It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
Especially when Europe, and Germany in particular, is STILL paying huge amounts of real money straight into Putin's pocket.
Well that's just silly, you can't "end ALL imports of Russian gas and oil NOW" if every consumer and every business in your country is powered by those things. Whether you should have allowed that to become the case is a different and historical question.
And it really doesn't look good that the govening party is explicitly funded by Russian billionaires and, hey presto, it turns out sanctioning the personal assets of those billionaires is not just irrelevant, but actually playing into P{utin's hands. What are the chances? It really looks like football clubs are not the only institutions in London for sale to oligarchs.
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
A moments thought ought to make people question the comparison. 100 millionaires or 1 billionaire, which is best? It's probably not even a simple answer, is it influence or value you are looking for? One thing's for sure simply counting entities and declaring someone the winner is stupid.
In fact to extend this further there is an optimal sanction, that is the one that pushes a powerful person to bring down Putin and end the war. I will happily sing the praises of whichever country figures that one out. Even France.
By all accounts the one sanction that really freaked out Moscow was the freezing of Russia’s foreign reserves
I love this concept that the EU have been much more muscular with military side of things.....the UK has been sending support for years, in particular past several months basically everything went via UK, and the training e.g. the SAS trained the SoF (who apparently have been doing extremely well against Russian VDV).
The Germans for instance thought sending some helmets until a couple of days ago was good enough and even yesterday sent them soviet era piece of shit weapons that have been stuck in a warehouse in Eastern Germany for the past 30 odd years. They are more likely to blow up the Ukrainians trying to use them.
I don't think the Germans missiles will actually blow up, I think they will simply make a "pssss.... klum..." noise, and fail to fire.
There's already reports out of Ukraine that the weapons the Germans sent are "mouldy" and don't work properly or at all so have been scrapped. UK, US and Swedish weapons coming out on top at the moment according to the research people at home. Lots of pledges from European countries but not a lot arriving is the other constant theme.
One interesting analysis (from last week, I only got to read it this morning) suggested that the US and UK should deploy special forces in Ukraine to defend nuclear power stations from any Russian attacks due to the risk of catastrophic outcomes. I feel as though that junior researcher deserves a raise.
Do we not think that there might already be some "lost businessmen" in Ukraine?
I'm as sure as it's possible for a complete layman to be that there will be agents on the ground, but there won't be any troops, even in civvies. Firstly what could they do to protect these installations from massed armoured formations of the Russian army? Secondly, as has been frequently emphasised throughout this conflict, any direct confrontations between NATO and Russian forces is to be avoided at all costs.
Speaking more generally of intelligence services, what do we all make of the reports that repeated attempts on the life of President Zelenskyy have been thwarted, in part, by leaks from within the FSB? It has also been suggested that much of the Western security services' very detailed knowledge of the Russian invasion operation has come from FSB sources, i.e. that the organisation is leaking like a sieve. One therefore wonders how much opposition to Putin exists within the organs of the Russian state itself?
During the Troubles, "The Securocrats" as the PIRA liked to call them had tremendous fun mixing technical intelligence with human.
Sometimes they would frame a member of the IRA as an informer by only acting on information he/she knew - which they had got from bugs. Repeatedly.
Other times they protected their sources by allowing bugs to be found to explain leaks.
"India’s position at the HRC adds to a string of abstentions at the United Nations and multilateral groups since the start of Russian military operations in Ukraine on February 24, even as the continuing Russian military advances in Ukraine have seen more and more countries vote for resolutions that criticise Moscow . The Modi government has decided to abstain from three votes at the UN Security Council, two at the UN General Assembly in New York, two at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, and one at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna."
Crikey. Is that because they expect worldwide grain shortages as Ukraine is levelled?
Not good
From memory, Russia and Ukraine are the world’s number 1 and number 2 grain exporters.
This could work well for Russia. They keep their grain, make better vodka from it then eat the potatoes which would have gone into the vodka. Win/win and trebles all round.
"India’s position at the HRC adds to a string of abstentions at the United Nations and multilateral groups since the start of Russian military operations in Ukraine on February 24, even as the continuing Russian military advances in Ukraine have seen more and more countries vote for resolutions that criticise Moscow . The Modi government has decided to abstain from three votes at the UN Security Council, two at the UN General Assembly in New York, two at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, and one at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna."
“Indeed, 67% of Ukrainians said they would be willing to take up arms to defend the country against Russian troops, with a further 7% saying they were already doing so. 85% of men and 63% of women said they had already taken up arms or were willing to do so.”
Even allowing for bravado those are incredibly high numbers. Putin has roused an entire nation of 44m people and he’s got 30 million potential soldiers taking on his army
They will fight street by street. The only way Russia can win is by unthinkable savagery. Carpet bombing, chemical bombing, tactical nukes
Not much point in taking over a smouldering ruin of a country though.
I doubt even Afghanistan had that level of potential armed resistance against the invader. Maybe the nearest example is Vietnam, where resistance was ubiquitous, and which defeated a huge imperial power, France, AND then the world’s greatest power, America. Not a great augury for Putin’s rusting army
I think that Ukraine is mainly fighting for hearts and minds at the moment. But the analysis I have seen is that Russia will switch to co-ordinated heavy bombardment against which there is no effective defence and consequently the cities will fall very quickly with significant damage to property and casualties.
At some point in the near future, it will switch from a territorial war, to a war of resistance; which Russia is very ill equipped to fight.
Eh? Heavy bombardment doesn't cause cities to fall. It only makes defence and guerrilla activity easier. Stalingrad.
Heavy bombardment has got somewhat deadlier over the last three quarters of a century.
Yes. But it still doesn't cause.a city to fall. It needs boots in that city. For a sustained period.
“Indeed, 67% of Ukrainians said they would be willing to take up arms to defend the country against Russian troops, with a further 7% saying they were already doing so. 85% of men and 63% of women said they had already taken up arms or were willing to do so.”
Even allowing for bravado those are incredibly high numbers. Putin has roused an entire nation of 44m people and he’s got 30 million potential soldiers taking on his army
They will fight street by street. The only way Russia can win is by unthinkable savagery. Carpet bombing, chemical bombing, tactical nukes
Not much point in taking over a smouldering ruin of a country though.
I doubt even Afghanistan had that level of potential armed resistance against the invader. Maybe the nearest example is Vietnam, where resistance was ubiquitous, and which defeated a huge imperial power, France, AND then the world’s greatest power, America. Not a great augury for Putin’s rusting army
I think that Ukraine is mainly fighting for hearts and minds at the moment. But the analysis I have seen is that Russia will switch to co-ordinated heavy bombardment against which there is no effective defence and consequently the cities will fall very quickly with significant damage to property and casualties.
At some point in the near future, it will switch from a territorial war, to a war of resistance; which Russia is very ill equipped to fight.
Difficult for us to judge but there are a lot of reports of serious damage being inflicted on the Russian side and reverses. Three senior Russian officers killed by snipers when visiting the front according to BBC.
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
Especially when Europe, and Germany in particular, is STILL paying huge amounts of real money straight into Putin's pocket.
Well that's just silly, you can't "end ALL imports of Russian gas and oil NOW" if every consumer and every business in your country is powered by those things. Whether you should have allowed that to become the case is a different and historical question.
And it really doesn't look good that the govening party is explicitly funded by Russian billionaires and, hey presto, it turns out sanctioning the personal assets of those billionaires is not just irrelevant, but actually playing into P{utin's hands. What are the chances? It really looks like football clubs are not the only institutions in London for sale to oligarchs.
You do end them all NOW if you really want to stop the barbarous war perpetrated by your supplier and funded by your euros.
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
Loads of countries have sanctioned members of the United Russia Party with travel bans, it's merely symbolic but gets those numbers up.
Haven't some countries sanctioned every Deputy in the Duma that voted for the war? Is that useful? Maybe, but also possibly not at all.
Yeah, it's just names on a sheet of paper. Of no importance in terms of bringing the Putin regime down.
I believe Sir Humphrey called it "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Just like their boss, some of Boris Johnson’s Cabinet can’t resist a bit of self promotion.
Rishi Sunak has his signature all over glossy social media messages. Priti Patel dresses up in police uniform. Sajid Javid has YouTube videos of a national tour that featured his childhood home. Liz Truss is famed for Instagram snaps of her trips to far flung places (often with a taxpayer-funded photographer in tow).
By contrast, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace doesn’t exactly court publicity. His Instagram page has a grand total of eight posts, including a local newspaper-style snap of him putting money in a Poppy Day collecting tin. He shuns “cosplay Cabinet” photo-ops in tanks or fighter jets, preferring his lounge suit to military fatigues.
But what Wallace lacks in the PR stakes of some of his colleagues, he more than makes up for it with his no-nonsense approach to his job, many Tory MPs believe.
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
A moments thought ought to make people question the comparison. 100 millionaires or 1 billionaire, which is best? It's probably not even a simple answer, is it influence or value you are looking for? One thing's for sure simply counting entities and declaring someone the winner is stupid.
In fact to extend this further there is an optimal sanction, that is the one that pushes a powerful person to bring down Putin and end the war. I will happily sing the praises of whichever country figures that one out. Even France.
By all accounts the one sanction that really freaked out Moscow was the freezing of Russia’s foreign reserves
And on that list it counts as 1 entity (the Russian central bank) the same as some no name politician in the United Russia Party who is banned from travelling to/through the EU.
I suspect that sanctions chart shared earlier was bollocks.
Neverthless, regardless of what anyone else has done, the UK hasn’t yet got a coherently communicated position on sanctions, or indeed a reasonable policy on refugees.
The first makes it look at least as if the Conservative Party had been bought and sold by years of Russian money, and the second that Johnson et al are still prisoners of their mendacious Brexity rhetoric.
"India’s position at the HRC adds to a string of abstentions at the United Nations and multilateral groups since the start of Russian military operations in Ukraine on February 24, even as the continuing Russian military advances in Ukraine have seen more and more countries vote for resolutions that criticise Moscow . The Modi government has decided to abstain from three votes at the UN Security Council, two at the UN General Assembly in New York, two at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, and one at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna."
“Indeed, 67% of Ukrainians said they would be willing to take up arms to defend the country against Russian troops, with a further 7% saying they were already doing so. 85% of men and 63% of women said they had already taken up arms or were willing to do so.”
Even allowing for bravado those are incredibly high numbers. Putin has roused an entire nation of 44m people and he’s got 30 million potential soldiers taking on his army
They will fight street by street. The only way Russia can win is by unthinkable savagery. Carpet bombing, chemical bombing, tactical nukes
Not much point in taking over a smouldering ruin of a country though.
I doubt even Afghanistan had that level of potential armed resistance against the invader. Maybe the nearest example is Vietnam, where resistance was ubiquitous, and which defeated a huge imperial power, France, AND then the world’s greatest power, America. Not a great augury for Putin’s rusting army
I think that Ukraine is mainly fighting for hearts and minds at the moment. But the analysis I have seen is that Russia will switch to co-ordinated heavy bombardment against which there is no effective defence and consequently the cities will fall very quickly with significant damage to property and casualties.
At some point in the near future, it will switch from a territorial war, to a war of resistance; which Russia is very ill equipped to fight.
Eh? Heavy bombardment doesn't cause cities to fall. It only makes defence and guerrilla activity easier. Stalingrad.
Heavy bombardment has got somewhat deadlier over the last three quarters of a century.
Yes. But it still doesn't cause.a city to fall. It needs boots in that city. For a sustained period.
Nobody can live in a rubble heap with no power, no water, and no food. It ceases to be a city.
With a bit of luck this will do for Trump. Unlike Marine Le Pen and the SDP in Germany, he’s too dumb to understand why this is so obviously bad.
Trump is dumb but it helps him because his supporters are too - so he relates well to them. It's a kind of vicious swirling pool of mutually resonating dumbness. He validates and reinforces theirs and they do the same back for him and his. Thus does the level rise and rise until ... well, let's see, either it overflows and washes everything away with it or somebody finds a way to pull the plug.
Trump supporters are not the dumb working class stereotype you depict
“It’s time to bust the myth: Most Trump voters were not working class.”
They were in terms of not being college educated. 67% of non college educated whites voted for Trump in 2020 while 51% of college educated whites voted for Biden as did most non whites.
Yes Trump did better with higher earners but Biden still tied Trump with the highest earners earning over $200 000 a year
Just like their boss, some of Boris Johnson’s Cabinet can’t resist a bit of self promotion.
Rishi Sunak has his signature all over glossy social media messages. Priti Patel dresses up in police uniform. Sajid Javid has YouTube videos of a national tour that featured his childhood home. Liz Truss is famed for Instagram snaps of her trips to far flung places (often with a taxpayer-funded photographer in tow).
By contrast, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace doesn’t exactly court publicity. His Instagram page has a grand total of eight posts, including a local newspaper-style snap of him putting money in a Poppy Day collecting tin. He shuns “cosplay Cabinet” photo-ops in tanks or fighter jets, preferring his lounge suit to military fatigues.
But what Wallace lacks in the PR stakes of some of his colleagues, he more than makes up for it with his no-nonsense approach to his job, many Tory MPs believe.
The thing that I don't get is - given Trumps apparent liking for Putin - why was there no rapprochment over the 4 years he was in power? It seems like relations between the US and Russia were simply frozen for all that time. Why was there no deal? Very strange. To me it reveals more about Putin than Trump.
Putin did get a fair amount from Trump including a reasonably free hand in Syria, very little pushback on election interference and cyber-security, a shift in the attitude of Republican voters in favour of Putin and Russia, and withholding of military aid from Ukraine (as part of a plot to get Zelensky to launch a politically-motivated inquiry into Biden).
That he didn't get more says more about the political reality that the elected Republicans leadership in Congress remained VERY sceptical of Putin's Russia (Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and others made it pretty clear), and the efforts of Trump's babysitters and nappy-changers over four dismal years.
I would say this is evidence of low level co-operation, rather than anything approaching a meaningful partnership. Putin is obsessed about foreign forces in Ukraine, why couldn't he do a deal over that? The US army were training the Ukrainian Army to fight the Russians all under Trumps watch, and Russia remained under US sanctions.
No doubt Republicans in Congress were a problem. But I would speculate that Putin was not willing to offer anything decent back, such that meaningful progress could be made. It would have been hampered by his pathological fear and hatred towards the west, which seems to be at the core of his philosophy.
As GOP voters as well as Democrats are appalled at Putin's invasion of Ukraine, Trump has had to change course.
Though while the House is likely to go GOP in November the Senate is less certain with only a third of seats up and most already GOP held
Democrats will probably hold the senate even if it's 50/50 again (I would be surprised if Mark Kelly lost in Arizona for example) but get massacred in the house.
With a bit of luck this will do for Trump. Unlike Marine Le Pen and the SDP in Germany, he’s too dumb to understand why this is so obviously bad.
Trump is dumb but it helps him because his supporters are too - so he relates well to them. It's a kind of vicious swirling pool of mutually resonating dumbness. He validates and reinforces theirs and they do the same back for him and his. Thus does the level rise and rise until ... well, let's see, either it overflows and washes everything away with it or somebody finds a way to pull the plug.
Trump supporters are not the dumb working class stereotype you depict
“It’s time to bust the myth: Most Trump voters were not working class.”
I don't think anyone really suggested they were but like all good politicians he won enough of a disaffected class of voters to win power. Just as Boris did in the Red Wall. The majority of Tory voters in 2019 were middle class, yet they also won enough working class voters to devastate Labour in key parts of the country.
I think people do in fact suggest that Trump's (and Johnson's) wins were absolute victories among non-university educated, white working class voters.
As you say, they are wrong - both got enough such voters to damage their opponents without losing their core vote, but it was a relatively good performance amongst these groups, not an absolute victory.
Interestingly, whilst 2020 is remembered for Trump's Big Lie, the underlying vote was something of a reversion to the mean in terms of voting patterns. Biden actually lost ground compared with Clinton in the core Republican constituency of high earners - Trump had delivered for them in many ways economically (up to COVID and possibly unsustainably) and in tax cuts. But Biden won back lower, and particularly middle income groups.
Johnson's risk is, I'd suggest, the other way. Starmer is much more appealing than Corbyn to high income Tories, and Johnson clearly has features that make the relatively socially conservative, CofE wing of his party very uncomfortable. So rather than a reversion to the mean, I can see a consolidation with Johnson keeping hold of "new" voters but losing "old" ones if he remains in place. Sunak would probably entail reversion to the mean.
“Indeed, 67% of Ukrainians said they would be willing to take up arms to defend the country against Russian troops, with a further 7% saying they were already doing so. 85% of men and 63% of women said they had already taken up arms or were willing to do so.”
Even allowing for bravado those are incredibly high numbers. Putin has roused an entire nation of 44m people and he’s got 30 million potential soldiers taking on his army
They will fight street by street. The only way Russia can win is by unthinkable savagery. Carpet bombing, chemical bombing, tactical nukes
Not much point in taking over a smouldering ruin of a country though.
I doubt even Afghanistan had that level of potential armed resistance against the invader. Maybe the nearest example is Vietnam, where resistance was ubiquitous, and which defeated a huge imperial power, France, AND then the world’s greatest power, America. Not a great augury for Putin’s rusting army
I think that Ukraine is mainly fighting for hearts and minds at the moment. But the analysis I have seen is that Russia will switch to co-ordinated heavy bombardment against which there is no effective defence and consequently the cities will fall very quickly with significant damage to property and casualties.
At some point in the near future, it will switch from a territorial war, to a war of resistance; which Russia is very ill equipped to fight.
Eh? Heavy bombardment doesn't cause cities to fall. It only makes defence and guerrilla activity easier. Stalingrad.
Heavy bombardment has got somewhat deadlier over the last three quarters of a century.
Yes. But it still doesn't cause.a city to fall. It needs boots in that city. For a sustained period.
Nobody can live in a rubble heap with no power, no water, and no food. It ceases to be a city.
Stalingrad, Leningrad, Berlin 45, I dunno.
Cities can be pulverised to fuck, or devoid of food, or both, yet somehow people live in the wreckage for quite a while
"India’s position at the HRC adds to a string of abstentions at the United Nations and multilateral groups since the start of Russian military operations in Ukraine on February 24, even as the continuing Russian military advances in Ukraine have seen more and more countries vote for resolutions that criticise Moscow . The Modi government has decided to abstain from three votes at the UN Security Council, two at the UN General Assembly in New York, two at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, and one at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna."
32% of Labour voters back WW3 it seems. The movement of Corbynites to the Greens and TUSC while ex UKIP and many isolationist Leave Labour voters now vote Tory means Starmer Labour are now the more hawkish of the 2 main parties for the first time since Blair was PM
“Indeed, 67% of Ukrainians said they would be willing to take up arms to defend the country against Russian troops, with a further 7% saying they were already doing so. 85% of men and 63% of women said they had already taken up arms or were willing to do so.”
Even allowing for bravado those are incredibly high numbers. Putin has roused an entire nation of 44m people and he’s got 30 million potential soldiers taking on his army
They will fight street by street. The only way Russia can win is by unthinkable savagery. Carpet bombing, chemical bombing, tactical nukes
Not much point in taking over a smouldering ruin of a country though.
I doubt even Afghanistan had that level of potential armed resistance against the invader. Maybe the nearest example is Vietnam, where resistance was ubiquitous, and which defeated a huge imperial power, France, AND then the world’s greatest power, America. Not a great augury for Putin’s rusting army
I think that Ukraine is mainly fighting for hearts and minds at the moment. But the analysis I have seen is that Russia will switch to co-ordinated heavy bombardment against which there is no effective defence and consequently the cities will fall very quickly with significant damage to property and casualties.
At some point in the near future, it will switch from a territorial war, to a war of resistance; which Russia is very ill equipped to fight.
Eh? Heavy bombardment doesn't cause cities to fall. It only makes defence and guerrilla activity easier. Stalingrad.
Heavy bombardment has got somewhat deadlier over the last three quarters of a century.
Yes. But it still doesn't cause.a city to fall. It needs boots in that city. For a sustained period.
Nobody can live in a rubble heap with no power, no water, and no food. It ceases to be a city.
In other news we had drinks with a couple of Americans from Seattle and SF last night at a rooftop bar in Oaxaca. I expected them to be extremely liberal and all about the culture war but man was I wrong. The woman from SF was so pissed off with the local politicians and she's basically leaving for Long Beach or Orange County by the end of the summer if they haven't fixed the drug and crime problems. The guy said he was fed up of "NoCal" politics seeping into Seattle and turning it into a shit hole. These are solid Dem voters, mid 30s liberals.
The other one that surprised me was their view of COVID and how the blue states and CDC have completely fucked it by politicising vaccines and mask wearing. I mean it's a self selecting cohort because they're in Mexico where the only reason to wear a mask is to avoid a 1000 peso "fine" from a corrupt police officer, still I was pretty shocked when they said most of their friends are pretty unhappy with the continuing COVID bullshit in CA and WA.
All in all a real learning experience for me, really surprised me that these basically left wing Dem voters were so fed up of liberal policies on crime/drugs but also on COVID they agreed with the consensus UK view that it's time to get off the train and call it.
Your experience mirrors my own in Mexico and California last year.
West Coast Liberals finally being mugged by reality.
I don't think California will become Republican any time soon, but maybe it won't be so reliable Democratic.
The gap is narrowing thanks to the media campaign supporting it. It doesn’t matter if it’s 4/1 in favour. It’s still insane and wrong. Ask people if they want to die as a consequence and what will the vote be then.
“Indeed, 67% of Ukrainians said they would be willing to take up arms to defend the country against Russian troops, with a further 7% saying they were already doing so. 85% of men and 63% of women said they had already taken up arms or were willing to do so.”
Even allowing for bravado those are incredibly high numbers. Putin has roused an entire nation of 44m people and he’s got 30 million potential soldiers taking on his army
They will fight street by street. The only way Russia can win is by unthinkable savagery. Carpet bombing, chemical bombing, tactical nukes
Not much point in taking over a smouldering ruin of a country though.
That depends on your objective. Ruining it may well be the real point.
Putin: "We have to destroy Ukraine to save it!"
"We have to act like Nazis to save Ukraine from them".
"India’s position at the HRC adds to a string of abstentions at the United Nations and multilateral groups since the start of Russian military operations in Ukraine on February 24, even as the continuing Russian military advances in Ukraine have seen more and more countries vote for resolutions that criticise Moscow . The Modi government has decided to abstain from three votes at the UN Security Council, two at the UN General Assembly in New York, two at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, and one at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna."
With a bit of luck this will do for Trump. Unlike Marine Le Pen and the SDP in Germany, he’s too dumb to understand why this is so obviously bad.
Trump is dumb but it helps him because his supporters are too - so he relates well to them. It's a kind of vicious swirling pool of mutually resonating dumbness. He validates and reinforces theirs and they do the same back for him and his. Thus does the level rise and rise until ... well, let's see, either it overflows and washes everything away with it or somebody finds a way to pull the plug.
Trump supporters are not the dumb working class stereotype you depict
“It’s time to bust the myth: Most Trump voters were not working class.”
I don't think anyone really suggested they were but like all good politicians he won enough of a disaffected class of voters to win power. Just as Boris did in the Red Wall. The majority of Tory voters in 2019 were middle class, yet they also won enough working class voters to devastate Labour in key parts of the country.
I think people do in fact suggest that Trump's (and Johnson's) wins were absolute victories among non-university educated, white working class voters.
As you say, they are wrong - both got enough such voters to damage their opponents without losing their core vote, but it was a relatively good performance amongst these groups, not an absolute victory.
Interestingly, whilst 2020 is remembered for Trump's Big Lie, the underlying vote was something of a reversion to the mean in terms of voting patterns. Biden actually lost ground compared with Clinton in the core Republican constituency of high earners - Trump had delivered for them in many ways economically (up to COVID and possibly unsustainably) and in tax cuts. But Biden won back lower, and particularly middle income groups.
Johnson's risk is, I'd suggest, the other way. Starmer is much more appealing than Corbyn to high income Tories, and Johnson clearly has features that make the relatively socially conservative, CofE wing of his party very uncomfortable. So rather than a reversion to the mean, I can see a consolidation with Johnson keeping hold of "new" voters but losing "old" ones if he remains in place. Sunak would probably entail reversion to the mean.
Indeed, the Tories now do better with skilled working class C2s under Boris than upper middle class ABs.
Biden actually tied Trump with the richest voters earning over $200 000 a year in 2020, while Hillary lost the richest voters to Trump in 2016.
“Indeed, 67% of Ukrainians said they would be willing to take up arms to defend the country against Russian troops, with a further 7% saying they were already doing so. 85% of men and 63% of women said they had already taken up arms or were willing to do so.”
Even allowing for bravado those are incredibly high numbers. Putin has roused an entire nation of 44m people and he’s got 30 million potential soldiers taking on his army
They will fight street by street. The only way Russia can win is by unthinkable savagery. Carpet bombing, chemical bombing, tactical nukes
Not much point in taking over a smouldering ruin of a country though.
I doubt even Afghanistan had that level of potential armed resistance against the invader. Maybe the nearest example is Vietnam, where resistance was ubiquitous, and which defeated a huge imperial power, France, AND then the world’s greatest power, America. Not a great augury for Putin’s rusting army
I think that Ukraine is mainly fighting for hearts and minds at the moment. But the analysis I have seen is that Russia will switch to co-ordinated heavy bombardment against which there is no effective defence and consequently the cities will fall very quickly with significant damage to property and casualties.
At some point in the near future, it will switch from a territorial war, to a war of resistance; which Russia is very ill equipped to fight.
Eh? Heavy bombardment doesn't cause cities to fall. It only makes defence and guerrilla activity easier. Stalingrad.
Heavy bombardment has got somewhat deadlier over the last three quarters of a century.
Yes. But it still doesn't cause.a city to fall. It needs boots in that city. For a sustained period.
Nobody can live in a rubble heap with no power, no water, and no food. It ceases to be a city.
Stalingrad, Leningrad, Berlin 45, I dunno.
Cities can be pulverised to fuck, or devoid of food, or both, yet somehow people live in the wreckage for quite a while
Quite. Berlin was pounded to fuck by bombs then shells then street-to-street killing and rape. Its population in 1946 was non zero. And don't get me started on Hiroshima.
Silly post. There's always tinned food, and water mains, and furniture to burn.
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
A moments thought ought to make people question the comparison. 100 millionaires or 1 billionaire, which is best? It's probably not even a simple answer, is it influence or value you are looking for? One thing's for sure simply counting entities and declaring someone the winner is stupid.
In fact to extend this further there is an optimal sanction, that is the one that pushes a powerful person to bring down Putin and end the war. I will happily sing the praises of whichever country figures that one out. Even France.
By all accounts the one sanction that really freaked out Moscow was the freezing of Russia’s foreign reserves
And on that list it counts as 1 entity (the Russian central bank) the same as some no name politician in the United Russia Party who is banned from travelling to/through the EU.
Change of subject but how is Mexico, especially Oaxaca?:
I LOVE Oaxaca. One of my favourite cities in the Americas - or it was. But I heard rumours it was yet another lovely Mexican city ruined by drug wars and street crime. Is that not so? Is it still adorable? I recall the food being brilliant, too…
Just like their boss, some of Boris Johnson’s Cabinet can’t resist a bit of self promotion.
Rishi Sunak has his signature all over glossy social media messages. Priti Patel dresses up in police uniform. Sajid Javid has YouTube videos of a national tour that featured his childhood home. Liz Truss is famed for Instagram snaps of her trips to far flung places (often with a taxpayer-funded photographer in tow).
By contrast, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace doesn’t exactly court publicity. His Instagram page has a grand total of eight posts, including a local newspaper-style snap of him putting money in a Poppy Day collecting tin. He shuns “cosplay Cabinet” photo-ops in tanks or fighter jets, preferring his lounge suit to military fatigues.
But what Wallace lacks in the PR stakes of some of his colleagues, he more than makes up for it with his no-nonsense approach to his job, many Tory MPs believe.
“Indeed, 67% of Ukrainians said they would be willing to take up arms to defend the country against Russian troops, with a further 7% saying they were already doing so. 85% of men and 63% of women said they had already taken up arms or were willing to do so.”
Even allowing for bravado those are incredibly high numbers. Putin has roused an entire nation of 44m people and he’s got 30 million potential soldiers taking on his army
They will fight street by street. The only way Russia can win is by unthinkable savagery. Carpet bombing, chemical bombing, tactical nukes
Not much point in taking over a smouldering ruin of a country though.
I doubt even Afghanistan had that level of potential armed resistance against the invader. Maybe the nearest example is Vietnam, where resistance was ubiquitous, and which defeated a huge imperial power, France, AND then the world’s greatest power, America. Not a great augury for Putin’s rusting army
I think that Ukraine is mainly fighting for hearts and minds at the moment. But the analysis I have seen is that Russia will switch to co-ordinated heavy bombardment against which there is no effective defence and consequently the cities will fall very quickly with significant damage to property and casualties.
At some point in the near future, it will switch from a territorial war, to a war of resistance; which Russia is very ill equipped to fight.
Eh? Heavy bombardment doesn't cause cities to fall. It only makes defence and guerrilla activity easier. Stalingrad.
Heavy bombardment has got somewhat deadlier over the last three quarters of a century.
Yes. But it still doesn't cause.a city to fall. It needs boots in that city. For a sustained period.
Nobody can live in a rubble heap with no power, no water, and no food. It ceases to be a city.
Stalingrad, Leningrad, Berlin 45, I dunno.
Cities can be pulverised to fuck, or devoid of food, or both, yet somehow people live in the wreckage for quite a while
True, but they are unlikely to be supplying a counter-offensive.
I suppose it depends on what the point of holding a city is. If Putin wants to 'own' the land I guess he will have to occupy the ruins.
The alternative is to just move on to the next city and lay waste to that until there is nothing left in the country to fight for. Sadly that appears to be the current plan.
“Indeed, 67% of Ukrainians said they would be willing to take up arms to defend the country against Russian troops, with a further 7% saying they were already doing so. 85% of men and 63% of women said they had already taken up arms or were willing to do so.”
Even allowing for bravado those are incredibly high numbers. Putin has roused an entire nation of 44m people and he’s got 30 million potential soldiers taking on his army
They will fight street by street. The only way Russia can win is by unthinkable savagery. Carpet bombing, chemical bombing, tactical nukes
Not much point in taking over a smouldering ruin of a country though.
I doubt even Afghanistan had that level of potential armed resistance against the invader. Maybe the nearest example is Vietnam, where resistance was ubiquitous, and which defeated a huge imperial power, France, AND then the world’s greatest power, America. Not a great augury for Putin’s rusting army
I think that Ukraine is mainly fighting for hearts and minds at the moment. But the analysis I have seen is that Russia will switch to co-ordinated heavy bombardment against which there is no effective defence and consequently the cities will fall very quickly with significant damage to property and casualties.
At some point in the near future, it will switch from a territorial war, to a war of resistance; which Russia is very ill equipped to fight.
Eh? Heavy bombardment doesn't cause cities to fall. It only makes defence and guerrilla activity easier. Stalingrad.
Heavy bombardment has got somewhat deadlier over the last three quarters of a century.
Yes. But it still doesn't cause.a city to fall. It needs boots in that city. For a sustained period.
Nobody can live in a rubble heap with no power, no water, and no food. It ceases to be a city.
In which case there ceases to be a city to take. Sure. Putin can level Ukraine. But then it isn't really Ukraine any more.
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
Loads of countries have sanctioned members of the United Russia Party with travel bans, it's merely symbolic but gets those numbers up.
Haven't some countries sanctioned every Deputy in the Duma that voted for the war? Is that useful? Maybe, but also possibly not at all.
Yeah, it's just names on a sheet of paper. Of no importance in terms of bringing the Putin regime down.
I believe Sir Humphrey called it "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Actually it's the opposite of "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it". It's "not trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Chasing designated persons is a fairly fruitless task for various reasons, but it is something they can do. The UKG is pursuing these people with a lack of urgency that is entirely deliberate. It does raise the question why they would be so keen not to chase them.
In other news we had drinks with a couple of Americans from Seattle and SF last night at a rooftop bar in Oaxaca. I expected them to be extremely liberal and all about the culture war but man was I wrong. The woman from SF was so pissed off with the local politicians and she's basically leaving for Long Beach or Orange County by the end of the summer if they haven't fixed the drug and crime problems. The guy said he was fed up of "NoCal" politics seeping into Seattle and turning it into a shit hole. These are solid Dem voters, mid 30s liberals.
The other one that surprised me was their view of COVID and how the blue states and CDC have completely fucked it by politicising vaccines and mask wearing. I mean it's a self selecting cohort because they're in Mexico where the only reason to wear a mask is to avoid a 1000 peso "fine" from a corrupt police officer, still I was pretty shocked when they said most of their friends are pretty unhappy with the continuing COVID bullshit in CA and WA.
All in all a real learning experience for me, really surprised me that these basically left wing Dem voters were so fed up of liberal policies on crime/drugs but also on COVID they agreed with the consensus UK view that it's time to get off the train and call it.
"India’s position at the HRC adds to a string of abstentions at the United Nations and multilateral groups since the start of Russian military operations in Ukraine on February 24, even as the continuing Russian military advances in Ukraine have seen more and more countries vote for resolutions that criticise Moscow . The Modi government has decided to abstain from three votes at the UN Security Council, two at the UN General Assembly in New York, two at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, and one at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna."
Which is a surprise only to those who know nowt about Modi. A government the Tories have been keen to big up their close connections to.
Modi + Orban + Bolsonaro + Johnson + Trump = Putin's Rat Pack
Tell that to the President of Ukraine and the Baltic countries
Poll by Ukranians show UK doing most in their cause
President of Ukraine’s first phone call on the nuclear power plant attack was to Boris
Just lazy association not born out by evidence
I don't need to tell them, they know it already.
Your constant defense of Boris Johnson baffles me, as you clearly think he's fundamentally akin to what you scrape off your boot after strolling through a cow pasture.
As for evidence, plenty enough in his case as with rest of Putin's pals.
And maybe Z called BJ in order to pressure one of the weakest NATO links? AND to do more than making pretty speeches as Ukraine's Great White Hope??
I don't think the decimation facing Russia has been fully understood. War is costly. The UK may have won the 2nd world war but we were massively drained as a world power. Russia's economy is facing into the abyss. Diplomatically it is isolated alone with Belarus, Syria, Eritrea and North Korea. Having spent a decade trying to restore their military might they are running through men and equipment in no time and will not be in a position to replace it with the economic mess.
I honestly think we should start to question Russia's position on the UN Security Council. It has been a malevolent actor on the world stage for decades and giving up that seat could be one requirement to removing sanctions. How possible would it be to replace them with India or would Kashmir be too much of a problem?
A suspension would be great, but that's for another day. Post Putin as a major nuclear power Russia realistically needs to be on the security council.
The permanent members by mid-Century should really be USA, China, EU (or an EU/UK/Fr joint seat with 1 vote), Russia, India, Brazil and the African Union.
I would suggest that the best change that could be made to the Security Council would be the removal of the veto of the permanent members. At the same time expand the permanent membership to, say 10 countries with the other 10 being on a rotational basis. But again the UN should be an organisation of independent member states, not collections or organisations. So the EU and the AU should not be given votes. Those votes should remain with the individual countries (which if the EU had any sense would mean they actually had more of a say rather than less assuming all their member countries were in agreement).
With a bit of luck this will do for Trump. Unlike Marine Le Pen and the SDP in Germany, he’s too dumb to understand why this is so obviously bad.
Trump is dumb but it helps him because his supporters are too - so he relates well to them. It's a kind of vicious swirling pool of mutually resonating dumbness. He validates and reinforces theirs and they do the same back for him and his. Thus does the level rise and rise until ... well, let's see, either it overflows and washes everything away with it or somebody finds a way to pull the plug.
Trump supporters are not the dumb working class stereotype you depict
“It’s time to bust the myth: Most Trump voters were not working class.”
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
Loads of countries have sanctioned members of the United Russia Party with travel bans, it's merely symbolic but gets those numbers up.
Haven't some countries sanctioned every Deputy in the Duma that voted for the war? Is that useful? Maybe, but also possibly not at all.
Yeah, it's just names on a sheet of paper. Of no importance in terms of bringing the Putin regime down.
I believe Sir Humphrey called it "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Actually it's the opposite of "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it". It's "not trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Chasing designated persons is a fairly fruitless task for various reasons, but it is something they can do. The UKG is pursuing these people with a lack of urgency that is entirely deliberate. It does raise the question why they would be so keen not to chase them.
For the most part the people in the Duma are nobodies. Hardly surprising the government isn't focusing its efforts on them.
“Indeed, 67% of Ukrainians said they would be willing to take up arms to defend the country against Russian troops, with a further 7% saying they were already doing so. 85% of men and 63% of women said they had already taken up arms or were willing to do so.”
Even allowing for bravado those are incredibly high numbers. Putin has roused an entire nation of 44m people and he’s got 30 million potential soldiers taking on his army
They will fight street by street. The only way Russia can win is by unthinkable savagery. Carpet bombing, chemical bombing, tactical nukes
Not much point in taking over a smouldering ruin of a country though.
I doubt even Afghanistan had that level of potential armed resistance against the invader. Maybe the nearest example is Vietnam, where resistance was ubiquitous, and which defeated a huge imperial power, France, AND then the world’s greatest power, America. Not a great augury for Putin’s rusting army
I think that Ukraine is mainly fighting for hearts and minds at the moment. But the analysis I have seen is that Russia will switch to co-ordinated heavy bombardment against which there is no effective defence and consequently the cities will fall very quickly with significant damage to property and casualties.
At some point in the near future, it will switch from a territorial war, to a war of resistance; which Russia is very ill equipped to fight.
Eh? Heavy bombardment doesn't cause cities to fall. It only makes defence and guerrilla activity easier. Stalingrad.
Heavy bombardment has got somewhat deadlier over the last three quarters of a century.
Yes. But it still doesn't cause.a city to fall. It needs boots in that city. For a sustained period.
Nobody can live in a rubble heap with no power, no water, and no food. It ceases to be a city.
In which case there ceases to be a city to take. Sure. Putin can level Ukraine. But then it isn't really Ukraine any more.
"If I can't have it..."
Does he really care about any city other than Kyiv?
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
Especially when Europe, and Germany in particular, is STILL paying huge amounts of real money straight into Putin's pocket.
Well that's just silly, you can't "end ALL imports of Russian gas and oil NOW" if every consumer and every business in your country is powered by those things. Whether you should have allowed that to become the case is a different and historical question.
And it really doesn't look good that the govening party is explicitly funded by Russian billionaires and, hey presto, it turns out sanctioning the personal assets of those billionaires is not just irrelevant, but actually playing into P{utin's hands. What are the chances? It really looks like football clubs are not the only institutions in London for sale to oligarchs.
You do end them all NOW if you really want to stop the barbarous war perpetrated by your supplier and funded by your euros.
Bloody hell. Huffling and puffling is great fun, but actual thought is quite important too. You could attack my suggestion that Germany is entirely powered by Russia (probably wrong but in the right ballpark) but you choose not to. So what you are saying is children and pensioners should die of cold, businesses and wage payments and banks should collapse (and that all happens within 48 hours of complete and permanent energy failure) because gentlemen in energy-secure England now abed get a buzz from pompous orations about barbarous wars. Is that about it?
Any MP proven to have taken money or favours from a foreign power or organisation should be kicked out of Parliament permanently. There really is absolutely no excuse for it.
If they want to support another country because they admire some aspect of them - one of the various 'friends of' organisations - then that is fine. But they should NOT get paid for it.
“Indeed, 67% of Ukrainians said they would be willing to take up arms to defend the country against Russian troops, with a further 7% saying they were already doing so. 85% of men and 63% of women said they had already taken up arms or were willing to do so.”
Even allowing for bravado those are incredibly high numbers. Putin has roused an entire nation of 44m people and he’s got 30 million potential soldiers taking on his army
They will fight street by street. The only way Russia can win is by unthinkable savagery. Carpet bombing, chemical bombing, tactical nukes
Not much point in taking over a smouldering ruin of a country though.
I doubt even Afghanistan had that level of potential armed resistance against the invader. Maybe the nearest example is Vietnam, where resistance was ubiquitous, and which defeated a huge imperial power, France, AND then the world’s greatest power, America. Not a great augury for Putin’s rusting army
I think that Ukraine is mainly fighting for hearts and minds at the moment. But the analysis I have seen is that Russia will switch to co-ordinated heavy bombardment against which there is no effective defence and consequently the cities will fall very quickly with significant damage to property and casualties.
At some point in the near future, it will switch from a territorial war, to a war of resistance; which Russia is very ill equipped to fight.
Eh? Heavy bombardment doesn't cause cities to fall. It only makes defence and guerrilla activity easier. Stalingrad.
Heavy bombardment has got somewhat deadlier over the last three quarters of a century.
Yes. But it still doesn't cause.a city to fall. It needs boots in that city. For a sustained period.
Nobody can live in a rubble heap with no power, no water, and no food. It ceases to be a city.
Stalingrad, Leningrad, Berlin 45, I dunno.
Cities can be pulverised to fuck, or devoid of food, or both, yet somehow people live in the wreckage for quite a while
Quite. Berlin was pounded to fuck by bombs then shells then street-to-street killing and rape. Its population in 1946 was non zero. And don't get me started on Hiroshima.
Silly post. There's always tinned food, and water mains, and furniture to burn.
Exactly, I lived in Wapping in 1982 (a desolate ruin at the time) and squatted Bloomsbury/Fitzrovia in 1984-86 (when surprising chunks of it were derelict)
It’s actually quite fun living in ruins. There is always stuff to salvage and scavenge
Every sign of the Russian government being terrified of people knowing what is happening. Those are the people who kicked the Soviets out before, after all.
I don't think the decimation facing Russia has been fully understood. War is costly. The UK may have won the 2nd world war but we were massively drained as a world power. Russia's economy is facing into the abyss. Diplomatically it is isolated alone with Belarus, Syria, Eritrea and North Korea. Having spent a decade trying to restore their military might they are running through men and equipment in no time and will not be in a position to replace it with the economic mess.
I honestly think we should start to question Russia's position on the UN Security Council. It has been a malevolent actor on the world stage for decades and giving up that seat could be one requirement to removing sanctions. How possible would it be to replace them with India or would Kashmir be too much of a problem?
A suspension would be great, but that's for another day. Post Putin as a major nuclear power Russia realistically needs to be on the security council.
The permanent members by mid-Century should really be USA, China, EU (or an EU/UK/Fr joint seat with 1 vote), Russia, India, Brazil and the African Union.
I would suggest that the best change that could be made to the Security Council would be the removal of the veto of the permanent members. At the same time expand the permanent membership to, say 10 countries with the other 10 being on a rotational basis. But again the UN should be an organisation of independent member states, not collections or organisations. So the EU and the AU should not be given votes. Those votes should remain with the individual countries (which if the EU had any sense would mean they actually had more of a say rather than less assuming all their member countries were in agreement).
But you can't get here from there, or vv. An attempt to remove the power of veto is itself subject to veto.
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
Loads of countries have sanctioned members of the United Russia Party with travel bans, it's merely symbolic but gets those numbers up.
Haven't some countries sanctioned every Deputy in the Duma that voted for the war? Is that useful? Maybe, but also possibly not at all.
Yeah, it's just names on a sheet of paper. Of no importance in terms of bringing the Putin regime down.
I believe Sir Humphrey called it "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Actually it's the opposite of "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it". It's "not trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Chasing designated persons is a fairly fruitless task for various reasons, but it is something they can do. The UKG is pursuing these people with a lack of urgency that is entirely deliberate. It does raise the question why they would be so keen not to chase them.
For the most part the people in the Duma are nobodies. Hardly surprising the government isn't focusing its efforts on them.
I don't think the people in the Duma are part of Johnson's government calculation to lay off people with closer connections to the Conservative Party, the Brexit campaign and himself personally.
With a bit of luck this will do for Trump. Unlike Marine Le Pen and the SDP in Germany, he’s too dumb to understand why this is so obviously bad.
Trump is dumb but it helps him because his supporters are too - so he relates well to them. It's a kind of vicious swirling pool of mutually resonating dumbness. He validates and reinforces theirs and they do the same back for him and his. Thus does the level rise and rise until ... well, let's see, either it overflows and washes everything away with it or somebody finds a way to pull the plug.
Trump supporters are not the dumb working class stereotype you depict
“It’s time to bust the myth: Most Trump voters were not working class.”
Yes that was a tell. Did I say working class? No I didn't.
Come come. Do you really expect me to believe that your image of a Trump supporter is NOT a stupid, red neck, working class, gum-chewing white supremacist prole from flyover country? Everything you say about them exudes this contempt. Don’t wiggle out of it
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
Loads of countries have sanctioned members of the United Russia Party with travel bans, it's merely symbolic but gets those numbers up.
Haven't some countries sanctioned every Deputy in the Duma that voted for the war? Is that useful? Maybe, but also possibly not at all.
Yeah, it's just names on a sheet of paper. Of no importance in terms of bringing the Putin regime down.
I believe Sir Humphrey called it "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Actually it's the opposite of "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it". It's "not trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Chasing designated persons is a fairly fruitless task for various reasons, but it is something they can do. The UKG is pursuing these people with a lack of urgency that is entirely deliberate. It does raise the question why they would be so keen not to chase them.
For the most part the people in the Duma are nobodies. Hardly surprising the government isn't focusing its efforts on them.
I don't think the people in the Duma are part of Johnson's government calculation to lay off people with closer connections to the Conservative Party, the Brexit campaign and himself personally.
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
Especially when Europe, and Germany in particular, is STILL paying huge amounts of real money straight into Putin's pocket.
Well that's just silly, you can't "end ALL imports of Russian gas and oil NOW" if every consumer and every business in your country is powered by those things. Whether you should have allowed that to become the case is a different and historical question.
And it really doesn't look good that the govening party is explicitly funded by Russian billionaires and, hey presto, it turns out sanctioning the personal assets of those billionaires is not just irrelevant, but actually playing into P{utin's hands. What are the chances? It really looks like football clubs are not the only institutions in London for sale to oligarchs.
You do end them all NOW if you really want to stop the barbarous war perpetrated by your supplier and funded by your euros.
Bloody hell. Huffling and puffling is great fun, but actual thought is quite important too. You could attack my suggestion that Germany is entirely powered by Russia (probably wrong but in the right ballpark) but you choose not to. So what you are saying is children and pensioners should die of cold, businesses and wage payments and banks should collapse (and that all happens within 48 hours of complete and permanent energy failure) because gentlemen in energy-secure England now abed get a buzz from pompous orations about barbarous wars. Is that about it?
Children dying from cold because they don't have central heating?!
What ludicrous bullshit.
They've got plenty of forest in Germany. They can burn some of that if they're cold.
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
A moments thought ought to make people question the comparison. 100 millionaires or 1 billionaire, which is best? It's probably not even a simple answer, is it influence or value you are looking for? One thing's for sure simply counting entities and declaring someone the winner is stupid.
In fact to extend this further there is an optimal sanction, that is the one that pushes a powerful person to bring down Putin and end the war. I will happily sing the praises of whichever country figures that one out. Even France.
By all accounts the one sanction that really freaked out Moscow was the freezing of Russia’s foreign reserves
And on that list it counts as 1 entity (the Russian central bank) the same as some no name politician in the United Russia Party who is banned from travelling to/through the EU.
Change of subject but how is Mexico, especially Oaxaca?:
I LOVE Oaxaca. One of my favourite cities in the Americas - or it was. But I heard rumours it was yet another lovely Mexican city ruined by drug wars and street crime. Is that not so? Is it still adorable? I recall the food being brilliant, too…
It's great, we've had an absolutely wonderful time here and sad to be moving on (but also not) to Puerto Escondido tomorrow to a co-working hotel. There is obviously crime and police corruption but it's nothing like what I imagined it to be. The two Americans said that Oaxaca is way less dangerous than the Tenderloin and the danger is fairly predictable, people want to steal your shit more than anything else whereas in SF there's a lot of random violence from fentanyl addicts.
The art scene, food and hospitality is amazing here, I'd highly recommend it. If you come then you want to check out CRUDO for the 8 course tasting menu with mezcal pairings, it's about $90 USD per person and it's some of the best food I've ever had anywhere. The rooftop bar at Vaca Marina is an absolute must as well, which is where we want last night. Incredible sunset and really good cocktails and appetisers.
Bollocks, I think my lurgy is Covid. Time to get a test tomorrow
That distinct scathing cough. Hmm
Yup - that's what I have. LFT time....
I definitely don’t have a classic cold. No runny nose, just the odd sneeze, but lots of fatigue, a nasty scratchy cough. Dizziness if I rise and walk about
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
Loads of countries have sanctioned members of the United Russia Party with travel bans, it's merely symbolic but gets those numbers up.
Haven't some countries sanctioned every Deputy in the Duma that voted for the war? Is that useful? Maybe, but also possibly not at all.
Yeah, it's just names on a sheet of paper. Of no importance in terms of bringing the Putin regime down.
I believe Sir Humphrey called it "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Actually it's the opposite of "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it". It's "not trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Chasing designated persons is a fairly fruitless task for various reasons, but it is something they can do. The UKG is pursuing these people with a lack of urgency that is entirely deliberate. It does raise the question why they would be so keen not to chase them.
For the most part the people in the Duma are nobodies. Hardly surprising the government isn't focusing its efforts on them.
Crikey. Is that because they expect worldwide grain shortages as Ukraine is levelled?
Not good
Yep. It is already starting to happen. Russia and Ukraine between them produce 14% of the world wheat production. That is a big hit if it is completely removed.
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
Loads of countries have sanctioned members of the United Russia Party with travel bans, it's merely symbolic but gets those numbers up.
Haven't some countries sanctioned every Deputy in the Duma that voted for the war? Is that useful? Maybe, but also possibly not at all.
Yeah, it's just names on a sheet of paper. Of no importance in terms of bringing the Putin regime down.
I believe Sir Humphrey called it "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Actually it's the opposite of "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it". It's "not trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Chasing designated persons is a fairly fruitless task for various reasons, but it is something they can do. The UKG is pursuing these people with a lack of urgency that is entirely deliberate. It does raise the question why they would be so keen not to chase them.
For the most part the people in the Duma are nobodies. Hardly surprising the government isn't focusing its efforts on them.
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
Especially when Europe, and Germany in particular, is STILL paying huge amounts of real money straight into Putin's pocket.
Well that's just silly, you can't "end ALL imports of Russian gas and oil NOW" if every consumer and every business in your country is powered by those things. Whether you should have allowed that to become the case is a different and historical question.
And it really doesn't look good that the govening party is explicitly funded by Russian billionaires and, hey presto, it turns out sanctioning the personal assets of those billionaires is not just irrelevant, but actually playing into P{utin's hands. What are the chances? It really looks like football clubs are not the only institutions in London for sale to oligarchs.
You do end them all NOW if you really want to stop the barbarous war perpetrated by your supplier and funded by your euros.
Bloody hell. Huffling and puffling is great fun, but actual thought is quite important too. You could attack my suggestion that Germany is entirely powered by Russia (probably wrong but in the right ballpark) but you choose not to. So what you are saying is children and pensioners should die of cold, businesses and wage payments and banks should collapse (and that all happens within 48 hours of complete and permanent energy failure) because gentlemen in energy-secure England now abed get a buzz from pompous orations about barbarous wars. Is that about it?
Children dying from cold because they don't have central heating?!
What ludicrous bullshit.
They've got plenty of forest in Germany. They can burn some of that if they're cold.
And they can buy electricity off France.
And all that can be arranged at 24 hours notice.
I am embarrassed about the utter stupidity of my post, and grateful to you for bringing it to my attention.
“Indeed, 67% of Ukrainians said they would be willing to take up arms to defend the country against Russian troops, with a further 7% saying they were already doing so. 85% of men and 63% of women said they had already taken up arms or were willing to do so.”
Even allowing for bravado those are incredibly high numbers. Putin has roused an entire nation of 44m people and he’s got 30 million potential soldiers taking on his army
They will fight street by street. The only way Russia can win is by unthinkable savagery. Carpet bombing, chemical bombing, tactical nukes
Not much point in taking over a smouldering ruin of a country though.
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
Loads of countries have sanctioned members of the United Russia Party with travel bans, it's merely symbolic but gets those numbers up.
Haven't some countries sanctioned every Deputy in the Duma that voted for the war? Is that useful? Maybe, but also possibly not at all.
Yeah, it's just names on a sheet of paper. Of no importance in terms of bringing the Putin regime down.
I believe Sir Humphrey called it "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Actually it's the opposite of "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it". It's "not trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Chasing designated persons is a fairly fruitless task for various reasons, but it is something they can do. The UKG is pursuing these people with a lack of urgency that is entirely deliberate. It does raise the question why they would be so keen not to chase them.
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
A moments thought ought to make people question the comparison. 100 millionaires or 1 billionaire, which is best? It's probably not even a simple answer, is it influence or value you are looking for? One thing's for sure simply counting entities and declaring someone the winner is stupid.
In fact to extend this further there is an optimal sanction, that is the one that pushes a powerful person to bring down Putin and end the war. I will happily sing the praises of whichever country figures that one out. Even France.
By all accounts the one sanction that really freaked out Moscow was the freezing of Russia’s foreign reserves
And on that list it counts as 1 entity (the Russian central bank) the same as some no name politician in the United Russia Party who is banned from travelling to/through the EU.
Change of subject but how is Mexico, especially Oaxaca?:
I LOVE Oaxaca. One of my favourite cities in the Americas - or it was. But I heard rumours it was yet another lovely Mexican city ruined by drug wars and street crime. Is that not so? Is it still adorable? I recall the food being brilliant, too…
It's great, we've had an absolutely wonderful time here and sad to be moving on (but also not) to Puerto Escondido tomorrow to a co-working hotel. There is obviously crime and police corruption but it's nothing like what I imagined it to be. The two Americans said that Oaxaca is way less dangerous than the Tenderloin and the danger is fairly predictable, people want to steal your shit more than anything else whereas in SF there's a lot of random violence from fentanyl addicts.
The art scene, food and hospitality is amazing here, I'd highly recommend it. If you come then you want to check out CRUDO for the 8 course tasting menu with mezcal pairings, it's about $90 USD per person and it's some of the best food I've ever had anywhere. The rooftop bar at Vaca Marina is an absolute must as well, which is where we want last night. Incredible sunset and really good cocktails and appetisers.
Ah. I’m jealous! Oaxaca is ace, and it sounds like it has retained its charm. Probably the best food in Mexico
With a bit of luck this will do for Trump. Unlike Marine Le Pen and the SDP in Germany, he’s too dumb to understand why this is so obviously bad.
Trump is dumb but it helps him because his supporters are too - so he relates well to them. It's a kind of vicious swirling pool of mutually resonating dumbness. He validates and reinforces theirs and they do the same back for him and his. Thus does the level rise and rise until ... well, let's see, either it overflows and washes everything away with it or somebody finds a way to pull the plug.
Trump supporters are not the dumb working class stereotype you depict
“It’s time to bust the myth: Most Trump voters were not working class.”
Yes that was a tell. Did I say working class? No I didn't.
Come come. Do you really expect me to believe that your image of a Trump supporter is NOT a stupid, red neck, working class, gum-chewing white supremacist prole from flyover country? Everything you say about them exudes this contempt. Don’t wiggle out of it
He says, trying to pathetically wriggle out of his oh-so-revealing faux pas.
“Indeed, 67% of Ukrainians said they would be willing to take up arms to defend the country against Russian troops, with a further 7% saying they were already doing so. 85% of men and 63% of women said they had already taken up arms or were willing to do so.”
Even allowing for bravado those are incredibly high numbers. Putin has roused an entire nation of 44m people and he’s got 30 million potential soldiers taking on his army
They will fight street by street. The only way Russia can win is by unthinkable savagery. Carpet bombing, chemical bombing, tactical nukes
Not much point in taking over a smouldering ruin of a country though.
I doubt even Afghanistan had that level of potential armed resistance against the invader. Maybe the nearest example is Vietnam, where resistance was ubiquitous, and which defeated a huge imperial power, France, AND then the world’s greatest power, America. Not a great augury for Putin’s rusting army
I think that Ukraine is mainly fighting for hearts and minds at the moment. But the analysis I have seen is that Russia will switch to co-ordinated heavy bombardment against which there is no effective defence and consequently the cities will fall very quickly with significant damage to property and casualties.
At some point in the near future, it will switch from a territorial war, to a war of resistance; which Russia is very ill equipped to fight.
Eh? Heavy bombardment doesn't cause cities to fall. It only makes defence and guerrilla activity easier. Stalingrad.
Heavy bombardment has got somewhat deadlier over the last three quarters of a century.
Yes. But it still doesn't cause.a city to fall. It needs boots in that city. For a sustained period.
Nobody can live in a rubble heap with no power, no water, and no food. It ceases to be a city.
Stalingrad, Leningrad, Berlin 45, I dunno.
Cities can be pulverised to fuck, or devoid of food, or both, yet somehow people live in the wreckage for quite a while
Quite. Berlin was pounded to fuck by bombs then shells then street-to-street killing and rape. Its population in 1946 was non zero. And don't get me started on Hiroshima.
Silly post. There's always tinned food, and water mains, and furniture to burn.
Obviously I'm aware of all the examples.
But surely to be a proper city it actually has to be functioning and capable of supporting itself? There's a limit to furniture burning and tins.
It just turns into an encampment - one which may or may not have strategic value.
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
Especially when Europe, and Germany in particular, is STILL paying huge amounts of real money straight into Putin's pocket.
Well that's just silly, you can't "end ALL imports of Russian gas and oil NOW" if every consumer and every business in your country is powered by those things. Whether you should have allowed that to become the case is a different and historical question.
And it really doesn't look good that the govening party is explicitly funded by Russian billionaires and, hey presto, it turns out sanctioning the personal assets of those billionaires is not just irrelevant, but actually playing into P{utin's hands. What are the chances? It really looks like football clubs are not the only institutions in London for sale to oligarchs.
You do end them all NOW if you really want to stop the barbarous war perpetrated by your supplier and funded by your euros.
Bloody hell. Huffling and puffling is great fun, but actual thought is quite important too. You could attack my suggestion that Germany is entirely powered by Russia (probably wrong but in the right ballpark) but you choose not to. So what you are saying is children and pensioners should die of cold, businesses and wage payments and banks should collapse (and that all happens within 48 hours of complete and permanent energy failure) because gentlemen in energy-secure England now abed get a buzz from pompous orations about barbarous wars. Is that about it?
Children dying from cold because they don't have central heating?!
What ludicrous bullshit.
They've got plenty of forest in Germany. They can burn some of that if they're cold.
And they can buy electricity off France.
And all that can be arranged at 24 hours notice.
I am embarrassed about the utter stupidity of my post, and grateful to you for bringing it to my attention.
I hope to fuck they've spent at least the last week arranging it.
"India’s position at the HRC adds to a string of abstentions at the United Nations and multilateral groups since the start of Russian military operations in Ukraine on February 24, even as the continuing Russian military advances in Ukraine have seen more and more countries vote for resolutions that criticise Moscow . The Modi government has decided to abstain from three votes at the UN Security Council, two at the UN General Assembly in New York, two at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, and one at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna."
Which is a surprise only to those who know nowt about Modi. A government the Tories have been keen to big up their close connections to.
Modi + Orban + Bolsonaro + Johnson + Trump = Putin's Rat Pack
Tell that to the President of Ukraine and the Baltic countries
Poll by Ukranians show UK doing most in their cause
President of Ukraine’s first phone call on the nuclear power plant attack was to Boris
Just lazy association not born out by evidence
I don't need to tell them, they know it already.
Your constant defense of Boris Johnson baffles me, as you clearly think he's fundamentally akin to what you scrape off your boot after strolling through a cow pasture.
As for evidence, plenty enough in his case as with rest of Putin's pals.
And maybe Z called BJ in order to pressure one of the weakest NATO links? AND to do more than making pretty speeches as Ukraine's Great White Hope??
Boris achieved Brexit and handled covid well and had my support until partygate and I want him replaced but that is upto his mps
The rest of your post is all that Putin could hope for
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
Loads of countries have sanctioned members of the United Russia Party with travel bans, it's merely symbolic but gets those numbers up.
Haven't some countries sanctioned every Deputy in the Duma that voted for the war? Is that useful? Maybe, but also possibly not at all.
Yeah, it's just names on a sheet of paper. Of no importance in terms of bringing the Putin regime down.
I believe Sir Humphrey called it "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Actually it's the opposite of "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it". It's "not trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Chasing designated persons is a fairly fruitless task for various reasons, but it is something they can do. The UKG is pursuing these people with a lack of urgency that is entirely deliberate. It does raise the question why they would be so keen not to chase them.
For the most part the people in the Duma are nobodies. Hardly surprising the government isn't focusing its efforts on them.
I don't think the people in the Duma are part of Johnson's government calculation to lay off people with closer connections to the Conservative Party, the Brexit campaign and himself personally.
Ah, it's about Brexit?
In a way, I suppose it is, There are far more important things to worry about just now. Johnson has a big sensitivity about Russia and how it funds activities and people close to him. eg the Russia Report, which he has consistently refused to publish and which definitely was about Brexit. Not chasing oligarchs seems to be part of that pattern.
With a bit of luck this will do for Trump. Unlike Marine Le Pen and the SDP in Germany, he’s too dumb to understand why this is so obviously bad.
Trump is dumb but it helps him because his supporters are too - so he relates well to them. It's a kind of vicious swirling pool of mutually resonating dumbness. He validates and reinforces theirs and they do the same back for him and his. Thus does the level rise and rise until ... well, let's see, either it overflows and washes everything away with it or somebody finds a way to pull the plug.
Trump supporters are not the dumb working class stereotype you depict
“It’s time to bust the myth: Most Trump voters were not working class.”
Yes that was a tell. Did I say working class? No I didn't.
Come come. Do you really expect me to believe that your image of a Trump supporter is NOT a stupid, red neck, working class, gum-chewing white supremacist prole from flyover country? Everything you say about them exudes this contempt. Don’t wiggle out of it
He says, trying to pathetically wriggle out of his oh-so-revealing faux pas.
You what? I despise many members of the so-called “working classes”, what the fuck are you talking about. I despise that ridiculous counter-jumper @kinabalu for a start
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
Especially when Europe, and Germany in particular, is STILL paying huge amounts of real money straight into Putin's pocket.
Well that's just silly, you can't "end ALL imports of Russian gas and oil NOW" if every consumer and every business in your country is powered by those things. Whether you should have allowed that to become the case is a different and historical question.
And it really doesn't look good that the govening party is explicitly funded by Russian billionaires and, hey presto, it turns out sanctioning the personal assets of those billionaires is not just irrelevant, but actually playing into P{utin's hands. What are the chances? It really looks like football clubs are not the only institutions in London for sale to oligarchs.
You do end them all NOW if you really want to stop the barbarous war perpetrated by your supplier and funded by your euros.
Bloody hell. Huffling and puffling is great fun, but actual thought is quite important too. You could attack my suggestion that Germany is entirely powered by Russia (probably wrong but in the right ballpark) but you choose not to. So what you are saying is children and pensioners should die of cold, businesses and wage payments and banks should collapse (and that all happens within 48 hours of complete and permanent energy failure) because gentlemen in energy-secure England now abed get a buzz from pompous orations about barbarous wars. Is that about it?
Children dying from cold because they don't have central heating?!
What ludicrous bullshit.
They've got plenty of forest in Germany. They can burn some of that if they're cold.
And they can buy electricity off France.
Quite right. It's well known that gas and wood are fungible energy sources. If there's a shortage of gas, you just feed logs into the mains pipes and hey presto people's central heating works.
If they're cold they can heat water for hot water bottles on communal fires outdoors.
If they want Ukrainian blood on their hands, they can keep buying Russian gas.
I don't think the decimation facing Russia has been fully understood. War is costly. The UK may have won the 2nd world war but we were massively drained as a world power. Russia's economy is facing into the abyss. Diplomatically it is isolated alone with Belarus, Syria, Eritrea and North Korea. Having spent a decade trying to restore their military might they are running through men and equipment in no time and will not be in a position to replace it with the economic mess.
I honestly think we should start to question Russia's position on the UN Security Council. It has been a malevolent actor on the world stage for decades and giving up that seat could be one requirement to removing sanctions. How possible would it be to replace them with India or would Kashmir be too much of a problem?
A suspension would be great, but that's for another day. Post Putin as a major nuclear power Russia realistically needs to be on the security council.
The permanent members by mid-Century should really be USA, China, EU (or an EU/UK/Fr joint seat with 1 vote), Russia, India, Brazil and the African Union.
I would suggest that the best change that could be made to the Security Council would be the removal of the veto of the permanent members. At the same time expand the permanent membership to, say 10 countries with the other 10 being on a rotational basis. But again the UN should be an organisation of independent member states, not collections or organisations. So the EU and the AU should not be given votes. Those votes should remain with the individual countries (which if the EU had any sense would mean they actually had more of a say rather than less assuming all their member countries were in agreement).
But you can't get here from there, or vv. An attempt to remove the power of veto is itself subject to veto.
Oh I agree it is impossible. But then so is removing any of the permanent members without kicking them out of the UN entirely. I was just answering a theoretical point in the manner it had been made. There are lots of things we could do to make the UN better but as it stands non of them will happen.
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
A moments thought ought to make people question the comparison. 100 millionaires or 1 billionaire, which is best? It's probably not even a simple answer, is it influence or value you are looking for? One thing's for sure simply counting entities and declaring someone the winner is stupid.
In fact to extend this further there is an optimal sanction, that is the one that pushes a powerful person to bring down Putin and end the war. I will happily sing the praises of whichever country figures that one out. Even France.
By all accounts the one sanction that really freaked out Moscow was the freezing of Russia’s foreign reserves
And on that list it counts as 1 entity (the Russian central bank) the same as some no name politician in the United Russia Party who is banned from travelling to/through the EU.
Change of subject but how is Mexico, especially Oaxaca?:
I LOVE Oaxaca. One of my favourite cities in the Americas - or it was. But I heard rumours it was yet another lovely Mexican city ruined by drug wars and street crime. Is that not so? Is it still adorable? I recall the food being brilliant, too…
It's great, we've had an absolutely wonderful time here and sad to be moving on (but also not) to Puerto Escondido tomorrow to a co-working hotel. There is obviously crime and police corruption but it's nothing like what I imagined it to be. The two Americans said that Oaxaca is way less dangerous than the Tenderloin and the danger is fairly predictable, people want to steal your shit more than anything else whereas in SF there's a lot of random violence from fentanyl addicts.
The art scene, food and hospitality is amazing here, I'd highly recommend it. If you come then you want to check out CRUDO for the 8 course tasting menu with mezcal pairings, it's about $90 USD per person and it's some of the best food I've ever had anywhere. The rooftop bar at Vaca Marina is an absolute must as well, which is where we want last night. Incredible sunset and really good cocktails and appetisers.
Ah. I’m jealous! Oaxaca is ace, and it sounds like it has retained its charm. Probably the best food in Mexico
Did you make it up to Monte Alban? Stirring ruins
Yeah, we did the balloon trip over the Teotihuacan in Mexico City as well which was quite something. Overall I've been super impressed with Mexico, Asia's loss is Mexico's gain because we'd have gone to Thailand or Bali had they been relaxed about COVID.
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
Loads of countries have sanctioned members of the United Russia Party with travel bans, it's merely symbolic but gets those numbers up.
Haven't some countries sanctioned every Deputy in the Duma that voted for the war? Is that useful? Maybe, but also possibly not at all.
Yeah, it's just names on a sheet of paper. Of no importance in terms of bringing the Putin regime down.
I believe Sir Humphrey called it "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Actually it's the opposite of "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it". It's "not trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Chasing designated persons is a fairly fruitless task for various reasons, but it is something they can do. The UKG is pursuing these people with a lack of urgency that is entirely deliberate. It does raise the question why they would be so keen not to chase them.
For the most part the people in the Duma are nobodies. Hardly surprising the government isn't focusing its efforts on them.
I don't think the people in the Duma are part of Johnson's government calculation to lay off people with closer connections to the Conservative Party, the Brexit campaign and himself personally.
Ah, it's about Brexit?
In a way, I suppose it is, There are far more important things to worry about just now. Johnson has a big sensitivity about Russia and how it funds activities and people close to him. eg the Russia Report, which he has consistently refused to publish and which definitely was about Brexit. Not chasing oligarchs seems to be part of that pattern.
It's an observation.
Except they are chasing them, just the list does not include the huge number of nobodies in the Duma.
“Indeed, 67% of Ukrainians said they would be willing to take up arms to defend the country against Russian troops, with a further 7% saying they were already doing so. 85% of men and 63% of women said they had already taken up arms or were willing to do so.”
Even allowing for bravado those are incredibly high numbers. Putin has roused an entire nation of 44m people and he’s got 30 million potential soldiers taking on his army
They will fight street by street. The only way Russia can win is by unthinkable savagery. Carpet bombing, chemical bombing, tactical nukes
Not much point in taking over a smouldering ruin of a country though.
I doubt even Afghanistan had that level of potential armed resistance against the invader. Maybe the nearest example is Vietnam, where resistance was ubiquitous, and which defeated a huge imperial power, France, AND then the world’s greatest power, America. Not a great augury for Putin’s rusting army
I think that Ukraine is mainly fighting for hearts and minds at the moment. But the analysis I have seen is that Russia will switch to co-ordinated heavy bombardment against which there is no effective defence and consequently the cities will fall very quickly with significant damage to property and casualties.
At some point in the near future, it will switch from a territorial war, to a war of resistance; which Russia is very ill equipped to fight.
Eh? Heavy bombardment doesn't cause cities to fall. It only makes defence and guerrilla activity easier. Stalingrad.
Heavy bombardment has got somewhat deadlier over the last three quarters of a century.
While that's true, you do still need to put troops in the cities.
“Indeed, 67% of Ukrainians said they would be willing to take up arms to defend the country against Russian troops, with a further 7% saying they were already doing so. 85% of men and 63% of women said they had already taken up arms or were willing to do so.”
Even allowing for bravado those are incredibly high numbers. Putin has roused an entire nation of 44m people and he’s got 30 million potential soldiers taking on his army
They will fight street by street. The only way Russia can win is by unthinkable savagery. Carpet bombing, chemical bombing, tactical nukes
Not much point in taking over a smouldering ruin of a country though.
I doubt even Afghanistan had that level of potential armed resistance against the invader. Maybe the nearest example is Vietnam, where resistance was ubiquitous, and which defeated a huge imperial power, France, AND then the world’s greatest power, America. Not a great augury for Putin’s rusting army
I think that Ukraine is mainly fighting for hearts and minds at the moment. But the analysis I have seen is that Russia will switch to co-ordinated heavy bombardment against which there is no effective defence and consequently the cities will fall very quickly with significant damage to property and casualties.
At some point in the near future, it will switch from a territorial war, to a war of resistance; which Russia is very ill equipped to fight.
Eh? Heavy bombardment doesn't cause cities to fall. It only makes defence and guerrilla activity easier. Stalingrad.
Heavy bombardment has got somewhat deadlier over the last three quarters of a century.
Yes. But it still doesn't cause.a city to fall. It needs boots in that city. For a sustained period.
Nobody can live in a rubble heap with no power, no water, and no food. It ceases to be a city.
Stalingrad, Leningrad, Berlin 45, I dunno.
Cities can be pulverised to fuck, or devoid of food, or both, yet somehow people live in the wreckage for quite a while
On the other hand, Carthage was completely obliterated.
"India’s position at the HRC adds to a string of abstentions at the United Nations and multilateral groups since the start of Russian military operations in Ukraine on February 24, even as the continuing Russian military advances in Ukraine have seen more and more countries vote for resolutions that criticise Moscow . The Modi government has decided to abstain from three votes at the UN Security Council, two at the UN General Assembly in New York, two at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, and one at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna."
Which is a surprise only to those who know nowt about Modi. A government the Tories have been keen to big up their close connections to.
Modi + Orban + Bolsonaro + Johnson + Trump = Putin's Rat Pack
Tell that to the President of Ukraine and the Baltic countries
Poll by Ukranians show UK doing most in their cause
President of Ukraine’s first phone call on the nuclear power plant attack was to Boris
Just lazy association not born out by evidence
I don't need to tell them, they know it already.
Your constant defense of Boris Johnson baffles me, as you clearly think he's fundamentally akin to what you scrape off your boot after strolling through a cow pasture.
As for evidence, plenty enough in his case as with rest of Putin's pals.
And maybe Z called BJ in order to pressure one of the weakest NATO links? AND to do more than making pretty speeches as Ukraine's Great White Hope??
Boris achieved Brexit and handled covid well and had my support until partygate and I want him replaced but that is upto his mps
The rest of your post is all that Putin could hope for
Whereas I am an ungrateful bastard. Even after Brexit I could never support Johnson. I don't know of any Tory contender in the last 5 decades or more who has been so utterly unsuited to any high office.
It's very interesting to see on one side countries making a big deal about their sanctions of individual companies or individuals and saying that they are making a difference yet when the US and UK lock all of Russia out of capital markets, derivatives clearing, all types of reinsurance, and genuinely crippling financial measures that have forced the Moscow exchange to stay closed all week it's not enough.
Someone from work was lamenting that the SWIFT sanctions are as useful as chocolate teapot because the EU insisted on exempting too many banks and all of the payment activity has simply moved to the unsanctioned institutions like Sberbank. On the flip side the UK and US governments have locked almost all of the Russian financial industry out of London and NYC.
I think people are falling for the spin on sanctions coming out of Europe and see big shiny boats being impounded but don't realise that Russian industry and banking is on its knees because they simply can't pay their workers and people can't withdraw money due to sanctions implemented by the UK and US.
People counting the number of entities sanctioned are literally as stupid as the people who didn't and still don't understand the UK's vaccine strategy, and in most cases they are the same idiots. It's simply a dumb comparison for dumb people to crow about on dumb social media to their dumb mates.
Yes exactly. The whole premise of the argument is stupid as fuck. How do you define a sanction, what is an “entity”, how do you add them up into “the European Union”
Does Sainsbury’s banning Stolichnaya count as a sanction? If four supermarket chains do it is that four sanctions? If they do it to 50 brands of Russian vodka is that 200 sanctions on 50 entities, and what about the blinis?
What a ridiculous pile of statistical drivel
Loads of countries have sanctioned members of the United Russia Party with travel bans, it's merely symbolic but gets those numbers up.
Haven't some countries sanctioned every Deputy in the Duma that voted for the war? Is that useful? Maybe, but also possibly not at all.
Yeah, it's just names on a sheet of paper. Of no importance in terms of bringing the Putin regime down.
I believe Sir Humphrey called it "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Actually it's the opposite of "trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it". It's "not trying to look as if they're trying to do something about it".
Chasing designated persons is a fairly fruitless task for various reasons, but it is something they can do. The UKG is pursuing these people with a lack of urgency that is entirely deliberate. It does raise the question why they would be so keen not to chase them.
For the most part the people in the Duma are nobodies. Hardly surprising the government isn't focusing its efforts on them.
I don't think the people in the Duma are part of Johnson's government calculation to lay off people with closer connections to the Conservative Party, the Brexit campaign and himself personally.
Ah, it's about Brexit?
In a way, I suppose it is, There are far more important things to worry about just now. Johnson has a big sensitivity about Russia and how it funds activities and people close to him. eg the Russia Report, which he has consistently refused to publish and which definitely was about Brexit. Not chasing oligarchs seems to be part of that pattern.
It's an observation.
There’s no direct connection between Russia and Brexit.
Except we know Putin wanted it. And we know Russian bots helped promote it. And we know that some leading Brexiters have been identified as Russian agents of influence. And we know that the Conservative Party in particular has been well funded by various oligarchs, some of whom are close to Putin.
But there’s no “smoking gun”, and I doubt there ever will be. Putin didn’t cause Brexit and Brexit didn’t cause Putin. They perhaps share various morbid symptoms.
Crikey. Is that because they expect worldwide grain shortages as Ukraine is levelled?
Not good
From memory, Russia and Ukraine are the world’s number 1 and number 2 grain exporters.
No, Canada and the US are ahead of Ukraine. Russia is No 1, though.
Russia is about 18% of the world market and Ukraine about 8%.
We all know which Horseman follows war.
It's also worth remembering that the West (and the US in particular) can dramatically increase the amount grain available for human consumption by imposing a temporary ban on ethanol.
Comments
Though while the House is likely to go GOP in November the Senate is less certain with only a third of seats up and most already GOP held
And it really doesn't look good that the govening party is explicitly funded by Russian billionaires and, hey presto, it turns out sanctioning the personal assets of those billionaires is not just irrelevant, but actually playing into P{utin's hands. What are the chances? It really looks like football clubs are not the only institutions in London for sale to oligarchs.
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1499783409249443844?s=20
Sometimes they would frame a member of the IRA as an informer by only acting on information he/she knew - which they had got from bugs. Repeatedly.
Other times they protected their sources by allowing bugs to be found to explain leaks.
Russia is about 18% of the world market and Ukraine about 8%.
We all know which Horseman follows war.
Rishi Sunak has his signature all over glossy social media messages. Priti Patel dresses up in police uniform. Sajid Javid has YouTube videos of a national tour that featured his childhood home. Liz Truss is famed for Instagram snaps of her trips to far flung places (often with a taxpayer-funded photographer in tow).
By contrast, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace doesn’t exactly court publicity. His Instagram page has a grand total of eight posts, including a local newspaper-style snap of him putting money in a Poppy Day collecting tin. He shuns “cosplay Cabinet” photo-ops in tanks or fighter jets, preferring his lounge suit to military fatigues.
But what Wallace lacks in the PR stakes of some of his colleagues, he more than makes up for it with his no-nonsense approach to his job, many Tory MPs believe.
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/ben-wallaces-unshowy-competence-has-won-plaudits-from-mps-and-some-think-no-10-beckons-1499614
Neverthless, regardless of what anyone else has done, the UK hasn’t yet got a coherently communicated position on sanctions, or indeed a reasonable policy on refugees.
The first makes it look at least as if the Conservative Party had been bought and sold by years of Russian money, and the second that Johnson et al are still prisoners of their mendacious Brexity rhetoric.
Because we are up Putin's arse.
Yes Trump did better with higher earners but Biden still tied Trump with the highest earners earning over $200 000 a year
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election
No doubt Republicans in Congress were a problem. But I would speculate that Putin was not willing to offer anything decent back, such that meaningful progress could be made. It would have been hampered by his pathological fear and hatred towards the west, which seems to be at the core of his philosophy.
As you say, they are wrong - both got enough such voters to damage their opponents without losing their core vote, but it was a relatively good performance amongst these groups, not an absolute victory.
Interestingly, whilst 2020 is remembered for Trump's Big Lie, the underlying vote was something of a reversion to the mean in terms of voting patterns. Biden actually lost ground compared with Clinton in the core Republican constituency of high earners - Trump had delivered for them in many ways economically (up to COVID and possibly unsustainably) and in tax cuts. But Biden won back lower, and particularly middle income groups.
Johnson's risk is, I'd suggest, the other way. Starmer is much more appealing than Corbyn to high income Tories, and Johnson clearly has features that make the relatively socially conservative, CofE wing of his party very uncomfortable. So rather than a reversion to the mean, I can see a consolidation with Johnson keeping hold of "new" voters but losing "old" ones if he remains in place. Sunak would probably entail reversion to the mean.
Cities can be pulverised to fuck, or devoid of food, or both, yet somehow people live in the wreckage for quite a while
Though less and less so, as the ennoblement of the Verray Gentil Parfit Fireplace Salesman brutally underlines
isolationist Leave Labour voters now vote Tory means Starmer Labour are now the more hawkish of the 2 main parties for the first time since Blair was PM
West Coast Liberals finally being mugged by reality.
I don't think California will become Republican any time soon, but maybe it won't be so reliable Democratic.
Poll by Ukranians show UK doing most in their cause
President of Ukraine’s first phone call on the nuclear power plant attack was to Boris
Just lazy association not born out by evidence
Biden actually tied Trump with the richest voters earning over $200 000 a year in 2020, while Hillary lost the richest voters to Trump in 2016.
Silly post. There's always tinned food, and water mains, and furniture to burn.
I LOVE Oaxaca. One of my favourite cities in the Americas - or it was. But I heard rumours it was yet another lovely Mexican city ruined by drug wars and street crime. Is that not so? Is it still adorable? I recall the food being brilliant, too…
“Well, he said that Russia and Ukraine were neighbours…” was the gist of her reply
https://twitter.com/mattsingh_/status/1499820317413412868?s=21
I suppose it depends on what the point of holding a city is. If Putin wants to 'own' the land I guess he will have to occupy the ruins.
The alternative is to just move on to the next city and lay waste to that until there is nothing left in the country to fight for. Sadly that appears to be the current plan.
Sure. Putin can level Ukraine. But then it isn't really Ukraine any more.
That distinct scathing cough. Hmm
Chasing designated persons is a fairly fruitless task for various reasons, but it is something they can do. The UKG is pursuing these people with a lack of urgency that is entirely deliberate. It does raise the question why they would be so keen not to chase them.
Your constant defense of Boris Johnson baffles me, as you clearly think he's fundamentally akin to what you scrape off your boot after strolling through a cow pasture.
As for evidence, plenty enough in his case as with rest of Putin's pals.
And maybe Z called BJ in order to pressure one of the weakest NATO links? AND to do more than making pretty speeches as Ukraine's Great White Hope??
Seems unlikely.
Does he really care about any city other than Kyiv?
If they want to support another country because they admire some aspect of them - one of the various 'friends of' organisations - then that is fine. But they should NOT get paid for it.
It’s actually quite fun living in ruins. There is always stuff to salvage and scavenge
Russian Central Bank will independently print foreign money to the value of that currently frozen by sanctions.
What ludicrous bullshit.
They've got plenty of forest in Germany. They can burn some of that if they're cold.
And they can buy electricity off France.
The art scene, food and hospitality is amazing here, I'd highly recommend it. If you come then you want to check out CRUDO for the 8 course tasting menu with mezcal pairings, it's about $90 USD per person and it's some of the best food I've ever had anywhere. The rooftop bar at Vaca Marina is an absolute must as well, which is where we want last night. Incredible sunset and really good cocktails and appetisers.
I definitely don’t have a classic cold. No runny nose, just the odd sneeze, but lots of fatigue, a nasty scratchy cough. Dizziness if I rise and walk about
You?
Senator Lindsey Graham says someone should assassinate him
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/graham-faces-backlash-suggesting-assassinate-putin/story?id=83252288
I am embarrassed about the utter stupidity of my post, and grateful to you for bringing it to my attention.
Did you make it up to Monte Alban? Stirring ruins
But surely to be a proper city it actually has to be functioning and capable of supporting itself? There's a limit to furniture burning and tins.
It just turns into an encampment - one which may or may not have strategic value.
https://panorama.pub/news/bank-rossii-budet-sam-pechatat-inostrannuyu-valyutu
The rest of your post is all that Putin could hope for
It's an observation.
If they want Ukrainian blood on their hands, they can keep buying Russian gas.
Except we know Putin wanted it.
And we know Russian bots helped promote it.
And we know that some leading Brexiters have been identified as Russian agents of influence.
And we know that the Conservative Party in particular has been well funded by various oligarchs, some of whom are close to Putin.
But there’s no “smoking gun”, and I doubt there ever will be. Putin didn’t cause Brexit and Brexit didn’t cause Putin. They perhaps share various morbid symptoms.