similar sentence for the same crime but on a much larger scale.

More than Trump doesn’t mean it’s adequate

This deal, it it’s as described, is diabolical and the European nations need to step up over this, peace at all costs is simply surrender

You’re usually a rational poster. What proof do you have Trump is a Russian asset ?

Because he acts as Putin’s butt boy.

This proposal is easy to reject, as Ukraine would cease to exist as an independent country.

So reject it and the EU step up and support rather than tokenism

And Trump withdraws the use of all US made weaponry across Ukraine and the EU

Trump has all the cards, but history will record him as not only US worst president but a malign influence across the world

Trump the worst president? He's not even the worst president of the 2020s.

A niche view.

Fpt

Ukraine has really had a shitty time of it. One of the most dumped-on nations in history.

Decimated by deliberate famine under Stalin, one of the biggest sources of war dead in WW2, under the Soviet yoke for decades culminating in bearing the brunt of the Chernobyl tragedy, run like a Mafia state post independence by a series of the most corrupt governments anywhere in the post Soviet sphere, then ground down by Russian aggression for a decade, subject to a bloody and ruinous invasion, and now sold down the river for money by the USA.

So what’s your beloved EU doing to support it ?

More than Trump.

Still not enough but at least they are not selling them down the river like the US are at the moment.

On a day that a British politician was rightfully imprisoned for taking bribes from Russia it is a shame to think that Trump will never receive a similar sentence for the same crime but on a much larger scale.

More than Trump doesn’t mean it’s adequate

This deal, it it’s as described, is diabolical and the European nations need to step up over this, peace at all costs is simply surrender

You’re usually a rational poster. What proof do you have Trump is a Russian asset ?

Because he acts as Putin’s butt boy.

This proposal is easy to reject, as Ukraine would cease to exist as an independent country.

So reject it and the EU step up and support rather than tokenism

And Trump withdraws the use of all US made weaponry across Ukraine and the EU

Trump has all the cards, but history will record him as not only US worst president but a malign influence across the world

Trump the worst president? He's not even the worst president of the 2020s.

So, you think Biden was worse? Are you completely bonkers? The US still had the rule of law under Biden. The US still had friendly relations with its allies under Biden.