"I don't remember anyone saying when the Americans pulled out of Vietnam - let's send lots of British troops to replace them"
Hitchens has always claimed that he shed tears of joy when the Iron Curtain came down, but he always repeats Russian talking points, and plainly sees Russia as the gendarme of Eastern Europe.
Peter Hitchens is a nutcase.
He hates people agreeing with him, and will always change his position so he's as negative and forlorn as possible.
All you get from the man is an endless diet of negativity and cynicism.
If anyone can guess where this is they are an absolute fucking genius
Is it a clever cultural reference to the first line of the Sex Pistols' "Holidays in the Sun", taken from a Situationist wall slogan in Paris in May 1968, now updated for the Spectator group?
See Nigel’s been slagging Britain off in America. Predictable and depressing.
Meanwhile, The Reform logo points East towards Moscow. Hiding in plain sight.
While Trump's betrayal of Ukraine is dominating things here, I haven't yet heard it discussed in the real world, not even by the Ukranian doctor that I was working with earlier in the week.
I had a business meeting with a Californian on Weds. Recent events have caused family problems with his Maga sister and got him abuse. Feels like it’s back to 2006 🤷
Obviously those living in the Putin Reform media bubble will if anything be pleased at what’s going on.
Both my brother-in -law and my oldest friend are hard core Trumpist/Putinist types. I am finding myself having to limit my visits to them because I can't bite my tongue when they go off on their deranged rants.
Interesting. I live in a bubble where people seem to compete to show their disdain for Trump. The closest I find to someone making the alternative case is on here. It instinctively makes me feel that it just can't be that simple, I suppose I am a contrarian of sorts.
So, it seems to me the case can be made that Trump/Vance are just saying more bluntly and clearly which has always been true. The US will act in their self interest. The fact we wanted to delude ourselves for many years to give us a comfort blanket was on us, not them.
I think a case can also be made that the Lawfare of the previous administration was grossly irresponsible and a dangerous precedent. Trump should have been treated the same as everyone else before the law, he should not have been prosecuted for things that others doing the same would not have been prosecuted for.
I can sort of understand why the US might regard the Ukraine as a European problem rather than theirs.
Vance may be right about the excessive regulation of the EU in things like AI and data protection (I have sympathy with pretty much anyone criticising the bureaucratic and pointless mess of GDPR, for example).
He and even Musk may be right that the blob has simply grown out of control, more interested in feeding itself than serving the country (I have expressed similar, if more restrained views about our own country). Attacking it with callipers simply won't do, a chainsaw is needed.
I'm running out of arguments at this point but does anyone have any more? What is Trump & Co right about? Someone famous (but I am terrible with names) said if you didn't understand your opponents case then you don't even understand your own, or something like that.
I go along with this to some extent. However proportionality needs to apply. If Trump wants to undo NATO then this should be done in a way and timescale that allows and compels consideration of Europe and Canada's way forward.
Yes, I agree Europe has been at fault too.
Trump's approach makes good sense if, and only if, you decide that the world is and should be self interested well armed mercantileist power blocs with no particular interest in rights, democracy or the prosperity of others. The blocs are: Americas, Russia and the east, China, India, Rest of the West.
However, one word shows Trump's world is more complex: Israel.
I think the war itself is indefensible, and a very black mark on Putin's record. That said, the case for arming Ukraine indefinitely rests on either (1) believing that if Ukraine is seen to have lost then other Russian incursions will follow or (2) that there is no civilised alternative. The problem is that huge numbers of lives are being lost for what has become essentially a border war, and we aren't offering any alternative except for Russia saying sorry, we'll stop and pay damages. That's a formula for the war continuing for years, quite possibly ending with a Ukrainian defeat.
I've very little time for Trump, but the effort to see if there's a basis for a settlement seems worthwhile. If the condition is substantial border defences for the remaining 80% of Ukraine and other countries thought to be at risk, fine, and if it costs more money, we should be prepared to pay it. However, the principle that no boundaries can ever be changed, regardless of the wishes of the current population, and it's worth any number of casualities and indefinite war to prevent it, seems to me wrong.
Yes, one can argue that when the original population of the easstern provinces was asked, a (relatively slender) majority said they wanted to stay with Ukraine. That's a reasonable consideration, but not the only one. And the question "what would you do?" seems to me a reasonable one, to which the response "support the war continuing indefinitely" is unsatisfactory.
I hesitate to write this, as it generates hostility at a personal level which I can do without, given my lack of influence over the outcome. But you asked...
This is a lot more than a 'border war'. Calling it that reduces the war's impact, downplays Putin's ambitions for the region, and somewhat excuses what has happened.
We are facing an expansionist, imperialist and fascist Russia. We can either stop its expansion now, or do so later at a much greater cost. Unless you would quite like to live under an expansionist, imperialist and fascist state. If you do not, then why should others be subjected to it?
"Yes, one can argue that when the original population of the easstern provinces was asked, a (relatively slender) majority said they wanted to stay with Ukraine."
"I don't remember anyone saying when the Americans pulled out of Vietnam - let's send lots of British troops to replace them"
Fundamentally they are different
Vietnam was a civil war / revolution in which China and the US interfered.
Ukraine is a straightforward case of an invasion of a former Soviet country by Russia. The Russian leader has made clear his desire to conquer every other former Soviet territory.
If we believed Putin would be content to stop at Ukraine Europe would be much more relaxed. But we don’t and he won’t.
Stopping him here is critical. We should have done it in Georgia or Crimea but we were asleep on our watch.
See Nigel’s been slagging Britain off in America. Predictable and depressing.
Meanwhile, The Reform logo points East towards Moscow. Hiding in plain sight.
While Trump's betrayal of Ukraine is dominating things here, I haven't yet heard it discussed in the real world, not even by the Ukranian doctor that I was working with earlier in the week.
I had a business meeting with a Californian on Weds. Recent events have caused family problems with his Maga sister and got him abuse. Feels like it’s back to 2006 🤷
Obviously those living in the Putin Reform media bubble will if anything be pleased at what’s going on.
Both my brother-in -law and my oldest friend are hard core Trumpist/Putinist types. I am finding myself having to limit my visits to them because I can't bite my tongue when they go off on their deranged rants.
Interesting. I live in a bubble where people seem to compete to show their disdain for Trump. The closest I find to someone making the alternative case is on here. It instinctively makes me feel that it just can't be that simple, I suppose I am a contrarian of sorts.
So, it seems to me the case can be made that Trump/Vance are just saying more bluntly and clearly which has always been true. The US will act in their self interest. The fact we wanted to delude ourselves for many years to give us a comfort blanket was on us, not them.
I think a case can also be made that the Lawfare of the previous administration was grossly irresponsible and a dangerous precedent. Trump should have been treated the same as everyone else before the law, he should not have been prosecuted for things that others doing the same would not have been prosecuted for.
I can sort of understand why the US might regard the Ukraine as a European problem rather than theirs.
Vance may be right about the excessive regulation of the EU in things like AI and data protection (I have sympathy with pretty much anyone criticising the bureaucratic and pointless mess of GDPR, for example).
He and even Musk may be right that the blob has simply grown out of control, more interested in feeding itself than serving the country (I have expressed similar, if more restrained views about our own country). Attacking it with callipers simply won't do, a chainsaw is needed.
I'm running out of arguments at this point but does anyone have any more? What is Trump & Co right about? Someone famous (but I am terrible with names) said if you didn't understand your opponents case then you don't even understand your own, or something like that.
I go along with this to some extent. However proportionality needs to apply. If Trump wants to undo NATO then this should be done in a way and timescale that allows and compels consideration of Europe and Canada's way forward.
Yes, I agree Europe has been at fault too.
Trump's approach makes good sense if, and only if, you decide that the world is and should be self interested well armed mercantileist power blocs with no particular interest in rights, democracy or the prosperity of others. The blocs are: Americas, Russia and the east, China, India, Rest of the West.
However, one word shows Trump's world is more complex: Israel.
I think the war itself is indefensible, and a very black mark on Putin's record. That said, the case for arming Ukraine indefinitely rests on either (1) believing that if Ukraine is seen to have lost then other Russian incursions will follow or (2) that there is no civilised alternative. The problem is that huge numbers of lives are being lost for what has become essentially a border war, and we aren't offering any alternative except for Russia saying sorry, we'll stop and pay damages. That's a formula for the war continuing for years, quite possibly ending with a Ukrainian defeat.
I've very little time for Trump, but the effort to see if there's a basis for a settlement seems worthwhile. If the condition is substantial border defences for the remaining 80% of Ukraine and other countries thought to be at risk, fine, and if it costs more money, we should be prepared to pay it. However, the principle that no boundaries can ever be changed, regardless of the wishes of the current population, and it's worth any number of casualities and indefinite war to prevent it, seems to me wrong.
Yes, one can argue that when the original population of the easstern provinces was asked, a (relatively slender) majority said they wanted to stay with Ukraine. That's a reasonable consideration, but not the only one. And the question "what would you do?" seems to me a reasonable one, to which the response "support the war continuing indefinitely" is unsatisfactory.
I hesitate to write this, as it generates hostility at a personal level which I can do without, given my lack of influence over the outcome. But you asked...
1 and 2 are clearly both true. The problem with calling it a border war is that Russia has already denied Ukraine's right to exist, and is carrying out genocide in the occupied areas. Russia is already forced to use donkeys to supply the front line. My preferred route to peace would be for sanctions sufficient to destroy the Russian economy while the Ukrainians continue to kill Russian soldiers and bomb oil refineries. Russians actions in Ukraine ate, in my view, so reprehensible that the only just end to the war should be the destruction of the Russian state. (Unfortunately I can't see that happening)
Hitchens argument is bizarre. However much noise he creates, he will never match his brother.
What is bizarre about it?
Surprised you can’t see that. To get started Ukraine is about 2hrs from London and was invaded by Russia. Its leader is repeatedly directly antagonistic to the U.K. and our allies. The Americans are not in Ukraine and neither are we.
See Nigel’s been slagging Britain off in America. Predictable and depressing.
Meanwhile, The Reform logo points East towards Moscow. Hiding in plain sight.
While Trump's betrayal of Ukraine is dominating things here, I haven't yet heard it discussed in the real world, not even by the Ukranian doctor that I was working with earlier in the week.
I had a business meeting with a Californian on Weds. Recent events have caused family problems with his Maga sister and got him abuse. Feels like it’s back to 2006 🤷
Obviously those living in the Putin Reform media bubble will if anything be pleased at what’s going on.
Both my brother-in -law and my oldest friend are hard core Trumpist/Putinist types. I am finding myself having to limit my visits to them because I can't bite my tongue when they go off on their deranged rants.
Interesting. I live in a bubble where people seem to compete to show their disdain for Trump. The closest I find to someone making the alternative case is on here. It instinctively makes me feel that it just can't be that simple, I suppose I am a contrarian of sorts.
So, it seems to me the case can be made that Trump/Vance are just saying more bluntly and clearly which has always been true. The US will act in their self interest. The fact we wanted to delude ourselves for many years to give us a comfort blanket was on us, not them.
I think a case can also be made that the Lawfare of the previous administration was grossly irresponsible and a dangerous precedent. Trump should have been treated the same as everyone else before the law, he should not have been prosecuted for things that others doing the same would not have been prosecuted for.
I can sort of understand why the US might regard the Ukraine as a European problem rather than theirs.
Vance may be right about the excessive regulation of the EU in things like AI and data protection (I have sympathy with pretty much anyone criticising the bureaucratic and pointless mess of GDPR, for example).
He and even Musk may be right that the blob has simply grown out of control, more interested in feeding itself than serving the country (I have expressed similar, if more restrained views about our own country). Attacking it with callipers simply won't do, a chainsaw is needed.
I'm running out of arguments at this point but does anyone have any more? What is Trump & Co right about? Someone famous (but I am terrible with names) said if you didn't understand your opponents case then you don't even understand your own, or something like that.
The most stupid thing about the lawfare against Trump was that it was for the small stuff.
He should have been prosecuted for the Jan 6th stuff. Taking more than 4 years to get a case to court, when the crime was committed on live TV, is moronic. The Process Stare need for 1 million pieces of paper is bullshit - a couple of the most serious charges, collect the evidence, keep it simple
A key lesson for all prosecutors everywhere.
Once they appointed Jack Smith he seemed to move fairly quickly for it, but it took ages to appoint him.
The state pretended Trump would go away.
The GOP didn't want to convict Trump after his impeachment because they thought it would split their party.
The Dems wanted to encourage MAGA and have Trump as their opponent as they though he would be easier to defeat.
See Nigel’s been slagging Britain off in America. Predictable and depressing.
Meanwhile, The Reform logo points East towards Moscow. Hiding in plain sight.
While Trump's betrayal of Ukraine is dominating things here, I haven't yet heard it discussed in the real world, not even by the Ukranian doctor that I was working with earlier in the week.
I had a business meeting with a Californian on Weds. Recent events have caused family problems with his Maga sister and got him abuse. Feels like it’s back to 2006 🤷
Obviously those living in the Putin Reform media bubble will if anything be pleased at what’s going on.
Both my brother-in -law and my oldest friend are hard core Trumpist/Putinist types. I am finding myself having to limit my visits to them because I can't bite my tongue when they go off on their deranged rants.
Interesting. I live in a bubble where people seem to compete to show their disdain for Trump. The closest I find to someone making the alternative case is on here. It instinctively makes me feel that it just can't be that simple, I suppose I am a contrarian of sorts.
So, it seems to me the case can be made that Trump/Vance are just saying more bluntly and clearly which has always been true. The US will act in their self interest. The fact we wanted to delude ourselves for many years to give us a comfort blanket was on us, not them.
I think a case can also be made that the Lawfare of the previous administration was grossly irresponsible and a dangerous precedent. Trump should have been treated the same as everyone else before the law, he should not have been prosecuted for things that others doing the same would not have been prosecuted for.
I can sort of understand why the US might regard the Ukraine as a European problem rather than theirs.
Vance may be right about the excessive regulation of the EU in things like AI and data protection (I have sympathy with pretty much anyone criticising the bureaucratic and pointless mess of GDPR, for example).
He and even Musk may be right that the blob has simply grown out of control, more interested in feeding itself than serving the country (I have expressed similar, if more restrained views about our own country). Attacking it with callipers simply won't do, a chainsaw is needed.
I'm running out of arguments at this point but does anyone have any more? What is Trump & Co right about? Someone famous (but I am terrible with names) said if you didn't understand your opponents case then you don't even understand your own, or something like that.
I go along with this to some extent. However proportionality needs to apply. If Trump wants to undo NATO then this should be done in a way and timescale that allows and compels consideration of Europe and Canada's way forward.
Yes, I agree Europe has been at fault too.
Trump's approach makes good sense if, and only if, you decide that the world is and should be self interested well armed mercantileist power blocs with no particular interest in rights, democracy or the prosperity of others. The blocs are: Americas, Russia and the east, China, India, Rest of the West.
However, one word shows Trump's world is more complex: Israel.
Europe would be one of those blocs as well.
Thiel (and hence Vance) has been incredibly influenced by Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations. It’s a bit dated now but worth reading / rereading
Yes, Europe, apart from the bits Trump gives to Russia , is in with 'The Rest of the West' - an interesting group which could include Canada, Australia and NZ and any other randomers who are fond of liberalism, regulated capitalism, peace and so on. People who believe on the whole with Smith and Ricardo that a peaceful tolerant and prosperous world makes for good customers.
Nice try SBF, but if Trump has any sense he will let you rot.
SBF has a new interview out, conducted from prison. It is... unbelievable, at points.
Highlights include:
* Strong direct statement of his innocence. * Accusing prosecution and judge of policitized process, analogising to experience of President Trump, apparent maneuvering to secure clemancy. * Implied rationale for prosecution: his donations to Republicans. https://nitter.poast.org/patio11/status/1893039869737185300#m
I absorbed a lot of content before and during the trial, including his defence arguments, and SBF is genuinely a very nasty piece of work, and his attempts to pin the blame on others were absurd. From his epic attempst to portray himself as merely unbelievably stupid as a businessman despite years spending money to present himself as a humble genius even as he splurged on luxury property etc, to his utter amnesia about the countless things he said in public and on video due to arrogance (and which limited his defence options at trial), he is a very bad guy who deserves the 20 years he got.
The Economist this week is pretty uncheery. Summary: Europe alone. Needs single envoy to speak for it with USA and Russia. France and UK need to agree Europe's nuclear shield. Defence spending to rise to 4-5%, an extra 300bn Euros. Cut welfare. This is "Europe's worst nightmare".
Yup, there's no more room for higher taxes, it has to come out of welfare. We pay too many people too much money to sit at home and do nothing.
A shift from welfare spending to defence spending is also a shift from spending on the old to spending on the young and from spending on non-workers to spending on workers.
I think that's a bit optimistic. From my limited experience working at Westland Helicopters back in the day, defence spending tends to only trickle to workers as the horrendously expensive kit dams the flow rather.
A big military industrial complex hasn't done the US economy any harm. We could learn from that and invest in our own defence industry and capabilities.
"I don't remember anyone saying when the Americans pulled out of Vietnam - let's send lots of British troops to replace them"
Fundamentally they are different
Vietnam was a civil war / revolution in which China and the US interfered.
Ukraine is a straightforward case of an invasion of a former Soviet country by Russia. The Russian leader has made clear his desire to conquer every other former Soviet territory.
If we believed Putin would be content to stop at Ukraine Europe would be much more relaxed. But we don’t and he won’t.
Stopping him here is critical. We should have done it in Georgia or Crimea but we were asleep on our watch.
The Communists were set on world revolution - their expansionist aims and activities even after Stalin were vastly bigger than Putin's.
Nevertheless, he is right to question the wisdom of the desperate need to continue this war without US support, when the US was the driving force behind our participation in it.
Dickriding the US wasn't the sole motivation. I am sure Johnson got swept along, basking in the reflected glory of the martial euphoria when it looked like it might be an uncomplicated victory without any politically inconvenient mangled corpses. Indeed, the sheer density and quality of the memes coming from the front in February and March 2022 gave every indication that might be the case.
The Western governments just got sucked in as it progressed, or rather didn't progress, and Z was stridently begging for the next thing that would make all the difference and break the deadlock. Leopards, then Patriot, then HIMARS, then F-16s. There was never any articulation of what victory might look like or any strategy of how they'd get there. It was just keep sending the money and weapons, hoping for a Russian collapse that never came.
Fair to say the Chinese “live fire” exercises in the Tasman have alarmed both Australia and New Zealand and both Governments are using the incident as justification to increase defence spending.
In truth, the Chinese were doing nothing wrong as they were in international waters and NZ Defence Minister Judith Collin’s admitted both Australia and New Zealand had done the same in the South China Sea but this projection of power by Beijing reminds us the new global disorder is multi-faceted.
With Beijing diplomatically very active in the Southwest Pacific currently, both Canberra and Wellington are feeling fragile given the sense Washington is no longer the ally it was and with the European powers coming to terms with the new US-Russian rapprochement and its implications.
Xi Jinping would be able to amog the shit out of Donald Trump in any conversation about real estate.
Xi's dad Xi Zhongxun was the brains behind the Special Economic Zones, including in Guangdong (see especially Shenzhen opposite Hong Kong) and Fujian (Xiamen opposite Taiwan).
See Nigel’s been slagging Britain off in America. Predictable and depressing.
Meanwhile, The Reform logo points East towards Moscow. Hiding in plain sight.
While Trump's betrayal of Ukraine is dominating things here, I haven't yet heard it discussed in the real world, not even by the Ukranian doctor that I was working with earlier in the week.
I had a business meeting with a Californian on Weds. Recent events have caused family problems with his Maga sister and got him abuse. Feels like it’s back to 2006 🤷
Obviously those living in the Putin Reform media bubble will if anything be pleased at what’s going on.
Both my brother-in -law and my oldest friend are hard core Trumpist/Putinist types. I am finding myself having to limit my visits to them because I can't bite my tongue when they go off on their deranged rants.
Interesting. I live in a bubble where people seem to compete to show their disdain for Trump. The closest I find to someone making the alternative case is on here. It instinctively makes me feel that it just can't be that simple, I suppose I am a contrarian of sorts.
So, it seems to me the case can be made that Trump/Vance are just saying more bluntly and clearly which has always been true. The US will act in their self interest. The fact we wanted to delude ourselves for many years to give us a comfort blanket was on us, not them.
I think a case can also be made that the Lawfare of the previous administration was grossly irresponsible and a dangerous precedent. Trump should have been treated the same as everyone else before the law, he should not have been prosecuted for things that others doing the same would not have been prosecuted for.
I can sort of understand why the US might regard the Ukraine as a European problem rather than theirs.
Vance may be right about the excessive regulation of the EU in things like AI and data protection (I have sympathy with pretty much anyone criticising the bureaucratic and pointless mess of GDPR, for example).
He and even Musk may be right that the blob has simply grown out of control, more interested in feeding itself than serving the country (I have expressed similar, if more restrained views about our own country). Attacking it with callipers simply won't do, a chainsaw is needed.
I'm running out of arguments at this point but does anyone have any more? What is Trump & Co right about? Someone famous (but I am terrible with names) said if you didn't understand your opponents case then you don't even understand your own, or something like that.
The US legal system has always been more politicised than ours. To accuse the previous Democrat administration of creating a precedent is a naive reading of history, for starters.
Trump was in court for various charges. With most of these, he *was* being treated as anyone else would be. If anything, the Democrat government was going slower than usual to be extra careful they had dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s. The only case where I think this accusation of lawfare has any plausibility is the Stormy Daniels payment case. Even there, I don’t find the argument that persuasive. Leaving that aside, the important point is that that case was not brought by the Biden administration, because that was a New York State case.
So, I find the argument that there was grossly irresponsible and dangerous behaviour to fail. What was unprecedented was not the legal responses to Trump but Trump’s behaviour in the first place and the willingness of the GOP to line up behind someone with such a troubled attitude to the law.
"In fact, Vance’s speech and Trump’s remarks make it clear that the US is no longer in alliance with Europe at all, but with Russia against Europe, and Europe’s liberal elites."
See Nigel’s been slagging Britain off in America. Predictable and depressing.
Meanwhile, The Reform logo points East towards Moscow. Hiding in plain sight.
While Trump's betrayal of Ukraine is dominating things here, I haven't yet heard it discussed in the real world, not even by the Ukranian doctor that I was working with earlier in the week.
I had a business meeting with a Californian on Weds. Recent events have caused family problems with his Maga sister and got him abuse. Feels like it’s back to 2006 🤷
Obviously those living in the Putin Reform media bubble will if anything be pleased at what’s going on.
Both my brother-in -law and my oldest friend are hard core Trumpist/Putinist types. I am finding myself having to limit my visits to them because I can't bite my tongue when they go off on their deranged rants.
Interesting. I live in a bubble where people seem to compete to show their disdain for Trump. The closest I find to someone making the alternative case is on here. It instinctively makes me feel that it just can't be that simple, I suppose I am a contrarian of sorts.
So, it seems to me the case can be made that Trump/Vance are just saying more bluntly and clearly which has always been true. The US will act in their self interest. The fact we wanted to delude ourselves for many years to give us a comfort blanket was on us, not them.
I think a case can also be made that the Lawfare of the previous administration was grossly irresponsible and a dangerous precedent. Trump should have been treated the same as everyone else before the law, he should not have been prosecuted for things that others doing the same would not have been prosecuted for.
I can sort of understand why the US might regard the Ukraine as a European problem rather than theirs.
Vance may be right about the excessive regulation of the EU in things like AI and data protection (I have sympathy with pretty much anyone criticising the bureaucratic and pointless mess of GDPR, for example).
He and even Musk may be right that the blob has simply grown out of control, more interested in feeding itself than serving the country (I have expressed similar, if more restrained views about our own country). Attacking it with callipers simply won't do, a chainsaw is needed.
I'm running out of arguments at this point but does anyone have any more? What is Trump & Co right about? Someone famous (but I am terrible with names) said if you didn't understand your opponents case then you don't even understand your own, or something like that.
I go along with this to some extent. However proportionality needs to apply. If Trump wants to undo NATO then this should be done in a way and timescale that allows and compels consideration of Europe and Canada's way forward.
Yes, I agree Europe has been at fault too.
Trump's approach makes good sense if, and only if, you decide that the world is and should be self interested well armed mercantileist power blocs with no particular interest in rights, democracy or the prosperity of others. The blocs are: Americas, Russia and the east, China, India, Rest of the West.
However, one word shows Trump's world is more complex: Israel.
I think the war itself is indefensible, and a very black mark on Putin's record. That said, the case for arming Ukraine indefinitely rests on either (1) believing that if Ukraine is seen to have lost then other Russian incursions will follow or (2) that there is no civilised alternative. The problem is that huge numbers of lives are being lost for what has become essentially a border war, and we aren't offering any alternative except for Russia saying sorry, we'll stop and pay damages. That's a formula for the war continuing for years, quite possibly ending with a Ukrainian defeat.
I've very little time for Trump, but the effort to see if there's a basis for a settlement seems worthwhile. If the condition is substantial border defences for the remaining 80% of Ukraine and other countries thought to be at risk, fine, and if it costs more money, we should be prepared to pay it. However, the principle that no boundaries can ever be changed, regardless of the wishes of the current population, and it's worth any number of casualities and indefinite war to prevent it, seems to me wrong.
Yes, one can argue that when the original population of the easstern provinces was asked, a (relatively slender) majority said they wanted to stay with Ukraine. That's a reasonable consideration, but not the only one. And the question "what would you do?" seems to me a reasonable one, to which the response "support the war continuing indefinitely" is unsatisfactory.
I hesitate to write this, as it generates hostility at a personal level which I can do without, given my lack of influence over the outcome. But you asked...
That's the most reasonable version of your position you've so far expressed, Nick. I don't agree with you on it, but I'm not going to criticise you for holding it.
See Nigel’s been slagging Britain off in America. Predictable and depressing.
Meanwhile, The Reform logo points East towards Moscow. Hiding in plain sight.
While Trump's betrayal of Ukraine is dominating things here, I haven't yet heard it discussed in the real world, not even by the Ukranian doctor that I was working with earlier in the week.
I had a business meeting with a Californian on Weds. Recent events have caused family problems with his Maga sister and got him abuse. Feels like it’s back to 2006 🤷
Obviously those living in the Putin Reform media bubble will if anything be pleased at what’s going on.
Both my brother-in -law and my oldest friend are hard core Trumpist/Putinist types. I am finding myself having to limit my visits to them because I can't bite my tongue when they go off on their deranged rants.
Interesting. I live in a bubble where people seem to compete to show their disdain for Trump. The closest I find to someone making the alternative case is on here. It instinctively makes me feel that it just can't be that simple, I suppose I am a contrarian of sorts.
So, it seems to me the case can be made that Trump/Vance are just saying more bluntly and clearly which has always been true. The US will act in their self interest. The fact we wanted to delude ourselves for many years to give us a comfort blanket was on us, not them.
I think a case can also be made that the Lawfare of the previous administration was grossly irresponsible and a dangerous precedent. Trump should have been treated the same as everyone else before the law, he should not have been prosecuted for things that others doing the same would not have been prosecuted for.
I can sort of understand why the US might regard the Ukraine as a European problem rather than theirs.
Vance may be right about the excessive regulation of the EU in things like AI and data protection (I have sympathy with pretty much anyone criticising the bureaucratic and pointless mess of GDPR, for example).
He and even Musk may be right that the blob has simply grown out of control, more interested in feeding itself than serving the country (I have expressed similar, if more restrained views about our own country). Attacking it with callipers simply won't do, a chainsaw is needed.
I'm running out of arguments at this point but does anyone have any more? What is Trump & Co right about? Someone famous (but I am terrible with names) said if you didn't understand your opponents case then you don't even understand your own, or something like that.
I go along with this to some extent. However proportionality needs to apply. If Trump wants to undo NATO then this should be done in a way and timescale that allows and compels consideration of Europe and Canada's way forward.
Yes, I agree Europe has been at fault too.
Trump's approach makes good sense if, and only if, you decide that the world is and should be self interested well armed mercantileist power blocs with no particular interest in rights, democracy or the prosperity of others. The blocs are: Americas, Russia and the east, China, India, Rest of the West.
However, one word shows Trump's world is more complex: Israel.
I think the war itself is indefensible, and a very black mark on Putin's record. That said, the case for arming Ukraine indefinitely rests on either (1) believing that if Ukraine is seen to have lost then other Russian incursions will follow or (2) that there is no civilised alternative. The problem is that huge numbers of lives are being lost for what has become essentially a border war, and we aren't offering any alternative except for Russia saying sorry, we'll stop and pay damages. That's a formula for the war continuing for years, quite possibly ending with a Ukrainian defeat.
I've very little time for Trump, but the effort to see if there's a basis for a settlement seems worthwhile. If the condition is substantial border defences for the remaining 80% of Ukraine and other countries thought to be at risk, fine, and if it costs more money, we should be prepared to pay it. However, the principle that no boundaries can ever be changed, regardless of the wishes of the current population, and it's worth any number of casualities and indefinite war to prevent it, seems to me wrong.
Yes, one can argue that when the original population of the easstern provinces was asked, a (relatively slender) majority said they wanted to stay with Ukraine. That's a reasonable consideration, but not the only one. And the question "what would you do?" seems to me a reasonable one, to which the response "support the war continuing indefinitely" is unsatisfactory.
I hesitate to write this, as it generates hostility at a personal level which I can do without, given my lack of influence over the outcome. But you asked...
1 and 2 are clearly both true. The problem with calling it a border war is that Russia has already denied Ukraine's right to exist, and is carrying out genocide in the occupied areas. Russia is already forced to use donkeys to supply the front line. My preferred route to peace would be for sanctions sufficient to destroy the Russian economy while the Ukrainians continue to kill Russian soldiers and bomb oil refineries. Russians actions in Ukraine ate, in my view, so reprehensible that the only just end to the war should be the destruction of the Russian state. (Unfortunately I can't see that happening)
A just end like that was never likely, but there are too many people equivocating that essentially because a deal will be done at some point, like most wars, therefore any deal is inherently similar to any other deal. If the underlying causes, which is Russian acquisitiveness, are not addressed, certain deals do not resolve the issue. Unfortunately the people running the show just want any deal.
Nice try SBF, but if Trump has any sense he will let you rot.
SBF has a new interview out, conducted from prison. It is... unbelievable, at points.
Highlights include:
* Strong direct statement of his innocence. * Accusing prosecution and judge of policitized process, analogising to experience of President Trump, apparent maneuvering to secure clemancy. * Implied rationale for prosecution: his donations to Republicans. https://nitter.poast.org/patio11/status/1893039869737185300#m
I absorbed a lot of content before and during the trial, including his defence arguments, and SBF is genuinely a very nasty piece of work, and his attempts to pin the blame on others were absurd. From his epic attempst to portray himself as merely unbelievably stupid as a businessman despite years spending money to present himself as a humble genius even as he splurged on luxury property etc, to his utter amnesia about the countless things he said in public and on video due to arrogance (and which limited his defence options at trial), he is a very bad guy who deserves the 20 years he got.
He'll probably be out in a few.
I don't think many politicians want him out, between him and his FBX employees they bankrolled so many politicians campaigns, which they managed to shut down any real investigation into. He also has very powerful and connected parents. So whole world of trouble if he is out.
See Nigel’s been slagging Britain off in America. Predictable and depressing.
Meanwhile, The Reform logo points East towards Moscow. Hiding in plain sight.
While Trump's betrayal of Ukraine is dominating things here, I haven't yet heard it discussed in the real world, not even by the Ukranian doctor that I was working with earlier in the week.
I had a business meeting with a Californian on Weds. Recent events have caused family problems with his Maga sister and got him abuse. Feels like it’s back to 2006 🤷
Obviously those living in the Putin Reform media bubble will if anything be pleased at what’s going on.
Both my brother-in -law and my oldest friend are hard core Trumpist/Putinist types. I am finding myself having to limit my visits to them because I can't bite my tongue when they go off on their deranged rants.
Interesting. I live in a bubble where people seem to compete to show their disdain for Trump. The closest I find to someone making the alternative case is on here. It instinctively makes me feel that it just can't be that simple, I suppose I am a contrarian of sorts.
So, it seems to me the case can be made that Trump/Vance are just saying more bluntly and clearly which has always been true. The US will act in their self interest. The fact we wanted to delude ourselves for many years to give us a comfort blanket was on us, not them.
I think a case can also be made that the Lawfare of the previous administration was grossly irresponsible and a dangerous precedent. Trump should have been treated the same as everyone else before the law, he should not have been prosecuted for things that others doing the same would not have been prosecuted for.
I can sort of understand why the US might regard the Ukraine as a European problem rather than theirs.
Vance may be right about the excessive regulation of the EU in things like AI and data protection (I have sympathy with pretty much anyone criticising the bureaucratic and pointless mess of GDPR, for example).
He and even Musk may be right that the blob has simply grown out of control, more interested in feeding itself than serving the country (I have expressed similar, if more restrained views about our own country). Attacking it with callipers simply won't do, a chainsaw is needed.
I'm running out of arguments at this point but does anyone have any more? What is Trump & Co right about? Someone famous (but I am terrible with names) said if you didn't understand your opponents case then you don't even understand your own, or something like that.
I go along with this to some extent. However proportionality needs to apply. If Trump wants to undo NATO then this should be done in a way and timescale that allows and compels consideration of Europe and Canada's way forward.
Yes, I agree Europe has been at fault too.
Trump's approach makes good sense if, and only if, you decide that the world is and should be self interested well armed mercantileist power blocs with no particular interest in rights, democracy or the prosperity of others. The blocs are: Americas, Russia and the east, China, India, Rest of the West.
However, one word shows Trump's world is more complex: Israel.
Not sure why "Americas" is necessarily a bloc. South America's biggest trading partner is China, and South American countries may well feel Chinese influence is less malign than the US
With all the talk of what percentage of GDP should be spent on defence why not extend that to welfare and pensions.
Set a maximum for what the country can afford to give to non-workers and then if the number of claimants increase the amount individuals receive is proportionally reduced.
In would certainly help reduce this sort of madness:
Half of claims for Britain’s main benefit will be for poor health by the end of the parliamentary term, with the cost of payments for sickness topping £100 billion a year for the first time.
A post-Covid surge in claims will become permanent as Britain’s health declines, with costs now on course to double on pre-pandemic levels, the spending watchdog has warned.
The soaring cost of ill health benefits is a key reason why Britain is paying more tax without getting better public services, according to experts who have urged the government to get a grip on the problem.
See Nigel’s been slagging Britain off in America. Predictable and depressing.
Meanwhile, The Reform logo points East towards Moscow. Hiding in plain sight.
While Trump's betrayal of Ukraine is dominating things here, I haven't yet heard it discussed in the real world, not even by the Ukranian doctor that I was working with earlier in the week.
I had a business meeting with a Californian on Weds. Recent events have caused family problems with his Maga sister and got him abuse. Feels like it’s back to 2006 🤷
Obviously those living in the Putin Reform media bubble will if anything be pleased at what’s going on.
Both my brother-in -law and my oldest friend are hard core Trumpist/Putinist types. I am finding myself having to limit my visits to them because I can't bite my tongue when they go off on their deranged rants.
Interesting. I live in a bubble where people seem to compete to show their disdain for Trump. The closest I find to someone making the alternative case is on here. It instinctively makes me feel that it just can't be that simple, I suppose I am a contrarian of sorts.
So, it seems to me the case can be made that Trump/Vance are just saying more bluntly and clearly which has always been true. The US will act in their self interest. The fact we wanted to delude ourselves for many years to give us a comfort blanket was on us, not them.
I think a case can also be made that the Lawfare of the previous administration was grossly irresponsible and a dangerous precedent. Trump should have been treated the same as everyone else before the law, he should not have been prosecuted for things that others doing the same would not have been prosecuted for.
I can sort of understand why the US might regard the Ukraine as a European problem rather than theirs.
Vance may be right about the excessive regulation of the EU in things like AI and data protection (I have sympathy with pretty much anyone criticising the bureaucratic and pointless mess of GDPR, for example).
He and even Musk may be right that the blob has simply grown out of control, more interested in feeding itself than serving the country (I have expressed similar, if more restrained views about our own country). Attacking it with callipers simply won't do, a chainsaw is needed.
I'm running out of arguments at this point but does anyone have any more? What is Trump & Co right about? Someone famous (but I am terrible with names) said if you didn't understand your opponents case then you don't even understand your own, or something like that.
I go along with this to some extent. However proportionality needs to apply. If Trump wants to undo NATO then this should be done in a way and timescale that allows and compels consideration of Europe and Canada's way forward.
Yes, I agree Europe has been at fault too.
Trump's approach makes good sense if, and only if, you decide that the world is and should be self interested well armed mercantileist power blocs with no particular interest in rights, democracy or the prosperity of others. The blocs are: Americas, Russia and the east, China, India, Rest of the West.
However, one word shows Trump's world is more complex: Israel.
I think the war itself is indefensible, and a very black mark on Putin's record. That said, the case for arming Ukraine indefinitely rests on either (1) believing that if Ukraine is seen to have lost then other Russian incursions will follow or (2) that there is no civilised alternative. The problem is that huge numbers of lives are being lost for what has become essentially a border war, and we aren't offering any alternative except for Russia saying sorry, we'll stop and pay damages. That's a formula for the war continuing for years, quite possibly ending with a Ukrainian defeat.
I've very little time for Trump, but the effort to see if there's a basis for a settlement seems worthwhile. If the condition is substantial border defences for the remaining 80% of Ukraine and other countries thought to be at risk, fine, and if it costs more money, we should be prepared to pay it. However, the principle that no boundaries can ever be changed, regardless of the wishes of the current population, and it's worth any number of casualities and indefinite war to prevent it, seems to me wrong.
Yes, one can argue that when the original population of the easstern provinces was asked, a (relatively slender) majority said they wanted to stay with Ukraine. That's a reasonable consideration, but not the only one. And the question "what would you do?" seems to me a reasonable one, to which the response "support the war continuing indefinitely" is unsatisfactory.
I hesitate to write this, as it generates hostility at a personal level which I can do without, given my lack of influence over the outcome. But you asked...
That's the most reasonable version of your position you've so far expressed, Nick. I don't agree with you on it, but I'm not going to criticise you for holding it.
I would, but at least it's not holier than thou or logically totally incoherent.
See Nigel’s been slagging Britain off in America. Predictable and depressing.
Meanwhile, The Reform logo points East towards Moscow. Hiding in plain sight.
While Trump's betrayal of Ukraine is dominating things here, I haven't yet heard it discussed in the real world, not even by the Ukranian doctor that I was working with earlier in the week.
I had a business meeting with a Californian on Weds. Recent events have caused family problems with his Maga sister and got him abuse. Feels like it’s back to 2006 🤷
Obviously those living in the Putin Reform media bubble will if anything be pleased at what’s going on.
Both my brother-in -law and my oldest friend are hard core Trumpist/Putinist types. I am finding myself having to limit my visits to them because I can't bite my tongue when they go off on their deranged rants.
Interesting. I live in a bubble where people seem to compete to show their disdain for Trump. The closest I find to someone making the alternative case is on here. It instinctively makes me feel that it just can't be that simple, I suppose I am a contrarian of sorts.
So, it seems to me the case can be made that Trump/Vance are just saying more bluntly and clearly which has always been true. The US will act in their self interest. The fact we wanted to delude ourselves for many years to give us a comfort blanket was on us, not them.
I think a case can also be made that the Lawfare of the previous administration was grossly irresponsible and a dangerous precedent. Trump should have been treated the same as everyone else before the law, he should not have been prosecuted for things that others doing the same would not have been prosecuted for.
I can sort of understand why the US might regard the Ukraine as a European problem rather than theirs.
Vance may be right about the excessive regulation of the EU in things like AI and data protection (I have sympathy with pretty much anyone criticising the bureaucratic and pointless mess of GDPR, for example).
He and even Musk may be right that the blob has simply grown out of control, more interested in feeding itself than serving the country (I have expressed similar, if more restrained views about our own country). Attacking it with callipers simply won't do, a chainsaw is needed.
I'm running out of arguments at this point but does anyone have any more? What is Trump & Co right about? Someone famous (but I am terrible with names) said if you didn't understand your opponents case then you don't even understand your own, or something like that.
I go along with this to some extent. However proportionality needs to apply. If Trump wants to undo NATO then this should be done in a way and timescale that allows and compels consideration of Europe and Canada's way forward.
Yes, I agree Europe has been at fault too.
Trump's approach makes good sense if, and only if, you decide that the world is and should be self interested well armed mercantileist power blocs with no particular interest in rights, democracy or the prosperity of others. The blocs are: Americas, Russia and the east, China, India, Rest of the West.
However, one word shows Trump's world is more complex: Israel.
I think the war itself is indefensible, and a very black mark on Putin's record. That said, the case for arming Ukraine indefinitely rests on either (1) believing that if Ukraine is seen to have lost then other Russian incursions will follow or (2) that there is no civilised alternative. The problem is that huge numbers of lives are being lost for what has become essentially a border war, and we aren't offering any alternative except for Russia saying sorry, we'll stop and pay damages. That's a formula for the war continuing for years, quite possibly ending with a Ukrainian defeat.
I've very little time for Trump, but the effort to see if there's a basis for a settlement seems worthwhile. If the condition is substantial border defences for the remaining 80% of Ukraine and other countries thought to be at risk, fine, and if it costs more money, we should be prepared to pay it. However, the principle that no boundaries can ever be changed, regardless of the wishes of the current population, and it's worth any number of casualities and indefinite war to prevent it, seems to me wrong.
Yes, one can argue that when the original population of the easstern provinces was asked, a (relatively slender) majority said they wanted to stay with Ukraine. That's a reasonable consideration, but not the only one. And the question "what would you do?" seems to me a reasonable one, to which the response "support the war continuing indefinitely" is unsatisfactory.
I hesitate to write this, as it generates hostility at a personal level which I can do without, given my lack of influence over the outcome. But you asked...
However, the principle that no boundaries can ever be changed, regardless of the wishes of the current population
Nick, if I can use technical terminology:
That’s an immoral and incredibly fucking dangerous position to take.
It creates an incentive for invasion followed by ethnic cleansing.
Nevertheless, he is right to question the wisdom of the desperate need to continue this war without US support, when the US was the driving force behind our participation in it.
Dickriding the US wasn't the sole motivation. I am sure Johnson got swept along, basking in the reflected glory of the martial euphoria when it looked like it might be an uncomplicated victory without any politically inconvenient mangled corpses. Indeed, the sheer density and quality of the memes coming from the front in February and March 2022 gave every indication that might be the case.
The Western governments just got sucked in as it progressed, or rather didn't progress, and Z was stridently begging for the next thing that would make all the difference and break the deadlock. Leopards, then Patriot, then HIMARS, then F-16s. There was never any articulation of what victory might look like or any strategy of how they'd get there. It was just keep sending the money and weapons, hoping for a Russian collapse that never came.
Yet, viewed very cold-bloodedly, Western aid to Ukraine has cost Russia about 10,000 armoured vehicles, 800,000 casualties, destroyed its best military units, and exacerbated its already severe demographic problems.
If Ukraine is going to give over a big chunk of the wealth under its land, it ideally wants most of the following included:
1. the right to continue to claim the lands stolen by Russia as Ukrainian; 2. A commitment by America not to block any other nations keeping sanctions on Russia whilst ever it retains those lands; 3. A commiment by America not to sell Russia any goods related to mineral extraction/mining products that could be used in those lands; 4. The retained freeze by the US on Russian assets whilst ever it retains those lands; 5. A Production Sharing Agreement on the minerals, whereby Ukraine gets not less than a third of all production (to rebuild Ukraine); 6. An extensive number of Patriot batteries (and a minimum stock of x missiles retained for those batteries) to be provided for the next 20 years - to protect the American investment in the mineral from future grabs by Russia; 7. A twenty 20 mile buffer between Ukrainian and Russian held land, with the most intense minefields on the planet. The mines to be provided by the US. 8. Russia's Kursk lands held by Ukraine to be traded for the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and a wide buffer zone contiguous to currently held Ukrainian lands, with the return of all Ukrainian plant staff 9. The UN to oversee the return to Ukraine of all children stolen by Russia; 10. No amnesty for any war crimes committed by Russians. 11. No veto by the US on Ukraine membership of the EU/any trade organisation.
Until these terms are resolved, Ukraine to be free to destroy Russian hydrocarbon facilities.
My WhatsApp has two groups of friends which is basically wall to wall Vance/Trump chat, like it is here.
But, similar demographic: male, middle-aged, highly educated, politically interested etc.
I am quite literally bored. I only need to say they're twats about 8 times, not 93,456 times a day.
We have a blanket no politics chat rule unless it's a really funny meme like the Liz Truss lettuce or during election time. It's just completely grating as my friends group is fairly evenly split between left/right so it just leads to major disagreements over things none of us can fundamentally change.
"In fact, Vance’s speech and Trump’s remarks make it clear that the US is no longer in alliance with Europe at all, but with Russia against Europe, and Europe’s liberal elites."
Andrew Sullivan's weekly email.
Hard to argue with based on how they've been treating everyone. There's such burning anger in them, they explode at the merest slight (or imagined slight), so it isn't simply taking a radically different view of priorities either, it gets very personal.
See Nigel’s been slagging Britain off in America. Predictable and depressing.
Meanwhile, The Reform logo points East towards Moscow. Hiding in plain sight.
While Trump's betrayal of Ukraine is dominating things here, I haven't yet heard it discussed in the real world, not even by the Ukranian doctor that I was working with earlier in the week.
I had a business meeting with a Californian on Weds. Recent events have caused family problems with his Maga sister and got him abuse. Feels like it’s back to 2006 🤷
Obviously those living in the Putin Reform media bubble will if anything be pleased at what’s going on.
Both my brother-in -law and my oldest friend are hard core Trumpist/Putinist types. I am finding myself having to limit my visits to them because I can't bite my tongue when they go off on their deranged rants.
Interesting. I live in a bubble where people seem to compete to show their disdain for Trump. The closest I find to someone making the alternative case is on here. It instinctively makes me feel that it just can't be that simple, I suppose I am a contrarian of sorts.
So, it seems to me the case can be made that Trump/Vance are just saying more bluntly and clearly which has always been true. The US will act in their self interest. The fact we wanted to delude ourselves for many years to give us a comfort blanket was on us, not them.
I think a case can also be made that the Lawfare of the previous administration was grossly irresponsible and a dangerous precedent. Trump should have been treated the same as everyone else before the law, he should not have been prosecuted for things that others doing the same would not have been prosecuted for.
I can sort of understand why the US might regard the Ukraine as a European problem rather than theirs.
Vance may be right about the excessive regulation of the EU in things like AI and data protection (I have sympathy with pretty much anyone criticising the bureaucratic and pointless mess of GDPR, for example).
He and even Musk may be right that the blob has simply grown out of control, more interested in feeding itself than serving the country (I have expressed similar, if more restrained views about our own country). Attacking it with callipers simply won't do, a chainsaw is needed.
I'm running out of arguments at this point but does anyone have any more? What is Trump & Co right about? Someone famous (but I am terrible with names) said if you didn't understand your opponents case then you don't even understand your own, or something like that.
The most stupid thing about the lawfare against Trump was that it was for the small stuff.
He should have been prosecuted for the Jan 6th stuff. Taking more than 4 years to get a case to court, when the crime was committed on live TV, is moronic. The Process Stare need for 1 million pieces of paper is bullshit - a couple of the most serious charges, collect the evidence, keep it simple
It’s hard to do things as a prosecutor when the Supreme Court of your country is working against you, dragging out proceedings.
"I don't remember anyone saying when the Americans pulled out of Vietnam - let's send lots of British troops to replace them"
Fundamentally they are different
Vietnam was a civil war / revolution in which China and the US interfered.
Ukraine is a straightforward case of an invasion of a former Soviet country by Russia. The Russian leader has made clear his desire to conquer every other former Soviet territory.
If we believed Putin would be content to stop at Ukraine Europe would be much more relaxed. But we don’t and he won’t.
Stopping him here is critical. We should have done it in Georgia or Crimea but we were asleep on our watch.
The Communists were set on world revolution - their expansionist aims and activities even after Stalin were vastly bigger than Putin's.
And of course NATO was formed to contain Stalin too, Vietnam though was not even on the same continent as we were unlike Ukraine
Hitchens argument is bizarre. However much noise he creates, he will never match his brother.
What is bizarre about it?
Surprised you can’t see that. To get started Ukraine is about 2hrs from London and was invaded by Russia. Its leader is repeatedly directly antagonistic to the U.K. and our allies. The Americans are not in Ukraine and neither are we.
But Russia's capability of a conventional invasion of London (which is zero), is the substantive point, not the distance as the crow flies.
I am also not sure we can make much of Putin's antagonism toward the UK, when we have adopted an antagonistic stance toward them.
Of course the comparison with Vietnam isn't direct, no comparison ever could be. But it is a good illustration of the silliness of the current argument.
He's very critical of Russia and rather sympathetic to Zelensky in the interview, but his bottom line is (as mine is) what is the UK's interest in Ukraine?
The same as our interest in Belgium when fascists invaded.
It is in our own self interest that Putin loses, badly, and is seen to lose on the World stage.
I think you're confusing your World Wars.
Yes WW2 was the one where Poland started it by provoking Germany.
See Nigel’s been slagging Britain off in America. Predictable and depressing.
Meanwhile, The Reform logo points East towards Moscow. Hiding in plain sight.
While Trump's betrayal of Ukraine is dominating things here, I haven't yet heard it discussed in the real world, not even by the Ukranian doctor that I was working with earlier in the week.
I had a business meeting with a Californian on Weds. Recent events have caused family problems with his Maga sister and got him abuse. Feels like it’s back to 2006 🤷
Obviously those living in the Putin Reform media bubble will if anything be pleased at what’s going on.
Both my brother-in -law and my oldest friend are hard core Trumpist/Putinist types. I am finding myself having to limit my visits to them because I can't bite my tongue when they go off on their deranged rants.
Interesting. I live in a bubble where people seem to compete to show their disdain for Trump. The closest I find to someone making the alternative case is on here. It instinctively makes me feel that it just can't be that simple, I suppose I am a contrarian of sorts.
So, it seems to me the case can be made that Trump/Vance are just saying more bluntly and clearly which has always been true. The US will act in their self interest. The fact we wanted to delude ourselves for many years to give us a comfort blanket was on us, not them.
I think a case can also be made that the Lawfare of the previous administration was grossly irresponsible and a dangerous precedent. Trump should have been treated the same as everyone else before the law, he should not have been prosecuted for things that others doing the same would not have been prosecuted for.
I can sort of understand why the US might regard the Ukraine as a European problem rather than theirs.
Vance may be right about the excessive regulation of the EU in things like AI and data protection (I have sympathy with pretty much anyone criticising the bureaucratic and pointless mess of GDPR, for example).
He and even Musk may be right that the blob has simply grown out of control, more interested in feeding itself than serving the country (I have expressed similar, if more restrained views about our own country). Attacking it with callipers simply won't do, a chainsaw is needed.
I'm running out of arguments at this point but does anyone have any more? What is Trump & Co right about? Someone famous (but I am terrible with names) said if you didn't understand your opponents case then you don't even understand your own, or something like that.
I go along with this to some extent. However proportionality needs to apply. If Trump wants to undo NATO then this should be done in a way and timescale that allows and compels consideration of Europe and Canada's way forward.
Yes, I agree Europe has been at fault too.
Trump's approach makes good sense if, and only if, you decide that the world is and should be self interested well armed mercantileist power blocs with no particular interest in rights, democracy or the prosperity of others. The blocs are: Americas, Russia and the east, China, India, Rest of the West.
However, one word shows Trump's world is more complex: Israel.
I think the war itself is indefensible, and a very black mark on Putin's record. That said, the case for arming Ukraine indefinitely rests on either (1) believing that if Ukraine is seen to have lost then other Russian incursions will follow or (2) that there is no civilised alternative. The problem is that huge numbers of lives are being lost for what has become essentially a border war, and we aren't offering any alternative except for Russia saying sorry, we'll stop and pay damages. That's a formula for the war continuing for years, quite possibly ending with a Ukrainian defeat.
I've very little time for Trump, but the effort to see if there's a basis for a settlement seems worthwhile. If the condition is substantial border defences for the remaining 80% of Ukraine and other countries thought to be at risk, fine, and if it costs more money, we should be prepared to pay it. However, the principle that no boundaries can ever be changed, regardless of the wishes of the current population, and it's worth any number of casualities and indefinite war to prevent it, seems to me wrong.
Yes, one can argue that when the original population of the easstern provinces was asked, a (relatively slender) majority said they wanted to stay with Ukraine. That's a reasonable consideration, but not the only one. And the question "what would you do?" seems to me a reasonable one, to which the response "support the war continuing indefinitely" is unsatisfactory.
I hesitate to write this, as it generates hostility at a personal level which I can do without, given my lack of influence over the outcome. But you asked...
This is a lot more than a 'border war'. Calling it that reduces the war's impact, downplays Putin's ambitions for the region, and somewhat excuses what has happened.
We are facing an expansionist, imperialist and fascist Russia. We can either stop its expansion now, or do so later at a much greater cost. Unless you would quite like to live under an expansionist, imperialist and fascist state. If you do not, then why should others be subjected to it?
"Yes, one can argue that when the original population of the easstern provinces was asked, a (relatively slender) majority said they wanted to stay with Ukraine."
Nick P: "the effort to see if there's a basis for a settlement seems worthwhile."
I'm sorry are we viewing the same news? Trump has opened negotiations on a "settlement" on the basis that Putin can have pretty much every thing he wants.
"In fact, Vance’s speech and Trump’s remarks make it clear that the US is no longer in alliance with Europe at all, but with Russia against Europe, and Europe’s liberal elites."
Nazi salutes are getting normalised in the US now. I wonder if we'll get to a stage where not doing one sees you either primaried or losing your federal contract?
It's like we're living in the flashbacks of a zombie film, where you see the first news reports of mysterious new disease.
And then the feckers try to gaslight the world by saying that it wasn't a Nazi salute.
A good slice of this board thinks posters are being hysterical when they point out that politicians who support the AfD, Putin, use Nazi language and make Nazi salutes might err, be a bit Nazi.
It’s not a particularly helpful term - because it immediately makes people think about toothbrush-moustaches and German dictators.
It’s the same with “fascist”. The left abused the terms for so long to try and demonise their moderate opponents that they no longer have the power to shock.
I thought the right were all for plain speaking. If they are nazis call them nazis?
They are not. “Nazi” is a specific term relating to a German political party. As a generic term it has little value.
The right - and to be clear this is not defence of them - laugh it off and just claim that it’s “libtards” being hyperbolic again.
These guys are dangerous and need to be stopped. Using an inappropriate word doesn’t serve that objective
"I don't remember anyone saying when the Americans pulled out of Vietnam - let's send lots of British troops to replace them"
Fundamentally they are different
Vietnam was a civil war / revolution in which China and the US interfered.
Ukraine is a straightforward case of an invasion of a former Soviet country by Russia. The Russian leader has made clear his desire to conquer every other former Soviet territory.
If we believed Putin would be content to stop at Ukraine Europe would be much more relaxed. But we don’t and he won’t.
Stopping him here is critical. We should have done it in Georgia or Crimea but we were asleep on our watch.
The Communists were set on world revolution - their expansionist aims and activities even after Stalin were vastly bigger than Putin's.
And of course NATO was formed to contain Stalin too, Vietnam though was not even on the same continent as we were unlike Ukraine
Though unlike the Septics or Frogs, we actually won when we invaded Vietnam. In a matter of months too.
Nazi salutes are getting normalised in the US now. I wonder if we'll get to a stage where not doing one sees you either primaried or losing your federal contract?
It's like we're living in the flashbacks of a zombie film, where you see the first news reports of mysterious new disease.
And then the feckers try to gaslight the world by saying that it wasn't a Nazi salute.
A good slice of this board thinks posters are being hysterical when they point out that politicians who support the AfD, Putin, use Nazi language and make Nazi salutes might err, be a bit Nazi.
It’s not a particularly helpful term - because it immediately makes people think about toothbrush-moustaches and German dictators.
It’s the same with “fascist”. The left abused the terms for so long to try and demonise their moderate opponents that they no longer have the power to shock.
Thank goodness we have the right’s measured use of commie, Trot and Stalinist as an example of restraint.
See Nigel’s been slagging Britain off in America. Predictable and depressing.
Meanwhile, The Reform logo points East towards Moscow. Hiding in plain sight.
While Trump's betrayal of Ukraine is dominating things here, I haven't yet heard it discussed in the real world, not even by the Ukranian doctor that I was working with earlier in the week.
I had a business meeting with a Californian on Weds. Recent events have caused family problems with his Maga sister and got him abuse. Feels like it’s back to 2006 🤷
Obviously those living in the Putin Reform media bubble will if anything be pleased at what’s going on.
Both my brother-in -law and my oldest friend are hard core Trumpist/Putinist types. I am finding myself having to limit my visits to them because I can't bite my tongue when they go off on their deranged rants.
Interesting. I live in a bubble where people seem to compete to show their disdain for Trump. The closest I find to someone making the alternative case is on here. It instinctively makes me feel that it just can't be that simple, I suppose I am a contrarian of sorts.
So, it seems to me the case can be made that Trump/Vance are just saying more bluntly and clearly which has always been true. The US will act in their self interest. The fact we wanted to delude ourselves for many years to give us a comfort blanket was on us, not them.
I think a case can also be made that the Lawfare of the previous administration was grossly irresponsible and a dangerous precedent. Trump should have been treated the same as everyone else before the law, he should not have been prosecuted for things that others doing the same would not have been prosecuted for.
I can sort of understand why the US might regard the Ukraine as a European problem rather than theirs.
Vance may be right about the excessive regulation of the EU in things like AI and data protection (I have sympathy with pretty much anyone criticising the bureaucratic and pointless mess of GDPR, for example).
He and even Musk may be right that the blob has simply grown out of control, more interested in feeding itself than serving the country (I have expressed similar, if more restrained views about our own country). Attacking it with callipers simply won't do, a chainsaw is needed.
I'm running out of arguments at this point but does anyone have any more? What is Trump & Co right about? Someone famous (but I am terrible with names) said if you didn't understand your opponents case then you don't even understand your own, or something like that.
I go along with this to some extent. However proportionality needs to apply. If Trump wants to undo NATO then this should be done in a way and timescale that allows and compels consideration of Europe and Canada's way forward.
Yes, I agree Europe has been at fault too.
Trump's approach makes good sense if, and only if, you decide that the world is and should be self interested well armed mercantileist power blocs with no particular interest in rights, democracy or the prosperity of others. The blocs are: Americas, Russia and the east, China, India, Rest of the West.
However, one word shows Trump's world is more complex: Israel.
I think the war itself is indefensible, and a very black mark on Putin's record. That said, the case for arming Ukraine indefinitely rests on either (1) believing that if Ukraine is seen to have lost then other Russian incursions will follow or (2) that there is no civilised alternative. The problem is that huge numbers of lives are being lost for what has become essentially a border war, and we aren't offering any alternative except for Russia saying sorry, we'll stop and pay damages. That's a formula for the war continuing for years, quite possibly ending with a Ukrainian defeat.
I've very little time for Trump, but the effort to see if there's a basis for a settlement seems worthwhile. If the condition is substantial border defences for the remaining 80% of Ukraine and other countries thought to be at risk, fine, and if it costs more money, we should be prepared to pay it. However, the principle that no boundaries can ever be changed, regardless of the wishes of the current population, and it's worth any number of casualities and indefinite war to prevent it, seems to me wrong.
Yes, one can argue that when the original population of the easstern provinces was asked, a (relatively slender) majority said they wanted to stay with Ukraine. That's a reasonable consideration, but not the only one. And the question "what would you do?" seems to me a reasonable one, to which the response "support the war continuing indefinitely" is unsatisfactory.
I hesitate to write this, as it generates hostility at a personal level which I can do without, given my lack of influence over the outcome. But you asked...
This is a lot more than a 'border war'. Calling it that reduces the war's impact, downplays Putin's ambitions for the region, and somewhat excuses what has happened.
We are facing an expansionist, imperialist and fascist Russia. We can either stop its expansion now, or do so later at a much greater cost. Unless you would quite like to live under an expansionist, imperialist and fascist state. If you do not, then why should others be subjected to it?
"Yes, one can argue that when the original population of the easstern provinces was asked, a (relatively slender) majority said they wanted to stay with Ukraine."
Also, do we think a world in which powerful nations get back into the habit of raw border conquest without consequence is a good thing?
We cannot do anything about it now, but the West was at least learning that ignoring 'border wars' from Russia earlier did not help in the long run. Now that it's too late to do anything as the USA are pulling support we are seeing mental contortions to try to justify to ourselves that, actually, it is sad but not a big deal, by using terms like border wars.
It's rather obviously a way of unlearning the lesson from 2022 and probably a way of making us feel better by acting as though the outcome were inevitable and thus no-one's fault really.
I'm not sure if we'd have gotten to this point precisely anyway, the West was getting tired of it and Ukraine was not advancing, but I think there's been a sudden shift in the way we are trying to excuse doing nothing substantive. And maybe the options to do something substantive are more than we or the public would bear, but they were choices.
Nevertheless, he is right to question the wisdom of the desperate need to continue this war without US support, when the US was the driving force behind our participation in it.
Dickriding the US wasn't the sole motivation. I am sure Johnson got swept along, basking in the reflected glory of the martial euphoria when it looked like it might be an uncomplicated victory without any politically inconvenient mangled corpses. Indeed, the sheer density and quality of the memes coming from the front in February and March 2022 gave every indication that might be the case.
The Western governments just got sucked in as it progressed, or rather didn't progress, and Z was stridently begging for the next thing that would make all the difference and break the deadlock. Leopards, then Patriot, then HIMARS, then F-16s. There was never any articulation of what victory might look like or any strategy of how they'd get there. It was just keep sending the money and weapons, hoping for a Russian collapse that never came.
Yet, viewed very cold-bloodedly, Western aid to Ukraine has cost Russia about 10,000 armoured vehicles, 800,000 casualties, destroyed its best military units, and exacerbated its already severe demographic problems.
Where is the downside for us, in any of that?
It probably wasn't the very best way to use 10bn quid of taxpayers' money. They could actually done something that made the country better. Not much with 10bn, I grant you, but something.
"I don't remember anyone saying when the Americans pulled out of Vietnam - let's send lots of British troops to replace them"
Fundamentally they are different
Vietnam was a civil war / revolution in which China and the US interfered.
Ukraine is a straightforward case of an invasion of a former Soviet country by Russia. The Russian leader has made clear his desire to conquer every other former Soviet territory.
If we believed Putin would be content to stop at Ukraine Europe would be much more relaxed. But we don’t and he won’t.
Stopping him here is critical. We should have done it in Georgia or Crimea but we were asleep on our watch.
The Communists were set on world revolution - their expansionist aims and activities even after Stalin were vastly bigger than Putin's.
And of course NATO was formed to contain Stalin too, Vietnam though was not even on the same continent as we were unlike Ukraine
Though unlike the Septics or Frogs, we actually won when we invaded Vietnam. In a matter of months too.
Nazi salutes are getting normalised in the US now. I wonder if we'll get to a stage where not doing one sees you either primaried or losing your federal contract?
It's like we're living in the flashbacks of a zombie film, where you see the first news reports of mysterious new disease.
And then the feckers try to gaslight the world by saying that it wasn't a Nazi salute.
A good slice of this board thinks posters are being hysterical when they point out that politicians who support the AfD, Putin, use Nazi language and make Nazi salutes might err, be a bit Nazi.
It’s not a particularly helpful term - because it immediately makes people think about toothbrush-moustaches and German dictators.
It’s the same with “fascist”. The left abused the terms for so long to try and demonise their moderate opponents that they no longer have the power to shock.
Thank goodness we have the right’s measured use of commie, Trot and Stalinist as an example of restraint.
For some reason Stalinist doesn't seem to be as common a derogatory label as the others in my experience. Is that because people associate Stalin and communism more strongly, or because Trotskyite groups were more prominent in the West among loony marxist groups?
(I'm assuming here there are non-loony marxist groups, which is perhaps over generous, like assuming there were moderate BNP branches).
"In fact, Vance’s speech and Trump’s remarks make it clear that the US is no longer in alliance with Europe at all, but with Russia against Europe, and Europe’s liberal elites."
"I don't remember anyone saying when the Americans pulled out of Vietnam - let's send lots of British troops to replace them"
Hitchens has always claimed that he shed tears of joy when the Iron Curtain came down, but he always repeats Russian talking points, and plainly sees Russia as the gendarme of Eastern Europe.
Also the analogy doesn't work in any way, does it? (haven't watched interview)
He's very critical of Russia and rather sympathetic to Zelensky in the interview, but his bottom line is (as mine is) what is the UK's interest in Ukraine?
The same as our interest in Belgium when fascists invaded.
It is in our own self interest that Putin loses, badly, and is seen to lose on the World stage.
I think you're confusing your World Wars.
Yes WW2 was the one where Poland started it by provoking Germany.
(Is it Saturday already?)
Germany and Russia. You'd have thought they'd have more sense.
Is this Zelenskyy daring Musk to cut off Starlink .
What is the opinion in Ukraine? As the leader he might find himself needing to sign it, but the people don't want him too? So diplomatic theatre would be needed and Trump and co would be wise to allow him some time to do it perhaps.
Nevertheless, he is right to question the wisdom of the desperate need to continue this war without US support, when the US was the driving force behind our participation in it.
Dickriding the US wasn't the sole motivation. I am sure Johnson got swept along, basking in the reflected glory of the martial euphoria when it looked like it might be an uncomplicated victory without any politically inconvenient mangled corpses. Indeed, the sheer density and quality of the memes coming from the front in February and March 2022 gave every indication that might be the case.
The Western governments just got sucked in as it progressed, or rather didn't progress, and Z was stridently begging for the next thing that would make all the difference and break the deadlock. Leopards, then Patriot, then HIMARS, then F-16s. There was never any articulation of what victory might look like or any strategy of how they'd get there. It was just keep sending the money and weapons, hoping for a Russian collapse that never came.
Yet, viewed very cold-bloodedly, Western aid to Ukraine has cost Russia about 10,000 armoured vehicles, 800,000 casualties, destroyed its best military units, and exacerbated its already severe demographic problems.
Where is the downside for us, in any of that?
That its working so well is why they are so desperate to stop it.
The economic and military ruin of Russia terrifies many people.
Nevertheless, he is right to question the wisdom of the desperate need to continue this war without US support, when the US was the driving force behind our participation in it.
Dickriding the US wasn't the sole motivation. I am sure Johnson got swept along, basking in the reflected glory of the martial euphoria when it looked like it might be an uncomplicated victory without any politically inconvenient mangled corpses. Indeed, the sheer density and quality of the memes coming from the front in February and March 2022 gave every indication that might be the case.
The Western governments just got sucked in as it progressed, or rather didn't progress, and Z was stridently begging for the next thing that would make all the difference and break the deadlock. Leopards, then Patriot, then HIMARS, then F-16s. There was never any articulation of what victory might look like or any strategy of how they'd get there. It was just keep sending the money and weapons, hoping for a Russian collapse that never came.
Yet, viewed very cold-bloodedly, Western aid to Ukraine has cost Russia about 10,000 armoured vehicles, 800,000 casualties, destroyed its best military units, and exacerbated its already severe demographic problems.
Where is the downside for us, in any of that?
It probably wasn't the very best way to use 10bn quid of taxpayers' money. They could actually done something that made the country better. Not much with 10bn, I grant you, but something.
"In fact, Vance’s speech and Trump’s remarks make it clear that the US is no longer in alliance with Europe at all, but with Russia against Europe, and Europe’s liberal elites."
Andrew Sullivan's weekly email.
In Trump world his closest allies are 1 Netanyahu's Israel (Netanyahu was the first foreign leader Trump invited and met at the White House after his inaugration last month), 2 Putin's Russia and Orban's Hungary 3 Milei's Argentina and at a push Modi's India and Meloni's Italy. We can forget a 'special relationship' with his US unless Farage becomes PM.
For Trump most western nations are led by a woke effete liberal to some degree, nations like China and Mexico are undercutting the US economy with cheap imports, Muslim nations it is his duty as a white Christian nationalist to contain and the rest of the world beyond that are largely 'shithole' nations (as he once described most of Africa and much of the Caribbean).
Basically we need to redo the old 'world according to Ronald Reagan' to become 'the world according to Donald Trump'
Hitchens argument is bizarre. However much noise he creates, he will never match his brother.
What is bizarre about it?
Surprised you can’t see that. To get started Ukraine is about 2hrs from London and was invaded by Russia. Its leader is repeatedly directly antagonistic to the U.K. and our allies. The Americans are not in Ukraine and neither are we.
But Russia's capability of a conventional invasion of London (which is zero), is the substantive point, not the distance as the crow flies.
I am also not sure we can make much of Putin's antagonism toward the UK, when we have adopted an antagonistic stance toward them.
Of course the comparison with Vietnam isn't direct, no comparison ever could be. But it is a good illustration of the silliness of the current argument.
Czechoslovakia was a long way away.
All the Russians have to do to end the war is to go home.
Nazi salutes are getting normalised in the US now. I wonder if we'll get to a stage where not doing one sees you either primaried or losing your federal contract?
It's like we're living in the flashbacks of a zombie film, where you see the first news reports of mysterious new disease.
And then the feckers try to gaslight the world by saying that it wasn't a Nazi salute.
A good slice of this board thinks posters are being hysterical when they point out that politicians who support the AfD, Putin, use Nazi language and make Nazi salutes might err, be a bit Nazi.
It’s not a particularly helpful term - because it immediately makes people think about toothbrush-moustaches and German dictators.
It’s the same with “fascist”. The left abused the terms for so long to try and demonise their moderate opponents that they no longer have the power to shock.
Thank goodness we have the right’s measured use of commie, Trot and Stalinist as an example of restraint.
For some reason Stalinist doesn't seem to be as common a derogatory label as the others in my experience. Is that because people associate Stalin and communism more strongly, or because Trotskyite groups were more prominent in the West among loony marxist groups?
(I'm assuming here there are non-loony marxist groups, which is perhaps over generous, like assuming there were moderate BNP branches).
Folk memory of cuddly Uncle Joe with his twinkly eyes.
See Nigel’s been slagging Britain off in America. Predictable and depressing.
Meanwhile, The Reform logo points East towards Moscow. Hiding in plain sight.
While Trump's betrayal of Ukraine is dominating things here, I haven't yet heard it discussed in the real world, not even by the Ukranian doctor that I was working with earlier in the week.
I had a business meeting with a Californian on Weds. Recent events have caused family problems with his Maga sister and got him abuse. Feels like it’s back to 2006 🤷
Obviously those living in the Putin Reform media bubble will if anything be pleased at what’s going on.
Both my brother-in -law and my oldest friend are hard core Trumpist/Putinist types. I am finding myself having to limit my visits to them because I can't bite my tongue when they go off on their deranged rants.
Interesting. I live in a bubble where people seem to compete to show their disdain for Trump. The closest I find to someone making the alternative case is on here. It instinctively makes me feel that it just can't be that simple, I suppose I am a contrarian of sorts.
So, it seems to me the case can be made that Trump/Vance are just saying more bluntly and clearly which has always been true. The US will act in their self interest. The fact we wanted to delude ourselves for many years to give us a comfort blanket was on us, not them.
I think a case can also be made that the Lawfare of the previous administration was grossly irresponsible and a dangerous precedent. Trump should have been treated the same as everyone else before the law, he should not have been prosecuted for things that others doing the same would not have been prosecuted for.
I can sort of understand why the US might regard the Ukraine as a European problem rather than theirs.
Vance may be right about the excessive regulation of the EU in things like AI and data protection (I have sympathy with pretty much anyone criticising the bureaucratic and pointless mess of GDPR, for example).
He and even Musk may be right that the blob has simply grown out of control, more interested in feeding itself than serving the country (I have expressed similar, if more restrained views about our own country). Attacking it with callipers simply won't do, a chainsaw is needed.
I'm running out of arguments at this point but does anyone have any more? What is Trump & Co right about? Someone famous (but I am terrible with names) said if you didn't understand your opponents case then you don't even understand your own, or something like that.
The Jesuits train people to understand opponents' arguments better than the opponents understand them themselves.
Trump was educated by Jesuits for two years, but I doubt he was paying attention. (He left without graduating and transferred somewhere else to do real estate studies.)
See also Sun Tzu on knowing yourself and knowing the enemy.
Nevertheless, he is right to question the wisdom of the desperate need to continue this war without US support, when the US was the driving force behind our participation in it.
Dickriding the US wasn't the sole motivation. I am sure Johnson got swept along, basking in the reflected glory of the martial euphoria when it looked like it might be an uncomplicated victory without any politically inconvenient mangled corpses. Indeed, the sheer density and quality of the memes coming from the front in February and March 2022 gave every indication that might be the case.
The Western governments just got sucked in as it progressed, or rather didn't progress, and Z was stridently begging for the next thing that would make all the difference and break the deadlock. Leopards, then Patriot, then HIMARS, then F-16s. There was never any articulation of what victory might look like or any strategy of how they'd get there. It was just keep sending the money and weapons, hoping for a Russian collapse that never came.
Yet, viewed very cold-bloodedly, Western aid to Ukraine has cost Russia about 10,000 armoured vehicles, 800,000 casualties, destroyed its best military units, and exacerbated its already severe demographic problems.
Where is the downside for us, in any of that?
It makes Russia into a China vassal state, reorienting its economy to supply China with its abundant natural resources to fuel their takedown of the Western economies.
It risks full collapse, which could see the emergence of nuclear warlordism, or the emergence of a dictator with a far more anti-Western stance.
It's 800,000 people dead before their time.
Apart from that it's great. You do a very good line in negative cynicism by the way, for someone so opposed to it.
"I don't remember anyone saying when the Americans pulled out of Vietnam - let's send lots of British troops to replace them"
Hitchens has always claimed that he shed tears of joy when the Iron Curtain came down, but he always repeats Russian talking points, and plainly sees Russia as the gendarme of Eastern Europe.
Peter Hitchens is a nutcase.
He hates people agreeing with him, and will always change his position so he's as negative and forlorn as possible.
Nevertheless, he is right to question the wisdom of the desperate need to continue this war without US support, when the US was the driving force behind our participation in it.
He agrees with the need to be more operationally independent in defence, but there's a big difference between spending more on defence so our Islands are better defended, and spending more on defence so we can give it to Ukraine. Even the type of defence equipment and personell needed in each case seem very different.
You are incorrect
Cameron originally led the charge with the training and rearming of Ukraine from 2015 onwards. Johnson was first to support them with NLAWs in the early days of the invasion - it was that intervention that stopped the March on Kyiv when the Americans were evacuating.
The UK worked incredibly hard to bring America round to seeing the invasion as something that needed to be stopped.
See Nigel’s been slagging Britain off in America. Predictable and depressing.
Meanwhile, The Reform logo points East towards Moscow. Hiding in plain sight.
While Trump's betrayal of Ukraine is dominating things here, I haven't yet heard it discussed in the real world, not even by the Ukranian doctor that I was working with earlier in the week.
I had a business meeting with a Californian on Weds. Recent events have caused family problems with his Maga sister and got him abuse. Feels like it’s back to 2006 🤷
Obviously those living in the Putin Reform media bubble will if anything be pleased at what’s going on.
Both my brother-in -law and my oldest friend are hard core Trumpist/Putinist types. I am finding myself having to limit my visits to them because I can't bite my tongue when they go off on their deranged rants.
Interesting. I live in a bubble where people seem to compete to show their disdain for Trump. The closest I find to someone making the alternative case is on here. It instinctively makes me feel that it just can't be that simple, I suppose I am a contrarian of sorts.
So, it seems to me the case can be made that Trump/Vance are just saying more bluntly and clearly which has always been true. The US will act in their self interest. The fact we wanted to delude ourselves for many years to give us a comfort blanket was on us, not them.
I think a case can also be made that the Lawfare of the previous administration was grossly irresponsible and a dangerous precedent. Trump should have been treated the same as everyone else before the law, he should not have been prosecuted for things that others doing the same would not have been prosecuted for.
I can sort of understand why the US might regard the Ukraine as a European problem rather than theirs.
Vance may be right about the excessive regulation of the EU in things like AI and data protection (I have sympathy with pretty much anyone criticising the bureaucratic and pointless mess of GDPR, for example).
He and even Musk may be right that the blob has simply grown out of control, more interested in feeding itself than serving the country (I have expressed similar, if more restrained views about our own country). Attacking it with callipers simply won't do, a chainsaw is needed.
I'm running out of arguments at this point but does anyone have any more? What is Trump & Co right about? Someone famous (but I am terrible with names) said if you didn't understand your opponents case then you don't even understand your own, or something like that.
I go along with this to some extent. However proportionality needs to apply. If Trump wants to undo NATO then this should be done in a way and timescale that allows and compels consideration of Europe and Canada's way forward.
Yes, I agree Europe has been at fault too.
Trump's approach makes good sense if, and only if, you decide that the world is and should be self interested well armed mercantileist power blocs with no particular interest in rights, democracy or the prosperity of others. The blocs are: Americas, Russia and the east, China, India, Rest of the West.
However, one word shows Trump's world is more complex: Israel.
I think the war itself is indefensible, and a very black mark on Putin's record. That said, the case for arming Ukraine indefinitely rests on either (1) believing that if Ukraine is seen to have lost then other Russian incursions will follow or (2) that there is no civilised alternative. The problem is that huge numbers of lives are being lost for what has become essentially a border war, and we aren't offering any alternative except for Russia saying sorry, we'll stop and pay damages. That's a formula for the war continuing for years, quite possibly ending with a Ukrainian defeat.
I've very little time for Trump, but the effort to see if there's a basis for a settlement seems worthwhile. If the condition is substantial border defences for the remaining 80% of Ukraine and other countries thought to be at risk, fine, and if it costs more money, we should be prepared to pay it. However, the principle that no boundaries can ever be changed, regardless of the wishes of the current population, and it's worth any number of casualities and indefinite war to prevent it, seems to me wrong.
Yes, one can argue that when the original population of the easstern provinces was asked, a (relatively slender) majority said they wanted to stay with Ukraine. That's a reasonable consideration, but not the only one. And the question "what would you do?" seems to me a reasonable one, to which the response "support the war continuing indefinitely" is unsatisfactory.
I hesitate to write this, as it generates hostility at a personal level which I can do without, given my lack of influence over the outcome. But you asked...
This is a lot more than a 'border war'. Calling it that reduces the war's impact, downplays Putin's ambitions for the region, and somewhat excuses what has happened.
We are facing an expansionist, imperialist and fascist Russia. We can either stop its expansion now, or do so later at a much greater cost. Unless you would quite like to live under an expansionist, imperialist and fascist state. If you do not, then why should others be subjected to it?
"Yes, one can argue that when the original population of the easstern provinces was asked, a (relatively slender) majority said they wanted to stay with Ukraine."
Nick P: "the effort to see if there's a basis for a settlement seems worthwhile."
I'm sorry are we viewing the same news? Trump has opened negotiations on a "settlement" on the basis that Putin can have pretty much every thing he wants.
And that Ukraine are really incidental to the negotiations.
This is where I draw the line between people supporting cold, practical options even if they are unpalatable, and presenting awful options as somehow, at their core, decently motivated. Like using the word settlement or deal means it is a positive intention. On that basis the 'effort' Putin has made in the last 3 years to see if there is a basis for a settlement is also worthwhile!
See Nigel’s been slagging Britain off in America. Predictable and depressing.
Meanwhile, The Reform logo points East towards Moscow. Hiding in plain sight.
While Trump's betrayal of Ukraine is dominating things here, I haven't yet heard it discussed in the real world, not even by the Ukranian doctor that I was working with earlier in the week.
I had a business meeting with a Californian on Weds. Recent events have caused family problems with his Maga sister and got him abuse. Feels like it’s back to 2006 🤷
Obviously those living in the Putin Reform media bubble will if anything be pleased at what’s going on.
Both my brother-in -law and my oldest friend are hard core Trumpist/Putinist types. I am finding myself having to limit my visits to them because I can't bite my tongue when they go off on their deranged rants.
Interesting. I live in a bubble where people seem to compete to show their disdain for Trump. The closest I find to someone making the alternative case is on here. It instinctively makes me feel that it just can't be that simple, I suppose I am a contrarian of sorts.
So, it seems to me the case can be made that Trump/Vance are just saying more bluntly and clearly which has always been true. The US will act in their self interest. The fact we wanted to delude ourselves for many years to give us a comfort blanket was on us, not them.
I think a case can also be made that the Lawfare of the previous administration was grossly irresponsible and a dangerous precedent. Trump should have been treated the same as everyone else before the law, he should not have been prosecuted for things that others doing the same would not have been prosecuted for.
I can sort of understand why the US might regard the Ukraine as a European problem rather than theirs.
Vance may be right about the excessive regulation of the EU in things like AI and data protection (I have sympathy with pretty much anyone criticising the bureaucratic and pointless mess of GDPR, for example).
He and even Musk may be right that the blob has simply grown out of control, more interested in feeding itself than serving the country (I have expressed similar, if more restrained views about our own country). Attacking it with callipers simply won't do, a chainsaw is needed.
I'm running out of arguments at this point but does anyone have any more? What is Trump & Co right about? Someone famous (but I am terrible with names) said if you didn't understand your opponents case then you don't even understand your own, or something like that.
JS Mill - "He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that."
"I don't remember anyone saying when the Americans pulled out of Vietnam - let's send lots of British troops to replace them"
Fundamentally they are different
Vietnam was a civil war / revolution in which China and the US interfered.
Ukraine is a straightforward case of an invasion of a former Soviet country by Russia. The Russian leader has made clear his desire to conquer every other former Soviet territory.
If we believed Putin would be content to stop at Ukraine Europe would be much more relaxed. But we don’t and he won’t.
Stopping him here is critical. We should have done it in Georgia or Crimea but we were asleep on our watch.
The Communists were set on world revolution - their expansionist aims and activities even after Stalin were vastly bigger than Putin's.
Not the Viet Cong though. It was one fight in a broader global struggle.
Is this Zelenskyy daring Musk to cut off Starlink .
What is the opinion in Ukraine? As the leader he might find himself needing to sign it, but the people don't want him too? So diplomatic theatre would be needed and Trump and co would be wise to allow him some time to do it perhaps.
Just cede to America a share of the minerals in areas under current Russian occupation. It means America has to back the original border or lose them.
If any rights are signed over to Trump, I expect that it will be impossible to collect. By the time any US company is there Trump would be history, and the deposits re-nationalised by Ukraine.
Hitchens argument is bizarre. However much noise he creates, he will never match his brother.
What is bizarre about it?
Surprised you can’t see that. To get started Ukraine is about 2hrs from London and was invaded by Russia. Its leader is repeatedly directly antagonistic to the U.K. and our allies. The Americans are not in Ukraine and neither are we.
But Russia's capability of a conventional invasion of London (which is zero), is the substantive point, not the distance as the crow flies...
Nice try SBF, but if Trump has any sense he will let you rot.
SBF has a new interview out, conducted from prison. It is... unbelievable, at points.
Highlights include:
* Strong direct statement of his innocence. * Accusing prosecution and judge of policitized process, analogising to experience of President Trump, apparent maneuvering to secure clemancy. * Implied rationale for prosecution: his donations to Republicans. https://nitter.poast.org/patio11/status/1893039869737185300#m
I absorbed a lot of content before and during the trial, including his defence arguments, and SBF is genuinely a very nasty piece of work, and his attempts to pin the blame on others were absurd. From his epic attempst to portray himself as merely unbelievably stupid as a businessman despite years spending money to present himself as a humble genius even as he splurged on luxury property etc, to his utter amnesia about the countless things he said in public and on video due to arrogance (and which limited his defence options at trial), he is a very bad guy who deserves the 20 years he got.
He'll probably be out in a few.
I don't think many politicians want him out, between him and his FBX employees they bankrolled so many politicians campaigns, which they managed to shut down any real investigation into. He also has very powerful and connected parents. So whole world of trouble if he is out.
I don't think many want him out either, but as an awkward looking youngish man in for a non-violent crime is he really going to serve even half of his sentence, when his parents still seem to be swimming in cash (the dad in particular seems to have been up to his neck in FTX, with the mother more on the political donation side)?.
Nevertheless, he is right to question the wisdom of the desperate need to continue this war without US support, when the US was the driving force behind our participation in it.
Dickriding the US wasn't the sole motivation. I am sure Johnson got swept along, basking in the reflected glory of the martial euphoria when it looked like it might be an uncomplicated victory without any politically inconvenient mangled corpses. Indeed, the sheer density and quality of the memes coming from the front in February and March 2022 gave every indication that might be the case.
The Western governments just got sucked in as it progressed, or rather didn't progress, and Z was stridently begging for the next thing that would make all the difference and break the deadlock. Leopards, then Patriot, then HIMARS, then F-16s. There was never any articulation of what victory might look like or any strategy of how they'd get there. It was just keep sending the money and weapons, hoping for a Russian collapse that never came.
Yet, viewed very cold-bloodedly, Western aid to Ukraine has cost Russia about 10,000 armoured vehicles, 800,000 casualties, destroyed its best military units, and exacerbated its already severe demographic problems.
Where is the downside for us, in any of that?
It makes Russia into a China vassal state, reorienting its economy to supply China with its abundant natural resources to fuel their takedown of the Western economies.
It risks full collapse, which could see the emergence of nuclear warlordism, or the emergence of a dictator with a far more anti-Western stance.
It's 800,000 people dead before their time.
Apart from that it's great. You do a very good line in negative cynicism by the way, for someone so opposed to it.
I'm answering your question, in your terms.
Given your - and Hitchens' - indifference to Ukrainian deaths and suffering, why should I or anyone else, care about the deaths and suffering of Russian soldiers?
See Nigel’s been slagging Britain off in America. Predictable and depressing.
Meanwhile, The Reform logo points East towards Moscow. Hiding in plain sight.
While Trump's betrayal of Ukraine is dominating things here, I haven't yet heard it discussed in the real world, not even by the Ukranian doctor that I was working with earlier in the week.
I had a business meeting with a Californian on Weds. Recent events have caused family problems with his Maga sister and got him abuse. Feels like it’s back to 2006 🤷
Obviously those living in the Putin Reform media bubble will if anything be pleased at what’s going on.
Both my brother-in -law and my oldest friend are hard core Trumpist/Putinist types. I am finding myself having to limit my visits to them because I can't bite my tongue when they go off on their deranged rants.
Interesting. I live in a bubble where people seem to compete to show their disdain for Trump. The closest I find to someone making the alternative case is on here. It instinctively makes me feel that it just can't be that simple, I suppose I am a contrarian of sorts.
So, it seems to me the case can be made that Trump/Vance are just saying more bluntly and clearly which has always been true. The US will act in their self interest. The fact we wanted to delude ourselves for many years to give us a comfort blanket was on us, not them.
I think a case can also be made that the Lawfare of the previous administration was grossly irresponsible and a dangerous precedent. Trump should have been treated the same as everyone else before the law, he should not have been prosecuted for things that others doing the same would not have been prosecuted for.
I can sort of understand why the US might regard the Ukraine as a European problem rather than theirs.
Vance may be right about the excessive regulation of the EU in things like AI and data protection (I have sympathy with pretty much anyone criticising the bureaucratic and pointless mess of GDPR, for example).
He and even Musk may be right that the blob has simply grown out of control, more interested in feeding itself than serving the country (I have expressed similar, if more restrained views about our own country). Attacking it with callipers simply won't do, a chainsaw is needed.
I'm running out of arguments at this point but does anyone have any more? What is Trump & Co right about? Someone famous (but I am terrible with names) said if you didn't understand your opponents case then you don't even understand your own, or something like that.
I go along with this to some extent. However proportionality needs to apply. If Trump wants to undo NATO then this should be done in a way and timescale that allows and compels consideration of Europe and Canada's way forward.
Yes, I agree Europe has been at fault too.
Trump's approach makes good sense if, and only if, you decide that the world is and should be self interested well armed mercantileist power blocs with no particular interest in rights, democracy or the prosperity of others. The blocs are: Americas, Russia and the east, China, India, Rest of the West.
However, one word shows Trump's world is more complex: Israel.
I think the war itself is indefensible, and a very black mark on Putin's record. That said, the case for arming Ukraine indefinitely rests on either (1) believing that if Ukraine is seen to have lost then other Russian incursions will follow or (2) that there is no civilised alternative. The problem is that huge numbers of lives are being lost for what has become essentially a border war, and we aren't offering any alternative except for Russia saying sorry, we'll stop and pay damages. That's a formula for the war continuing for years, quite possibly ending with a Ukrainian defeat.
I've very little time for Trump, but the effort to see if there's a basis for a settlement seems worthwhile. If the condition is substantial border defences for the remaining 80% of Ukraine and other countries thought to be at risk, fine, and if it costs more money, we should be prepared to pay it. However, the principle that no boundaries can ever be changed, regardless of the wishes of the current population, and it's worth any number of casualities and indefinite war to prevent it, seems to me wrong.
Yes, one can argue that when the original population of the easstern provinces was asked, a (relatively slender) majority said they wanted to stay with Ukraine. That's a reasonable consideration, but not the only one. And the question "what would you do?" seems to me a reasonable one, to which the response "support the war continuing indefinitely" is unsatisfactory.
I hesitate to write this, as it generates hostility at a personal level which I can do without, given my lack of influence over the outcome. But you asked...
The post-WW2 international rules based order is that borders cannot be changed by force. They *can* be changed by the wishes of the current population, contrary to how you put it above.
In the 1991 Ukrainian independence referendum, the eastern provinces voted overwhelmingly for independence from Russia. Luhansk was at 84%, as was Donetsk. Kharkiv was 86%. These are not “relatively slender” majorities.
The Economist this week is pretty uncheery. Summary: Europe alone. Needs single envoy to speak for it with USA and Russia. France and UK need to agree Europe's nuclear shield. Defence spending to rise to 4-5%, an extra 300bn Euros. Cut welfare. This is "Europe's worst nightmare".
Yup, there's no more room for higher taxes, it has to come out of welfare. We pay too many people too much money to sit at home and do nothing.
A shift from welfare spending to defence spending is also a shift from spending on the old to spending on the young and from spending on non-workers to spending on workers.
I think that's a bit optimistic. From my limited experience working at Westland Helicopters back in the day, defence spending tends to only trickle to workers as the horrendously expensive kit dams the flow rather.
A big military industrial complex hasn't done the US economy any harm. We could learn from that and invest in our own defence industry and capabilities.
Oh I don't disagree with your wider point, just the specifics of it being a good way to funnel money to young workers.
Nevertheless, he is right to question the wisdom of the desperate need to continue this war without US support, when the US was the driving force behind our participation in it.
Dickriding the US wasn't the sole motivation. I am sure Johnson got swept along, basking in the reflected glory of the martial euphoria when it looked like it might be an uncomplicated victory without any politically inconvenient mangled corpses. Indeed, the sheer density and quality of the memes coming from the front in February and March 2022 gave every indication that might be the case.
The Western governments just got sucked in as it progressed, or rather didn't progress, and Z was stridently begging for the next thing that would make all the difference and break the deadlock. Leopards, then Patriot, then HIMARS, then F-16s. There was never any articulation of what victory might look like or any strategy of how they'd get there. It was just keep sending the money and weapons, hoping for a Russian collapse that never came.
Yet, viewed very cold-bloodedly, Western aid to Ukraine has cost Russia about 10,000 armoured vehicles, 800,000 casualties, destroyed its best military units, and exacerbated its already severe demographic problems.
Where is the downside for us, in any of that?
It probably wasn't the very best way to use 10bn quid of taxpayers' money. They could actually done something that made the country better. Not much with 10bn, I grant you, but something.
"I don't remember anyone saying when the Americans pulled out of Vietnam - let's send lots of British troops to replace them"
Hitchens has always claimed that he shed tears of joy when the Iron Curtain came down, but he always repeats Russian talking points, and plainly sees Russia as the gendarme of Eastern Europe.
He's very critical of Russia and rather sympathetic to Zelensky in the interview, but his bottom line is (as mine is) what is the UK's interest in Ukraine?
We were pulled into it in the first place because the US's geopolitical rivalry with Russia, it's quite perverse now that the US seems set on a raphrochment with Russia, to want to keep playing the old tunes like a disco fan in 1982. If we were dealing with a normal White House, the thaw would be gradual, it would all be couched in guarded terms, and a memo would go round so all the Western leaders could make similar noises. But it's Trump, and he doesn't give a shit about embarrassing other world leaders.
Nazi salutes are getting normalised in the US now. I wonder if we'll get to a stage where not doing one sees you either primaried or losing your federal contract?
It's like we're living in the flashbacks of a zombie film, where you see the first news reports of mysterious new disease.
And then the feckers try to gaslight the world by saying that it wasn't a Nazi salute.
A good slice of this board thinks posters are being hysterical when they point out that politicians who support the AfD, Putin, use Nazi language and make Nazi salutes might err, be a bit Nazi.
It’s not a particularly helpful term - because it immediately makes people think about toothbrush-moustaches and German dictators.
It’s the same with “fascist”. The left abused the terms for so long to try and demonise their moderate opponents that they no longer have the power to shock.
Thank goodness we have the right’s measured use of commie, Trot and Stalinist as an example of restraint.
I agree with that as well.
For language to have meaning you can’t just misuse it
See Nigel’s been slagging Britain off in America. Predictable and depressing.
Meanwhile, The Reform logo points East towards Moscow. Hiding in plain sight.
While Trump's betrayal of Ukraine is dominating things here, I haven't yet heard it discussed in the real world, not even by the Ukranian doctor that I was working with earlier in the week.
I had a business meeting with a Californian on Weds. Recent events have caused family problems with his Maga sister and got him abuse. Feels like it’s back to 2006 🤷
Obviously those living in the Putin Reform media bubble will if anything be pleased at what’s going on.
Both my brother-in -law and my oldest friend are hard core Trumpist/Putinist types. I am finding myself having to limit my visits to them because I can't bite my tongue when they go off on their deranged rants.
Interesting. I live in a bubble where people seem to compete to show their disdain for Trump. The closest I find to someone making the alternative case is on here. It instinctively makes me feel that it just can't be that simple, I suppose I am a contrarian of sorts.
So, it seems to me the case can be made that Trump/Vance are just saying more bluntly and clearly which has always been true. The US will act in their self interest. The fact we wanted to delude ourselves for many years to give us a comfort blanket was on us, not them.
I think a case can also be made that the Lawfare of the previous administration was grossly irresponsible and a dangerous precedent. Trump should have been treated the same as everyone else before the law, he should not have been prosecuted for things that others doing the same would not have been prosecuted for.
I can sort of understand why the US might regard the Ukraine as a European problem rather than theirs.
Vance may be right about the excessive regulation of the EU in things like AI and data protection (I have sympathy with pretty much anyone criticising the bureaucratic and pointless mess of GDPR, for example).
He and even Musk may be right that the blob has simply grown out of control, more interested in feeding itself than serving the country (I have expressed similar, if more restrained views about our own country). Attacking it with callipers simply won't do, a chainsaw is needed.
I'm running out of arguments at this point but does anyone have any more? What is Trump & Co right about? Someone famous (but I am terrible with names) said if you didn't understand your opponents case then you don't even understand your own, or something like that.
I go along with this to some extent. However proportionality needs to apply. If Trump wants to undo NATO then this should be done in a way and timescale that allows and compels consideration of Europe and Canada's way forward.
Yes, I agree Europe has been at fault too.
Trump's approach makes good sense if, and only if, you decide that the world is and should be self interested well armed mercantileist power blocs with no particular interest in rights, democracy or the prosperity of others. The blocs are: Americas, Russia and the east, China, India, Rest of the West.
However, one word shows Trump's world is more complex: Israel.
I think the war itself is indefensible, and a very black mark on Putin's record. That said, the case for arming Ukraine indefinitely rests on either (1) believing that if Ukraine is seen to have lost then other Russian incursions will follow or (2) that there is no civilised alternative. The problem is that huge numbers of lives are being lost for what has become essentially a border war, and we aren't offering any alternative except for Russia saying sorry, we'll stop and pay damages. That's a formula for the war continuing for years, quite possibly ending with a Ukrainian defeat.
I've very little time for Trump, but the effort to see if there's a basis for a settlement seems worthwhile. If the condition is substantial border defences for the remaining 80% of Ukraine and other countries thought to be at risk, fine, and if it costs more money, we should be prepared to pay it. However, the principle that no boundaries can ever be changed, regardless of the wishes of the current population, and it's worth any number of casualities and indefinite war to prevent it, seems to me wrong.
Yes, one can argue that when the original population of the easstern provinces was asked, a (relatively slender) majority said they wanted to stay with Ukraine. That's a reasonable consideration, but not the only one. And the question "what would you do?" seems to me a reasonable one, to which the response "support the war continuing indefinitely" is unsatisfactory.
I hesitate to write this, as it generates hostility at a personal level which I can do without, given my lack of influence over the outcome. But you asked...
The post-WW2 international rules based order is that borders cannot be changed by force. They *can* be changed by the wishes of the current population, contrary to how you put it above.
In the 1991 Ukrainian independence referendum, the eastern provinces voted overwhelmingly for independence from Russia. Luhansk was at 84%, as was Donetsk. Kharkiv was 86%. These are not “relatively slender” majorities.
A lot of people buy the argument that all Russian speakers at heart want to be part of Russia. Having conceded that point, mentally, it's easy to then move to a 'Well invasion is wrong, buuuuuut' position. That the people in the east have spent 10+ years living with it without all committing seppuku makes a cold view of accepting the status quo much easier (even I would say I was never confident Ukraine would be able/permitted to regain those areas - possibly in a best case, but never Crimea) whilst softening the mental low that it is such a cold calculation.
Nevertheless, he is right to question the wisdom of the desperate need to continue this war without US support, when the US was the driving force behind our participation in it.
Dickriding the US wasn't the sole motivation. I am sure Johnson got swept along, basking in the reflected glory of the martial euphoria when it looked like it might be an uncomplicated victory without any politically inconvenient mangled corpses. Indeed, the sheer density and quality of the memes coming from the front in February and March 2022 gave every indication that might be the case.
The Western governments just got sucked in as it progressed, or rather didn't progress, and Z was stridently begging for the next thing that would make all the difference and break the deadlock. Leopards, then Patriot, then HIMARS, then F-16s. There was never any articulation of what victory might look like or any strategy of how they'd get there. It was just keep sending the money and weapons, hoping for a Russian collapse that never came.
Yet, viewed very cold-bloodedly, Western aid to Ukraine has cost Russia about 10,000 armoured vehicles, 800,000 casualties, destroyed its best military units, and exacerbated its already severe demographic problems.
Where is the downside for us, in any of that?
It probably wasn't the very best way to use 10bn quid of taxpayers' money. They could actually done something that made the country better. Not much with 10bn, I grant you, but something.
That works out at less than £50 per person per year as our contribution to destroying Russia's military.
Its difficult to think of a more effective piece of government spending.
He's very critical of Russia and rather sympathetic to Zelensky in the interview, but his bottom line is (as mine is) what is the UK's interest in Ukraine?
The same as our interest in Belgium when fascists invaded.
It is in our own self interest that Putin loses, badly, and is seen to lose on the World stage.
I think you're confusing your World Wars.
Yes WW2 was the one where Poland started it by provoking Germany.
(Is it Saturday already?)
Germany and Russia. You'd have thought they'd have more sense.
Yes, though some blame must go to the British and French for provocatively allying themselves with the Poles. What choice did it leave Hitler and Stalin?
"In fact, Vance’s speech and Trump’s remarks make it clear that the US is no longer in alliance with Europe at all, but with Russia against Europe, and Europe’s liberal elites."
Nevertheless, he is right to question the wisdom of the desperate need to continue this war without US support, when the US was the driving force behind our participation in it.
Dickriding the US wasn't the sole motivation. I am sure Johnson got swept along, basking in the reflected glory of the martial euphoria when it looked like it might be an uncomplicated victory without any politically inconvenient mangled corpses. Indeed, the sheer density and quality of the memes coming from the front in February and March 2022 gave every indication that might be the case.
The Western governments just got sucked in as it progressed, or rather didn't progress, and Z was stridently begging for the next thing that would make all the difference and break the deadlock. Leopards, then Patriot, then HIMARS, then F-16s. There was never any articulation of what victory might look like or any strategy of how they'd get there. It was just keep sending the money and weapons, hoping for a Russian collapse that never came.
Yet, viewed very cold-bloodedly, Western aid to Ukraine has cost Russia about 10,000 armoured vehicles, 800,000 casualties, destroyed its best military units, and exacerbated its already severe demographic problems.
Where is the downside for us, in any of that?
It probably wasn't the very best way to use 10bn quid of taxpayers' money. They could actually done something that made the country better. Not much with 10bn, I grant you, but something.
£10 billion could fund another CCS cluster.
'Cluster' being an abbreviation. ?
You might think that. I couldn't possibly comment.
Nazi salutes are getting normalised in the US now. I wonder if we'll get to a stage where not doing one sees you either primaried or losing your federal contract?
It's like we're living in the flashbacks of a zombie film, where you see the first news reports of mysterious new disease.
And then the feckers try to gaslight the world by saying that it wasn't a Nazi salute.
A good slice of this board thinks posters are being hysterical when they point out that politicians who support the AfD, Putin, use Nazi language and make Nazi salutes might err, be a bit Nazi.
It’s not a particularly helpful term - because it immediately makes people think about toothbrush-moustaches and German dictators.
It’s the same with “fascist”. The left abused the terms for so long to try and demonise their moderate opponents that they no longer have the power to shock.
Thank goodness we have the right’s measured use of commie, Trot and Stalinist as an example of restraint.
I agree with that as well.
For language to have meaning you can’t just misuse it
Nevertheless, he is right to question the wisdom of the desperate need to continue this war without US support, when the US was the driving force behind our participation in it.
Dickriding the US wasn't the sole motivation. I am sure Johnson got swept along, basking in the reflected glory of the martial euphoria when it looked like it might be an uncomplicated victory without any politically inconvenient mangled corpses. Indeed, the sheer density and quality of the memes coming from the front in February and March 2022 gave every indication that might be the case.
The Western governments just got sucked in as it progressed, or rather didn't progress, and Z was stridently begging for the next thing that would make all the difference and break the deadlock. Leopards, then Patriot, then HIMARS, then F-16s. There was never any articulation of what victory might look like or any strategy of how they'd get there. It was just keep sending the money and weapons, hoping for a Russian collapse that never came.
Yet, viewed very cold-bloodedly, Western aid to Ukraine has cost Russia about 10,000 armoured vehicles, 800,000 casualties, destroyed its best military units, and exacerbated its already severe demographic problems.
Where is the downside for us, in any of that?
It probably wasn't the very best way to use 10bn quid of taxpayers' money. They could actually done something that made the country better. Not much with 10bn, I grant you, but something.
That works out at less than £50 per person per year as our contribution to destroying Russia's military.
Its difficult to think of a more effective piece of government spending.
It is incredibly good value for money - viewed in terms of cold realpolitik. Russia has proved itself relentlessly hostile towards our interests.
That's the settled opinion that's pushed in the Anglophone media but it's not accurate. VVP is a cautious opportunist and while I am sure he'd like NATO out of Eastern Europe he knows it's not happening and asking for it is, what Trotsky would have called, the transitional demand.
He won't bet his arse off on a pair of twos, which is what an invasion of Poland or the Baltics would be. He does things he thinks are low risk with limited downside. Sometimes he calibrates that judgment correctly, as in Crimea, and in the SMO he didn't. We'll never know the kremlinology behind the decision to do it. It's possible that somebody on the General Staff, maybe Dvornikov who was in favour after Syria, convinced him it would be easy. Or maybe he thought he was going to get rolled if he didn't conclusively resolve the status of the Donetsk and Lugansk statelets.
Nazi salutes are getting normalised in the US now. I wonder if we'll get to a stage where not doing one sees you either primaried or losing your federal contract?
It's like we're living in the flashbacks of a zombie film, where you see the first news reports of mysterious new disease.
And then the feckers try to gaslight the world by saying that it wasn't a Nazi salute.
A good slice of this board thinks posters are being hysterical when they point out that politicians who support the AfD, Putin, use Nazi language and make Nazi salutes might err, be a bit Nazi.
It’s not a particularly helpful term - because it immediately makes people think about toothbrush-moustaches and German dictators.
It’s the same with “fascist”. The left abused the terms for so long to try and demonise their moderate opponents that they no longer have the power to shock.
Thank goodness we have the right’s measured use of commie, Trot and Stalinist as an example of restraint.
For some reason Stalinist doesn't seem to be as common a derogatory label as the others in my experience. Is that because people associate Stalin and communism more strongly, or because Trotskyite groups were more prominent in the West among loony marxist groups?
(I'm assuming here there are non-loony marxist groups, which is perhaps over generous, like assuming there were moderate BNP branches).
I think anyone with half a brain is Marxist to some extent. Marx wrote widely and compellingly on many subjects, just as eg Hayek did.
It's the political ideologies resulting from Marxist thought that are so damaging, not least the Communist manifesto, which understandably discredits Marx's other work.
Nazi salutes are getting normalised in the US now. I wonder if we'll get to a stage where not doing one sees you either primaried or losing your federal contract?
It's like we're living in the flashbacks of a zombie film, where you see the first news reports of mysterious new disease.
And then the feckers try to gaslight the world by saying that it wasn't a Nazi salute.
A good slice of this board thinks posters are being hysterical when they point out that politicians who support the AfD, Putin, use Nazi language and make Nazi salutes might err, be a bit Nazi.
It’s not a particularly helpful term - because it immediately makes people think about toothbrush-moustaches and German dictators.
It’s the same with “fascist”. The left abused the terms for so long to try and demonise their moderate opponents that they no longer have the power to shock.
Thank goodness we have the right’s measured use of commie, Trot and Stalinist as an example of restraint.
For some reason Stalinist doesn't seem to be as common a derogatory label as the others in my experience. Is that because people associate Stalin and communism more strongly, or because Trotskyite groups were more prominent in the West among loony marxist groups?
(I'm assuming here there are non-loony marxist groups, which is perhaps over generous, like assuming there were moderate BNP branches).
I have no idea what you mean by loony or marxist, but in western countries there were orders of magnitude more members of Stalinist parties than there were of Trotskyist ones. The largest of the former tended to be called things like "Communist Party of [Country]" or "[Country] Communist Party". See Spain, France, Italy, Britain, etc.
Wait till you find out about anti-Bolshevik communism :-)
"I don't remember anyone saying when the Americans pulled out of Vietnam - let's send lots of British troops to replace them"
Fundamentally they are different
Vietnam was a civil war / revolution in which China and the US interfered.
Ukraine is a straightforward case of an invasion of a former Soviet country by Russia. The Russian leader has made clear his desire to conquer every other former Soviet territory.
If we believed Putin would be content to stop at Ukraine Europe would be much more relaxed. But we don’t and he won’t.
Stopping him here is critical. We should have done it in Georgia or Crimea but we were asleep on our watch.
The Communists were set on world revolution - their expansionist aims and activities even after Stalin were vastly bigger than Putin's.
Putin's Russia is occupying eastern Ukraine (since 2022, with certain parts since 2014), parts of Georgia (since 2008), and is holding on to four Japanese islands since 1945.
Hardly reliable evidence but listening to some Americans on a Singapore River Cruise this afternoon, my sense is they like Trump not because they agree with him but because he’s doing something or at least that’s the perception.
I’ve never been a fan of the old “we must do something, this is something, let’s do it” school of governance. Trump seems dynamic in contrast to Biden, he seems to have ideas in a way Biden didn’t and I get the appeal of that in a time of uncertainty and malaise.
That doesn’t mean I think he’s right but those seeking a response to the new breed of political disruptors have to accept the popularity of disruption, the attraction of change, the allure of risk taking.
Playing it safe, kicking the can down the road because trying to solve the huge problems of modern society and Government is too much effort simply doesn’t work any more and the vacuum has been filled by the disruptors.
He's very critical of Russia and rather sympathetic to Zelensky in the interview, but his bottom line is (as mine is) what is the UK's interest in Ukraine?
The same as our interest in Belgium when fascists invaded.
It is in our own self interest that Putin loses, badly, and is seen to lose on the World stage.
I think you're confusing your World Wars.
Yes WW2 was the one where Poland started it by provoking Germany.
(Is it Saturday already?)
Germany and Russia. You'd have thought they'd have more sense.
Yes, though some blame must go to the British and French for provocatively allying themselves with the Poles. What choice did it leave Hitler and Stalin?
There are people who will quite unironically, make that argument.
Nazi salutes are getting normalised in the US now. I wonder if we'll get to a stage where not doing one sees you either primaried or losing your federal contract?
It's like we're living in the flashbacks of a zombie film, where you see the first news reports of mysterious new disease.
And then the feckers try to gaslight the world by saying that it wasn't a Nazi salute.
A good slice of this board thinks posters are being hysterical when they point out that politicians who support the AfD, Putin, use Nazi language and make Nazi salutes might err, be a bit Nazi.
Indeed, on which topic Reform's dilemma could be a fork in the road. SFAICS its support base, as opposed to the powers on and behind the throne are the sort of people who watch reruns of Dad's Army, apart from those who find it a bit too intellectual.
WTf is wrong with watching re-runs of Dads Army. It’s an excellent, well written, well observed and characterised comedy accessible to all.
Nothing at all. Many of them are masterpieces. Their appeal is massive. I love them. That's the point. Not many potential Reform voters are going to stick for ever with a party if it goes down the rabbit hole of apologists for Nazi salutes or Europe's invaders. Farage could easily struggle here unless he wants to be a proper normal rightish social democrat + NATO or its replacement(?) + low migration + bash welfare for the wrong sort + fantasy economics party.
So what’s it to be:
- We’re all doomed, or - Don’t panic?
Rubbish.
We are all doomed. Form an orderly queue for the PB Panic. Please remember to share the Jaffa cakes and help people to tea and coffee from the urns at the end table.
Also, can we have some volunteers to stay behind, after The Panic, to fold the tables and put the chairs back in the cupboard? The caretaker gets upset if he can’t run the floor polisher on Sunday afternoon.
As an observation, PB does hysteria brilliantly.
It reveals much about my own prejudices that I am enjoying our current bout of hysteria (the Nazification of USA) far more than I enjoyed the last few (trans women rampaging through toilets and/or a tiny set of islands somewhere revealing the nefarious, traitorous plot of Starmer to hand our whole nation over to the Chinese in exchange for permission to have to US make our decisions over video call or somesuch).
Whenever women's concerns are raised on here, they are invariably described as "hysteria", often by the very people who condemn others for being anti-woke (because, of course, calling women hysterical is very "woke").
But oddly when those concerns reach the courts those raising them win. There was another such victory in the Court of Appeal this week - not that anyone here noticed or thought it worthy of comment, what with the James Bond franchise being so much more important.
What can possibly explain this discrepancy between court judgments and the self-assured - but usually ignorant conviction - of PB commentators?
The latter is really rather Trumpian, which may well explain why he is so politically successful. The hateful bastard.
Nevertheless, he is right to question the wisdom of the desperate need to continue this war without US support, when the US was the driving force behind our participation in it.
Dickriding the US wasn't the sole motivation. I am sure Johnson got swept along, basking in the reflected glory of the martial euphoria when it looked like it might be an uncomplicated victory without any politically inconvenient mangled corpses. Indeed, the sheer density and quality of the memes coming from the front in February and March 2022 gave every indication that might be the case.
The Western governments just got sucked in as it progressed, or rather didn't progress, and Z was stridently begging for the next thing that would make all the difference and break the deadlock. Leopards, then Patriot, then HIMARS, then F-16s. There was never any articulation of what victory might look like or any strategy of how they'd get there. It was just keep sending the money and weapons, hoping for a Russian collapse that never came.
Yet, viewed very cold-bloodedly, Western aid to Ukraine has cost Russia about 10,000 armoured vehicles, 800,000 casualties, destroyed its best military units, and exacerbated its already severe demographic problems.
Where is the downside for us, in any of that?
It probably wasn't the very best way to use 10bn quid of taxpayers' money. They could actually done something that made the country better. Not much with 10bn, I grant you, but something.
Your objection is that it frustrated Russia's aims.
The argument you're making today is totally at odds with the one you made the day before yesterday that increased defence spending isn't necessary because Russia can't even retake all the Kursk Oblast, because it almost certainly would have been able to do so - if Ukraine had been able to make any form of incursion in the first place - were it not for that support.
See Nigel’s been slagging Britain off in America. Predictable and depressing.
Meanwhile, The Reform logo points East towards Moscow. Hiding in plain sight.
While Trump's betrayal of Ukraine is dominating things here, I haven't yet heard it discussed in the real world, not even by the Ukranian doctor that I was working with earlier in the week.
I had a business meeting with a Californian on Weds. Recent events have caused family problems with his Maga sister and got him abuse. Feels like it’s back to 2006 🤷
Obviously those living in the Putin Reform media bubble will if anything be pleased at what’s going on.
Both my brother-in -law and my oldest friend are hard core Trumpist/Putinist types. I am finding myself having to limit my visits to them because I can't bite my tongue when they go off on their deranged rants.
Interesting. I live in a bubble where people seem to compete to show their disdain for Trump. The closest I find to someone making the alternative case is on here. It instinctively makes me feel that it just can't be that simple, I suppose I am a contrarian of sorts.
So, it seems to me the case can be made that Trump/Vance are just saying more bluntly and clearly which has always been true. The US will act in their self interest. The fact we wanted to delude ourselves for many years to give us a comfort blanket was on us, not them.
I think a case can also be made that the Lawfare of the previous administration was grossly irresponsible and a dangerous precedent. Trump should have been treated the same as everyone else before the law, he should not have been prosecuted for things that others doing the same would not have been prosecuted for.
I can sort of understand why the US might regard the Ukraine as a European problem rather than theirs.
Vance may be right about the excessive regulation of the EU in things like AI and data protection (I have sympathy with pretty much anyone criticising the bureaucratic and pointless mess of GDPR, for example).
He and even Musk may be right that the blob has simply grown out of control, more interested in feeding itself than serving the country (I have expressed similar, if more restrained views about our own country). Attacking it with callipers simply won't do, a chainsaw is needed.
I'm running out of arguments at this point but does anyone have any more? What is Trump & Co right about? Someone famous (but I am terrible with names) said if you didn't understand your opponents case then you don't even understand your own, or something like that.
I go along with this to some extent. However proportionality needs to apply. If Trump wants to undo NATO then this should be done in a way and timescale that allows and compels consideration of Europe and Canada's way forward.
Yes, I agree Europe has been at fault too.
Trump's approach makes good sense if, and only if, you decide that the world is and should be self interested well armed mercantileist power blocs with no particular interest in rights, democracy or the prosperity of others. The blocs are: Americas, Russia and the east, China, India, Rest of the West.
However, one word shows Trump's world is more complex: Israel.
I think the war itself is indefensible, and a very black mark on Putin's record. That said, the case for arming Ukraine indefinitely rests on either (1) believing that if Ukraine is seen to have lost then other Russian incursions will follow or (2) that there is no civilised alternative. The problem is that huge numbers of lives are being lost for what has become essentially a border war, and we aren't offering any alternative except for Russia saying sorry, we'll stop and pay damages. That's a formula for the war continuing for years, quite possibly ending with a Ukrainian defeat.
I've very little time for Trump, but the effort to see if there's a basis for a settlement seems worthwhile. If the condition is substantial border defences for the remaining 80% of Ukraine and other countries thought to be at risk, fine, and if it costs more money, we should be prepared to pay it. However, the principle that no boundaries can ever be changed, regardless of the wishes of the current population, and it's worth any number of casualities and indefinite war to prevent it, seems to me wrong.
Yes, one can argue that when the original population of the easstern provinces was asked, a (relatively slender) majority said they wanted to stay with Ukraine. That's a reasonable consideration, but not the only one. And the question "what would you do?" seems to me a reasonable one, to which the response "support the war continuing indefinitely" is unsatisfactory.
I hesitate to write this, as it generates hostility at a personal level which I can do without, given my lack of influence over the outcome. But you asked...
The post-WW2 international rules based order is that borders cannot be changed by force. They *can* be changed by the wishes of the current population, contrary to how you put it above.
In the 1991 Ukrainian independence referendum, the eastern provinces voted overwhelmingly for independence from Russia. Luhansk was at 84%, as was Donetsk. Kharkiv was 86%. These are not “relatively slender” majorities.
A lot of people buy the argument that all Russian speakers at heart want to be part of Russia. Having conceded that point, mentally, it's easy to then move to a 'Well invasion is wrong, buuuuuut' position. That the people in the east have spent 10+ years living with it without all committing seppuku makes a cold view of accepting the status quo much easier (even I would say I was never confident Ukraine would be able/permitted to regain those areas - possibly in a best case, but never Crimea) whilst softening the mental low that it is such a cold calculation.
Quite. It's a facile proposition anyway. "All English speakers at heart want to be part of England..." is not a proposition that has really stood up to close examination as even the most frothing nationalists here would admit. Nor indeed "All Spanish speakers want to be part of Spain", nor "Serbo-Croat speakers yearn to be part of one country", nor "All German speakers..." etc etc.
He's very critical of Russia and rather sympathetic to Zelensky in the interview, but his bottom line is (as mine is) what is the UK's interest in Ukraine?
The same as our interest in Belgium when fascists invaded.
It is in our own self interest that Putin loses, badly, and is seen to lose on the World stage.
I think you're confusing your World Wars.
Yes WW2 was the one where Poland started it by provoking Germany.
(Is it Saturday already?)
Germany and Russia. You'd have thought they'd have more sense.
Yes, though some blame must go to the British and French for provocatively allying themselves with the Poles. What choice did it leave Hitler and Stalin?
There is the question of whether Hitler would have been allowed to bank his gains if he had stopped after the Anschluss with Austria and Czechoslovakia.
And whether Hitler could have been quickly defeated if France, with its larger army, had gone into Poland.
Both questions have clear parallels with Russia/Ukraine.
Nazi salutes are getting normalised in the US now. I wonder if we'll get to a stage where not doing one sees you either primaried or losing your federal contract?
It's like we're living in the flashbacks of a zombie film, where you see the first news reports of mysterious new disease.
And then the feckers try to gaslight the world by saying that it wasn't a Nazi salute.
A good slice of this board thinks posters are being hysterical when they point out that politicians who support the AfD, Putin, use Nazi language and make Nazi salutes might err, be a bit Nazi.
Indeed, on which topic Reform's dilemma could be a fork in the road. SFAICS its support base, as opposed to the powers on and behind the throne are the sort of people who watch reruns of Dad's Army, apart from those who find it a bit too intellectual.
WTf is wrong with watching re-runs of Dads Army. It’s an excellent, well written, well observed and characterised comedy accessible to all.
Nothing at all. Many of them are masterpieces. Their appeal is massive. I love them. That's the point. Not many potential Reform voters are going to stick for ever with a party if it goes down the rabbit hole of apologists for Nazi salutes or Europe's invaders. Farage could easily struggle here unless he wants to be a proper normal rightish social democrat + NATO or its replacement(?) + low migration + bash welfare for the wrong sort + fantasy economics party.
So what’s it to be:
- We’re all doomed, or - Don’t panic?
Rubbish.
We are all doomed. Form an orderly queue for the PB Panic. Please remember to share the Jaffa cakes and help people to tea and coffee from the urns at the end table.
Also, can we have some volunteers to stay behind, after The Panic, to fold the tables and put the chairs back in the cupboard? The caretaker gets upset if he can’t run the floor polisher on Sunday afternoon.
As an observation, PB does hysteria brilliantly.
It reveals much about my own prejudices that I am enjoying our current bout of hysteria (the Nazification of USA) far more than I enjoyed the last few (trans women rampaging through toilets and/or a tiny set of islands somewhere revealing the nefarious, traitorous plot of Starmer to hand our whole nation over to the Chinese in exchange for permission to have to US make our decisions over video call or somesuch).
Whenever women's concerns are raised on here, they are invariably described as "hysteria", often by the very people who condemn others for being anti-woke (because, of course, calling women hysterical is very "woke").
But oddly when those concerns reach the courts those raising them win. There was another such victory in the Court of Appeal this week - not that anyone here noticed or thought it worthy of comment, what with the James Bond franchise being so much more important.
What can possibly explain this discrepancy between court judgments and the self-assured - but usually ignorant conviction - of PB commentators?
The latter is really rather Trumpian, which may well explain why he is so politically successful. The hateful bastard.
It's like Tobias Ellwood praising the Taliban for bringing "stability" to Afghanistan. The fact that 51% of the population are being treated somewhat worse than livestock never registered with him.
The Economist this week is pretty uncheery. Summary: Europe alone. Needs single envoy to speak for it with USA and Russia. France and UK need to agree Europe's nuclear shield. Defence spending to rise to 4-5%, an extra 300bn Euros. Cut welfare. This is "Europe's worst nightmare".
Yup, there's no more room for higher taxes, it has to come out of welfare. We pay too many people too much money to sit at home and do nothing.
A shift from welfare spending to defence spending is also a shift from spending on the old to spending on the young and from spending on non-workers to spending on workers.
I think that's a bit optimistic. From my limited experience working at Westland Helicopters back in the day, defence spending tends to only trickle to workers as the horrendously expensive kit dams the flow rather.
Certainly, but it all helps:
Britain's biggest defence firm, BAE Systems, has announced the creation of 50 new jobs as part of a £25m investment in Sheffield.
The company said it would open a new 94,000 sq ft (8,732 sq m)artillery development and production facility in the city in 2025.
It said the site would house a state-of-the-art factory which would specialise in artillery expertise.
Nazi salutes are getting normalised in the US now. I wonder if we'll get to a stage where not doing one sees you either primaried or losing your federal contract?
It's like we're living in the flashbacks of a zombie film, where you see the first news reports of mysterious new disease.
And then the feckers try to gaslight the world by saying that it wasn't a Nazi salute.
A good slice of this board thinks posters are being hysterical when they point out that politicians who support the AfD, Putin, use Nazi language and make Nazi salutes might err, be a bit Nazi.
It’s not a particularly helpful term - because it immediately makes people think about toothbrush-moustaches and German dictators.
It’s the same with “fascist”. The left abused the terms for so long to try and demonise their moderate opponents that they no longer have the power to shock.
Thank goodness we have the right’s measured use of commie, Trot and Stalinist as an example of restraint.
For some reason Stalinist doesn't seem to be as common a derogatory label as the others in my experience. Is that because people associate Stalin and communism more strongly, or because Trotskyite groups were more prominent in the West among loony marxist groups?
(I'm assuming here there are non-loony marxist groups, which is perhaps over generous, like assuming there were moderate BNP branches).
I think anyone with half a brain is Marxist to some extent. Marx wrote widely and compellingly on many subjects, just as eg Hayek did.
It's the political ideologies resulting from Marxist thought that are so damaging, not least the Communist manifesto, which understandably discredits Marx's other work.
It took Marx 150 pages to get to terms with the fact that than employee creates more value for there employer than they receive in wages. Well of course they do, or else they wouldn't have a job. And yet Marx found this situation problematic.
So overthrow the oppressors...
...then get back to the factory and get back to work.
Marx has duped almost as many people as that prophet fellow from the Middle East.
...If the condition is substantial border defences for the remaining 80% of Ukraine...
According to the Austrian military, Russia's demands are 12 of Ukraine's original 24 oblasts not including Crimea. It would leave Ukraine landlocked and with less than 50% of its 2013 area (approx 30-40%? by my brief look). It would gut the country. It's worse than how Germany was treated after WW2.
Comments
a cheap paid holiday in other people's misery.
We are facing an expansionist, imperialist and fascist Russia. We can either stop its expansion now, or do so later at a much greater cost. Unless you would quite like to live under an expansionist, imperialist and fascist state. If you do not, then why should others be subjected to it?
"Yes, one can argue that when the original population of the easstern provinces was asked, a (relatively slender) majority said they wanted to stay with Ukraine."
The use of 'original population' in your sentence hides a great deal. And it was mostly not even close in the territories Russia craves most:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Ukrainian_independence_referendum
Don't rewrite history.
Vietnam was a civil war / revolution in which China and the US interfered.
Ukraine is a straightforward case of an invasion of a former Soviet country by Russia. The Russian leader has made clear his desire to conquer every other former Soviet territory.
If we believed Putin would be content to stop at Ukraine Europe would be much more relaxed. But we don’t and he won’t.
Stopping him here is critical. We should have done it in Georgia or Crimea but we were asleep on our watch.
The Dems wanted to encourage MAGA and have Trump as their opponent as they though he would be easier to defeat.
SBF has a new interview out, conducted from prison. It is... unbelievable, at points.
Highlights include:
* Strong direct statement of his innocence.
* Accusing prosecution and judge of policitized process, analogising to experience of President Trump, apparent maneuvering to secure clemancy.
* Implied rationale for prosecution: his donations to Republicans.
https://nitter.poast.org/patio11/status/1893039869737185300#m
I absorbed a lot of content before and during the trial, including his defence arguments, and SBF is genuinely a very nasty piece of work, and his attempts to pin the blame on others were absurd. From his epic attempst to portray himself as merely unbelievably stupid as a businessman despite years spending money to present himself as a humble genius even as he splurged on luxury property etc, to his utter amnesia about the countless things he said in public and on video due to arrogance (and which limited his defence options at trial), he is a very bad guy who deserves the 20 years he got.
He'll probably be out in a few.
The Western governments just got sucked in as it progressed, or rather didn't progress, and Z was stridently begging for the next thing that would make all the difference and break the deadlock. Leopards, then Patriot, then HIMARS, then F-16s. There was never any articulation of what victory might look like or any strategy of how they'd get there. It was just keep sending the money and weapons, hoping for a Russian collapse that never came.
Xi's dad Xi Zhongxun was the brains behind the Special Economic Zones, including in Guangdong (see especially Shenzhen opposite Hong Kong) and Fujian (Xiamen opposite Taiwan).
Trump was in court for various charges. With most of these, he *was* being treated as anyone else would be. If anything, the Democrat government was going slower than usual to be extra careful they had dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s. The only case where I think this accusation of lawfare has any plausibility is the Stormy Daniels payment case. Even there, I don’t find the argument that persuasive. Leaving that aside, the important point is that that case was not brought by the Biden administration, because that was a New York State case.
So, I find the argument that there was grossly irresponsible and dangerous behaviour to fail. What was unprecedented was not the legal responses to Trump but Trump’s behaviour in the first place and the willingness of the GOP to line up behind someone with such a troubled attitude to the law.
Andrew Sullivan's weekly email.
I don't agree with you on it, but I'm not going to criticise you for holding it.
Set a maximum for what the country can afford to give to non-workers and then if the number of claimants increase the amount individuals receive is proportionally reduced.
In would certainly help reduce this sort of madness:
Half of claims for Britain’s main benefit will be for poor health by the end of the parliamentary term, with the cost of payments for sickness topping £100 billion a year for the first time.
A post-Covid surge in claims will become permanent as Britain’s health declines, with costs now on course to double on pre-pandemic levels, the spending watchdog has warned.
The soaring cost of ill health benefits is a key reason why Britain is paying more tax without getting better public services, according to experts who have urged the government to get a grip on the problem.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/uk-benefits-bill-half-of-claims-will-be-for-sickness-by-2029-2g9lm32wz
Nick, if I can use technical terminology:
That’s an immoral and incredibly fucking dangerous position to take.
It creates an incentive for invasion followed by ethnic cleansing.
Where is the downside for us, in any of that?
1. the right to continue to claim the lands stolen by Russia as Ukrainian;
2. A commitment by America not to block any other nations keeping sanctions on Russia whilst ever it retains those lands;
3. A commiment by America not to sell Russia any goods related to mineral extraction/mining products that could be used in those lands;
4. The retained freeze by the US on Russian assets whilst ever it retains those lands;
5. A Production Sharing Agreement on the minerals, whereby Ukraine gets not less than a third of all production (to rebuild Ukraine);
6. An extensive number of Patriot batteries (and a minimum stock of x missiles retained for those batteries) to be provided for the next 20 years - to protect the American investment in the mineral from future grabs by Russia;
7. A twenty 20 mile buffer between Ukrainian and Russian held land, with the most intense minefields on the planet. The mines to be provided by the US.
8. Russia's Kursk lands held by Ukraine to be traded for the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and a wide buffer zone contiguous to currently held Ukrainian lands, with the return of all Ukrainian plant staff
9. The UN to oversee the return to Ukraine of all children stolen by Russia;
10. No amnesty for any war crimes committed by Russians.
11. No veto by the US on Ukraine membership of the EU/any trade organisation.
Until these terms are resolved, Ukraine to be free to destroy Russian hydrocarbon facilities.
I am also not sure we can make much of Putin's antagonism toward the UK, when we have adopted an antagonistic stance toward them.
Of course the comparison with Vietnam isn't direct, no comparison ever could be. But it is a good illustration of the silliness of the current argument.
(Is it Saturday already?)
I'm sorry are we viewing the same news? Trump has opened negotiations on a "settlement" on the basis that Putin can have pretty much every thing he wants.
The right - and to be clear this is not defence of them - laugh it off and just claim that it’s “libtards” being hyperbolic again.
These guys are dangerous and need to be stopped. Using an inappropriate word doesn’t serve that objective
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Vietnam_(1945–1946)
We cannot do anything about it now, but the West was at least learning that ignoring 'border wars' from Russia earlier did not help in the long run. Now that it's too late to do anything as the USA are pulling support we are seeing mental contortions to try to justify to ourselves that, actually, it is sad but not a big deal, by using terms like border wars.
It's rather obviously a way of unlearning the lesson from 2022 and probably a way of making us feel better by acting as though the outcome were inevitable and thus no-one's fault really.
I'm not sure if we'd have gotten to this point precisely anyway, the West was getting tired of it and Ukraine was not advancing, but I think there's been a sudden shift in the way we are trying to excuse doing nothing substantive. And maybe the options to do something substantive are more than we or the public would bear, but they were choices.
(I'm assuming here there are non-loony marxist groups, which is perhaps over generous, like assuming there were moderate BNP branches).
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/trumps-shock-and-awe-month-7a9
You'd have thought they'd have more sense.
The economic and military ruin of Russia terrifies many people.
For Trump most western nations are led by a woke effete liberal to some degree, nations like China and Mexico are undercutting the US economy with cheap imports, Muslim nations it is his duty as a white Christian nationalist to contain and the rest of the world beyond that are largely 'shithole' nations (as he once described most of Africa and much of the Caribbean).
Basically we need to redo the old 'world according to Ronald Reagan' to become 'the world according to Donald Trump'
https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/1355623#:~:text=The world is divided between,being dismissed as 'Kangaroos'.
All the Russians have to do to end the war is to go home.
Trump was educated by Jesuits for two years, but I doubt he was paying attention. (He left without graduating and transferred somewhere else to do real estate studies.)
See also Sun Tzu on knowing yourself and knowing the enemy.
It risks full collapse, which could see the emergence of nuclear warlordism, or the emergence of a dictator with a far more anti-Western stance.
It's 800,000 people dead before their time.
Apart from that it's great. You do a very good line in negative cynicism by the way, for someone so opposed to it.
Cameron originally led the charge with the training and rearming of Ukraine from 2015 onwards. Johnson was first to support them with NLAWs in the early days of the invasion - it was that intervention that stopped the March on Kyiv when the Americans were evacuating.
The UK worked incredibly hard to bring America round to seeing the invasion as something that needed to be stopped.
This is where I draw the line between people supporting cold, practical options even if they are unpalatable, and presenting awful options as somehow, at their core, decently motivated. Like using the word settlement or deal means it is a positive intention. On that basis the 'effort' Putin has made in the last 3 years to see if there is a basis for a settlement is also worthwhile!
Putin is entirely focused on Eastern Europe
If any rights are signed over to Trump, I expect that it will be impossible to collect. By the time any US company is there Trump would be history, and the deposits re-nationalised by Ukraine.
Given your - and Hitchens' - indifference to Ukrainian deaths and suffering, why should I or anyone else, care about the deaths and suffering of Russian soldiers?
In the 1991 Ukrainian independence referendum, the eastern provinces voted overwhelmingly for independence from Russia. Luhansk was at 84%, as was Donetsk. Kharkiv was 86%. These are not “relatively slender” majorities.
But his suspected loyalty to the Constitution rather than the Dictator was the main reason he was fired.
For language to have meaning you can’t just misuse it
Its difficult to think of a more effective piece of government spending.
https://news.sky.com/story/unclear-whether-ukraine-us-rare-earth-saga-is-a-masterstroke-or-colonial-appropriation-13311930
How much blowback would there be in Europe if the US cut off Star Link ?
https://www.ft.com/content/1511aa42-a9ad-4952-99c8-98bea07d0414
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es9_OA1KTp0
Lord Glasman of Blue Labour, to save following the link to the Times Wireless podcast.
He won't bet his arse off on a pair of twos, which is what an invasion of Poland or the Baltics would be. He does things he thinks are low risk with limited downside. Sometimes he calibrates that judgment correctly, as in Crimea, and in the SMO he didn't. We'll never know the kremlinology behind the decision to do it. It's possible that somebody on the General Staff, maybe Dvornikov who was in favour after Syria, convinced him it would be easy. Or maybe he thought he was going to get rolled if he didn't conclusively resolve the status of the Donetsk and Lugansk statelets.
It's the political ideologies resulting from Marxist thought that are so damaging, not least the Communist manifesto, which understandably discredits Marx's other work.
Wait till you find out about anti-Bolshevik communism :-)
I’ve never been a fan of the old “we must do something, this is something, let’s do it” school of governance. Trump seems dynamic in contrast to Biden, he seems to have ideas in a way Biden didn’t and I get the appeal of that in a time of uncertainty and malaise.
That doesn’t mean I think he’s right but those seeking a response to the new breed of political disruptors have to accept the popularity of disruption, the attraction of change, the allure of risk taking.
Playing it safe, kicking the can down the road because trying to solve the huge problems of modern society and Government is too much effort simply doesn’t work any more and the vacuum has been filled by the disruptors.
But oddly when those concerns reach the courts those raising them win. There was another such victory in the Court of Appeal this week - not that anyone here noticed or thought it worthy of comment, what with the James Bond franchise being so much more important.
What can possibly explain this discrepancy between court judgments and the self-assured - but usually ignorant conviction - of PB commentators?
The latter is really rather Trumpian, which may well explain why he is so politically successful. The hateful bastard.
The argument you're making today is totally at odds with the one you made the day before yesterday that increased defence spending isn't necessary because Russia can't even retake all the Kursk Oblast, because it almost certainly would have been able to do so - if Ukraine had been able to make any form of incursion in the first place - were it not for that support.
You get the point.
And whether Hitler could have been quickly defeated if France, with its larger army, had gone into Poland.
Both questions have clear parallels with Russia/Ukraine.
Britain's biggest defence firm, BAE Systems, has announced the creation of 50 new jobs as part of a £25m investment in Sheffield.
The company said it would open a new 94,000 sq ft (8,732 sq m)artillery development and production facility in the city in 2025.
It said the site would house a state-of-the-art factory which would specialise in artillery expertise.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy87pgl4l84o
At the other end of the scale are the 15k employed by BAe at Barrow.
So overthrow the oppressors...
...then get back to the factory and get back to work.
Marx has duped almost as many people as that prophet fellow from the Middle East.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDRjughhXMg&t=1070s