“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
What makes the destruction of the dam immoral, and probably unlawful, is that Russia is already the aggressor, and is now causing further harm to its victim.
Blowing up a dam to slow an invading army would not be unlawful. Nor would it be unlawful for Ukraine to do so, if it gave them some strategic advantage, which was proportionate to the harm caused.
Unless you can point to legal backup in black and white, I'm calling BS, Surely the whole point of humanitarian law as it applies in war is that all sides must recognise the rights of all civilians (and service personnel prisoners for that matter).
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
How dare you suggest we hold the UK to the same standards we hold others to.
The matter was less clear cut until 1977. The historic position was that power sources were legitimate military targets because they directly impacted on the capacity of the combatant to wage war. That was the justification at the time, that these dams were a major source of electrical power.
Starmer’s decline in Scotland is a glimpse of how Wokeness/greenery could destroy him after just one term, and maybe prevent him getting a majority
His party is insanely woke and green and will be quite unpopular with many people for that reason. He can ride an anti Tory tide for a while but then the voters will sense the lunacy of Labour on everything from trans to net zero
Big problems ahead
Yes it was noticeable last year in particular in the local elections while Starmer Labour gained Westminster and Barnet their gains in the redwall were less than impressive. Even this year in the locals the Tories held areas like Dartford, Basildon, Dudley and Walsall and Harlow Blair won in 1997 and it was the LDs who made the biggest gains from the Tories in the South not Labour
I said on Monday applying UNS to poll numbers was unwise but the fact remains however you praise the performance did in Dartford, Harlow and Basildon, you also need to explain the loss of Bracknell Forest, Amber Valley and East Staffordshire to name but three.
Labour did very well in some areas but not in others - I agree that's a big difference to the mid-90s when Labour was doing well everywhere but the fact remains small islands of not-quite-as-bad Conservative performance shouldn't obscure the fact the Party lost more than 1000 seats (and some were predicting losses of 250 seats at most in the days immediately prior to the local elections).
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
How dare you suggest we hold the UK to the same standards we hold others to.
The law changed in 1977 - 30 years after Chastise.
The reason behind the change is of interest. It was sparked by what the Israelis told the Egyptians. That if Egypt *participated* in a war that defeated Israel, as part of the Sampson Option, Israel would nuke the Aswan Dam. Which would annihilate Egypt.
This was a major reason that Egypt broke ranks and made peace with Israel - they had achieved MAD….
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
Massively restricting the water supply to a civilian population? No problem then?
It’s not a war crime. Otherwise just about everyone by, to, for, at or near the Jordan Valley would be in The Hague, for example.
Attacks on dams are war crimes, as explicitly noted in Article 56 of Protocol I and Article 15 of Protocol II of the 1977 Protocols to the Geneva Conventions.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
Massively restricting the water supply to a civilian population? No problem then?
It’s not a war crime. Otherwise just about everyone by, to, for, at or near the Jordan Valley would be in The Hague, for example.
Attacks on dams are war crimes, as explicitly noted in Article 56 of Protocol I and Article 15 of Protocol II of the 1977 Protocols to the Geneva Conventions.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
How dare you suggest we hold the UK to the same standards we hold others to.
The law changed in 1977 - 30 years after Chastise.
The reason behind the change is of interest. It was sparked by what the Israelis told the Egyptians. That if Egypt *participated* in a war that defeated Israel, as part of the Sampson Option, Israel would nuke the Aswan Dam. Which would annihilate Egypt.
This was a major reason that Egypt broke ranks and made peace with Israel - they had achieved MAD….
Nuking the Aswan dam was later threatened, or raised as an option depending on your POV, by Avigdor Lieberman. What is it with nukes and dams? Can't a big dam be busted conventionally nowadays? This is part of the Ukrainian position right now: "It can't have been us because it's impossible to do it (conventionally) from the outside, and only you were on the inside".
At the moment I've an open mind on which side benefits most from the dam event, and suspect its purpose irrespective of the identity of the perp is escalation.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
What makes the destruction of the dam immoral, and probably unlawful, is that Russia is already the aggressor, and is now causing further harm to its victim.
Blowing up a dam to slow an invading army would not be unlawful. Nor would it be unlawful for Ukraine to do so, if it gave them some strategic advantage, which was proportionate to the harm caused.
Unless you can point to legal backup in black and white, I'm calling BS, Surely the whole point of humanitarian law as it applies in war is that all sides must recognise the rights of all civilians (and service personnel prisoners for that matter).
The overriding principle, in terms of destroying a target, in circumstances where civilians may be harmed as a result, is whether that is a proportionate means of furthering a legitimate aim.
Russia has no legitimate aim in Ukraine. Ukraine has, namely self-defence.
BTW, it is being reported that Harry has a hotel suite in LA, where he has been seen spending a lot of time....
Have they got that off his phone?
It will be hotel staff or management - unless he is using the public areas.
Years back I was a member of a private club in London which hosted many A listers over the years. Madonna rented a whole floor of rooms upstairs for years. The staff were quite carefully selected, paid and treated so that they wouldn’t run to the press,
Looking back, it was incredible that you never saw anything from there in the press.
Sir Keir Starmer is on course to win more seats than Sir Tony Blair’s landslide victory, according to the first big constituency polling conducted under the new boundaries.
The best-case scenario for Rishi Sunak is that the Conservatives are the second party in a hung parliament, the 10,140-person MRP poll conducted by Focaldata for Best for Britain suggests. The model used to translate the polling into seats uses the new boundaries that will shortly be approved for the next general election.
The poll recorded Labour’s national support at 35 per cent, 12 points ahead of the Conservatives on 23 per cent. This would secure Labour 470 seats to the Conservatives’ 129, a 290-seat majority.
Something odd is going on. Peter Kellner in January opined that Labour need a 10-13 % point lead to get a majority at all. The SNP situation will have changed that a bit, but not mightily.
The difference of outcomes is over 100 seats on similar Labour lead figures.
Betting opportunities? Can anyone make sense of this?
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
Massively restricting the water supply to a civilian population? No problem then?
It’s not a war crime. Otherwise just about everyone by, to, for, at or near the Jordan Valley would be in The Hague, for example.
Attacks on dams are war crimes, as explicitly noted in Article 56 of Protocol I and Article 15 of Protocol II of the 1977 Protocols to the Geneva Conventions.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
Massively restricting the water supply to a civilian population? No problem then?
It’s not a war crime. Otherwise just about everyone by, to, for, at or near the Jordan Valley would be in The Hague, for example.
Attacks on dams are war crimes, as explicitly noted in Article 56 of Protocol I and Article 15 of Protocol II of the 1977 Protocols to the Geneva Conventions.
These rules would all go out of the window if we ever had a true WW3 scenario.
I mentioned yesterday that Colin Powell admitted that if the Iraqis used WMD in Desert Storm then America looked at bombing the dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in retaliation.
They realised that the death toll would be bigger than nuking Baghdad and they would be facing war crimes trials.
Eventually it was decided to send a message through the King of Jordan that if Iraq used WMD then America would occupy Iraq until they found Saddam.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
How dare you suggest we hold the UK to the same standards we hold others to.
It wasn't illegal at the time. See also flamethrowers
I bet you it would have turned out to be illegal if the Nazis had won though.
I think that Nazi law worked on the basis that what Hitler said and did was de jure legal, so yes. However my point was that the convention prohibiting dam attack was in the 1970s, decades after the Dambusters
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
How dare you suggest we hold the UK to the same standards we hold others to.
It wasn't illegal at the time. See also flamethrowers
I bet you it would have turned out to be illegal if the Nazis had won though.
Any form of self-defence would have been illegal, had the Nazis won.
The Allies never prosecuted the Nazis for bombing civilians, because they did the same. In WWII it was entirely lawful.
Such bombing campaigns would be unlawful now, but only because precision bombing is a real possibility. Back in WWII, incendiaries were by far the most effective means to destroy enemy infrastructure.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
How dare you suggest we hold the UK to the same standards we hold others to.
The law changed in 1977 - 30 years after Chastise.
The reason behind the change is of interest. It was sparked by what the Israelis told the Egyptians. That if Egypt *participated* in a war that defeated Israel, as part of the Sampson Option, Israel would nuke the Aswan Dam. Which would annihilate Egypt.
This was a major reason that Egypt broke ranks and made peace with Israel - they had achieved MAD….
Nuking the Aswan dam was later threatened, or raised as an option depending on your POV, by Avigdor Lieberman. What is it with nukes and dams? Can't a big dam be busted conventionally nowadays? This is part of the Ukrainian position right now: "It can't have been us because it's impossible to do it (conventionally) from the outside, and only you were on the inside".
At the moment I've an open mind on which side benefits most from the dam event, and suspect its purpose irrespective of the identity of the perp is escalation.
Every dam since WWII has considered the possibility of a Chastise style operation. All the USSR dams had to be proof against such an attack. It’s fairly easy to do - an earth berm on the upstream side to prevent a bomb directly contacting the concrete for example. Or just more concrete.
Aswan is protected by its construction type - Upkeep proof was a design criteria.
Chastise *just* worked against masonry dams - modern concrete is much more resilient. And that took multiple strikes with a hard contact between the concrete and the weapon.
The number of aircraft that could carry an Upkeep mine or similar is pretty small - you’d need a strategic bomber to carry it. Precision guidance doesn’t help - Upkeep worked by literally touching the dam when it went bang.
So unless the Ukrainians stole the BBMF Lancaster, built a squadron of them etc…
Sir Keir Starmer is on course to win more seats than Sir Tony Blair’s landslide victory, according to the first big constituency polling conducted under the new boundaries.
The best-case scenario for Rishi Sunak is that the Conservatives are the second party in a hung parliament, the 10,140-person MRP poll conducted by Focaldata for Best for Britain suggests. The model used to translate the polling into seats uses the new boundaries that will shortly be approved for the next general election.
The poll recorded Labour’s national support at 35 per cent, 12 points ahead of the Conservatives on 23 per cent. This would secure Labour 470 seats to the Conservatives’ 129, a 290-seat majority.
The Tories with another 15 months of sensible, popular polices - versus SKS closing down the North Sea, etc. - and both parties will be close together in the upper 30's. It's what previous Tory voters are wanting to see before they re-engage. If they deliver, the Tory vote will rise significantly.
LOL, this post needs saving for posterity. I’d love to know what these “sensible” policies are
Please do save. You'll see these "sensible" policies outlined - at length - in the Autumn statement.
Labour won't know what's hit them....
More's the point - why has it taken you Conservatives 13 years to come up with some "sensible" and "popular" policies?
Even the average dinosaur had a more rapid and coherent thought process.
It's taken 13 years and counting because all the previous "sensible" and "popular" policies proved not to be either.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
How dare you suggest we hold the UK to the same standards we hold others to.
It wasn't illegal at the time. See also flamethrowers
I bet you it would have turned out to be illegal if the Nazis had won though.
Any form of self-defence would have been illegal, had the Nazis won.
The Allies never prosecuted the Nazis for bombing civilians, because they did the same. In WWII it was entirely lawful.
Such bombing campaigns would be unlawful now, but only because precision bombing is a real possibility. Back in WWII, incendiaries were by far the most effective means to destroy enemy infrastructure.
The laws of war progress.
A while back I mentioned the story I came across - a Royal Navy boat crew refused the surrender of slavers that had killed their midshipman and slaughter them.
At the time this was the customary usage of war - you could choose to accept an offered surrender or not.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
Did I blame Zelensky for cutting the water supply to Crimea in 2014?
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
Now he’s saying that we need to focus on an impending nuclear war? Which is it?
I’ve no idea. He has a ridiculous name
However I think his point here is valid. If Putin blew the dam - and the evidence points that way - it suggests he is prepared to keep escalating - and there aren’t many further steps he can take before he reaches the nuclear level
That doesn’t mean a bomb. Could be an “accident” at ZPP
The prime military significance of the dam event may well turn out to be ZPP-related.
You say "if Putin blew the dam", but a similar conclusion follows from "if Zelensky blew the dam".
It could be that both of these f*cking nutters probably with very short penises are pushing the world in the same direction.
(Yes I have started drinking again under Armageddo-stress after many years of quiet abstention.)
On the bright side a nuclear war will put lots of dust in the atmosphere and counteract the warming effect
Every cloud. The idea of a nuclear winter has been dumped, though, as probable Soviet propaganda, even though when I were a lad it was being pushed out by the authorities in Britain something rotten,
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
How dare you suggest we hold the UK to the same standards we hold others to.
It wasn't illegal at the time. See also flamethrowers
I bet you it would have turned out to be illegal if the Nazis had won though.
Any form of self-defence would have been illegal, had the Nazis won.
The Allies never prosecuted the Nazis for bombing civilians, because they did the same. In WWII it was entirely lawful.
Such bombing campaigns would be unlawful now, but only because precision bombing is a real possibility. Back in WWII, incendiaries were by far the most effective means to destroy enemy infrastructure.
The laws of war progress.
A while back I mentioned the story I came across - a Royal Navy boat crew refused the surrender of slavers that had killed their midshipman and slaughter them.
At the time this was the customary usage of war - you could choose to accept an offered surrender or not.
Today that would be a war crime
Pre-1907, it was lawful to apply the rule, “Surrender at the outset, or don’t bother surrendering.” It was not until 1949 that it became unlawful to sack a city, whose commander had rejected an offer of quarter, before the final assault began.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
Did I blame Zelensky for cutting the water supply to Crimea in 2014?
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
Now he’s saying that we need to focus on an impending nuclear war? Which is it?
I’ve no idea. He has a ridiculous name
However I think his point here is valid. If Putin blew the dam - and the evidence points that way - it suggests he is prepared to keep escalating - and there aren’t many further steps he can take before he reaches the nuclear level
That doesn’t mean a bomb. Could be an “accident” at ZPP
The prime military significance of the dam event may well turn out to be ZPP-related.
You say "if Putin blew the dam", but a similar conclusion follows from "if Zelensky blew the dam".
It could be that both of these f*cking nutters probably with very short penises are pushing the world in the same direction.
(Yes I have started drinking again under Armageddo-stress after many years of quiet abstention.)
On the bright side a nuclear war will put lots of dust in the atmosphere and counteract the warming effect
Every cloud. The idea of a nuclear winter has been dumped, though, as probable Soviet propaganda...,
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
How dare you suggest we hold the UK to the same standards we hold others to.
It wasn't illegal at the time. See also flamethrowers
I bet you it would have turned out to be illegal if the Nazis had won though.
Any form of self-defence would have been illegal, had the Nazis won.
The Allies never prosecuted the Nazis for bombing civilians, because they did the same. In WWII it was entirely lawful.
Such bombing campaigns would be unlawful now, but only because precision bombing is a real possibility. Back in WWII, incendiaries were by far the most effective means to destroy enemy infrastructure.
But we did prosecute people for things like benefiting from slave labour. Slave labour was also happening in British concentration camps. Were those instances prosecuted?
Victor's justice is a real thing, and international law is a concept freighted with hypocrisy.
BTW, it is being reported that Harry has a hotel suite in LA, where he has been seen spending a lot of time....
Poor Harry. He's taking the media on in court and we shouldn't go by media reports. At first I thought he was in trouble, but now it seems they may be. Gotta pinch myself to take it in that Piers "C*nt" Morgan is still sentient.
BTW, it is being reported that Harry has a hotel suite in LA, where he has been seen spending a lot of time....
Poor Harry. He's taking the media on in court and we shouldn't go by media reports. At first I thought he was in trouble, but now it seems they may be. Gotta pinch myself to take it in that Piers "C*nt" Morgan is still sentient.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
How dare you suggest we hold the UK to the same standards we hold others to.
It wasn't illegal at the time. See also flamethrowers
I bet you it would have turned out to be illegal if the Nazis had won though.
Any form of self-defence would have been illegal, had the Nazis won.
The Allies never prosecuted the Nazis for bombing civilians, because they did the same. In WWII it was entirely lawful.
Such bombing campaigns would be unlawful now, but only because precision bombing is a real possibility. Back in WWII, incendiaries were by far the most effective means to destroy enemy infrastructure.
But we did prosecute people for things like benefiting from slave labour. Slave labour was also happening in British concentration camps. Were those instances prosecuted?
Victor's justice is a real thing, and international law is a concept freighted with hypocrisy.
Cry me a river over the injustice here. I will take your word for it over slave labour in British concentration camps (or rather I won't, what is your source?) but it probably wasn't intended as a method of murder - working people to death.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
How dare you suggest we hold the UK to the same standards we hold others to.
It wasn't illegal at the time. See also flamethrowers
I bet you it would have turned out to be illegal if the Nazis had won though.
Any form of self-defence would have been illegal, had the Nazis won.
The Allies never prosecuted the Nazis for bombing civilians, because they did the same. In WWII it was entirely lawful.
Such bombing campaigns would be unlawful now, but only because precision bombing is a real possibility. Back in WWII, incendiaries were by far the most effective means to destroy enemy infrastructure.
But we did prosecute people for things like benefiting from slave labour. Slave labour was also happening in British concentration camps. Were those instances prosecuted?
Victor's justice is a real thing, and international law is a concept freighted with hypocrisy.
Were the British using slave labour from 1939-45? Enemy POW’s were certainly put to work, but I’d hesitate to call it slave labour. In fact, POW’s of the British had the highest survival rate of any nation.
From a legal POV, I’d have preferred the Axis defendants to be tried according to German law, customary international law, or the laws of the countries where they had committed their crimes. There was no need to invent such things as crimes against peace, or crimes against humanity, to condemn them.
Or just do as Churchill proposed. Attaint 1,000 leading Nazis and shoot them.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
Massively restricting the water supply to a civilian population? No problem then?
It’s not a war crime. Otherwise just about everyone by, to, for, at or near the Jordan Valley would be in The Hague, for example.
Attacks on dams are war crimes, as explicitly noted in Article 56 of Protocol I and Article 15 of Protocol II of the 1977 Protocols to the Geneva Conventions.
These rules would all go out of the window if we ever had a true WW3 scenario.
I mentioned yesterday that Colin Powell admitted that if the Iraqis used WMD in Desert Storm then America looked at bombing the dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in retaliation.
They realised that the death toll would be bigger than nuking Baghdad and they would be facing war crimes trials.
Eventually it was decided to send a message through the King of Jordan that if Iraq used WMD then America would occupy Iraq until they found Saddam.
In reality they wouldn't, nobody was going to arrest the Secretary of State of the most powerful military and economic superpower on earth
Rishi Sunak is in big trouble if these focus groups are right.
He's been nick-named "little Rishi", because he cannot stand up to Johnson.
"Weak"
"Too rich"
CBA to sit through 15 minutes of that, but you aren't really selling it to me. Check out who is PM. This is like saying Churchill has been nick-named "little Winnie", because he cannot stand up to Hitler. Feeble stuff.
It is conceivable we will achieve Artificial General Intelligence, get a confirmed visit from aliens, and enjoy the outbreak of nuclear war - all in the same week. Probably august?
August, but not before, is OK for end of the world as we know it matters. The Ashes series ends on 31 July.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
Did I blame Zelensky for cutting the water supply to Crimea in 2014?
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
Now he’s saying that we need to focus on an impending nuclear war? Which is it?
I’ve no idea. He has a ridiculous name
However I think his point here is valid. If Putin blew the dam - and the evidence points that way - it suggests he is prepared to keep escalating - and there aren’t many further steps he can take before he reaches the nuclear level
That doesn’t mean a bomb. Could be an “accident” at ZPP
The prime military significance of the dam event may well turn out to be ZPP-related.
You say "if Putin blew the dam", but a similar conclusion follows from "if Zelensky blew the dam".
It could be that both of these f*cking nutters probably with very short penises are pushing the world in the same direction.
(Yes I have started drinking again under Armageddo-stress after many years of quiet abstention.)
On the bright side a nuclear war will put lots of dust in the atmosphere and counteract the warming effect
Every cloud. The idea of a nuclear winter has been dumped, though, as probable Soviet propaganda...,
I'm not sure that's true
Georgy Golitsyn pushed idea hard, with Andropov’s backing, to increase support for unilateral disarmament in the West.
The models turned out to be wrong in a number of ways - the Iraq oil well fires in 1991 were the icing on the cake.
This is not to say that there wouldn’t be climatic effects from a Global Thermonuclear War - but instant ice age wasn’t one of them.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
Did I blame Zelensky for cutting the water supply to Crimea in 2014?
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
Now he’s saying that we need to focus on an impending nuclear war? Which is it?
I’ve no idea. He has a ridiculous name
However I think his point here is valid. If Putin blew the dam - and the evidence points that way - it suggests he is prepared to keep escalating - and there aren’t many further steps he can take before he reaches the nuclear level
That doesn’t mean a bomb. Could be an “accident” at ZPP
The prime military significance of the dam event may well turn out to be ZPP-related.
You say "if Putin blew the dam", but a similar conclusion follows from "if Zelensky blew the dam".
It could be that both of these f*cking nutters probably with very short penises are pushing the world in the same direction.
(Yes I have started drinking again under Armageddo-stress after many years of quiet abstention.)
On the bright side a nuclear war will put lots of dust in the atmosphere and counteract the warming effect
Every cloud. The idea of a nuclear winter has been dumped, though, as probable Soviet propaganda...,
I'm not sure that's true
Georgy Golitsyn pushed idea hard, with Andropov’s backing, to increase support for unilateral disarmament in the West.
The models turned out to be wrong in a number of ways - the Iraq oil well fires in 1991 were the icing on the cake.
This is not to say that there wouldn’t be climatic effects from a Global Thermonuclear War - but instant ice age wasn’t one of them.
Um, I haven't got the source to hand, but I think the impetus came from a study of a Martian dust cloud that was later extrapolated to Earth, popularised by Carl Sagan, and supported by temperature estimates of years with volcano eruptions. Nuclear winter as a theory dates back to at least the 1970/80s. Are you confusing it with climate change?
Rishi Sunak is in big trouble if these focus groups are right.
He's been nick-named "little Rishi", because he cannot stand up to Johnson.
"Weak"
"Too rich"
CBA to sit through 15 minutes of that, but you aren't really selling it to me. Check out who is PM. This is like saying Churchill has been nick-named "little Winnie", because he cannot stand up to Hitler. Feeble stuff.
Starmer is "meh", Sunak is too rich for the Red Wall to vote for him. They do not like him.
It is conceivable we will achieve Artificial General Intelligence, get a confirmed visit from aliens, and enjoy the outbreak of nuclear war - all in the same week. Probably august?
August, but not before, is OK for end of the world as we know it matters. The Ashes series ends on 31 July.
So if England wins them and the world ends the next month they get to keep them forever? Cool.
Rishi Sunak is in big trouble if these focus groups are right.
He's been nick-named "little Rishi", because he cannot stand up to Johnson.
"Weak"
"Too rich"
CBA to sit through 15 minutes of that, but you aren't really selling it to me. Check out who is PM. This is like saying Churchill has been nick-named "little Winnie", because he cannot stand up to Hitler. Feeble stuff.
Starmer is "meh", Sunak is too rich for the Red Wall to vote for him. They do not like him.
She also said the blue wall do like Sunak though as he is more in touch with their values than Boris was
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
Did I blame Zelensky for cutting the water supply to Crimea in 2014?
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
Now he’s saying that we need to focus on an impending nuclear war? Which is it?
I’ve no idea. He has a ridiculous name
However I think his point here is valid. If Putin blew the dam - and the evidence points that way - it suggests he is prepared to keep escalating - and there aren’t many further steps he can take before he reaches the nuclear level
That doesn’t mean a bomb. Could be an “accident” at ZPP
The prime military significance of the dam event may well turn out to be ZPP-related.
You say "if Putin blew the dam", but a similar conclusion follows from "if Zelensky blew the dam".
It could be that both of these f*cking nutters probably with very short penises are pushing the world in the same direction.
(Yes I have started drinking again under Armageddo-stress after many years of quiet abstention.)
On the bright side a nuclear war will put lots of dust in the atmosphere and counteract the warming effect
Every cloud. The idea of a nuclear winter has been dumped, though, as probable Soviet propaganda...,
I'm not sure that's true
Georgy Golitsyn pushed idea hard, with Andropov’s backing, to increase support for unilateral disarmament in the West.
The models turned out to be wrong in a number of ways - the Iraq oil well fires in 1991 were the icing on the cake.
This is not to say that there wouldn’t be climatic effects from a Global Thermonuclear War - but instant ice age wasn’t one of them.
Um, I haven't got the source to hand, but I think the impetus came from a study of a Martian dust cloud that was later extrapolated to Earth, popularised by Carl Sagan, and supported by temperature estimates of years with volcano eruptions. Nuclear winter as a theory dates back to at least the 1970/80s. Are you confusing it with climate change?
Nope - Sagan was working in the same area. His models were flawed as well. The Russian push on Nuclear Winter made him keep going with it for far longer.
Perhaps ironically, the scientific destruction of the Nuclear Winter Armageddon thing was made possible by better climate models which took into account better modelling of the atmosphere, which led to Global Warming being proven as a valid scientific idea.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
How dare you suggest we hold the UK to the same standards we hold others to.
It wasn't illegal at the time. See also flamethrowers
I bet you it would have turned out to be illegal if the Nazis had won though.
Any form of self-defence would have been illegal, had the Nazis won.
The Allies never prosecuted the Nazis for bombing civilians, because they did the same. In WWII it was entirely lawful.
Such bombing campaigns would be unlawful now, but only because precision bombing is a real possibility. Back in WWII, incendiaries were by far the most effective means to destroy enemy infrastructure.
Although, the RAF went to great pains not to bomb German civilians in 1939.
The gloves were taken off when it became clear there were no bounds to Nazi depravity.
It is conceivable we will achieve Artificial General Intelligence, get a confirmed visit from aliens, and enjoy the outbreak of nuclear war - all in the same week. Probably august?
August, but not before, is OK for end of the world as we know it matters. The Ashes series ends on 31 July.
So if England wins them and the world ends the next month they get to keep them forever? Cool.
And since the trophy is already a pile of ashes, a bucket of instant sunshine won't degrade them.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
How dare you suggest we hold the UK to the same standards we hold others to.
It wasn't illegal at the time. See also flamethrowers
I bet you it would have turned out to be illegal if the Nazis had won though.
Any form of self-defence would have been illegal, had the Nazis won.
The Allies never prosecuted the Nazis for bombing civilians, because they did the same. In WWII it was entirely lawful.
Such bombing campaigns would be unlawful now, but only because precision bombing is a real possibility. Back in WWII, incendiaries were by far the most effective means to destroy enemy infrastructure.
But we did prosecute people for things like benefiting from slave labour. Slave labour was also happening in British concentration camps. Were those instances prosecuted?
Victor's justice is a real thing, and international law is a concept freighted with hypocrisy.
Were the British using slave labour from 1939-45? Enemy POW’s were certainly put to work, but I’d hesitate to call it slave labour. In fact, POW’s of the British had the highest survival rate of any nation.
From a legal POV, I’d have preferred the Axis defendants to be tried according to German law, customary international law, or the laws of the countries where they had committed their crimes. There was no need to invent such things as crimes against peace, or crimes against humanity, to condemn them.
Or just do as Churchill proposed. Attaint 1,000 leading Nazis and shoot them.
It's the sort of Whataboutery bullshit you hear today about how the British were no better than the Nazis.
Rishi Sunak is in big trouble if these focus groups are right.
He's been nick-named "little Rishi", because he cannot stand up to Johnson.
"Weak"
"Too rich"
CBA to sit through 15 minutes of that, but you aren't really selling it to me. Check out who is PM. This is like saying Churchill has been nick-named "little Winnie", because he cannot stand up to Hitler. Feeble stuff.
Starmer is "meh", Sunak is too rich for the Red Wall to vote for him. They do not like him.
She also said the blue wall do like Sunak though as he is more in touch with their values than Boris was
It is conceivable we will achieve Artificial General Intelligence, get a confirmed visit from aliens, and enjoy the outbreak of nuclear war - all in the same week. Probably august?
August, but not before, is OK for end of the world as we know it matters. The Ashes series ends on 31 July.
So if England wins them and the world ends the next month they get to keep them forever? Cool.
And vv. Realistically the least worst option for England is bringing Armageddon forward to just after the Lord's test.
Boris and Carrie Johnson hosted a close friend, who helped plan their wedding, overnight at Chequers when a number of Covid restrictions were in place, the Guardian has been told.
Dixie Maloney, a corporate events organiser, stayed at the former prime minister’s grace-and-favour country mansion on 7 May 2021 when indoor gatherings between different households were banned except when “reasonably necessary” for reasons such as work or childcare.
She is understood to have been informally helping to plan the couples’ festival-style wedding, which took place in the Downing Street garden three weeks later.
How is this possible? I thought the Russell group was the best????
So even on that most of the top 10 and the top 3 universities are all Russell Group. Your uni and the others were also always unis never polys converted to unis
Eh? Before Robbins it was Bristol College of Science and Technology
So were Exeter and Manchester and Birmingham once colleges, they were never polys either
And Pot Hall was a PPH.
It’s what something makes of itself, not where it comes from, that matters
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
How dare you suggest we hold the UK to the same standards we hold others to.
It wasn't illegal at the time. See also flamethrowers
I bet you it would have turned out to be illegal if the Nazis had won though.
Any form of self-defence would have been illegal, had the Nazis won.
The Allies never prosecuted the Nazis for bombing civilians, because they did the same. In WWII it was entirely lawful.
Such bombing campaigns would be unlawful now, but only because precision bombing is a real possibility. Back in WWII, incendiaries were by far the most effective means to destroy enemy infrastructure.
In the end though, their demented ideology finished them.
By stripping France and Benelux of machine tools and foodstuffs for Greater Germany, they couldn't fully mobilise the European economy. And by being so brutal to conquered people's in the East they couldn't mobilise a coalition against Stalin.
Then they declared war against the USA because they were pig ignorant of its capability, having put their defeat in 1918 down to stab-in-the-back mythology rather than because a couple of million American doughboys turned up in the last year. And then they were routinely outwitted by the Soviets in campaign after campaign from 1943 onwards because they thought Slavs as sub-humans were too stupid to practice deception.
Had they called those all the other way they could have dominated Europe for an awful long time, and we'd have been pretty powerless to do much about it other than survive.
Either Europe's centrist parties get a grip on this issue or, eventually, we'll see European polities collapse into autocracy and dictatorship as they become overwhelmed with the problem."
++++
I reckon it is too late. The numbers of migrants are too big and the waves will come too fast
Brace. I expect several countries to veer into far right politics, or, to be more precise, populism with a large dollop of xenophobia (the actual economics might well be "left"), and regimes prepared to shoot people or sink boats
We're already there in Hungary, Poland, maybe Greece, possibly Italy if Meloni can't get a grip
Turning back boats at gunpoint is one guaranteed way to stop them.
So, if they don't, then sooner or later I expect some regime to try it.
The Greeks have already been filmed towing boats back out into the Aegean and saying Fuck off, good luck, don't come back
Eventually the Italians will do the same, and hang the consequences. No society can tolerate 400,000 illegal people simply swarming the frontier (and 400,000 is the prediction for this year in Italy). Meloni's entire career depends on this. This is her THING. If she - openly "hard right" - cannot stop the boats then the Italians will vote for someone prepared to be even tougher
It will end in gunfire and drownings, but then, it already does: it is just hidden away in Africa - but now it will become visible
Ironically the Greeks could do with a bit of immigration, since their population is in decline and the fertility rate is 1.3.
That’s the weird thing. Being anti-immigration in Southern Europe where nobody has babies anymore is true foot shooting behaviour. And oddly hypocritical, in countries that have exported millions of emigrants over the last century to America, Australia and Northern Europe.
I don't really agree with that. Immigration is about more than numbers. Culture, integration/assimilation are other acceptable things to consider. And I wouldn't say those countries have exported their people. Individuals from those countries freely chose to leave and other countries decided to accept them. I can't see it as hypocritical.
Both you and Williamglen make a valid point. Those who emigrated are different from those left behind who don’t like immigration. One group doesn’t owe the other anything.
Perhaps that’s part of the reason these countries are slowly dying. The dynamic, entrepreneurial ones emigrated to seek their fortune. They certainly didn’t mind about living somewhere - like Australia - that was a melting pot of new cultures. The cautious home-loving ones stayed behind, and just want a quiet life. Immigration means change, and challenge, and things not being like the old days.
We don’t have the emigration problem so much in Britain, at least not these days, because a. unemployment hasn’t been a problem for a long time, and b. we don’t do foreign languages. But our demographics aren’t much better than Italy or Greece. Better, though trending in the wrong direction. But thankfully we have a much more balanced attitude towards immigration.
Apparently the UK had the largest expat population of any EU member state in 2016, but most of them migrated to other Anglosphere countries:
I wonder where the highest global % (not in absolute numbers) is?
Lebanon?
Some small, obscure country whose a) economy fell off a cliff a few decades ago, and b ) had a free movement agreement / liberal visa regime with other more prosperous countries, i'd guess.
Somewhere in the Caribbean, perhaps?
Lesotho/Eswatini?
Of the countries on that map, probably Latvia.
Were there any good suggestions for countries with the largest % of their home-born citizens living abroad? I propose Guyana, with a proportion said to be ~60%.
Either Europe's centrist parties get a grip on this issue or, eventually, we'll see European polities collapse into autocracy and dictatorship as they become overwhelmed with the problem."
++++
I reckon it is too late. The numbers of migrants are too big and the waves will come too fast
Brace. I expect several countries to veer into far right politics, or, to be more precise, populism with a large dollop of xenophobia (the actual economics might well be "left"), and regimes prepared to shoot people or sink boats
We're already there in Hungary, Poland, maybe Greece, possibly Italy if Meloni can't get a grip
Turning back boats at gunpoint is one guaranteed way to stop them.
So, if they don't, then sooner or later I expect some regime to try it.
The Greeks have already been filmed towing boats back out into the Aegean and saying Fuck off, good luck, don't come back
Eventually the Italians will do the same, and hang the consequences. No society can tolerate 400,000 illegal people simply swarming the frontier (and 400,000 is the prediction for this year in Italy). Meloni's entire career depends on this. This is her THING. If she - openly "hard right" - cannot stop the boats then the Italians will vote for someone prepared to be even tougher
It will end in gunfire and drownings, but then, it already does: it is just hidden away in Africa - but now it will become visible
Ironically the Greeks could do with a bit of immigration, since their population is in decline and the fertility rate is 1.3.
That’s the weird thing. Being anti-immigration in Southern Europe where nobody has babies anymore is true foot shooting behaviour. And oddly hypocritical, in countries that have exported millions of emigrants over the last century to America, Australia and Northern Europe.
I don't really agree with that. Immigration is about more than numbers. Culture, integration/assimilation are other acceptable things to consider. And I wouldn't say those countries have exported their people. Individuals from those countries freely chose to leave and other countries decided to accept them. I can't see it as hypocritical.
Both you and Williamglen make a valid point. Those who emigrated are different from those left behind who don’t like immigration. One group doesn’t owe the other anything.
Perhaps that’s part of the reason these countries are slowly dying. The dynamic, entrepreneurial ones emigrated to seek their fortune. They certainly didn’t mind about living somewhere - like Australia - that was a melting pot of new cultures. The cautious home-loving ones stayed behind, and just want a quiet life. Immigration means change, and challenge, and things not being like the old days.
We don’t have the emigration problem so much in Britain, at least not these days, because a. unemployment hasn’t been a problem for a long time, and b. we don’t do foreign languages. But our demographics aren’t much better than Italy or Greece. Better, though trending in the wrong direction. But thankfully we have a much more balanced attitude towards immigration.
Apparently the UK had the largest expat population of any EU member state in 2016, but most of them migrated to other Anglosphere countries:
I wonder where the highest global % (not in absolute numbers) is?
Lebanon?
Some small, obscure country whose a) economy fell off a cliff a few decades ago, and b ) had a free movement agreement / liberal visa regime with other more prosperous countries, i'd guess.
Somewhere in the Caribbean, perhaps?
Lesotho/Eswatini?
Of the countries on that map, probably Latvia.
Were there any good suggestions for countries with the largest % of their home-born citizens living abroad? I propose Guyana, with a proportion said to be ~60%.
Vatican?
Vatican I'm sure wins the other way too: number of resident population born outside the country.
It is conceivable we will achieve Artificial General Intelligence, get a confirmed visit from aliens, and enjoy the outbreak of nuclear war - all in the same week. Probably august?
Excellent example of why the order of events is important.
Gonna stick my neck out and say that this will not happen in August.
Hope not. I have a holiday booked.
I'm even more concerned. My holiday is not until September.
Getting my holiday in at the end of June, before the end of the world.
I've got mid-July. If enough PB'ers have holidays booked through autumn we might just get to Christmas.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
Did I blame Zelensky for cutting the water supply to Crimea in 2014?
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
Now he’s saying that we need to focus on an impending nuclear war? Which is it?
I’ve no idea. He has a ridiculous name
However I think his point here is valid. If Putin blew the dam - and the evidence points that way - it suggests he is prepared to keep escalating - and there aren’t many further steps he can take before he reaches the nuclear level
That doesn’t mean a bomb. Could be an “accident” at ZPP
The prime military significance of the dam event may well turn out to be ZPP-related.
You say "if Putin blew the dam", but a similar conclusion follows from "if Zelensky blew the dam".
It could be that both of these f*cking nutters probably with very short penises are pushing the world in the same direction.
(Yes I have started drinking again under Armageddo-stress after many years of quiet abstention.)
On the bright side a nuclear war will put lots of dust in the atmosphere and counteract the warming effect
Every cloud. The idea of a nuclear winter has been dumped, though, as probable Soviet propaganda...,
I'm not sure that's true
Georgy Golitsyn pushed idea hard, with Andropov’s backing, to increase support for unilateral disarmament in the West.
The models turned out to be wrong in a number of ways - the Iraq oil well fires in 1991 were the icing on the cake.
This is not to say that there wouldn’t be climatic effects from a Global Thermonuclear War - but instant ice age wasn’t one of them.
IIRC, large volcanic eruptions - which threw lots of particles into the upper atmosphere - have significantly reduced solar radiation reaching the surface, and led to meaningfully lower temperatures.
Presumably the models predicting nuclear winter were based on those observations.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
How dare you suggest we hold the UK to the same standards we hold others to.
It wasn't illegal at the time. See also flamethrowers
I bet you it would have turned out to be illegal if the Nazis had won though.
Any form of self-defence would have been illegal, had the Nazis won.
The Allies never prosecuted the Nazis for bombing civilians, because they did the same. In WWII it was entirely lawful.
Such bombing campaigns would be unlawful now, but only because precision bombing is a real possibility. Back in WWII, incendiaries were by far the most effective means to destroy enemy infrastructure.
Although, the RAF went to great pains not to bomb German civilians in 1939.
The gloves were taken off when it became clear there were no bounds to Nazi depravity.
It would be more accurate to say that the gloves were taken off when it became clear that there were no bounds to RAF bomber inaccuracy. The error ranges were measured in miles. They started bombing cities because they were the only things big enough to hit reliably. This remained true from 1939 to say late 44. They could have mounted more accurate bombing runs in 44/45 with (say) Mosquitos (and did!), but the highly efficient city bombing machine the RAF had become by then could not have been turned around on a sixpence and Harris didn't want to anyway, defying orders in the process. They did what they could.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
Did I blame Zelensky for cutting the water supply to Crimea in 2014?
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
Now he’s saying that we need to focus on an impending nuclear war? Which is it?
I’ve no idea. He has a ridiculous name
However I think his point here is valid. If Putin blew the dam - and the evidence points that way - it suggests he is prepared to keep escalating - and there aren’t many further steps he can take before he reaches the nuclear level
That doesn’t mean a bomb. Could be an “accident” at ZPP
The prime military significance of the dam event may well turn out to be ZPP-related.
You say "if Putin blew the dam", but a similar conclusion follows from "if Zelensky blew the dam".
It could be that both of these f*cking nutters probably with very short penises are pushing the world in the same direction.
(Yes I have started drinking again under Armageddo-stress after many years of quiet abstention.)
On the bright side a nuclear war will put lots of dust in the atmosphere and counteract the warming effect
Every cloud. The idea of a nuclear winter has been dumped, though, as probable Soviet propaganda...,
I'm not sure that's true
Georgy Golitsyn pushed idea hard, with Andropov’s backing, to increase support for unilateral disarmament in the West.
The models turned out to be wrong in a number of ways - the Iraq oil well fires in 1991 were the icing on the cake.
This is not to say that there wouldn’t be climatic effects from a Global Thermonuclear War - but instant ice age wasn’t one of them.
IIRC, large volcanic eruptions - which threw lots of particles into the upper atmosphere - have significantly reduced solar radiation reaching the surface, and led to meaningfully lower temperatures.
Presumably the models predicting nuclear winter were based on those observations.
They were related but the mechanisms are a little different. The main modelled contributor to cooling from nuclear winter was soot from firestorms around the bomb, reaching the upper troposphere and to some extent the lower stratosphere. For volcanoes it’s the injection of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere.
The Tories should not revert to Thatcherism. They need to rethink what Conservatism means for a country facing the challenges of the 2030's and 2040's. Not rehash an old old tune - without even properly understanding it.
What should the Tories want? As a centre right voter I am looking for:
A focus on the importance of the balance of payments. This requires more investment and savings and less consumption. Policies should therefore focus on how to incentivise these objectives. That means super tax breaks for investment and training, making the UK a good place to invest. It also means focusing education much more on what skills are actually required and likely to be required in the future. It also means getting serious about cutting government borrowing. This means current spending needs to be sharply controlled because more infrastructure investment is needed. Above all, we need more housing, both social and privately owned. We need to go as far and as fast as we can towards a renewable energy policy without damaging underlying competitiveness. This will both improve our balance of payments and improve our contributions to reducing global warming. We need to think hard about how social care and medical care for the elderly is funded. Personally, I would want to go back to the ideas that were being floated by May. Inheritance is not to be subsidised by public money meeting individual needs. We need to rebalance our tax system so that capital makes a bigger contribution and the pressure on incomes is lessened. We need to simplify our tax system and remove cliff edges, the anomaly of higher marginal rates over £100k, the absurdity of NI and the stupid differentials in rates depending on which vehicle the same money is earned through.
I think that would fill the first couple of terms.
I'm on board with 90% of this, and the different 10% is more about how to get there. It ain't Sunak's Government though.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
How dare you suggest we hold the UK to the same standards we hold others to.
It wasn't illegal at the time. See also flamethrowers
I bet you it would have turned out to be illegal if the Nazis had won though.
Any form of self-defence would have been illegal, had the Nazis won.
The Allies never prosecuted the Nazis for bombing civilians, because they did the same. In WWII it was entirely lawful.
Such bombing campaigns would be unlawful now, but only because precision bombing is a real possibility. Back in WWII, incendiaries were by far the most effective means to destroy enemy infrastructure.
Although, the RAF went to great pains not to bomb German civilians in 1939.
The gloves were taken off when it became clear there were no bounds to Nazi depravity.
It would be more accurate to say that the gloves were taken off when it became clear that there were no bounds to RAF bomber inaccuracy. The error ranges were measured in miles. They started bombing cities because they were the only things big enough to hit reliably. This remained true from 1939 to say late 44. They could have mounted more accurate bombing runs in 44/45 with (say) Mosquitos (and did!), but the highly efficient city bombing machine the RAF had become by then could not have been turned around on a sixpence and Harris didn't want to anyway, defying orders in the process. They did what they could.
That was also a pull factor but the push factor was the Nazis had no morals or scruples whatsoever and total war was what was required to meet it.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
Did I blame Zelensky for cutting the water supply to Crimea in 2014?
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
Now he’s saying that we need to focus on an impending nuclear war? Which is it?
I’ve no idea. He has a ridiculous name
However I think his point here is valid. If Putin blew the dam - and the evidence points that way - it suggests he is prepared to keep escalating - and there aren’t many further steps he can take before he reaches the nuclear level
That doesn’t mean a bomb. Could be an “accident” at ZPP
The prime military significance of the dam event may well turn out to be ZPP-related.
You say "if Putin blew the dam", but a similar conclusion follows from "if Zelensky blew the dam".
It could be that both of these f*cking nutters probably with very short penises are pushing the world in the same direction.
(Yes I have started drinking again under Armageddo-stress after many years of quiet abstention.)
On the bright side a nuclear war will put lots of dust in the atmosphere and counteract the warming effect
Every cloud. The idea of a nuclear winter has been dumped, though, as probable Soviet propaganda...,
I'm not sure that's true
Georgy Golitsyn pushed idea hard, with Andropov’s backing, to increase support for unilateral disarmament in the West.
The models turned out to be wrong in a number of ways - the Iraq oil well fires in 1991 were the icing on the cake.
This is not to say that there wouldn’t be climatic effects from a Global Thermonuclear War - but instant ice age wasn’t one of them.
IIRC, large volcanic eruptions - which threw lots of particles into the upper atmosphere - have significantly reduced solar radiation reaching the surface, and led to meaningfully lower temperatures.
Presumably the models predicting nuclear winter were based on those observations.
It is conceivable we will achieve Artificial General Intelligence, get a confirmed visit from aliens, and enjoy the outbreak of nuclear war - all in the same week. Probably august?
Excellent example of why the order of events is important.
Gonna stick my neck out and say that this will not happen in August.
Hope not. I have a holiday booked.
I'm even more concerned. My holiday is not until September.
Getting my holiday in at the end of June, before the end of the world.
I've got mid-July. If enough PB'ers have holidays booked through autumn we might just get to Christmas.
We'd better hold off any more Mike holidays for a while though.
Boris and Carrie Johnson hosted a close friend, who helped plan their wedding, overnight at Chequers when a number of Covid restrictions were in place, the Guardian has been told.
Dixie Maloney, a corporate events organiser, stayed at the former prime minister’s grace-and-favour country mansion on 7 May 2021 when indoor gatherings between different households were banned except when “reasonably necessary” for reasons such as work or childcare.
She is understood to have been informally helping to plan the couples’ festival-style wedding, which took place in the Downing Street garden three weeks later.
It probably was a breach of the rules but it looks like they can get away with it because Carrie was pregnant and they can claim that she was there to look after her.
Boris and Carrie Johnson hosted a close friend, who helped plan their wedding, overnight at Chequers when a number of Covid restrictions were in place, the Guardian has been told.
Dixie Maloney, a corporate events organiser, stayed at the former prime minister’s grace-and-favour country mansion on 7 May 2021 when indoor gatherings between different households were banned except when “reasonably necessary” for reasons such as work or childcare.
She is understood to have been informally helping to plan the couples’ festival-style wedding, which took place in the Downing Street garden three weeks later.
Boris and Carrie Johnson hosted a close friend, who helped plan their wedding, overnight at Chequers when a number of Covid restrictions were in place, the Guardian has been told.
Dixie Maloney, a corporate events organiser, stayed at the former prime minister’s grace-and-favour country mansion on 7 May 2021 when indoor gatherings between different households were banned except when “reasonably necessary” for reasons such as work or childcare.
She is understood to have been informally helping to plan the couples’ festival-style wedding, which took place in the Downing Street garden three weeks later.
Either Europe's centrist parties get a grip on this issue or, eventually, we'll see European polities collapse into autocracy and dictatorship as they become overwhelmed with the problem."
++++
I reckon it is too late. The numbers of migrants are too big and the waves will come too fast
Brace. I expect several countries to veer into far right politics, or, to be more precise, populism with a large dollop of xenophobia (the actual economics might well be "left"), and regimes prepared to shoot people or sink boats
We're already there in Hungary, Poland, maybe Greece, possibly Italy if Meloni can't get a grip
Turning back boats at gunpoint is one guaranteed way to stop them.
So, if they don't, then sooner or later I expect some regime to try it.
The Greeks have already been filmed towing boats back out into the Aegean and saying Fuck off, good luck, don't come back
Eventually the Italians will do the same, and hang the consequences. No society can tolerate 400,000 illegal people simply swarming the frontier (and 400,000 is the prediction for this year in Italy). Meloni's entire career depends on this. This is her THING. If she - openly "hard right" - cannot stop the boats then the Italians will vote for someone prepared to be even tougher
It will end in gunfire and drownings, but then, it already does: it is just hidden away in Africa - but now it will become visible
Ironically the Greeks could do with a bit of immigration, since their population is in decline and the fertility rate is 1.3.
That’s the weird thing. Being anti-immigration in Southern Europe where nobody has babies anymore is true foot shooting behaviour. And oddly hypocritical, in countries that have exported millions of emigrants over the last century to America, Australia and Northern Europe.
I don't really agree with that. Immigration is about more than numbers. Culture, integration/assimilation are other acceptable things to consider. And I wouldn't say those countries have exported their people. Individuals from those countries freely chose to leave and other countries decided to accept them. I can't see it as hypocritical.
Both you and Williamglen make a valid point. Those who emigrated are different from those left behind who don’t like immigration. One group doesn’t owe the other anything.
Perhaps that’s part of the reason these countries are slowly dying. The dynamic, entrepreneurial ones emigrated to seek their fortune. They certainly didn’t mind about living somewhere - like Australia - that was a melting pot of new cultures. The cautious home-loving ones stayed behind, and just want a quiet life. Immigration means change, and challenge, and things not being like the old days.
We don’t have the emigration problem so much in Britain, at least not these days, because a. unemployment hasn’t been a problem for a long time, and b. we don’t do foreign languages. But our demographics aren’t much better than Italy or Greece. Better, though trending in the wrong direction. But thankfully we have a much more balanced attitude towards immigration.
Apparently the UK had the largest expat population of any EU member state in 2016, but most of them migrated to other Anglosphere countries:
I wonder where the highest global % (not in absolute numbers) is?
Lebanon?
Some small, obscure country whose a) economy fell off a cliff a few decades ago, and b ) had a free movement agreement / liberal visa regime with other more prosperous countries, i'd guess.
Somewhere in the Caribbean, perhaps?
Lesotho/Eswatini?
Of the countries on that map, probably Latvia.
Were there any good suggestions for countries with the largest % of their home-born citizens living abroad? I propose Guyana, with a proportion said to be ~60%.
Vatican?
Vatican I'm sure wins the other way too: number of resident population born outside the country.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
Did I blame Zelensky for cutting the water supply to Crimea in 2014?
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
Now he’s saying that we need to focus on an impending nuclear war? Which is it?
I’ve no idea. He has a ridiculous name
However I think his point here is valid. If Putin blew the dam - and the evidence points that way - it suggests he is prepared to keep escalating - and there aren’t many further steps he can take before he reaches the nuclear level
That doesn’t mean a bomb. Could be an “accident” at ZPP
The prime military significance of the dam event may well turn out to be ZPP-related.
You say "if Putin blew the dam", but a similar conclusion follows from "if Zelensky blew the dam".
It could be that both of these f*cking nutters probably with very short penises are pushing the world in the same direction.
(Yes I have started drinking again under Armageddo-stress after many years of quiet abstention.)
On the bright side a nuclear war will put lots of dust in the atmosphere and counteract the warming effect
Every cloud. The idea of a nuclear winter has been dumped, though, as probable Soviet propaganda...,
I'm not sure that's true
Georgy Golitsyn pushed idea hard, with Andropov’s backing, to increase support for unilateral disarmament in the West.
The models turned out to be wrong in a number of ways - the Iraq oil well fires in 1991 were the icing on the cake.
This is not to say that there wouldn’t be climatic effects from a Global Thermonuclear War - but instant ice age wasn’t one of them.
IIRC, large volcanic eruptions - which threw lots of particles into the upper atmosphere - have significantly reduced solar radiation reaching the surface, and led to meaningfully lower temperatures.
Presumably the models predicting nuclear winter were based on those observations.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
Massively restricting the water supply to a civilian population? No problem then?
It’s not a war crime. Otherwise just about everyone by, to, for, at or near the Jordan Valley would be in The Hague, for example.
Attacks on dams are war crimes, as explicitly noted in Article 56 of Protocol I and Article 15 of Protocol II of the 1977 Protocols to the Geneva Conventions.
These rules would all go out of the window if we ever had a true WW3 scenario.
I mentioned yesterday that Colin Powell admitted that if the Iraqis used WMD in Desert Storm then America looked at bombing the dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in retaliation.
They realised that the death toll would be bigger than nuking Baghdad and they would be facing war crimes trials.
Eventually it was decided to send a message through the King of Jordan that if Iraq used WMD then America would occupy Iraq until they found Saddam.
In reality they wouldn't, nobody was going to arrest the Secretary of State of the most powerful military and economic superpower on earth
He probably preferred not to be labelled his generation’s Kissinger.
Who as Nixon’s NSA and Secretary of State arranged the dropping of half a million tonnes of ordnance on a neutral nation.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
Massively restricting the water supply to a civilian population? No problem then?
It’s not a war crime. Otherwise just about everyone by, to, for, at or near the Jordan Valley would be in The Hague, for example.
Attacks on dams are war crimes, as explicitly noted in Article 56 of Protocol I and Article 15 of Protocol II of the 1977 Protocols to the Geneva Conventions.
These rules would all go out of the window if we ever had a true WW3 scenario.
I mentioned yesterday that Colin Powell admitted that if the Iraqis used WMD in Desert Storm then America looked at bombing the dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in retaliation.
They realised that the death toll would be bigger than nuking Baghdad and they would be facing war crimes trials.
Eventually it was decided to send a message through the King of Jordan that if Iraq used WMD then America would occupy Iraq until they found Saddam.
In reality they wouldn't, nobody was going to arrest the Secretary of State of the most powerful military and economic superpower on earth
Boris and Carrie Johnson hosted a close friend, who helped plan their wedding, overnight at Chequers when a number of Covid restrictions were in place, the Guardian has been told.
Dixie Maloney, a corporate events organiser, stayed at the former prime minister’s grace-and-favour country mansion on 7 May 2021 when indoor gatherings between different households were banned except when “reasonably necessary” for reasons such as work or childcare.
She is understood to have been informally helping to plan the couples’ festival-style wedding, which took place in the Downing Street garden three weeks later.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
Did I blame Zelensky for cutting the water supply to Crimea in 2014?
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
Now he’s saying that we need to focus on an impending nuclear war? Which is it?
I’ve no idea. He has a ridiculous name
However I think his point here is valid. If Putin blew the dam - and the evidence points that way - it suggests he is prepared to keep escalating - and there aren’t many further steps he can take before he reaches the nuclear level
That doesn’t mean a bomb. Could be an “accident” at ZPP
The prime military significance of the dam event may well turn out to be ZPP-related.
You say "if Putin blew the dam", but a similar conclusion follows from "if Zelensky blew the dam".
It could be that both of these f*cking nutters probably with very short penises are pushing the world in the same direction.
(Yes I have started drinking again under Armageddo-stress after many years of quiet abstention.)
On the bright side a nuclear war will put lots of dust in the atmosphere and counteract the warming effect
Every cloud. The idea of a nuclear winter has been dumped, though, as probable Soviet propaganda...,
I'm not sure that's true
Georgy Golitsyn pushed idea hard, with Andropov’s backing, to increase support for unilateral disarmament in the West.
The models turned out to be wrong in a number of ways - the Iraq oil well fires in 1991 were the icing on the cake.
This is not to say that there wouldn’t be climatic effects from a Global Thermonuclear War - but instant ice age wasn’t one of them.
IIRC, large volcanic eruptions - which threw lots of particles into the upper atmosphere - have significantly reduced solar radiation reaching the surface, and led to meaningfully lower temperatures.
Presumably the models predicting nuclear winter were based on those observations.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
Did I blame Zelensky for cutting the water supply to Crimea in 2014?
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
Now he’s saying that we need to focus on an impending nuclear war? Which is it?
I’ve no idea. He has a ridiculous name
However I think his point here is valid. If Putin blew the dam - and the evidence points that way - it suggests he is prepared to keep escalating - and there aren’t many further steps he can take before he reaches the nuclear level
That doesn’t mean a bomb. Could be an “accident” at ZPP
The prime military significance of the dam event may well turn out to be ZPP-related.
You say "if Putin blew the dam", but a similar conclusion follows from "if Zelensky blew the dam".
It could be that both of these f*cking nutters probably with very short penises are pushing the world in the same direction.
(Yes I have started drinking again under Armageddo-stress after many years of quiet abstention.)
On the bright side a nuclear war will put lots of dust in the atmosphere and counteract the warming effect
Every cloud. The idea of a nuclear winter has been dumped, though, as probable Soviet propaganda, even though when I were a lad it was being pushed out by the authorities in Britain something rotten,
The idea of a nuclear winter has not been dumped its a known fact that a high density of particulate matter in the atmosphere reduces solar forcing. Trying to claim otherwise shows you are an idiot
Boris and Carrie Johnson hosted a close friend, who helped plan their wedding, overnight at Chequers when a number of Covid restrictions were in place, the Guardian has been told.
Dixie Maloney, a corporate events organiser, stayed at the former prime minister’s grace-and-favour country mansion on 7 May 2021 when indoor gatherings between different households were banned except when “reasonably necessary” for reasons such as work or childcare.
She is understood to have been informally helping to plan the couples’ festival-style wedding, which took place in the Downing Street garden three weeks later.
Wedding planner found it reasonably necessary to be on site to plan wedding
Nice try, but she stayed at Chequers while the wedding was due to (and did) take place at 10 Downing Street. Still, she probably didn’t have beer and curry, so that makes it okay. Or something.
Boris and Carrie Johnson hosted a close friend, who helped plan their wedding, overnight at Chequers when a number of Covid restrictions were in place, the Guardian has been told.
Dixie Maloney, a corporate events organiser, stayed at the former prime minister’s grace-and-favour country mansion on 7 May 2021 when indoor gatherings between different households were banned except when “reasonably necessary” for reasons such as work or childcare.
She is understood to have been informally helping to plan the couples’ festival-style wedding, which took place in the Downing Street garden three weeks later.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
Did I blame Zelensky for cutting the water supply to Crimea in 2014?
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
Now he’s saying that we need to focus on an impending nuclear war? Which is it?
I’ve no idea. He has a ridiculous name
However I think his point here is valid. If Putin blew the dam - and the evidence points that way - it suggests he is prepared to keep escalating - and there aren’t many further steps he can take before he reaches the nuclear level
That doesn’t mean a bomb. Could be an “accident” at ZPP
The prime military significance of the dam event may well turn out to be ZPP-related.
You say "if Putin blew the dam", but a similar conclusion follows from "if Zelensky blew the dam".
It could be that both of these f*cking nutters probably with very short penises are pushing the world in the same direction.
(Yes I have started drinking again under Armageddo-stress after many years of quiet abstention.)
On the bright side a nuclear war will put lots of dust in the atmosphere and counteract the warming effect
Every cloud. The idea of a nuclear winter has been dumped, though, as probable Soviet propaganda...,
I'm not sure that's true
Georgy Golitsyn pushed idea hard, with Andropov’s backing, to increase support for unilateral disarmament in the West.
The models turned out to be wrong in a number of ways - the Iraq oil well fires in 1991 were the icing on the cake.
This is not to say that there wouldn’t be climatic effects from a Global Thermonuclear War - but instant ice age wasn’t one of them.
IIRC, large volcanic eruptions - which threw lots of particles into the upper atmosphere - have significantly reduced solar radiation reaching the surface, and led to meaningfully lower temperatures.
Presumably the models predicting nuclear winter were based on those observations.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
How dare you suggest we hold the UK to the same standards we hold others to.
It wasn't illegal at the time. See also flamethrowers
I bet you it would have turned out to be illegal if the Nazis had won though.
Any form of self-defence would have been illegal, had the Nazis won.
The Allies never prosecuted the Nazis for bombing civilians, because they did the same. In WWII it was entirely lawful.
Such bombing campaigns would be unlawful now, but only because precision bombing is a real possibility. Back in WWII, incendiaries were by far the most effective means to destroy enemy infrastructure.
Although, the RAF went to great pains not to bomb German civilians in 1939.
The gloves were taken off when it became clear there were no bounds to Nazi depravity.
It would be more accurate to say that the gloves were taken off when it became clear that there were no bounds to RAF bomber inaccuracy. The error ranges were measured in miles. They started bombing cities because they were the only things big enough to hit reliably. This remained true from 1939 to say late 44. They could have mounted more accurate bombing runs in 44/45 with (say) Mosquitos (and did!), but the highly efficient city bombing machine the RAF had become by then could not have been turned around on a sixpence and Harris didn't want to anyway, defying orders in the process. They did what they could.
That was also a pull factor but the push factor was the Nazis had no morals or scruples whatsoever and total war was what was required to meet it.
There is an excellent little museum in the ruins of the St Nickolai Church in Hamburg, a memorial to the fire-bombing of July 1943 that killed about 30 000. It is an unusually well balanced museum, also covering the Nazi bombing of Warsaw and Rotterdam, as well as treatment of Jews and slave labor ours during the air raids (they were prevented from entering shelters).
It is hard not to be moved by the horrors of firebombing of civilians. Ironically the church was built by a British architect, back when the Germans were our European cousins.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
How dare you suggest we hold the UK to the same standards we hold others to.
It wasn't illegal at the time. See also flamethrowers
I bet you it would have turned out to be illegal if the Nazis had won though.
Any form of self-defence would have been illegal, had the Nazis won.
The Allies never prosecuted the Nazis for bombing civilians, because they did the same. In WWII it was entirely lawful.
Such bombing campaigns would be unlawful now, but only because precision bombing is a real possibility. Back in WWII, incendiaries were by far the most effective means to destroy enemy infrastructure.
Although, the RAF went to great pains not to bomb German civilians in 1939.
The gloves were taken off when it became clear there were no bounds to Nazi depravity.
It would be more accurate to say that the gloves were taken off when it became clear that there were no bounds to RAF bomber inaccuracy. The error ranges were measured in miles. They started bombing cities because they were the only things big enough to hit reliably. This remained true from 1939 to say late 44. They could have mounted more accurate bombing runs with (say) Mosquitos (and did!), but the highly efficient city bombing machine the RAF had become by then could not have been turned around on a sixpence and Harris didn't want to anyway, defying orders to do so.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
How dare you suggest we hold the UK to the same standards we hold others to.
It wasn't illegal at the time. See also flamethrowers
I bet you it would have turned out to be illegal if the Nazis had won though.
Any form of self-defence would have been illegal, had the Nazis won.
The Allies never prosecuted the Nazis for bombing civilians, because they did the same. In WWII it was entirely lawful.
Such bombing campaigns would be unlawful now, but only because precision bombing is a real possibility. Back in WWII, incendiaries were by far the most effective means to destroy enemy infrastructure.
Although, the RAF went to great pains not to bomb German civilians in 1939.
The gloves were taken off when it became clear there were no bounds to Nazi depravity.
It would be more accurate to say that the gloves were taken off when it became clear that there were no bounds to RAF bomber inaccuracy. The error ranges were measured in miles. They started bombing cities because they were the only things big enough to hit reliably. This remained true from 1939 to say late 44. They could have mounted more accurate bombing runs in 44/45 with (say) Mosquitos (and did!), but the highly efficient city bombing machine the RAF had become by then could not have been turned around on a sixpence and Harris didn't want to anyway, defying orders in the process. They did what they could.
That was also a pull factor but the push factor was the Nazis had no morals or scruples whatsoever and total war was what was required to meet it.
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
And closing a canal is not blowing up a dam.
Blowing up dams is specifically a Bad Action in International law.
What makes the destruction of the dam immoral, and probably unlawful, is that Russia is already the aggressor, and is now causing further harm to its victim.
Blowing up a dam to slow an invading army would not be unlawful. Nor would it be unlawful for Ukraine to do so, if it gave them some strategic advantage, which was proportionate to the harm caused.
Unless you can point to legal backup in black and white, I'm calling BS, Surely the whole point of humanitarian law as it applies in war is that all sides must recognise the rights of all civilians (and service personnel prisoners for that matter).
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
We probably are dangerously close to nuclear war, but where was Hamish when Ukraine cut most of the water supply to the Crimea during 2014-22 by closing the North Crimean Canal? If it's a war crime it must be a war crime whichever side does it. Since when was blowing up a dam unconventional anyway? And it's not at all clear who did it yet, although if the Russian assertion that Ukraine shelled it is anywhere near the truth they will probably furnish evidence within a few days...and if they don't...
Someone needs to bang Putin and Zelensky's heads together.
Zelenskyy was not president of Ukraine until 2019
Did I blame Zelensky for cutting the water supply to Crimea in 2014?
“We are now dangerously close to nuclear war The dam attack is a turning point. The West must act urgently to stop Putin seeing unconventional warfare as a viable option”
Now he’s saying that we need to focus on an impending nuclear war? Which is it?
I’ve no idea. He has a ridiculous name
However I think his point here is valid. If Putin blew the dam - and the evidence points that way - it suggests he is prepared to keep escalating - and there aren’t many further steps he can take before he reaches the nuclear level
That doesn’t mean a bomb. Could be an “accident” at ZPP
The prime military significance of the dam event may well turn out to be ZPP-related.
You say "if Putin blew the dam", but a similar conclusion follows from "if Zelensky blew the dam".
It could be that both of these f*cking nutters probably with very short penises are pushing the world in the same direction.
(Yes I have started drinking again under Armageddo-stress after many years of quiet abstention.)
On the bright side a nuclear war will put lots of dust in the atmosphere and counteract the warming effect
Every cloud. The idea of a nuclear winter has been dumped, though, as probable Soviet propaganda, even though when I were a lad it was being pushed out by the authorities in Britain something rotten,
The idea of a nuclear winter has not been dumped its a known fact that a high density of particulate matter in the atmosphere reduces solar forcing. Trying to claim otherwise shows you are an idiot
You just have to read even the Wikipedia article on nuclear winter and compare it with what was propagandised in say Britain in say 1980. You can insult me as much as you like, but the nuclear war causes nuclear winter hypothesis is not advanced anywhere near as much as it was in the 1980s. It has in fact been blamed on KGB propaganda. I am looking for a source to show you that.
Edit: here you go, and this is by no means the only source:
I don't understand the Dutch Salute reference. Please explain
Dutch Salute theory in polling explained. Look for a gradual or even sudden rise for this trend across surveys.
For LLG frequently showing in the 60s, why wait till May 1st to work out how you are tactically voting, and tell pollsters something different till then - when you know today and can be right up front will the pollster?
Dutch Salute theory is based on HY being right about something he posted last week - in much of the blue wall the main challenge to the Tories are Lib Dem’s - so if it goes with current polling (HY uses a lot of If’s) this degree of Labour voting will be wasted votes in so many places and hand the seats to the Tories.
Hang on, it’s not even an If there’s going to be tactical voting. With 60% LLG a great number will know exactly how to vote tactical a long time before the General Election.
However, this tactical voting is going to be massively regional - many telling pollsters today they will vote Lab, will start to tell pollsters Lib Dem instead. But they will do this in certain places, not evenly across the nation. In the Nationwide poll Labour will FALL - Labours lead over the Tories will FALL - all this with no extra Tory votes but Lib Dem’s on the rise.
This national polling, at first glance looking much more optimistic for the Tories, will utterly disguise what is really shaping up - the national polling picture cannot give us what will actually be going on - swing calculators based on average swing will slip woefully behind the huge variation in tactical vote between place to place, region to region, wall to wall.
Voters knowing in the coming months how they will vote tactically in the general election, simply becoming all up front with pollsters about their vote, and how tactical voting will be wildly different from place to place not showing in the nationwide polls, this explains Dutch Salute theory. What to look out for, what is causing it, and the added caution this builds into the NATIONAL POLLS, that, if I’m right, will if anything show Tories closing the gap to Labour, yet completely miss the tactical storm brewing.
I don't understand the Dutch Salute reference. Please explain
Shirt lifted to flash bare breasts.
Yes, I didn't get it either - we must live very sheltered lives, my friends.
As I reported last night, I think this is a frothy poll for the LDs and we'll see the Conservatives up again in a fortnight. I do wonder if the publicity around new Liberal Democrat-led administrations taking over from Conservative administrations at local Council level has had a slight impact on LD fortunes.
The Con-Lab swing is a decent 16.5% but as I also mentioned, straight UNS isn't going to be helpful - some seats will see much smaller swings, other seats much larger.
I don't understand the Dutch Salute reference. Please explain
Dutch Salute theory in polling explained. Look for a gradual or even sudden rise for this trend across surveys.
For LLG frequently showing in the 60s, why wait till May 1st to work out how you are tactically voting, and tell pollsters something different till then - when you know today and can be right up front will the pollster?
Dutch Salute theory is based on HY being right about something he posted last week - in much of the blue wall the main challenge to the Tories are Lib Dem’s - so if it goes with current polling (HY uses a lot of If’s) this degree of Labour voting will be wasted votes in so many places and hand the seats to the Tories.
Hang on, it’s not even an If there’s going to be tactical voting. With 60% LLG a great number will know exactly how to vote tactical a long time before the General Election.
However, this tactical voting is going to be massively regional - many telling pollsters today they will vote Lab, will start to tell pollsters Lib Dem instead. But they will do this in certain places, not evenly across the nation. In the Nationwide poll Labour will FALL - Labours lead over the Tories will FALL - all this with no extra Tory votes but Lib Dem’s on the rise.
This national polling, at first glance looking much more optimistic for the Tories, will utterly disguise what is really shaping up - the national polling picture cannot give us what will actually be going on - swing calculators based on average swing will slip woefully behind the huge variation in tactical vote between place to place, region to region, wall to wall.
Voters knowing in the coming months how they will vote tactically in the general election, simply becoming all up front with pollsters about their vote, and how tactical voting will be wildly different from place to place not showing in the nationwide polls, this explains Dutch Salute theory. What to look out for, what is causing it, and the added caution this builds into the NATIONAL POLLS, that, if I’m right, will if anything show Tories closing the gap to Labour, yet completely miss the tactical storm brewing.
To be honest, under the stewardship of Rishi Sunak when Chancellor, the whole country could be put under a Section 114 notice.
The biggest disaster is the Victoria Square development which was meant to create a new commercial and residential heart for Woking but the £750 million previous value has been downgraded to £200 million. For a Borough Council (not a unitary), the scale of the debt is extraordinary - I'm also forced to ask why this measure wasn't taken when the Conservative administration at the Town Hall was piling up these debts.
I don't understand the Dutch Salute reference. Please explain
Dutch Salute theory in polling explained. Look for a gradual or even sudden rise for this trend across surveys.
For LLG frequently showing in the 60s, why wait till May 1st to work out how you are tactically voting, and tell pollsters something different till then - when you know today and can be right up front will the pollster?
Dutch Salute theory is based on HY being right about something he posted last week - in much of the blue wall the main challenge to the Tories are Lib Dem’s - so if it goes with current polling (HY uses a lot of If’s) this degree of Labour voting will be wasted votes in so many places and hand the seats to the Tories.
Hang on, it’s not even an If there’s going to be tactical voting. With 60% LLG a great number will know exactly how to vote tactical a long time before the General Election.
However, this tactical voting is going to be massively regional - many telling pollsters today they will vote Lab, will start to tell pollsters Lib Dem instead. But they will do this in certain places, not evenly across the nation. In the Nationwide poll Labour will FALL - Labours lead over the Tories will FALL - all this with no extra Tory votes but Lib Dem’s on the rise.
This national polling, at first glance looking much more optimistic for the Tories, will utterly disguise what is really shaping up - the national polling picture cannot give us what will actually be going on - swing calculators based on average swing will slip woefully behind the huge variation in tactical vote between place to place, region to region, wall to wall.
Voters knowing in the coming months how they will vote tactically in the general election, simply becoming all up front with pollsters about their vote, and how tactical voting will be wildly different from place to place not showing in the nationwide polls, this explains Dutch Salute theory. What to look out for, what is causing it, and the added caution this builds into the NATIONAL POLLS, that, if I’m right, will if anything show Tories closing the gap to Labour, yet completely miss the tactical storm brewing.
Comments
Is quite clear - no blowing up dams. Formally Considered Naughty in International Law.
Signed by the USSR and accepted by Russia and Ukraine as the successor states.
There is nothing similar about reducing water supplies to enemy held territory.
Labour did very well in some areas but not in others - I agree that's a big difference to the mid-90s when Labour was doing well everywhere but the fact remains small islands of not-quite-as-bad Conservative performance shouldn't obscure the fact the Party lost more than 1000 seats (and some were predicting losses of 250 seats at most in the days immediately prior to the local elections).
The reason behind the change is of interest. It was sparked by what the Israelis told the Egyptians. That if Egypt *participated* in a war that defeated Israel, as part of the Sampson Option, Israel would nuke the Aswan Dam. Which would annihilate Egypt.
This was a major reason that Egypt broke ranks and made peace with Israel - they had achieved MAD….
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/woman-accused-pretending-birmingham-man-27075210
‘with his hood up?’
‘yeah’
‘bit strange’
At the moment I've an open mind on which side benefits most from the dam event, and suspect its purpose irrespective of the identity of the perp is escalation.
Russia has no legitimate aim in Ukraine. Ukraine has, namely self-defence.
Years back I was a member of a private club in London which hosted many A listers over the years. Madonna rented a whole floor of rooms upstairs for years. The staff were quite carefully selected, paid and treated so that they wouldn’t run to the press,
Looking back, it was incredible that you never saw anything from there in the press.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/keir-starmer-to-beat-blair-landslide-in-general-election-poll-finds-ks26rxjng
They realised that the death toll would be bigger than nuking Baghdad and they would be facing war crimes trials.
Eventually it was decided to send a message through the King of Jordan that if Iraq used WMD then America would occupy Iraq until they found Saddam.
The Allies never prosecuted the Nazis for bombing civilians, because they did the same. In WWII it was entirely lawful.
Such bombing campaigns would be unlawful now, but only because precision bombing is a real possibility. Back in WWII, incendiaries were by far the most effective means to destroy enemy infrastructure.
Aswan is protected by its construction type - Upkeep proof was a design criteria.
Chastise *just* worked against masonry dams - modern concrete is much more resilient. And that took multiple strikes with a hard contact between the concrete and the weapon.
The number of aircraft that could carry an Upkeep mine or similar is pretty small - you’d need a strategic bomber to carry it. Precision guidance doesn’t help - Upkeep worked by literally touching the dam when it went bang.
So unless the Ukrainians stole the BBMF Lancaster, built a squadron of them etc…
A while back I mentioned the story I came across - a Royal Navy boat crew refused the surrender of slavers that had killed their midshipman and slaughter them.
At the time this was the customary usage of war - you could choose to accept an offered surrender or not.
Today that would be a war crime
Victor's justice is a real thing, and international law is a concept freighted with hypocrisy.
Rishi Sunak is in big trouble if these focus groups are right.
He's been nick-named "little Rishi", because he cannot stand up to Johnson.
"Weak"
"Too rich"
https://chionwurahmp.com/2023/06/policy-issues-raised-by-constituents-april-2023/
I’d hesitate to call it slave labour. In fact, POW’s of the British had the highest survival rate of any nation.
From a legal POV, I’d have preferred the Axis defendants to be tried according to German law, customary international law, or the laws of the countries where they had committed their crimes. There was no need to invent such things as crimes against peace, or crimes against humanity, to condemn them.
Or just do as Churchill proposed. Attaint 1,000 leading Nazis and shoot them.
The models turned out to be wrong in a number of ways - the Iraq oil well fires in 1991 were the icing on the cake.
This is not to say that there wouldn’t be climatic effects from a Global Thermonuclear War - but instant ice age wasn’t one of them.
https://www.instagram.com/stories/rishisunakmp/3120089439217635631/
Perhaps ironically, the scientific destruction of the Nuclear Winter Armageddon thing was made possible by better climate models which took into account better modelling of the atmosphere, which led to Global Warming being proven as a valid scientific idea.
The gloves were taken off when it became clear there were no bounds to Nazi depravity.
It's as ignorant as it sounds.
Dixie Maloney, a corporate events organiser, stayed at the former prime minister’s grace-and-favour country mansion on 7 May 2021 when indoor gatherings between different households were banned except when “reasonably necessary” for reasons such as work or childcare.
She is understood to have been informally helping to plan the couples’ festival-style wedding, which took place in the Downing Street garden three weeks later.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jun/07/boris-and-carrie-johnson-hosted-friend-at-chequers-during-covid-restrictions
It’s what something makes of itself, not where it comes from, that matters
By stripping France and Benelux of machine tools and foodstuffs for Greater Germany, they couldn't fully mobilise the European economy. And by being so brutal to conquered people's in the East they couldn't mobilise a coalition against Stalin.
Then they declared war against the USA because they were pig ignorant of its capability, having put their defeat in 1918 down to stab-in-the-back mythology rather than because a couple of million American doughboys turned up in the last year. And then they were routinely outwitted by the Soviets in campaign after campaign from 1943 onwards because they thought Slavs as sub-humans were too stupid to practice deception.
Had they called those all the other way they could have dominated Europe for an awful long time, and we'd have been pretty powerless to do much about it other than survive.
Presumably the models predicting nuclear winter were based on those observations.
Suspect serious ramifications will follow
1816, ascribed to mt Tambora erupting.
No wonder they sacked Phil Neville.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/65832658
But did they consume beer and curry together?
In Belgium, the Flemish liberals want to make English the third administrative language in the country’s capital, Brussels.
Flemish nationalists aren’t happy about it.
Who as Nixon’s NSA and Secretary of State arranged the dropping of half a million tonnes of ordnance on a neutral nation.
Super volcanoes are the ones to watch though.
Edit - though it is now thought the sulphur dioxide emissions are the main driver of post eruption cooling rather than particulate matter.
It is hard not to be moved by the horrors of firebombing of civilians. Ironically the church was built by a British architect, back when the Germans were our European cousins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Nicholas_Church,_Hamburg
Edit: here you go, and this is by no means the only source:
https://archive.is/v6lKf
For LLG frequently showing in the 60s, why wait till May 1st to work out how you are tactically voting, and tell pollsters something different till then - when you know today and can be right up front will the pollster?
Dutch Salute theory is based on HY being right about something he posted last week - in much of the blue wall the main challenge to the Tories are Lib Dem’s - so if it goes with current polling (HY uses a lot of If’s) this degree of Labour voting will be wasted votes in so many places and hand the seats to the Tories.
Hang on, it’s not even an If there’s going to be tactical voting. With 60% LLG a great number will know exactly how to vote tactical a long time before the General Election.
However, this tactical voting is going to be massively regional - many telling pollsters today they will vote Lab, will start to tell pollsters Lib Dem instead. But they will do this in certain places, not evenly across the nation. In the Nationwide poll Labour will FALL - Labours lead over the Tories will FALL - all this with no extra Tory votes but Lib Dem’s on the rise.
This national polling, at first glance looking much more optimistic for the Tories, will utterly disguise what is really shaping up - the national polling picture cannot give us what will actually be going on - swing calculators based on average swing will slip woefully behind the huge variation in tactical vote between place to place, region to region, wall to wall.
Voters knowing in the coming months how they will vote tactically in the general election, simply becoming all up front with pollsters about their vote, and how tactical voting will be wildly different from place to place not showing in the nationwide polls, this explains Dutch Salute theory. What to look out for, what is causing it, and the added caution this builds into the NATIONAL POLLS, that, if I’m right, will if anything show Tories closing the gap to Labour, yet completely miss the tactical storm brewing.
As I reported last night, I think this is a frothy poll for the LDs and we'll see the Conservatives up again in a fortnight. I do wonder if the publicity around new Liberal Democrat-led administrations taking over from Conservative administrations at local Council level has had a slight impact on LD fortunes.
The Con-Lab swing is a decent 16.5% but as I also mentioned, straight UNS isn't going to be helpful - some seats will see much smaller swings, other seats much larger.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-65833006
To be honest, under the stewardship of Rishi Sunak when Chancellor, the whole country could be put under a Section 114 notice.
The biggest disaster is the Victoria Square development which was meant to create a new commercial and residential heart for Woking but the £750 million previous value has been downgraded to £200 million. For a Borough Council (not a unitary), the scale of the debt is extraordinary - I'm also forced to ask why this measure wasn't taken when the Conservative administration at the Town Hall was piling up these debts.