Baby Talk and Fairy Stories
I suppose the reason that the major supermarkets have removed Russian vodka from their shelves was to prevent rioting, looting and bottle smashing by a public goaded into frothing madness by the main stream media. After all, the failure to sell a product already bought and paid for could not harm the Russian economy in any way whatsoever. Could not tighten the screws, as Liz Truss announced she was about to do last week, in her charmless mediaeval torture analogy. I do wish someone would shut her the fuck up, before she further irritates Putin into going Nucula. Have you noticed that no-one on the telly seems able to say nuclear? Is it part of the London deviation from Standard English? Or does it make it more palatable, in a sort of baby-talk way? You know how you talk to babies - who's got pretty little toesies? Who's got a new tushy-peg? (although my friend did point out that tushy does not mean toothy, certainly as far as anatomy is currently constituted - although, who knows what those clever dentists might get up to). Who's got a nucula power station/bomb/submarine?
Anyway, I had a Damascene epiphany moment this morning, whilst watching the Sophie Raworth Lets All Go to War Show. She had a boy on to read the papers sporting the most preposterous comb-over I have ever clapped eyes on.
Turns out that this is Vitaly Shevchenko - no, not the 70 year old Russian coach and former Soviet footballer, no, this guy is Ukrainian, not Russian, and he's the Russia Editor at BBC Monitoring. His Linked In profile trumpets: "I am a high-performing and highly motivated journalist with 18 years of editorial experience at BBC News. During this time, I've mostly held editorial positions, but now I also manage a very dynamic and diverse team". His job is to watch all the Russian news - or make his team watch it, analyse it and, pretty obviously, influence the BBC's stance on Russia. This morning he told us that his parents are living in Ukraine. Doesn't that give him a conflict of interest? Shouldn't he step back from any sort of role in influencing reporting on the Ukrainian situation? Now that Russia Today has been blocked, the BBC is the main purveyor of news about this conflict on the eastern side of the vast European continent, and we would hope to have some semblance of objectivity in news reporting - which hasn't happened so far and is unlikely to happen under the stewardship of Preposterous Comb-Over of the BBC.
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| 37 year old former international lawyer, Olha |
I've just finished watching Amazon Prime's offering of Wheel of Time. Lush scenery, terrific costuming, special effects and epic adventuring in furtherance of the beleaguered but plucky Forces of Light overcoming the Dark and His Orc-like millions of minions who eat each other when felled in battle. Fairly routine sub-Tolkein hokum. Suited me fine - my core personality is set at around 14 - an Enid Blyton, C.S. Lewis sort of 14 year old. Basically, Wheel is kid's stuff - the white hats against the black hats; NATO against Putin. The Incarnated Dark has a decidedly Talibanesque look about him - he'll probably look like Putin in Season Two. Trouble is, America pumps out variations of goodies v. baddies shit and the West believes this pernicious nonsense, in which we are always the goodies pitted against the Dark.
So, the appearance of Admiral Sir Tony Radakin in this sea of trouble (see what I did there?) was a restorative dose of fresh commonsense on the Sophie's War Show.
Sir Antony David Radakin, KCB, ADC (born 10 November 1965) is the 24th Chief of the Defence Staff, the professional head of the British Armed Forces since November 2021, succeeding General Sir Nicholas Carter. He's also previously had lots of top Navy jobs and was educated in state schools and Southampton University. He held firm against Sophie's prodding -
Sophie: Why don't we invade?
Sir Tony: Because we don't want to escalate the conflict.
Sophie: Why don't we instigate a no-fly zone?
Sir Tony: Because we don't want to escalate the conflict.
Sophie: Last week Liz Truss urged British men to go out to Ukraine to fight alongside Ukrainians - do you agree?
Sir Tony: That is not a sensible thing to do. It is unlawful and unmilitary for British residents to go to war in a foreign country. If you want to help, then join your own army.
War fever is a strange thing - the testosterone over-rides sense and self-interest. The thought of men, from teenagers to one chap aged 60, untrained and unprepared, going out to Ukraine for a bit of a ruck, as if they were going to watch a football match, prompted me to repost this reflection by mr ishmael:
THE DISEASE OF CONCEIT 12/10/2010
People
go caving, don't they, mad bastards, do it for fun, they do. And
hiking, up in the Cairngorms or Snowdonia, dressed, more or less, in
their underpants. There's always the mountain rescue guys; they have
helicopters and thermal imaging stuff. Yachtsmen go Hornblowering down
to the sea, in flimsy craft, Gales in North Uzera, Force Ten in South
Uzera. And they are all, in their own minds, invulnerable. Nasty old
snow's not gonna take me by surprise. Or, No, I'm a mariner, me, know
these waters like the back of my hand, just have to do some tacking.
And backing. Nautical stuff. And there's always the RAF Rescue blokes,
they can pull you out of the drink. Ah've been cavin', me, man and boy,
for't best part of eighteen months, there' s nowt tha can teach me,
subterranean 'omesick blues, got 'em in me blood. No danger of me
getting stuck or drownded, checked all me ropes, I 'ave. And any road
up, there's potholing rescue teams, right good lads.
When
I was a kid, recently, really, in the scheme of things, I was one of
those brinkman types. Used to ride on the open platform of the old
yellow-and-blue Birmingham Corporation buses, like the Routemasters, but
not so good; it was at the rear, for getting on and off, and an upright
chrome pole was in one corner of the open platform, so's you could hold
it, getting on or off, but I leaned my back against it, hands in my
pockets, school satchel clasped between my knees, as the bus hurtled
towards the next stop, where I would disembark; lots of us did it, a
rite of passage for twelve year olds, and one pothole would have thrown
us off the platform into the path of the bus or car or lorry behind.
Later, I sailed the North Atlantic in midwinter. It was a deathtrap of a
tub, the SS Ramore Head, 6ooo tons, carrying Vauxhall Vivas to New
Brunswick, when seasoned old seamen were tucked up in their bunks, some
of them, in monster seas, throwing their guts into their buckets, I'd
be out on deck, down towards the stern, just digging it, man, the huge
power of it, as the ocean threw the stern upwards and it came crashing
down, the deck almost falling away below my feet, Oh Lording, thy sea is
so huge, my boat so small; for those in peril-ing, on the sea. I loved
it. Take me out of my turbulent waters and you extinguish my flame. That
was F Scott FitzGerald and that was how I lived. Later, pronounced Dead
At The Scene, but revived, in hospital, by a very cool doctor, after
the first of, well, more than one drug-induced RTA. Little things, I'd
always stand right up to the edge of the platform, at Coventry Railway
Station, toes hanging over; if there was an edge I wanted to be on it;
should have been killed, well, more than once. For a bet, I'd consume a
half-a-bottle of whiskey, topped-up with old fashioned Barley Wine
(loony juice ale, for younger readers) consume it straight down in one
gulping, determined go. You know how when Popeye had his spinach you
could see a blast surging through his body, right out to his
extremities, it was like that, Ka-Pow, like a nuclear elixir. And
naturally, to even consider such a thing, one had to be, already,
stone-mad, out of your mind drunk, only the truly bizarre, only the off
the wall crazy having any meaning which meant anything. Take me out of
my turbulent waters and you extinguish my flame.
It's
a long time ago now, even though it's just the same brief, candle in
the window, womb-to-tomb continuum, and I don't like to think about
it. When I have thought about it I have managed, eventually, to do so
with a little grace and a deal of understanding and I am not as hard on
young men as many blokes my age. Take them out of their turbulent
waters and you extinguish their flame. At least, unlike them, bless, I
wasn't encouraged, by the likes of Mrs Clarkson's gobby son, Jeremy, to
drive sideways in stolen cars or exposed, before puberty, to every
imaginable form of sexual activity, leaving nothing, as it were, to be
discovered, invented for oneself; every conceivable depravity,
perversion and cruelty, and then some, laid out before the boys'
soon-jaded eyes, even their wetdream imagination colonised by
consumerist Ruin, their very lust hijacked and sold back to them,
unrecogniseable as their own, relentlessly mechanised, stereotypical,
Eat This, Bitch. That Jamie Bulger shit, where did those little lads
learn about all that, if learning it be ?
Some
of us do do risk. It is selfish and stupid and invites a good,
righteous motherfucking from those who don't, from those whose taxes pay
for the helicopters and the ambulances, from those who man the
helicopters and ambulances, however much that smacks of ingratitude.
But on the other hand, the ones who do do risk, they'll be the ones who
crawled out of the sea. We have been here before, the danger and the
uncertainty of creativity and imagination and discontent versus the
Rewards of Obedience. Risk is who we are, some of us.Take me out of my
turbulent waters and you extinguish my flame.
I
mention this, the foregoing, only because the moral of this story, the
moral of this song, is simply that one should never be where one does
not belong, well, not if one would survive long enough to develop angina
or dementia or incontinence. Surviving risk has been my portion and now
I must, soonish, in the scheme of things, deal with whatever is dealt
to those who fail to Live Fast, Love Hard and Die Young, good fortune's
miserable and protracted convalescence, the strengthening clutches of
Death's fingers, this is what we survive for. If we survive.
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| image of the Ramore Head by mr. verge. |
Writing in the Sunday Times, Camilla Long describes the ecstatic welcome given to wealthy Russians by the British establishment at the beginning of this century. At a party given by the present owner of the London Evening Standard, former FSB agent Alexander Lebedev at Althorp in 2006 there was "a display by Cossacks; jewelled camels; women in 18th-century costume hanging in the trees. There was the bizarre sight of Mikhail Gorbachev high-fiving the main act, Black Eyed Peas, plus vapid supermodels such as Elle Macpherson trying to look engaged by Gorby’s favourite band, the Scorpions (“Let your balalaika sing what my guitar wants to say”)." The party was the
debutante ball of Alexander’s son, Evgeny, Proprietor of the Standard, and now Baron Lebedev, ennobled by Boris Johnson. The two are good chums, despite the whiff of KGB and Putin that hangs about the Baron.
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| Baron Lebedev, Proprietor of the Evening Standard. |
Starmer has called for the circumstances surrounding the awarding of the peerage to be scrutinised - Johnson had been warned at the time that it constituted a security risk. As part of the seizing of Russian assets in London - millionaire's houses and the like - will the Evening Standard also be seized? Boris' Useful War ( it's distraction utility has been compared to Margaret Thatcher's Useful Falklands War) may turn out to be less Useful than he had hoped if it exposes to the electorate the extent to which the Tory establishment is entwined with the Dark.
What's on at t'Pictures?
Kenneth bloody Branagh, that's what. Twice last week I was dragged out to see a Branagh masterpiece by my chum, who's a bit of a swivel-eyed loon when it comes to the Master. What can I say about Death on the Nile? Well, I don't need to go to Egypt anymore - I've seen the Nile and the Pyramids now, and very lushly golden they are too. A Ginger Poirot? Really? Really? And Linnet and Simon Doyle simulating clothed anal sex at Abu Simbel. Not very canonical, that. I'd have dropped a bloody big rock on them myself - can't blame Andrew Pennington at al.
And I also had to see Belfast, in which Branagh, surprisingly, didn't appear - he just directed it and wrote the book, because it is all about him as a little boy in the Troubles. In black and white. Because it's the past, innit. The anachronisms jarred. The accents were impenetrable. It was too loud. It was very, very, very long. The first hour and a half was the worst. No, the second hour and a half, that was definitely the worst. The film should only be shown with subtitles, extra cushions and regular gin and tonix.
The astute amongst you will have noticed that I've been signing off for the last couple of weeks with a picture of the wholly magnificent Sister Michael, of Derry Girls. Derry Girls, available on All Four in nice short chunks, with subtitles, is just about the funniest thing I've ever seen, and beats Branagh's depiction of the Troubles hands down. And as an alumna of a Catholic convent school, I can vouch for its total accuracy. If you need further persuasion, here is a compilation of Sister Michael's understated brilliance:
Honest Not Invent and Vent Stack - anthologies of the work of mr ishmael and stanislav, the young Polish plumber - can be purchased from Amazon or from Lulu.
Lulu Link for Vent Stack:
Lulu Link for Honest, Not Invent
https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/ishmael-smith/honest-not-invent/hardcover/product-njr7vg.html
Link for Paper Back :
https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/ishmael-smith/honest-not-invent/paperback/product-wq2kpg.html
At checkout, try PROWRITINGAID15, WELCOME15 or TREAT15 in the coupon box,
which takes 15% off the price before postage. If this
code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for
"Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.
 |
| Vampire and snack |
35 comments:
Ssshh, mrs i, ssshhh. Don't tell a soul but as a joke I managed to get a mongosling to go to university in Northern Ireland. Armed with her ever-so, ever-so good Catholic name, across the briny she went. So she did. Every day was Derry Girls lived for real. Ah, the tales. The shrieking of the Old Testament proddies a-yelping about damnation, and the quiet, blue-eyed boys from Bally-wherever who'd never spoken to a girl who wasn't their sister. What larjs, eh.
As for matters Ukrainian, the Colonel has been back on the telly being difficult. I thought that the interviewer was going to start weeping at the end. You could not get a fag-paper between the Colonel's analysis and the story brought to us from mr mike's source. Even the map is pretty much the same.
This bugger Blinken seems an interesting bastard. He veers from commonsense platitudes - which sound very pleasing to the ear - to mad discussions of hypothetical Armageddons from which he won't shrink but from which we all will be kept safe by the mighty cape and shield of Sleepy Joe Biden. If we just have faith. Alas, it is the weekend and so Joe is at his kip at home in Rhode Island. Back to the day job at 11am Monday, I understand. Armageddon must therefore be strictly timetabled for the working week, so it must.
Read a comment yesterday about Tank Girl. Can any Ishmaelite confirm? It seems she "went" to Oxford, likely did all sorts of stuff at Oxford, but leave with a degree of some sorts she did not.
Those boys are very sweet, mr mongoose. And very grateful.
Here's what Tank Girl's Wiki page says, Mr Mike: "Truss attended Merton College, Oxford, where she was President of Oxford University Liberal Democrats. She graduated from the University of Oxford in 1996, and subsequently joined the Conservative Party."
Please, please tell me it is a rotten lie.
Mrs I. This is what Wiki says:
"She read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Merton College, Oxford.[1]
Truss was President of Oxford University Liberal Democrats and a member of the national executive committee of its youth and student wing. She also expressed republican sentiments in a speech at the 1994 Liberal Democrats conference.[17][18] Truss joined the Conservative Party in 1996.[4] "
No mention of a degree. Maybe some recent word-smithery?
Everywhere says that she graduated; nowhere says what degree she got.
Also, and asking for a friend, what genius thought it a good idea for a NATO member to give military aircraft to a combatant state fighting Russia in a hot war?
mrs i, long ago I was one of those boys.
Mr mongoose: this was suggested by the US. Poland very quickly said "no way". Not even the Poles are that stupid. BTW I read that there is a very large Russian fleet still in the Western approaches, should Europe (the UK) do anything daft. The Irish complained about it a couple of weeks ago but the ships are sill out there. Combined they have > 10k missiles I read.
What difference would it make, mr mike? Call-Me-Dave took a first (also PPE) and you wouldn't want him running a government department, let alone the country...oh, hang on, wait. Anyway, on the other hand, Truss presumably curates her own wiki page and the omission may well indicate a sore spot on her part.
(Long ago and far away, I was "granted an allowance towards an Ordinary Degree", which meant better than failing but worse than a third. Remaining alive 7 years later, and being prepared to pay a £2 fee - no typo, that's two quid - entitled me to an upgrade, which was too good a piss-taking opportunity to pass up. So M.A. as well as the B. Silly nonsense.)
Forget the degrees, though - Liz Truss (working, let us not forget, for a PM whose surname is commonplace slang in the land of his birth for a cock) sounds like something a battle-hardened bull-dyke would order from the Ann Summers catalogue to keep herself from turning inside out after a hot date. Not the most dignified impression to be making on the world stage.
cheers
v./
That's well found, mr v. I couldn't find anything.
An astonishing thing as happened. Something worth reading in the Daily mail: Vladimir Putin is neither sick nor mad - he's the ruthless gangster he has always been
Mr verge: it matters in the sense that if they think they can get away with it, then what else are they doing? Like Kinnock's combover. First it revealed his vanity; second, his stupidity in thinking no one would notice.
Recall; Tank Girl single handed caused Russia to put its strategic nuclear forces on combat alert. Putin confirmed that again today in a speech when he pointed to Tank Girl's statement saying NATO should get directly involved in Ukraine.
Oh, that was you, mr v. Ye wily scamp, ye. I thought you'd unmasked the Truss.
I see that there continues to be much blithe talk of NATO assisting with this and that. The Ukie Pres broadcast into the Commons chamber tomorrow.
Better give those reading specs a polish, mr mongoose.
Assume you saw this already, mr mike?
https://www.ft.com/content/94839428-3f90-4fbd-966d-3199ecb9a357
"God help," as my Gran used to say.
v./
Mr verge: ft is behind a paywall. Pls can you give a quick summary.
Latest map:
https://dxczjjuegupb.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Donbass-operational-cauldron-on-Russian-TV.jpg
I can't believe some of the rubbish I have read in UK broadsheets.
As you can see the bulk of the Ukie army is sealed in a cauldron in the SE. Mariupol, (SE) is cut off. Odessa is about to be cut off; amphibious ships in the Black Sea wait to land troops in Odessa. A larger cauldron is forming from Odessa to Kiev. The Ukie army no longer exists.
By any historical standard this is an unprecedented campaign by Russia.
The next front of the war is economic with the West.
What I think Russia will do, particularly now it has published its "bad list" of countries (UK at the top of the list), is sell its commodities at 2 prices. High for those on the bad list, lower for friends. Sell directly to end-user and eliminate the traders and middle men. Or if traders want to buy they buy at the high price. And no payments on SWIFT as an added bonus. This will collapse the whole house of cards in the West very quickly.
These commodities are not just the staples of energy and food and fertilizer (Russia supplies 25-50% or world needs), but also minerals and metals that are essential to the West.
I hate to say it, but Europe and the UK are screwed; and my home country is not immune either.
Managed to find it again, mr mike. Too long to summarise or paste here. I'll drop you a line.
cheers
v./
t's getting a bit silly now. Poland being afraid to give its Migs to Ukraine - for one very good reason - think it is somehow better if they give them to the Yanks and the Yanks give them to Ukraine. Is it just me who thinks that that is actually worse?
Those Migs will never cross the Ukraine border, one way or another.
30 US bio-labs in Ukraine - evidence from MoD.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bLM0Nm_lSE
(Turn on cc and in settings set auto-translate to English)
It does though point to the truth of their having used up all their own aircraft. I cannot imagine that Poland's aircraft are going to be the most up-to-date examples given that they want Uncle Sam to replace them with new shiny somethngs.
30 Mig-29s. The first variant of the Mig-29 entered service in err, 1982. These might be more modern, I guess.
Depends on the maintenance, skill of pilots, on-board sensors, integration with ground and satellite sensors, missiles carried etc.
The bottom line is Russian satellites and radar will see them before they take off. They are in range of all kinds of missile systems against which there is no defence. But if Russia chooses not to hit them on the ground, they are with range of Russia AA systems (S300, S350, S400, S500 etc) the moment they cross the Ukie border. And Mig 29s are an older generation, still good, but no match for the modern Russian fighter jets. The bottom line is that its a kamakazi mission for any pilot getting in the jet, and I think this is understood.
Actually, nice move by Poland to try and dodge the bullet and pass it over to the Yanks.
PS US State Dept spokesman says US not consulted on transfer of Migs to the US for onward transfer to Ukraine. Sounds like the US has got cold feet.
Yes, mr mike, they've just stiffed the Yanks and made them look silly. It's a murky bloody business this international 4D chess. I'm always half a step behind the buggers.
I thought the Ukie lad did v well today. Channeling his inner Churchill had the HoC lapping it up in full blow-job mode. Quite sickening really but good theatre. Of course, the better the theatre gets, the closer we get to some idiot making a mistake and then we get a proper bloodbath spreading across borders.
Mr mongoose:
"The prospect of fighter jets 'at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America' departing from a U.S./NATO base in Germany to fly into airspace that is contested with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance," Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said of the Polish announcement which caught the Biden administration by surprise."
No shit Sherlock.
Amusing to note the BBC saying of the Russian external news embargo that the Russian people have no idea what is really going on, with no hint that the British embargo of Russian broadcasting in Britain might just be leaving the British people similarly in the dark.
Crikey, mr mike, and everyone else, have you seen the Kamala Harris presscon in Poland? It is terrifying. Completely incoherent and barely in control of her body. We better hope Sleepy Joe makes it to the end of his term.
Yes Mr mongoose, though had to watch through my fingers with my hands covering my eyes.
Seems like one of those immutable laws of physics, that each generation of politicians is worse than the last, but its a log scale not linear.
The Kamala routine demonstrates the absolutely vital importance of not letting a politician out without an Autocue.
The bombing of a maternity hospital is pretty heavy stuff. As the Gospel writer, Luke, has it: "It will go hard with women who are with child, or have children at the breast, in those days; it will be a time of bitter distress over all the land, and retribution against this people."
Mrs I: the maternity hospital thing was fake news. First, the "hospital" had been vacated a while ago and was a headquarters of the ASOV brigade because of its strategic location in Mariupol. The photo of the attractive pregnant woman was staged - she is a well known Instagram "influencer" from Mariupol. Second: the Russian MoD deny they bombed it and pointed to features of the damage which could not have been caused by high explosive. Third, none of the photos show any obvious hospital stuff - eg beds.
The MSM particularly in the UK has gone berserk publishing lies and propaganda.
The latest narrative seems to be chemical weapons. Nobody but the MSM and the usual western political players have anything supportive to say on the matter. It seems to be un-fact-checked madeupskynewsandfilth bullshit but we are used to this covid-CO2-WMD codswallop by now, I hope. Meanwhile the encirclement of Kiev is almost complete and the slaughter is about to begin. Mr mike's rather bleak summary of Rooskie tactics seems to be coming to fruition: encircle it, invite to surrender and if it doesn't, raze it to the ground.
One day a long time ago in the time of my grandfather, my forebears rebelled against the Tommies during a World War, then they won their partial freedom a few years later fighting what we would now call a terrorist war, and having won almost everything they wanted, they promptly had a civil war over the scrapings. A terrible beauty was born, a man said, and that's about the truth of the Ukraine right now.
Mr mongoose: slowly the truth on the real situation on the ground is filtering through in the western MSM - about time. I gather a report in The Times acknowledged the cauldron in the east (Donbass) containing 60-100k ukie forces. Actually, this big cauldron has now been broken down into smaller bite sized cauldrons.
Mariupol, a major port city in Ukraine, and a stronghold of the right wing neo-Nazi Asov brigade, is almost over run by Russian forces. Regular Ukie forces will be allowed to surrender and return home; the Asov brigade will not have that option. This will likely be the trigger for the collapse of the cauldrons in the Donbass. Then things will likely unfold very quickly. By the same token, the West will go even more hysterical; expect more hysterical propaganda and false flags - chemical weapons use by Russia etc...etc..
The economic war will continue. I imagine you can see the effects of this now on prices and supply chains in the UK. Its certainly evident here in Australia. And, Russia has yet to announce its counter sanctions. I read jut now that Germany says it need 5 years to wean itself off Russian gas - it may be lucky if it is gifted 5 years.
Thank you for that useful corrective, mr mike - it is easy to accept news reporting as factual rather than propaganda, especially when the news agency - the BBC - has a decades-long reputation for integrity, objectivity and truth. Spurred on by your comment I had a look at the available footage of the hospital after the bombing. There's little sign of a fully-equipped functioning hospital. The ASOV brigade are a bad lot, right enough: In 2015 and 2016, the regiment came to international notice after allegations of torture,war crimes and neo-Nazi sympathies, and use of Nazi symbols.In June 2015, the Canadian defence minister declared that Canadian forces would not provide training or support to Azov Battalion. In 2018, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a provision blocking any training of Azov members by American forces, citing its neo-Nazi connections. I suppose it is not too much of a stretch to imagine the ASOV Brigade using a still-functioning maternity hospital as a base, thus turning a civilian target into a military target. The blood-streaked "influencer", Marianna Podgurskaya, featured in the photos leaving the ruins of the building, has subsequently successfully given birth with no harm to mum or baby despite the trauma. Is this evidence of the resilience of nature in the face of danger and disaster, or evidence, as the Russians claim, that the whole thing was faked? It has certainly done her "influencer" carer no harm at all. Talk about being in the right place at the right time
Who the fuck knows? I certainly don't. They've been at it for two and a half weeks now and it is more than time for Zelensky to accept the Russian war aims - which remain limited, by and large, to Ukrainian neutrality and save the world from annihilation.
And likewise all the further cockwaffle about cooling and nuclear power stations. As if these places are not designed with the notion of a power failure being thought about.
I see Belarus might be joining the party, mr mike, or is that drivel too?
Mr mongoose. Russia does not need more troops. They have complete control of Ukraine airspace; nothing moves in Ukraine unless they allow it. So far they have used a fraction of the troops and airpower allocated to this mission. They are taking their time and doing it methodically so as to minimise damage on civilians and infrastructure - even at the cost of Russian casualties. If they wanted they could flatten Ukraine in 1 day.
Russia has an army (1st Guards Tank Army - absolutely elite) stationed in the West of Belarus that they could call in if required. I happen to think Russia is holding this in reserve should NATO get involved, and it could defeat any combination of NATO forces. BTW, Belarus also has a formidable army which trains (always has) with Russia. Since the failed US attempt at regime change last year in Belarus (an attempt to use Belarus the same way as Ukraine) the alliance between Belarus and Russia has become very strong. The coup failed because it was compromised by Russian intelligence services.
This is NOT about destroying Ukraine and killing Ukrainians (except ASOV). Especially Eastern Ukrainians, who are slavs, and the Russians regard them as brothers. Remember, Ukraine is an artificial construct created by the Soviet Union. The eastern half was formerly Russia; the western part (Galicia) was Polish. This is about not allowing Ukraine in NATO so the US can site nuclear weapons on the border of Russia. The declared Russian objectives are demilitarisation and denazification NOT the conquering of Ukraine.
Zelensky does what the US tells him and Ukraine is a proxy for the US. This is the problem with Ukraine. And has been so ever since the US coup in 2014.
But there is a much bigger picture. The West (US + UK) wants to break up Russia and steal its resources. They nearly succeeded in the 1990s til Putin came to power and reversed the decline and re-established Russia as a superpower. That's why the West hates Putin. With the rise of China, and now the strong alliance of Russia and China, the days when the West could dictate to the world are truly over. This is what underpins this Ukraine conflict.
PS here's a good discussion of the geopolitics and where we are currently.
https://youtu.be/lPqVcm6TfoI
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